05 August 2017

Call for Papers : Law’s Porosities

Call for Papers : Law’s Porosities


The North-American section of the Société de législation comparée is organizing a bilingual conference (French-English) on “Law’s Porosities” on October 26, 2017 in Washington, D.C. at the American University Washington College of Law, in conjunction with the American Society of Comparative Law’s annual meeting, which will be held on October 27 and 28, 2017. Presentations in English or French are welcome.
The Keynote lecture will be delivered by Mireille Delmas-Marty, Professor Emerita, Collège de France.
There is no cost to attend either or both meetings, and reduced hotel costs will be available to anyone registered for either or both meetings.
Please send a short abstract of your proposed presentation before August 31 to VivianeCurran@pitt.edu.
Details for registration will be posted soon on the site of the American Society of Comparative Law: http://ascl.org/
We are hoping to see many of you in Washington!
-Vivian Curran, President, North-American Section, Société de législation comparée and
            President, American Society of Comparative Law
-George Bermann, Vice-President, North-American Section, Société de législation comparée

Appel à communications : Porosités du droit


La Section nord-américaine de la Société de législation comparée organise une conférence bilingue (français-anglais) sur les « Porosités du droit » le 26 octobre 2017 à Washington, D.C. à l’American University Washington College of Law, en conjonction avec la conférence annuelle de l’American Society of Comparative Law qui aura lieu le 27 et 28 octobre 2017.  Les interventions en langue française ou anglaise seront bienvenues.
Discours d’ouverture par Madame le Professeur Mireille Delmas-Marty, Pr. émérite, Collège de France
Entrée gratuite aux deux conférences et tarifs réduits pour le logement avec inscription à l’une ou aux deux conférences.
Prière d’envoyer un court résumé de votre intervention proposée avant le 31 août à VivianeCurran@pitt.edu.
Précisions pour inscriptions se trouveront bientôt sur le site de l’American Society of Comparative Law :
http://ascl.org/
Espérant vous voir nombreux à Washington !
-Viviane Curran, Présidente de la Section nord-américaine de la SLC et
Présidente de l’American Society of Comparative Law

-George Bermann, Vice-Président de la Section nord-américaine de la SLC

04 August 2017

New from Hart

New from Hart Publishing
I am pleased to announce the publication of the title(s) shown below. If you would like to order with your 10% discount you can do so through our US distributor’s website (please quote the reference HART EMAIL in the voucher code field and click ‘apply’).
Alternatively please contact ISBS directly to place your order (details below).


Criminal Sentencing as Practical Wisdom
Graeme Brown

How do judges sentence? In particular, how important is judicial discretion in sentencing? Sentencing guidelines are often said to promote consistency, but is consistency in sentencing achievable or even desirable? Whilst the passing of a sentence is arguably the most public stage of the criminal justice process, there have been few attempts to examine judicial perceptions of, and attitudes towards, the sentencing process.
Through interviews with Scottish judges and by presenting a comprehensive review and analysis of recent scholarship on sentencing – including a comparative study of UK, Irish and Commonwealth sentencing jurisprudence – this book explores these issues to present a systematic theory of sentencing. Through an integration of the concept of equity as particularised justice, the Aristotelian concept of phronesis (or ‘practical wisdom’), the concept of value pluralism, and the focus of appellate courts throughout the Commonwealth on sentencing by way of ‘instinctive synthesis’, it is argued that judicial sentencing methodology is best viewed in terms of a phronetic synthesis of the relevant facts and circumstances of the particular case. The author concludes that sentencing is best conceptualised as a form of case-orientated, concrete and intuitive decision making; one that seeks individualisation through judicial recognition of the profoundly contextualised nature of the process.

Graeme Brown LLB (Hons), LLM, MSc, MJur (Dunelm), PhD (Edin), Dip LP is a solicitor and Honorary Fellow in the School of Law, University of Edinburgh.

June 2017     9781509902613     304pp     Hardback     RSP: $108

DISCOUNT RATE TO EMAIL LIST SUBSCRIBERS: $97.20 (+ postage)


Human Rights and Judicial Review in Australia and Canada
The Newest Despotism?
Janina Boughey

It is commonly asserted that bills of rights have had a ‘righting’ effect on the principles of judicial review of administrative action and have been a key driver of the modern expansion in judicial oversight of the executive arm of government. A number of commentators have pointed to Australian administrative law as evidence for this ‘righting’ hypothesis. They have suggested that the fact that Australia is an outlier among common law jurisdictions in having neither a statutory nor a constitutional framework to expressly protect human rights explains why Australia alone continues to take an apparently ‘formalist’, ‘legalist’ and ‘conservative’ approach to administrative law. Other commentators and judges, including a number in Canada, have argued the opposite: that bills of rights have the effect of stifling the development of the common law. However, for the most part, all these claims remain just that – there has been limited detailed analysis of the issue, and no detailed comparative analysis of the veracity of the claims. This book analyses in detail the interaction between administrative and human rights law in Australia and Canada, arguing that both jurisdictions have reached remarkably similar positions regarding the balance between judicial and executive power, and between broader fundamental principles including the rule of law, parliamentary sovereignty and the separation of powers. It will provide valuable reading for all those researching judicial review and human rights.

Janina Boughey is a Lecturer in Public Law at Monash University.


June 2017     9781509907861     320pp     Hardback     RSP: $108

DISCOUNT RATE TO EMAIL LIST SUBSCRIBERS: $97.20 (+ postage)


General Principles of Law
European and Comparative Perspectives
Edited by Stefan Vogenauer and Stephen Weatherill

Examining general principles of law provides one of the most instructive examples of the intersection between EU law and comparative law. This collection draws on the expertise of high-profile and distinguished scholars to provide a critical examination of this interaction. It shows how general principles of EU law need to be responsive to national laws. In addition, it is clear that the laws of the Member States have no choice but to be responsive to the general principles which are developed through EU law. Viewed through the perspective of proportionality, legal certainty, and fundamental rights, the dynamic relationship between the ingenuity of the Court of Justice, the legislative process and the process of Treaty revision is comprehensively illustrated.

Stefan Vogenauer is Director of the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt.
Stephen Weatherill is Jacques Delors Professor of European Law, University of Oxford.


June 2017     9781509910717     432pp     Hardback     RSP: $114

DISCOUNT RATE TO EMAIL LIST SUBSCRIBERS: $102.60 (+ postage)


Gender Equality in Law
Uncovering the Legacies of Czech State Socialism
Barbara Havelková

Praise For The Book
‘In ‘Gender Equality in Law: Uncovering the Legacies of Czech State Socialism’, Barbara Havelková offers a sober and sophisticated socio-legal account of gender equality law in Czechia. Tracing gender equality norms from their origins under state socialism, Havelková shows how the dominant understanding of the differences between women and men as natural and innate combined with a post-socialist understanding of rights as freedom to shape the views of key Czech legal actors and to thwart the transformative potential of EU sex discrimination law. Havelková’s compelling feminist legal genealogy of gender equality in Czechia illuminates the path dependency of gender norms and the antipathy to substantive gender equality that is common among the formerly state-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Her deft analysis of the relationship between gender and legal norms is especially relevant today as the legitimacy of gender equality laws is increasingly precarious.’
Professor Judy  Fudge, Kent Law School

Gender equality law in Czechia, as in other parts of post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe, is facing serious challenges. When obliged to adopt, interpret and apply anti-discrimination law as a condition of membership of the EU, Czech legislators and judges have repeatedly expressed hostility and demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding of key ideas underpinning it. This important new study explores this scepticism to gender equality law, examining it with reference to legal and socio-legal developments that started in the state-socialist past and that remain relevant today.
The book examines legal developments in gender-relevant areas, most importantly in equality and anti-discrimination law. But it goes further, shedding light on the underlying understandings of key concepts such as women, gender, equality, discrimination and rights. In so doing, it shows the fundamental intellectual and conceptual difficulties faced by gender equality law in Czechia. These include an essentialist understanding of differences between men and women, a notion that equality and anti-discrimination law is incompatible with freedom, and a perception that existing laws are objective and neutral, while any new gender-progressive regulation of social relations is an unacceptable interference with the ‘natural social order’. Timely and provocative, this book will be required reading for all scholars of equality and gender and the law.

Barbara Havelková is the Shaw Foundation Fellow in Law at the University of Oxford.


June 2017     9781509905867     368pp     Hardback     RSP: $94

DISCOUNT RATE TO EMAIL LIST SUBSCRIBERS: $84.60 (+ postage)


The Fundamental Right to Data Protection
Normative Value in the Context of Counter-Terrorism Surveillance
Maria Tzanou

Since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, data protection has been elevated to the status of a fundamental right in the European Union and is now enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights alongside the right to privacy. This timely book investigates the normative significance of data protection as a fundamental right in the EU. The first part of the book examines the scope, the content and the capabilities of data protection as a fundamental right to resolve problems and to provide for an effective protection. It discusses the current approaches to this right in the legal scholarship and the case-law and identifies the limitations that prevent it from having an added value of its own. It suggests a theory of data protection that reconstructs the understanding of this right and could guide courts and legislators on data protection issues. The second part of the book goes on to empirically test the reconstructed right to data protection in four case-studies of counter-terrorism surveillance: communications metadata, travel data, financial data and Internet data surveillance. The book will be of interest to academics, students, policy-makers and practitioners in EU law, privacy, data protection, counter-terrorism and human rights law.

Maria Tzanou is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Keele.


June 2017     9781509901678     320pp     Hardback     RSP: $94

DISCOUNT RATE TO EMAIL LIST SUBSCRIBERS: $84.60 (+ postage)


Religion, Equality and Employment in Europe
The Case for Reasonable Accommodation
Katayoun Alidadi

Praise For The Book
'This book offers a comprehensive exploration of a traditionally neglected theme which is of great practical significance for the prosperous development of multi-religious societies. Alidadi presents an innovative combination of findings from different normative and empirical disciplines, particularly law and sociology, and offers critical contributions to central debates within legal theory, including on the meaning of State neutrality vis-à-vis religion, secularity, formal and substantive equality, diversity and multiculturalism …a 'must' for everyone in the future dealing with issues of religious freedom, tolerance or discrimination in the workplace.'
Heiner Bielefeldt, Professor of Human Rights and Human Rights Policy at the University of Erlangen and Former UN Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief

'…a timely, expansive, and tremendously important book which offers a smart, sophisticated examination of divisive issues. Alidadi presents her thought-provoking argument in a balanced and compelling fashion.... The case for reasonable accommodation may very well provoke opposition in the current socio-political European context. But there can be no doubt that this rich study will have an impact on any future academic discussion on the accommodation of religious diversity in the workplace.'
Rik Torfs, Professor of Canon Law and University Chancellor Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium

'Alidadi’s work will rapidly emerge as the premier study of religion in the workplace.  Drawing on extensive empirical and legal research, she provides a powerful analysis pointing to the crucial importance of reasonable accommodation as a vital solution not only in employment settings, but in the larger context of our increasingly diverse societies.'
W. Cole Durham, Jr., Founding Director, International Center for Law and Religion Studies, Brigham Young University Law School

The management of religious and ideological diversity remains a key challenge of our time – deeply entangled with debates about the nature of liberal democracy, equality, social cohesion, minorities and nationalism, security and foreign policy. This book explores this challenge at the level of the workplace in Europe. People do not surrender their religion of belief at the gates of their workplace, nor should they be required to do so. But what are the limits of accommodating religious belief in the workplace, particularly when it clashes with other fundamental rights and freedoms?
Using a comparative and socio-legal approach that emphasises the practical role of human rights, anti-discrimination law and employment protection, this book argues for an enforceable right to reasonable accommodation on the grounds of religion and belief in the workplace in Europe. In so doing, it draws on the case law of Europe’s two supranational courts, three country studies –Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK – as well as developments in the US and Canada. By offering the first book-length treatment of the issue, it will be of significance to academics, students, policy-makers, business leaders and anyone interested in a deeper understanding of the potentials and limits of European and Western inclusion, freedom and equality in a multicultural context.

Katayoun Alidadi is an Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at Bryant University (Smithfield, RI, USA) and a Research Associate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle, Germany). Her work focuses on human rights, conflict of laws, employment law and the intersections of law and religion. She was awarded the 2013 Ius Commune Prize for her research on reasonable accommodation for religion and belief. Katayoun holds a PhD in law from the KULeuven (Leuven, Belgium) and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School (Cambridge, MA, USA).

June 2017     9781509911370     320pp     Hardback     RSP: $108

DISCOUNT RATE TO EMAIL LIST SUBSCRIBERS: $97.20 (+ postage)