Lived experiences of the law in colonial Sri Lanka. Dutch and Sinhalese law coexisted in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Sri Lanka. A dual forum called the Landraad empowered colonial justices to defer to either imperial or indigenous law on issues ranging from standards of evidence to inheritance rights. So, while major judicial decisions were often skewed toward assimilation, everyday life in the colony was marked by a cultural multiplicity. In Navigating Pluralities, Nadeera Rupesinghe focuses on these day-to-day experiences of the law in colonial Sri Lanka, discovering how such plural practices affected both colonized and colonizers in surprising ways.

The peoples of Sri Lanka have participated in far-flung trading networks, religious formations, and Asian and European empires for millennia. This interdisciplinary volume sets out to draw Sri Lanka into the field of Asian and Global History by showing how the latest wave of scholarship has explored the island as a ‘crossroads’, a place defined by its openness to movement across the Indian Ocean.Experts in the history, archaeology, literature and art of the island from c.500 BCE to c.1850 CE use Lankan material to explore a number of pressing scholarly debates. They address these matters from their varied disciplinary perspectives and diverse array of sources, critically assessing concepts such as ethnicity, cosmopolitanism and localisation, and elucidating the subtle ways in which the foreign may be resisted and embraced at the same time. The individual chapters, and the volume as a whole, are a welcome addition to the history and historiography of Sri Lanka, as well as studies of the Indian Ocean region, kingship, colonialism, imperialism, and early modernity.

The Uses of Justice in Global Perspective, 1600–1900 presents a new perspective on the uses of justice between 1600 and 1900 and confronts prevailing Eurocentric historiography in its examination of how people of this period made use of the law. Between 1600 and 1900 the towns in Western Europe, the Kingdoms in Eastern Europe, the Empires in Asia and the Colonial States in Asia and the Americas were all characterised by a plurality of legal orders resulting from interactions and negotiations between states, institutions, and people with different backgrounds. Through exploring how justice is used within these different areas of the world, this book offers a broad global perspective, but it also adopts a fresh approach through shifting attention away from states and onto how ordinary people lived with and made use of this ‘legal pluralism’. Containing a wealth of extensively contextualised case studies and contributing to debates on socio-legal history, processes of state formation from below, access to justice, and legal pluralism, The Uses of Justice in Global Perspective, 1600–1900 questions to what degree top-down imposed formal institutions were used and how, and to what degree, bottom-up crafted legal systems were crucial in allowing transactions to happen. It is ideal for students and scholars of early modern justice, crime and legal history.

Practitioners and academics dealing with the Middle East can turn to the Yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law for an instant source of information on the developments over an entire year in the region. The Yearbook covers Islamic and non-Islamic legal subjects, including the laws themselves, of some twenty Arab and other Islamic countries. The publication's practical features include: - articles on current topics, - country surveys reflecting important new legislation and amendments to existing legislation per country, - the text of a selection of documents and important court cases, - a Notes and News section, and - book reviews.

The second thematic volume in the series Studies in Private International Law – Asia looks into direct jurisdiction, that is, the situations in which the courts of 15 key Asian states (Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India) are prepared to hear a case involving cross-border elements. For instance, where parties are habitually resident abroad and a dispute has only some, little or no connection with an Asian state, will the courts of that state accept jurisdiction and hear the case and (if so) on what conditions? More specifically, the book's chapters explore the circumstances in which different Asian states assume or decline jurisdiction not just in commercial matters, but also in other types of action (such as family, consumer and employment disputes). The Introduction defines terminology and identifies similarities in the approaches to direct jurisdiction taken by the 15 Asian states in civil and commercial litigation. Taking its cue from this, the Conclusion assesses whether there should be a multilateral convention or soft law instrument articulating principles of direct jurisdiction for Asia. The Conclusion also discusses possible trajectories that Asian states may be taking in respect of direct jurisdiction in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the political tensions currently besetting the world. The book suggests that enacting suitable rules of direct jurisdiction requires an Asian state to strike a delicate balance between affording certainty and protecting its nationals. At heart, direct jurisdiction involves sometimes difficult policy considerations and is not just about drawing up lists of jurisdictional grounds and exceptions to them.

Women, Business and the Law 2021 is the seventh in a series of annual studies measuring the laws and regulations that affect women’s economic opportunity in 190 economies. The project presents eight indicators structured around women’s interactions with the law as they move through their lives and careers: Mobility, Workplace, Pay, Marriage, Parenthood, Entrepreneurship, Assets, and Pension. This year’s report updates all indicators as of October 1, 2020 and builds evidence of the links between legal gender equality and women’s economic inclusion. By examining the economic decisions women make throughout their working lives, as well as the pace of reform over the past 50 years, Women, Business and the Law 2021 makes an important contribution to research and policy discussions about the state of women’s economic empowerment. Prepared during a global pandemic that threatens progress toward gender equality, this edition also includes important findings on government responses to COVID-19 and pilot research related to childcare and women’s access to justice.

In 1602, the States General of the United Provinces of the Netherlands chartered the first commercial company, the Dutch East India Company, and, in so doing, initiated a new wave of globalization. Even though Dutch engagement in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans dates back to the 16th century, it was the dawn of the 17th century that brought the Dutch into the fold of the general movement of European expansion overseas and concomitant globalization. This volume surveys the Dutch participation in, and contribution to, the process of globalization. At the same time, it reassesses the various ways Dutchmen fashioned themselves following the encounter and in the light of increasing dialogue with other societies across the world. As such, Exploring the Dutch Empire offers a new insight into the macro and micro worlds of the global Dutchman in Asia, Africa and the Americas. The result fills a gap in the historiography on empire and globalization, which has previously been dominated by British and, to a lesser extent, French and Spanish cases.

Traditional Javanese law of the pre- and early-colonial period does not draw upon the contents of recognized texts, but -- as preserved and often explained in those texts -- on maxims (sloka/saloka) containing the essence of law expressed in pithy, easily remembered phrases, many of which live on as modern Javanese proverbs.