Ius Commune Europaeum – serie

This book on Legal Education was written based upon many of the author's experiences as professor and dean. The author noted that there is relatively few literature and research about legal education and felt it was necessary to discuss legal education in present times. The book focuses on many issues such as teaching itself, employability, mission and focus of law schools, the future of law schools in this age of internationalisation, student intake, the link with the labour markets and many other issues. One of the conclusions is that law schools will have to seek their own position and niche and that law schools will have different roles. This book also focuses on the need for law school deans and leaders to set clear missions and strategies and work towards education with all the necessary skills and knowledge, which the students can take with them far into the 21st century. No teaching as we did for many years, but analysing what lies ahead and what is needed for future careers.

The European acquis communautaire in the field of property law is to a large extent still unexplored. This study has aimed to shine a light on EU property law. It provides an overview of the existing acquis communautaire in property law, and presents a proposal for the future development of this field of law. It deals with the influence of the EU's four freedoms - of goods, persons, services and capital - on national property law and discusses whether or not the EU would have the competence to actively create property law, and the extent to which it has already done so. By conducting an extensive search on the basis of some thirty key property law terms, the author has been able to uncover not just the handful of Directives and Regulations that touch upon property law and are relatively well-known, but also hundreds of EU legislative measures that make use of property law concepts, but leave them mostly undefined. The resulting picture of EU property law is a fragmented one. In order to develop this field of law more consistently and coherently, the author has proposed a framework for future EU property law, focusing on both form and content.The essence of this framework is the development of three European-autonomous property rights, functioning within a European set of property law rules.

This book focuses on the damage to private natural resources which have an ecological value in excess of their market value and the damage to public natural resources. Its aim is to design a compensation system, taking into account the interaction between regulation, liability rules and compensation mechanisms.

This Training Framework is based on the empirical study of the procedural rights of suspects in four European Union (EU) jurisdictions - England and Wales, France, the Netherlands and Scotland - conducted in the period 2011-2013. The study focused on three of the procedural rights set out in the EU Roadmap for strengthening the procedural rights of suspected and accused persons in criminal proceedings: the right to interpretation and translation; the right to information and the letter of rights; and the right of access to a lawyer before and during police interrogation, as well as the right to silence. The results were published in the book Inside Police Custody: An Empirical Account of Suspects' Rights in Four Jurisdictions, Ius Commune Europaeum No. 113. The objective of the training framework is to enhance the knowledge, understanding and skills of criminal justice practitioners - police officers and defence lawyers - in respect of the procedural rights of suspects in police detention.It seeks to do this by orientating the framework around the requirements of EU law on procedural rights, as set out in the EU Directives referred to above, and by suggesting appropriate training strategies. The framework incorporates best-practice identified during the observational stage of the research study, and is designed to be applicable across EU Member States. Since training courses for police officers and lawyers rarely focus exclusively on the procedural rights of suspects, the training framework is not intended to provide a model for stand-alone training. Building on the findings of the research, and the pilot training programme carried out as part of the research project, the training framework is designed as a tool to be used in the planning of training programmes on the procedural aspects of police custody, for both police officers and lawyers. In this regard, it highlights the procedural rights to be addressed through training, and the training methods that may be suitable for ensuring their effective delivery in practice.The research study and development of the training framework was carried out by the Universities of Maastricht, Warwick and the West of England, together with JUSTICE. Avon and Somerset Police and the Open Society Justice Initiative were also collaborators on the project.

Constitutional review is a hot topic in contemporary constitutional debate and design. However, the legal force of judicial decisions, and in particular their effect in time, is an under-studied issue in the literature. This is remarkable, considering the substantial impact of these decisions on the parties or the wider society, in particular in the case of abstract review, and considering that the choice of retroactive, immediate or future effects may have at stake legal certainty, the right to effective judicial protection, or the rule of law. This edited volume fills the gap by offering a comparative analysis of legislative choices and jurisprudential developments regarding the effect in time of legal decisions and its implications in both civil law and common law systems, in abstract and concrete review. Both national and European courts are discussed. Country reports are preceded by milestone judgments so as to give insight into what, concretely, is at stake, thereby addressing both scholars and practitioners.

Is it necessary and just that parliamentarians are immune from legal action? If so, to what extent is such immunity justified and which purpose does it serve? These questions reveal a constitutional dilemma. On the one hand, parliamentary immunity safeguards the necessary independence of the legislature. It protects members of parliament from politically motivated legal action and facilitates freedom of parliamentary debate. On the other hand, however, it distorts equality before the law, limits the rights of citizens and obstructs the administration of justice. This dilemma touches the very core of constitutional law. Immunity rules are intimately linked to the basic setup of the democratic state, to the separation of powers, the concept of representation, the rule of law and fundamental rights. This book contains a comprehensive study of parliamentary immunity in the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands. It explores and compares the material legal rules as well as the historical and theoretical background of the three systems with a view to identifying common norms and principles.It also takes into account the -European dimension of parliamentary immunity by placing the national immunity systems in the context of the relevant case law of the European Court of Human Rights and providing an analysis of the immunity regime of the European Parliament. While no universal blueprint for parliamentary immunity is in sight, this book demonstrates that a common legal understanding of the function and purpose of immunity is slowly emerging.

This book contains selected contributions from the third Young Property Lawyers Forum (YPLF) and the YPLF Masterclass 2012. It offers new perspectives on property theory, constitutional property law, and private law-property law. Under these headings, young and renowned property law scholars present their current research and offer an exciting look into the challenges property law faces in the 21st century. In November 2012 the YPLF met in Stellenbosch, South Africa for the Forum's third edition. It is an informal network of young property law researchers that seeks to bring together property law researchers from around the world and to enable them to discuss their work with each other and with more experienced researchers. On this occasion a special Master Class was held after the YPLF in which some of the world's leading property law scholars presented their research. The YPLF continues to form a network for property law researchers around the word, leading to more conferences and publications.

The Treaty on European Union has had a profound impact on the process of European integration. This book commemorates the entry in force of the Treaty 20 years ago by evaluating the legal impact it has had on the European Union's institutional framework and its policies.

Although the protection of individuals' interests against administrative actions is still primarily the domain of the judiciary, most legal systems nowadays also assign this task to ombudsmen. This can potentially lead to tension between the two institutions and can affect their relations, and therefore needs coordination. This book investigates whether relations between the judiciary and ombudsmen exist at all, how their respective tasks and competences influence one another and how they are coordinated. It contains a comprehensive and comparative study on the coordination of the relations between ombudsmen and the judiciary in three considerably different legal systems, namely the Netherlands, England and the European Union. The author identifies three levels of possible coordination: institutional coordination, case coordination and normative coordination. He explores and compares the statutory rules, the case law of the judiciary and ombudsprudence. In addition, he draws from experiences shared through interviews with ombudsmen, judges and employees of ombudsman offices. In doing so, he demonstrates that several improvements to the ombudsmen-judiciary relations are required

The story of collective redress in the European Union up to the present day may be qualified as a story of missed opportunities and small steps forward. The editors of the present volume hope that the future of collective redress in Europe will be brighter than the past.