This volume offers readers a multi-layer analysis of issues of law and society in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Ukraine. This collection of thought-provoking essays deals with a wide range of subject matter including constitutional, administrative, civil, and criminal law, as well as aspects of legal culture, corruption, corporate social responsibility, and informal practices of judiciaries. Throughout the volume, readers are given not only a comparative perspective of current practices but are also offered a historical glimpse of law and philosophy in the region. The conclusions and analysis offered by these authors - from the ''East'" as well as from the ''West'' - are supported by survey data, literature, legislation, and court practice in the region and abroad.

The study of law and social movements provides an ideal lens for rethinking fundamental questions about the relationship between law and power. This Research Handbook takes up that challenge, framing a new, more global, dynamic, reflexive, and contextualised phase of social movement studies.

This volume examines the property transformations in post-communist Central Eastern Europe (CEE) and focuses on the role of restitution and privatisation in such transformations. It argues that the theorisation of ‘restitution’ in post-communist CEE is incomplete in the transitional justice scholarship and in the literature on correction of historical wrongs. The book also argues that, for a more complete theorisation of (post-communist) restitution, the transformations of property in post-communist societies ought to be studied in a more holistic way. The main legal vehicles used for such transformations, privatisation and restitution, should not be studied separately and in abstract, but in their reciprocal relationship, and in connection to the dimension of justice which each could achieve. Finally, the book integrates ‘privatisation’ in a theory of post-communist transformation of property.

Hate Speech and Human Rights. Democracies need to understand these terms to properly adapt their legal frameworks. Regulation of hate speech exposes underlining and sometimes invisible societal values such as security and public order, equality and non-discrimination, human dignity, and other democratic vital interests. The spread of hatred and hate speech has intensified in many corners of the world over the last decade and its regulation presents a conundrum for many democracies. This book presents a three-prong theory describing three different but complementary models of hate speech regulation which allows stakeholders to better address this phenomenon. It examines international and national legal frameworks and related case law as well as pertinent scholarly literature review to highlight this development. After a period of an absence of free speech during communism, post-communist democracies have sought to build a framework for the exercise of free speech while protecting public goods such as liberty, equality and human dignity. The three-prong theory is applied to identify public goods and values underlining the regulation of hate speech in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, two countries that share a political, sociological, and legal history, as an example of the differing approaches to hate speech regulation in post-communist societies due to divergent social values, despite identical legal frameworks. This book will be of great interest to scholars of human rights law, lawyers, judges, government, NGOs, media and anyone who would like to understand values that underpin hate speech regulations which reflect values that society cherishes the most.

"Istvâan Bibâo (1911-1979) was a Hungarian lawyer, political thinker, prolific essayist, and minister of state for the Hungarian national government during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. This magisterial compendium of Bibâo's essays introduces English-speaking audiences to the writings of one of the foremost theorists and psychologists of twentieth-century European politics and culture. Elegantly translated by Pâeter Pâasztor and with a scholarly introduction by Ivâan Zoltâan Dâenes, the essays in this volume address the causes and fallout of European political crises, postwar changes in the balance of power among countries, and nation-building processes"--

This volume offers readers a stimulating perspective on both struggles and cooperation on the Cold-War’s legal front and regard for its political context. It covers the era of Stalinism up to the post-Communist period of the 1990s and 2000s.

Provides a novel methodological approach to the study of popular and professional legal culture within the European context.

This edited volume opening the new series Revisiting Communism: Collectivist Economic Thought in Historical Perspective focuses on the concepts of ownership, the cornerstone of political economy in Soviet-type societies. The authors’ main objective is to contribute to the still unwritten chapter on collectivism in the history books of modern economic thought. They trace the lengthy evolution of economic ideas of property reform under communism leading from the doctrine of blanket nationalization to projects of moderate privatization in eight countries of Eastern Europe and China. The comparative analysis sheds light upon the tireless attempts of reform-minded economists in communist countries to populate the no man’s land of “social property” with quasi-private economic actors such as bodies of workers’ self-management and managers of state-owned companies. For a long time, these were expected to crowd out the communist nomenklatura from its actual ownership position without challenging the primacy of collective property rights. The fact that even the most radical reformers came to the conclusion that such surrogate owners would not be able to break the power of the ruling elite only on the eve of the 1989 revolutions demonstrates the immense strength of collectivist ideas. The authors coin the term “trap of collectivism” to warn those demanding nationalization or other forms of non-private ownership today: it is rather easy, even with the best intentions, to walk into this trap but it may take long decades to break out from it.

The Max Planck Handbooks in European Public Law series describes and analyzes the public law of the European legal space, an area that encompasses not only the law of the European Union but also the European Convention on Human Rights and, importantly, the domestic public laws of European states. Recognizing that the ongoing vertical and horizontal processes of European integration render legal comparison the task of our time for both scholars and practitioners, the project aims to foster a better understanding of the specific European legal pluralism and, ultimately, to contribute to the legitimacy and efficiency of European public law. The first volume of the series began this endeavour with an appraisal of the evolution of the state and its administration, offering both cross-cutting contributions and specific country reports. The third volume (the second in chronological terms) continues this approach with an in-depth appraisal of constitutional adjudication in various and diverse European countries. Fourteen country reports and two cross-cutting contributions investigate the antecedents, foundations, organization, procedure, and specific approach to constitutional issues throughout the Continent. The fourth volume now compares European constitutional jurisdiction in the European legal space. It examines the structures of the organization, the appointment of judges, the procedures and the methods of argumentation and interpretation, their impact on state and society, their legitimacy as well as their role in the division of powers, and thus completes the picture following the country reports in Volume III. This comparative perspective is supplemented by an examination that illustrates the relationship with the ECJ, the ECtHR, and the Venice Commission as well as their (constitutional) function. Finally, Constitutional Adjudication: Common Themes and Challenges is devoted to the challenges constitutional jurisdiction in the European judicial area is currently facing. The historical, political, and theoretical foundations as well as the basic dogmatic features of constitutional jurisdiction are presented in such a way that the discussion about its role and further development in this legal space is sustainably stimulated.