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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.


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Book
01 Jan 1992

46 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated and theorised different forms and patterns of resistance to international courts and developed an analytical framework for explaining their variability, and provided a roadmap for empirical studies of resistance against international courts.
Abstract: The article investigates and theorises different forms and patterns of resistance to international courts and develops an analytical framework for explaining their variability. In order to make intelligible the resistance that many international courts are currently facing, the article first unpacks the concept of resistance. It then introduces a key distinction between mere pushback from individual member states or other actors, seeking to influence the future direction of a court’s case law, and actual backlash – a critique triggering significant institutional reform or even the dismantling of tribunals. On the basis on the proposed theoretical framework, the article provides a roadmap for empirical studies of resistance to ICs, considering the key contextual factors necessary to take into account in such studies.

46 citations

Book
01 Jan 2008
TL;DR: Ashford et al. as discussed by the authors provide a detailed discussion of the important issues in environmental law, policy, and economics, tracing their development over the past few decades through an examination of environmental law cases and commentaries by leading scholars.
Abstract: The past twenty-five years have seen a significant evolution in environmental policy, with new environmental legislation and substantive amendments to earlier laws, significant advances in environmental science, and changes in the treatment of science (and scientific uncertainty) by the courts. This book offers a detailed discussion of the important issues in environmental law, policy, and economics, tracing their development over the past few decades through an examination of environmental law cases and commentaries by leading scholars. The authors focus on pollution, addressing both pollution control and prevention, but also emphasize the evaluation, design, and use of the law to stimulate technical change and industrial transformation, arguing that there is a need to address broader issues of sustainable development. Environmental Law, Policy, and Economics, which grew out of courses taught by the authors at MIT, treats the traditional topics covered in most classes in environmental law and policy, including common law and administrative law concepts and the primary federal legislation. But it goes beyond these to address topics not often found in a single volume: the information-based obligations of industry, enforcement of environmental law, market-based and voluntary alternatives to traditional regulation, risk assessment, environmental economics, and technological innovation and diffusion. Countering arguments found in other texts that government should play a reduced role in environmental protection, this book argues that clear, stringent legal requirements -- coupled with flexible means for meeting them -- and meaningful stakeholder participation are necessary for bringing about environmental improvements and technologicial transformations. This book is regularly updated online at http://mitpress.mit.edu/ashford_environmental_law

46 citations

Book
01 Jan 1976
TL;DR: The Law of South Africa as discussed by the authors is an encyclopaedia of South African law, which is used by practitioners to check a point quickly and easily without recourse to time-consuming research.
Abstract: By referring to the relevant volume of "The Law of South Africa" the practitioner is able to check a point quickly and easily without recourse to time-consuming research. The work's matter of fact statement of the law eschews speculative disgressions and spares the tedium of having to sift through a text to distinguish between the writer's opinion of what the law should be and the law as actually applied. Furthermore, the work's title scheme ensures that all the relevant statutory material is assembled in one place, saving the user the task of working through a labyrinth of common law and statutory provisions. In addition to a cumulative index volume and one for a cumulative table of cases, there are annual cumulative supplements and a frequent updating service. The titles in the encyclopaedia are listed alphabetically and divided into numbered paragraphs, each of which deals with one aspect of the law concerned. The subject matter is further divided by sub-headings, and running heads are inserted over each page. Moreover, each volume is equipped with a table of statutes and cases, a bibliography and an index. Each title is compiled by one or more jurists, all of whom are experts in their field. Academics, practitioners and judges have all contributed, and Butterworth staff members have sub-edited their text to guarantee the accuracy of case citations, statutory reference and quotations from judgements and ensure uniformity of treatment throughout the work.

46 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has been developing a "common law" of sentencing for the most serious international crimes: genocide and crimes against humanity as discussed by the authors, which has not yet become an integral part of international criminal justice rather than, as it has been treated, an afterthought.
Abstract: Absent much prescriptive guidance in its Statute or other positive law, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has been developing, in effect, a ‘common law’ of sentencing for the most serious international crimes: genocide and crimes against humanity. While it remains, as the Appeals Chamber has said, ‘premature to speak of an emerging “penal regime”, and the coherence in sentencing practice that this denotes’, this comment offers some preliminary reflections on the substantive law and process of sentencing as it has evolved through ICTR practice. Above all, the author argues, sentencing must, but has not yet, become an integral part of international criminal justice rather than, as it has historically been treated, an ‘afterthought’. The lack of sufficient attention to sentencing, evident procedurally in the ICTR's abandonment of distinct sentencing hearings and the expedient of ‘transactional sentencing’, at times manifests itself in perfunctory sentencing analyses and jurisprudential confusion over the proper role of ostensible sentencing factors including ‘gravity of the offence’, ‘zeal’, ‘heinous means’, ‘prior good character’ and ‘voluntary commission’. Because of the inherent gravity of the crimes, the ICTR's lack of adequate attention to sentencing has not, by and large, led it to impose quantitatively incorrect sentences. But qualitatively, neglect of sentencing inhibits the ‘common law’ evolution of a mature penal jurisprudence that can contribute to the long-term normative goals of international justice.

46 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
202358
2022195
2021460
2020774
2019920
2018981