Scholars of culture, humanities and social sciences have increasingly come to an appreciation of the importance of the legal domain in social life, while critically engaged socio-legal scholars around the world have taken up the task of understanding "Law's Empire" in all of its cultural, political, and economic dimensions. The questions arising from these intersections, and addressing imperialisms past and present forms the subject matter of a special symposium issue of Social Identities under the editorship of Griffith University's Rob McQueen, and UBC's Wes Pue and with contributions from McQueen, Ian Duncanson, Renisa Mawani, David Williams, Emma Cunliffe, Chidi Oguamanam, W. Wesley Pue, Fatou Camara, and Dianne Kirkby. This paper introduces the volume, forthcoming in late 2007. The central problematique of this issue has previously been explored through the 2005 Law's Empire conference, an informal but vibrant postcolonial legal studies network.

Law's Empire

The Concept Of Law

Inevitably, reading is one of the requirements to be undergone. To improve the performance and quality, someone needs to have something new every day. It will suggest you to have more inspirations, then. However, the needs of inspirations will make you searching for some sources. Even from the other people experience, internet, and many books. Books and internet are the recommended media to help you improving your quality and performance.

A matter of principle.

Introduction. Part 1 - Contravening the law. Part 2 - Public policy. Part 3 - Restraint of trade. Part 4 - Relief from the consequences. Part 5 - Reform. Part 6 - Cases and comments.

Illegality and Public Policy

Resolving contractual disputes

Review of Plunder: When the Rule of Law is Illegal. By Ugo Mattei and Laura Nader. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008

The High Court of Australia, in pursuing coherence between common law and statute law, has limited itself to ensuring that the rules of common law and statute law should be free of contradiction. The Court does not appear to have embraced the idea, which lies at the core of some major theories of private law, that a set of rules is coherent only if the set can be explained as the outworking of a single principle. Applying that idea to the relationship between common law and statute law is confronted by some serious challenges. In the past, coherence as non-contradiction (combined with the idea of parliamentary supremacy) has worked well as a means of reconciling common law with statute law, but the proliferation of legislation in recent years and the character of much modern legislation has drawn attention to the limitations of such an approach to the question. A more exacting approach to coherence of common law and statute law, on the other hand, would require the revision of some widely-held assumptions about the nature of law, such as the core assumption of legal positivism that the ultimate criterion of the authority of the law is its pronouncement by an authoritative institution.

Coherence in the Age of Statutes

Introduction The relationship of private and public law is an immense topic – too large to be exhausted by a single collection of essays. Statements of the relationship are also notoriously complicated by a lack of terminological clarity. What is it that one intends to contrast with what, when one distinguishes private law from public law, and what is one’s purpose in doing so? Is one’s objective simply an interpretive, classificatory one – a process of sorting and better understanding legal material so as to bring to it some greater rational order – or is the purpose instead a normative one – to change the legal order for the better in some way or illuminate its deficiencies from a particular point of view? Is defining the relationship between private and public law intended to make the practical task of legal actors easier – to make it simpler, for example, for a court to dispose of a particular case before it? Is the aim to promote consistency in decision-making? None of this is very clear. The truth is that the nature and purpose of inquiries into the relationship between private and public law depends entirely on the inquirer and that there is a great deal of variation on such matters.

Private law: key encounters with public law

Recent case law and scholarship has reignited the debate about whether fiduciary obligations are purely proscriptive in character. In particular, Rebecca Lee has suggested that fiduciary obligations have a prescriptive and 'directional' dimension. This article argues that the purely proscriptive understanding of fiduciary obligations represents the better understanding of English and Australian law. The argument rests upon three pillars. First, the proscriptive paradigm confines fiduciary obligations to their proper place within the broader complex of legal duties owed by those who undertake to act in the interests of other. Secondly, while it is often stated that fiduciaries have obligations to make full disclosure of relevant facts to their principals, an examination of the structure of fiduciary liability reveals that the disclosure rule functions as a subsidiary rule which removes the relevant activities from the scope of the proscription. Finally, the proscriptive character of fiduciary obligations is reflected in the remedies which are awarded for breach of fiduciary duty. Contrary to the position taken by some advocates of the proscription thesis (such as Matthew Conaglen), the author argues that the remedial rationale in breach of fiduciary duty cases is rescission (or elimination of the effect of the transaction) as between principal and fiduciary rather than deterrence of the fiduciary.

Prescription and Proscription in Fiduciary Obligations

The High Court of Australia, in pursuing coherence between common law and statute law, has limited itself to ensuring that the rules of common law and statute law should be free of contradiction. The Court does not appear to have embraced the idea, which lies at the core of some major theories of private law, that a set of rules is coherent only if the set can be explained as the outworking of a single principle. Applying that idea to the relationship between common law and statute law is confronted by some serious challenges. In the past, coherence as non-contradiction (combined with the idea of parliamentary supremacy) has worked well as a means of reconciling common law with statute law, but the proliferation of legislation in recent years and the character of much modern legislation has drawn attention to the limitations of such an approach to the question. A more exacting approach to coherence of common law and statute law, on the other hand, would require the revision of some widely held assumptions about the nature of law, such as the core assumption of legal positivism that the ultimate criterion of the authority of the law is its pronouncement by an authoritative institution.

https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:489272/UQ489272.pdf

Darryn Jensen

Papers

Review of Plunder: When the Rule of Law is Illegal. By Ugo Mattei and Laura Nader. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008

Coherence in the Age of Statutes

Private law: key encounters with public law

Prescription and Proscription in Fiduciary Obligations

Coherence in the age of statutes