1.. HARD CASES 5. Legal Rights A. Legislation . . . We might therefore do well to consider how a philosophical judge might develop, in appropriate cases, theories of what legislative purpose and legal principles require. We shall find that he would construct these theories in the same manner as a philosophical referee would construct the character of a game. I have invented, for this purpose, a lawyer of superhuman skill, learning, patience and acumen, whom I shall call Hercules. I suppose that Hercules is a judge in some representative American jurisdiction. I assume that he accepts the main uncontroversial constitutive and regulative rules of the law in his jurisdiction. He accepts, that is, that statutes have the general power to create and extinguish legal rights, and that judges have the general duty to follow earlier decisions of their court or higher courts whose rationale, as l

Taking Rights Seriously

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

Legitimacy (or “the right to exercise power”) is now an established concept in criminological analysis, especially in relation to policing. Substantial empirical evidence shows the importance of legitimacy in securing law-abiding behavior and cooperation from citizens. Yet adequate theorization has lagged behind empirical evidence, and there has been a conflation of legitimacy with the cognate concepts of “trust” and of “obligation to obey the law.” By drawing on the work of Beetham (1991) and others (e.g., Bottoms and Tankebe, 2012), this study tests the hypothesis that the contents of the multiple dimensions of police legitimacy comprise procedural fairness, distributive fairness, lawfulness, and effectiveness. The study also investigates the relative influence of legitimacy and feelings of obligation on citizens’ willingness to cooperate with the police. Using data from London, the results substantiate the hypothesized dimensions of police legitimacy. In addition, legitimacy was found to exhibit both a direct influence on cooperation that is independent of obligation and an indirect influence that flows through people's felt obligations to obey the police. Implications for future research are discussed.

Viewing things differently: The dimensions of public perceptions of police legitimacy.

This article examines some basic assumptions about the nature of political institutions, the ways in which practices and rules that comprise institutions are established, sustained, and transformed, and the ways in which those practices and rules are converted into political behavior through the mediation of interpretation and capability. We discuss an institutional approach to political life that emphasizes the endogenous nature and social construction of political institutions, identities, accounts, and capabilities.

Institutional Perspectives on Political Institutions

Abbreviations Preface and acknowledgements Introduction Part I. International Law, Development and Third World Resistance: 1. Writing Third World resistance into international law 2. International law and the development encounter Part II. International Law, Third World Resistance and the Institutionalization of Development: the Invention of the Apparatus: 3. Laying the groundwork: the Mandate system 4. Radicalizing institutions and/or institutionalizing radicalism? UNCTAD and the NIEO debate 5. From resistance to renewal: Bretton Woods institutions and the emergence of the 'new' development agenda 6. Completing a full circle: democracy and the discontent of development Part III. Decolonizing Resistance: Human Rights and the Challenge of Social Movements: 7. Human rights and the Third World: constituting the discourse of resistance 8. Recoding resistance: social movements and the challenge to international law 9. Markets, gender and identity: a case study of the Working Women's Forum as a social movement Part IV. Epilogue References Index.

Neil MacCormick

Papers

The Interest of the State and the Rule of Law

Il Diritto Come Istituzione

The rise of Scottish nationalism

Contemporary State Sovereignty under the Microscope@@@Questioning Sovereignty

Libertad, igualdad y nacionalismo