Customary Law in the Modern World is the study of a coherent and well-established legal system, which is now operating in the context of a modern nation-state and therefore poised between remaining relevant and the threat of marginalization. Focusing on Sudan, the author places customary law in its historical and cultural context, analyzing the fundamental and traditional values that underlie customary law and the impact of the war between the North and the South that lasted intermittently for half a century. He deals with the substance of customary law, covering a wide variety of areas: family law, property law, torts and criminal liability. Drawing on interviews conducted with judges, legislators and practicing lawyers on customary law and its future in the modern context, the book challenges the development of customary law to build on the positives of tradition and the reform of its shortcomings, particularly in the areas of human rights, gender equality and the protection of children. This book fills a gap in the literature on customary law, and will be of great interest to anyone interested in law, anthropology and politics.

Some legal rules are not laid down by a legislator but grow instead from informal social practices. In contract law, for example, the customs of merchants are used by courts to interpret the provisions of business contracts; in tort law, customs of best practice are used by courts to define professional responsibility. Nowhere are customary rules of law more prominent than in international law. The customs defining the obligations of each State to other States and, to some extent, to its own citizens, are often treated as legally binding. However, unlike natural law and positive law, customary law has received very little scholarly analysis. To remedy this neglect, a distinguished group of philosophers, historians and lawyers has been assembled to assess the nature and significance of customary law. The book offers fresh insights on this neglected and misunderstood form of law.

"Law in Modern Society" is a comparative study of the place of law in societies as well as a criticism of social theory. Under what conditions do different kinds of law emerge? What are the bases of the rule of law ideal that marks advanced liberal, capitalist societies? What can the study of law teach us about social hierarchy and moral vision in these societies, and, indeed, about the specificity of Western civilization? Why do we find it necessary to struggle for the rule of law and impossible to achieve it? What political possibilities are closed or opened by present-day changes in the established styles of legality and legal thought? Unger deals with these questions in a broad range of historical settings. But he also relates them to the central issues of social theory: the method of explanation, the conditions of social order, and the nature of 'modern' society. the book argues that to resolve its own internal dilemmas the science of society must once again become both metaphysical and political.

This book seeks to re-appreciate the concept of customary international law as a form of spontaneous societal self-organisation, and to develop the methodological consequences that ensue from this conception for the practice of its application. In pursuing this aim, the author draws from three different strands of scholarship that have not yet been considered in connection with one another: First, general jurisprudential theories of customary law; second, theories of customary international law, especially as they relate to international relations scholarship; and third, methodological approaches to the interpretation of international law. This expansive, philosophical layout of the book enables the author to put the conceptual enigmas of customary international law into a broader perspective. Among the issues discussed in the book are the dichotomy of its traditional and modern forms and the respective benefits and disadvantages of inductive and deductive approaches to its ascertainment. In the course of this analysis, the author draws insights from Friedrich August Hayek’s theory of law as a ‘spontaneous order’, an information-processing device which enables the participants of a legal system to make use of decentralised knowledge. The book argues that the major advantage of custom as a source of international law lies in the fact that it is the result of a gradual process of trial and error, rather than the product of deliberate planning. This makes it a particularly apposite source of law in a time of seismic shifts in the distribution of power within a vastly diverse community of States, when a new global order is expected to emerge, the contours of which are not yet clearly discernible. This book applies general concepts of legal philosophy to explain the continuing relevance of custom as a source of international law while at the same time inferring from this theoretical framework concrete practical and methodological consequences, the most important of which is the special role that purposive interpretation plays with respect to rules of international custom. Given this broad approach, the book will be of interest to several groups of potential readers including academics interested in the philosophy of customary law in general, academic international lawyers and legal practitioners, especially judges, scholars of international relations and all those interested in how the international community of States organises itself.

This is the first book to explore the concept of 'Grotian Moments'. Named for Hugo Grotius, whose masterpiece De jure belli ac pacis helped marshal in the modern system of international law, Grotian Moments are transformative developments that generate the unique conditions for accelerated formation of customary international law. In periods of fundamental change, whether by technological advances, the commission of new forms of crimes against humanity, or the development of new means of warfare or terrorism, customary international law may form much more rapidly and with less state practice than is normally the case to keep up with the pace of developments. The book examines the historic underpinnings of the Grotian Moment concept, provides a theoretical framework for testing its existence and application, and analyzes six case studies of potential Grotian Moments: Nuremberg, the continental shelf, space law, the Yugoslavia Tribunal's Tadic decision, the 1999 NATO intervention in Serbia and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

A new framework for understanding contemporary administrative law, through a comparative analysis of case law from Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, and New Zealand. The author argues that the field is structured by four values: individual self-realisation, good administration, electoral legitimacy and decisional autonomy.

No detailed description available for "History and Power in the Study of 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.