Common law

About: Common law is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 30135 publications have been published within this topic receiving 280701 citations. The topic is also known as: judicial precedent & judge-made law.

American Civil Law Origins: Implications for State Constitutions

Abstract: We examine the effect of initial legal traditions on constitutional stability in the American states. Ten states were initially settled by France, Spain, or Mexico and had developed civil law legal systems at the time of American acquisition. Although Louisiana retained civil law, the remaining nine adopted common law. Controlling for contemporaneous and initial conditions, civil law states have substantially higher levels of constitutional instability at the end of the twentieth century. We speculate that this effect is attributable to instability in property rights caused by the change in national governments and to the legacy of the civil law system. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.

Comparative legal research: its function in the development of harmonized law

Abstract: Most jurists assume that the law of a single country can be studied independently of the law of others. Law students study the law of their own nation. Judges consult national codes and case law. An American or a German scholar assumes that he can write about American law or German law without examining French or Italian law. Even scholars in comparative law often assume that they should first find out what the American, German, French and Italian law is, and then make comparisons. I do not think the law of a single country can be an independent object of study. To understand law, even as it is within that country, one must look beyond its boundaries, indeed, beyond one's own time. Curiously enough, the need for such a transtemporal transnational approach to law was explained most clearly by Portalis, the architect of the French Civil Code. We associate the Code with the emergence of national legal systems in the 19th century. Eventually, nearly every country enacted its own code, each supposedly containing a distinct law. Portalis explained that the French Civil Code could not be the unique source of French law. It could not "govern all and foresee all."' Indeed, virtually every case would present the judge with a problem that the Code by itself could not resolve since "no one pleads against a clear statutory text."2 Unlike 19th century French jurists, he did not say that answers were to be found by exegesis of the Code. He did not say they were to be found by consulting precedent. "Few cases are susceptible of being decided by a statute, by a clear text. It has always been by general principles, by doctrine, by legal science, that most disputes have been

Religion and Personal Law in Secular India: A Call to Judgment

Abstract: Table of Contents: Introduction: The Secular State in a Religious Society Gerald James Larson Part The Secular State and Legal Pluralism: The Current Debate and Its Historical Antecedents Religion, Personal Law and Identity Granville Austin Religious Minorities and the Law Ruma Pal Living with Difference in India: Legal Pluralism and Legal Universalism in Historical Context Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and Lloyd I Rudolph Part 2 Religious Endowments, Reservations Law, and Criminal Law Religious and Charitable Endowments and a Uniform Civil Code John H Mansfield Personal Law and Reservations: Volition and Religion in Contemporary India Laura Dudley Jenkins The Uniform Civil Code Debate: Lessons from the Criminal Procedures Arvind Verma Part 3 Personal Law and Issues of Gender Gender Implications for a Uniform Civil Code Robert D Baird The Personal and the Political: Indian Women and Inheritance Law Srimati Basu Colonialism, Nationalism, and Gendered Legal Subjectivities: Observations on the Historical Destruction of Separate Legal Regimes Kunal M Parker Who Was Roop Kanwar? Sati, Law, Religion, and Post-Colonial Feminism in Contemporary India Paul Courtright and Namita Goswami "Where Will She Go? What Will She Do?" Paternalism towards Women in the Administration of Muslim Family Law in Contemporary India Sylvia Vatuk Part 4 Cross-Cultural Perspectives Affirmative Action in the United States and the Reservation System in India: Some Comparative Perspectives Kevin Brown Personal Law Systems and Religious Conflict: A Comparison of India and Israel Marc Galanter and Jayanth Krishnan The Road to Xanadu: India's Quest for Secularism Rajeev Dhavan

Antitrust and the Bounds of Power: The Dilemma of Liberal Democracy in the History of the Market

Abstract: Antitrust - introduction on the surface - the technical profiles in the foundations - the dilemma of liberal democracy Part 1 Technical profiles - the USA: protection of competition or of freedom or contract - from the common law to the Sherman Act, early years of the Sherman Act, prohibitions to protect market pluralism increase today's subtle weapons - the Chicago School, evolution in the Supreme Court, trends in recent cases, the present position in summary Part 2 Technical profiles - Europe: the heritage of history - Europe's industrial culture, the Freiburger Ordoliberalen School, early development of antitrust laws, antitrust in the European Community "restrictive" agreements - the normative machinery, vertical agreements, horizontal agreements abuse of a dominant position - "special responsibility", assessment of "dominant position", abuse as an "objective concept", individual types of abuse, in conclusion prohibitions of dominant position - mergers - the ban and its limits, antitrust against public monopolies Part 3 Antitrust and the bounds of power: drawing together the threads - original aims and later evolution, in the USA, in Europe, the limits to antitrust law, facing concentrated, competitive firms, changing markets - what remains? the dilemma of liberal democracy - the dilemma of liberal democracy within the dilemma of efficiency, towards autonomy of European antitrust from other common policies, the global market and tomorrow's antitrust