"Law cannot be treated as a discrete set of principles without a context ... we seek to examine and evaluate the context of Australian law."So the authors write of their book.This second edition is divided up into 3 parts:Part A of the book - Law in a Political Context - contains separate chapters on Liberalism and Formalism and the Rule of Law, plus a new chapter on Power.Part B - Law, Justice and Inequality - contains material on access to justice, litigation and the lawyers. The text has been revised to take into account the considerable changes in these areas in the past five years. Each chapter relates the material to the tension between the provision of justice and the creation and maintenance of inequality in our legal system. These themes are continued in the chapters that deal with gender, race and with the processes which influence the production of legislation.Part C -Law and Efficiency- introduces students to the economic analysis of law and to the relationship between justice and efficiency.As with the first edition, material and examples are selected which have relevance for first year students.All other chapters have been revised and updated to reflect current trends and issues.The Law Institute Journal (Vic) called the first edition:"A new and intellectually fertile way of introducing students to the study of law."Other reviewers saw it as "fascinating", "instructive", "thoroughly recommended" and "representing the new wave of thought about law and law teaching".

The book relates the normativity of law to law's internal sociality and shows the multi-layered nature of legal normativity.

Law and society are closely related, though the relationship between the two is both complicated and understudied. In a world of rapidly changing people, places, and ideas, law is frequently taken out of context, often with surprising and unnecessary consequences. As societies and their structures, religious doctrines, and economies change, laws previously established often remain unchanged. Dominant nations frequently impose their own laws on weaker nations, whether or not their cultures are similar. Conquered nations, after regaining freedom, often keep their conquerors' laws by default. Law is often misrepresented in literature, and legal scholars, citizens, and businesspeople alike ignore large portions of the legislation under which they live and work. Even the American system of legal education frequently proves itself irrelevant to a proper understanding of today's laws. Alan Watson studies examples from the ancient laws of Rome and Byzantium, laws within the Christian Gospels, and policies of legal education in the modern United States to demonstrate the need for a new approach to both law and legal education. Law Out of Context illustrates that only by understanding comparative legal history and by paying more attention to changes in our society can we hope to devise consistently fair and respected laws.

The 2016-2017 Annual Supplement is available here. This volume is now available only as a paperback--ISBN 978-1-5310-0476-7 ($90). Through both historical essays and a timeline of American constitutional history, Constitutional Law in Context helps students understand constitutional law in light of cases, doctrine, constitutional analysis, federalism, and historical context. It covers both structure of government and individual liberty cases, and it includes a substantial chapter on free speech. In addition, the book provides historical context for the cases. The casebook helps students to see how historical context shaped doctrinal developments. It also shows how historical developments affecting one doctrine often shaped other doctrines as well. Examples include parallel changes in commerce clause, substantive due process, and equal protection cases, and in cases related to race and gender. The chapter on incorporation includes excerpts from the Black Codes and from the congressional debates on the Fourteenth Amendment. The incorporation chapter also shows how the framers of the amendment were influenced by denials of civil liberties that occurred during the crusade against slavery. The book contains materials on constitutional decision-making outside of the Supreme Court including materials on the Clinton impeachment and examples from free speech history. By its emphasis on the types of constitutional arguments, Constitutional Law in Context is designed to assist students in understanding and formulating constitutional arguments based on text, history, precedent, and policy. To help students understand constitutional doctrine, the book contains short doctrinal essays, charts, and diagrams. It also deals with some state constitutional law cases to remind students that state constitutions may provide independent and sometimes greater protection of rights. This new third edition includes cases decided through the 2009-2010 term and several new essays. The authors traditionally provide online supplements each year at no charge.

The contemporary US legal culture is marked by ubiquitous battles among various groups attempting to seize control of the law and wield it against others in pursuit of their particular agenda. This battle takes place in administrative, legislative, and judicial arenas at both the state and federal levels. This book identifies the underlying source of these battles in the spread of the instrumental view of law - the idea that law is purely a means to an end - in a context of sharp disagreement over the social good. It traces the rise of the instrumental view of law in the course of the past two centuries, then demonstrates the pervasiveness of this view of law and its implications within the contemporary legal culture, and ends by showing the various ways in which seeing law in purely instrumental terms threatens to corrode the rule of law.

Resource added for the Paralegal program 101101.

'Company Law in Context' is an ideal main text for company law courses. David Kershaw places company law in its economic, business, and social context, making more accessible and relevant the cases, statutes, and other forms of regulation. A running case study provides a practical perspective.

Roman Law in Context explains how Roman law worked for those who lived by it, by viewing it in the light of the society and economy in which it operated. The book discusses three main areas of Roman law and life: the family and inheritance; property and the use of land; commercial transactions and the management of businesses. It also deals with the question of litigation and how readily the Roman citizen could assert his or her legal rights in practice. In addition it provides an introduction to using the main sources of Roman law. The book ends with an epilogue discussing the role of Roman law in medieval and modern Europe, a bibliographical essay, and a glossary of legal terms. The book involves the minimum of legal technicality and is intended to be accessible to students and teachers of Roman history as well as interested general readers.

This work offers an analysis of constitutional law, examining Shakespeare's plays as legal texts. Professor Ward uses the plays as a starting point to investigate the development of constitutional ideas such as sovereignty, commonwealth, conscience and moral law, and the art of government. In the developing area of law and literature, this book examines how Shakespeare's work offers a rich source of textual material on legal subjects.

The most up-to-date and contextualised offering for comparative law students and scholars, referencing the newest research in the field.