For many nations, a key challenge is how to achieve sustainable development without a return to centralized planning. Using case studies from Greenland, Hawaii and northern Norway, this 2006 book examines whether 'bottom-up' systems such as customary law can play a critical role in achieving viable systems for managing natural resources. Customary law consists of underlying social norms that may become the acknowledged law of the land. The key to determining whether a custom constitutes customary law is whether the public acts as if the observance of the custom is legally obligated. While the use of customary law does not always produce sustainability, the study of customary methods of resource management can produce valuable insights into methods of managing resources in a sustainable way.

This Brief explores the issues concerning customary law, traditional knowledge and intellectual property.

This book promotes discussion and understanding of customary law and explores its continued relevance in sub-Saharan Africa. It considers the characteristics of customary law and efforts to ascertain and codify customary law, and how this body of law differs in content, form and status from legislation and common law.

"Working with Customary Justice Systems: Post-conflict and Fragile States is a collection of articles from the 'Legal Empowerment and Customary Law Research Grants' program, where seven bursaries were awarded to scholar-practitioners to develop and conduct empirically grounded and evidence-based research programs to evaluate the impact of an empowerment-based initiative involving customary justice. The case studies illustrate that what is effective is situation-specific and contingent upon a variety of factors including, among others, social norms, the presence and strength of a rule of law culture, socioeconomic realities and national and geo-politics"--Provided by publisher.

Legal aspects of economic development, especially investments and capital, agrarian reform and cooperative organisation, trade, etc. Capitalist and socialist systems, community development, etc.

Provides an in-depth study of the theory, history, practice, and interpretation of customary international law.

This volume of the Indigenous Justice series explores the global effects of marginalizing Indigenous law. The essays in this book argue that European-based law has been used to force Indigenous peoples to assimilate, has politically disenfranchised Indigenous communities, and has destroyed traditional Indigenous social institutions. European-based law not only has been used as a tool to infringe upon Indigenous human rights, it also has been used throughout global history to justify environmental injustices, treaty breaking, and massacres. The research in this volume focuses on the resurgence of traditional law, tribal–state relations in the United States, laws that have impacted Native American women, laws that have failed to protect Indigenous sacred sites, the effect of international conventions on domestic laws, and the role of community justice organizations in operationalizing international law. While all of these issues are rooted in colonization, Indigenous peoples are using their own solutions to demonstrate the resilience, persistence, and innovation of their communities. With chapters focusing on the use and misuse of law as it pertains to Indigenous peoples in North America, Latin America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, this book offers a wide scope of global injustice. Despite proof of oppressive legal practices concerning Indigenous peoples worldwide, this book also provides hope for amelioration of colonial consequences.