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The Restricted Vision of the Law

Maria Ågren

in Domestic Secrets: Women and Property in Sweden, 1600-1857

This chapter focuses on a lawyer's advice to a couple in response to their query submitted to a major Swedish newspaper in 2007. The lawyer advised the couple to write a will to the effect that when ... More

This chapter focuses on a lawyer's advice to a couple in response to their query submitted to a major Swedish newspaper in 2007. The lawyer advised the couple to write a will to the effect that when they were both dead, their property would become their child's separate property. The ultimate aim of the proposed will was unmistakable: to make sure that their child's spouse would not become part owner of the property. This small and inconspicuous feature succinctly sums up some of the continuities and ruptures in the story of marital property law in Sweden. On the one hand, it shows that today, just as in the Middle Ages, legal experts take for granted that parents are hesitant about letting their property come into the hands of sons-in-law and daughters-in-law. On the other hand, the response also makes very clear that modern marital property law differs radically from the law that existed in the medieval and early modern periods.Less

Latin Law in Greek Cities: Knowledge of Law and Latin in Imperial Asia Minor

Ulrich Huttner

in Law in the Roman Provinces

Starting from the so-called ‘sacrae litterae’ from the Severan era, which specifically addresses the lack of legal knowledge of the addressees, this article examines a number of examples of how Latin ... More

Starting from the so-called ‘sacrae litterae’ from the Severan era, which specifically addresses the lack of legal knowledge of the addressees, this article examines a number of examples of how Latin legal terminology (e.g. peculium) was spread in the Greek cities of Asia Minor. Comparative collections of data, although continually in need of revision and updating, make it fairly easy to see which Greek terms were usually used to translate Latin ones. This article discusses some examples in detail. It also takes a closer look at the procedures and institutions involved. This includes the work of legal experts, but also the actual job of translating, which could be offered privately, but could also be organized by the city, as the newly attested ‘chief-translator’ from Kolossai seems to suggest.Less

Limits of Logic and Legal Reasoning (1992)^*

Carlos E. Alchourrón

in Essays in Legal Philosophy

This chapter presents a response to Neil MacCormick’s paper, which analysed the nature of legal reasoning and the possibility of developing legal expert systems. It attempts to restate some of the ... More

This chapter presents a response to Neil MacCormick’s paper, which analysed the nature of legal reasoning and the possibility of developing legal expert systems. It attempts to restate some of the problems raised in the paper in more precise terms. As a result of this reformulation, certain disagreements will no doubt come to light. The chapter presents an account that differs from MacCormick’s on issues such as the characterization of subsumptive reasoning; the role of truth and truth-determining procedures in law; the character of evaluative and interpretative statements; the nature of the normative premises involved in legal reasoning; and the kind of logic that one needs for its reconstruction.Less

How Context Shapes the Authority of International Courts

Karen J. Alter, Laurence R. Helfer, and Mikael Rask Madsen

in International Court Authority

This chapter elaborates our authority framework, explaining how we measure narrow, intermediate, and extensive authority, and then identifies a range of institutional, social, and political factors ... More

This chapter elaborates our authority framework, explaining how we measure narrow, intermediate, and extensive authority, and then identifies a range of institutional, social, and political factors that shape the authority of international courts. Institution-specific context captures features that are distinctive to a particular IC, such as its design and subject matter mandate. These features vary across courts, but there may also vary within a single IC over time or across issue areas. Constituencies context analyzes issues related to IC interlocutors, including government officials, judges, attorneys, legal experts, and civil society groups. Political context, considers how political dynamics at global, regional and local levels affect IC authority. We conclude by considering the difference between IC authority and power.Less

Legal Advisors

Kimberley Czajkowski

in Localized Law: The Babatha and Salome Komaise Archives

This chapter examines the likelihood of legal experts being present in the province and how these may have been utilized by the parties. The broader evidence for such legal experts in the Roman ... More

This chapter examines the likelihood of legal experts being present in the province and how these may have been utilized by the parties. The broader evidence for such legal experts in the Roman Empire is briefly set out, and it is then argued that the strongest evidence for the influence of some kind of legal practitioners in Roman Arabia lies in the presence of P. Yadin 28–30 (an actio tutelae) in the Babatha archive. While the papyri’s relationship to the guardianship dispute that is attested by other documents in the archive is extremely problematic, it is suggested that the documents are still extremely valuable in their attestation of some level of (Roman) legal knowledge in the new province. Exactly how these three papyri may have been procured and used by Babatha is also considered at length.Less

The English Medieval Common Law (to c. 1307) as a System of National Institutions and Legal Rules: Creation and Functioning

Paul Brand

in Legalism: Anthropology and History

This chapter focuses on a number of aspects of the English common law during a period of just over a century between its initial creation and the first decade of the fourteenth century: the ... More

This chapter focuses on a number of aspects of the English common law during a period of just over a century between its initial creation and the first decade of the fourteenth century: the intentions of those who created and developed this national legal system; the jurisdiction claimed and exercised by the new royal courts and the rules and legal concepts these courts developed and applied in doing so; the functions of legal experts (royal justices and lawyers) in the operation of the courts and in developing and applying the rules of the common law; and what can be known or deduced of the attitudes of laymen towards this law.Less

Introduction: Some Thoughts on Biography

James R. Hackney

in Legal Intellectuals in Conversation: Reflections on the Construction of Contemporary American Legal Theory

This introductory chapter explains the rationale behind the present volume, which features a collection of interviews that offer a firsthand account of the movements, personalities, and ideas that ... More

This introductory chapter explains the rationale behind the present volume, which features a collection of interviews that offer a firsthand account of the movements, personalities, and ideas that animated the author's time at Yale Law School and the legal academy in general during the 1980s, through the lens of some of the era's major figures. This particular decade was chosen because it was an extraordinary period in American legal theory. There were movements formed and intellectual battles waged; there were not only paradigm shifts, but also paradigm proliferation and disintegration. Importantly, this period marked the shift in the legal academy from a largely doctrinally focused enterprise, to an arena in which high-level theoretical and interdisciplinary work thrives. The remainder of the chapter provides an overview of the topics covered during the interviews.Less

Euro As Legal Tender (and Banknotes)

Robert Freitag

in The EU Law of Economic and Monetary Union

The provisions governing the euro as ‘European Single Currency’ are at the core of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union’s (TFEU) rules on the Economic Monetary Union (EMU). Since ... More

The provisions governing the euro as ‘European Single Currency’ are at the core of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union’s (TFEU) rules on the Economic Monetary Union (EMU). Since the euro has replaced the former national currencies of the participating Member States and is to substitute the national currencies of any future members of the euro area, it was mandatory to ascribe to the euro the status of exclusive ‘legal tender’ as per Article 128(1) TFEU. This status of the euro seems to be so evident as to be self-explanatory–but only at first glance since the concept of ‘legal tender’ and its implications in European Union (EU) and national private and public law are less clear. A satisfactory concept of legal tender is hard to define and hardly ever given on the EU level–resulting in a striking lack of legal certainty in a great variety of aspects of public and private law. Less

Conclusion: The Survival of Porfirian Liberalism

in Emilio Rabasa and the Survival of Porfirian Liberalism: The Man, His Career, and His Ideas, 1856-1930

This chapter focuses on Emilio Rabasa' final years until his death on 25 April 1930. Although virtually blind, Rabasa published several articles in Excelsior in the year before his death. His final ... More

This chapter focuses on Emilio Rabasa' final years until his death on 25 April 1930. Although virtually blind, Rabasa published several articles in Excelsior in the year before his death. His final articles, “El Desprestigio de la vicepresidencia,” appeared on the third and fourth of that month. Although he probably had given up his work as a lawyer by 1925, he continued to teach constitutional law at the Escuela Libre de Derecho at least through 1928, as well as acting as rector of the institution at the time of his death. The chapter also considers Rabasa's political ideas, which were based on the transformed liberalism of the late nineteenth century, consisting of scientific politics, derived from positivism, and historical constitutionalism, also of European origin but thoroughly rooted in earlier Mexican history. Both strands of transformed liberalism emerged with the first term of Porfirio Díaz in 1878 and came together in the program of the National Liberal Union in 1892, followed by the great debate of 1893 over reforms to the Constitution.Less