In Narrating the Law Barry Scott Wimpfheimer creates a new theoretical framework for considering the relationship between law and narrative and models a new method for studying talmudic law in particular. Works of law, including the Talmud, are animated by a desire to create clear usable precedent. This animating impulse toward clarity is generally absent in narratives, the form of which is better able to capture the subtleties of lived life. Wimpfheimer proposes to make these different forms compatible by constructing a narrative-based law that considers law as one of several "languages," along with politics, ethics, psychology, and others that together compose culture. A narrative-based law is capable of recognizing the limitations of theoretical statutes and the degree to which other cultural languages interact with legal discourse, complicating any attempts to actualize a hypothetical set of rules. This way of considering law strongly resists the divide in traditional Jewish learning between legal literature (Halakhah) and nonlegal literature (Aggadah) by suggesting the possibility of a discourse broad enough to capture both. Narrating the Law activates this mode of reading by looking at the Talmud's legal stories, a set of texts that sits uncomfortably on the divide between Halakhah and Aggadah. After noticing that such stories invite an expansive definition of law that includes other cultural voices, Narrating the Law also mines the stories for the rich descriptions of rabbinic culture that they encapsulate.

Disputes lie at the heart of the sagas. Consequently, literary texts have been treated as sources of legal practice – narrations of law – while the sagas themselves and the handling of legal matters by the figures adhere to ‘laws of narration’. The volume addresses this intricate relationship between literature and social practice from the perspective of historians as well as philologists. The contributions focus not only on disputes and their solution in saga literature, but also on the representation of law and its history in sagas and Latin historiography from Scandinavia as well as the representation of laws and norms in mythological texts. They demonstrate that narrations of law provide an indispensable insight into legal culture and its connection to a wider framework of social norms, adjusting the impression given by the laws. The philological approaches underline that the narrative texts also have an agenda of their own when it comes to their representation of law, providing a mirror of conduct, criticising inequity, reinforcing the political and juridical position of kings or negotiating norms in mythological texts. Altogether, the volume underlines the unifying force exerted by a common fiction of law beyond its letter.

The relationship between Islamic law and international human rights law has been the subject of considerable, and heated, debate in recent years. The usual starting point has been to test one system by the standards of the other, asking is Islamic law 'compatible' with international human rights standards, or vice versa. This approach quickly ends in acrimony and accusations of misunderstanding. By overlaying one set of norms on another we overlook the deeply contextual nature of how legal rules operate in a society, and meaningful comparison and discussion is impossible. In this volume, leading experts in Islamic law and international human rights law attempt to deepen the understanding of human rights and Islam, paving the way for a more meaningful debate. Focusing on central areas of controversy, such as freedom of speech and religion, gender equality, and minority rights, the authors examine the contextual nature of how Islamic law and international human rights law are legitimately formed, interpreted, and applied within a community. They examine how these fundamental interests are recognized and protected within the law, and what restrictions are placed on the freedoms associated with them. By examining how each system recognizes and limits fundamental freedoms, this volume clears the ground for exploring the relationship between Islamic law and international human rights law on a sounder footing. In doing so it offers a challenging and distinctive contribution to the literature on the subject, and will be an invaluable reference for students, academics, and policy-makers engaged in the legal and religious debates surrounding Islam and the West.

Partial proceedings of the 17th World Congress of the International Association of Legal and Social Philosophy, held in Bologna, June 16-21, 1995.

This book is a political ethnography of norm diffusion and storytelling through international institutions in China. It is driven by intellectual puzzles and realpolitik questions: are we converging or diverging on values? Do emerging powers reinforce or reshape the existing international order? Are international institutions socialising emerging powers or being used to promote alternative norms? This book addresses these questions through fieldwork research over three years at the United Nations Development Programme in China, the first international development agency to enter post-reform China in 1979. It provides a crucial case to study the everyday practices of norm diffusion in emerging powers, and highlights the central role of storytelling in translating and contesting normative scripts. The book selects norms in human rights, rule of law and development cooperation to analyse how translators and brokers innovatively use stories to advocate, and how these normative stories move back-and-forth between local-global spaces and orders. "A fascinating ethnography that tells us much about international institutions and China's changing role in the world: of interest both to China specialists and theorists of international relations." —Rana Mitter, Director of the University of Oxford China Centre, University of Oxford, UK “Through pioneering ethnographic research, Xiaoyu Lu’s outstanding book makes a major contribution to our understanding of norm diffusion and the ways in which China is shaping, and is shaped by, international development norms. Lu’s richly textured analysis shows how ‘norm translators’ use case studies, personal stories, and other narratives to negotiate between global and local normative orders, and to facilitate the day-to-day processes of norm diffusion." —Amy King, Associate Professor, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, Australia "An intricate account of the everyday politics in international development institution, that will enrich our understanding of emerging powers and their roles in global development.” —Emma Mawdsley, Director of the Margaret Anstee Centre for Global Studies, University of Cambridge, UK

Watts here argues that conventions of oral rhetoric were adapted to shape the literary form and contents of the Pentateuch. The large-scale structure-stories introducing lists of laws that conclude with divine sanctions-reproduces a common ancient strategy for persuasion. The laws' use of direct address, historical motivations and frequent repetitions serve rhetorical ends, and even the legal contradictions seem designed to appeal to competing constituencies. The instructional speeches of God and Moses reinforce the persuasive appeal by characterizing God as a just ruler and Moses as a faithful scribe. The Pentateuch was designed to persuade Persian-period Judaeans that this Torah should define their identity as Israel.

In The Rest Write Back: Discourse and Decolonization, Esmaeil Zeiny brings together a collection of essays that interrogate the colonial legacies, the contemporary power structure and the geopolitics of knowledge production. The scholars in this collection illustrate how the writing-back paradigm engages in a conversation and paves the way for a “dialogical and pluri-versal” world where the Rest is no longer excluded. Among the important features of this book is that it presents ways for “decoloniality” and “epistemic disobedience.” This book will be of interest to scholars and students of all Social Science and Humanities disciplines but it is particularly important for those in the disciplines of sociology, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, literature, and theory and philosophy of Social Sciences and Humanities. Contributors include: Dustin J. Byrd, Ciarunji Chesaina, Hiba Ghanem, Mladjo Ivanovic, Masumi Hashimoto Odari, Arjuna Parakrama, JM. Persánch, Andrew Ridgeway, Rudolf J. Siebert, and Esmaeil Zeiny.

Transnational Legal Orders offers an empirically grounded approach to the emergence of legal orders beyond nation-states that reframes the study of law and society.

The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights provides a comprehensive, transnational, and interdisciplinary map to this emerging field, offering a broad overview of human rights and literature while providing innovative readings on key topics. The first of its kind, this volume covers essential issues and themes, necessarily crossing disciplines between the social sciences and humanities. Sections cover: subjects, with pieces on subjectivity, humanity, identity, gender, universality, the particular, the body forms, visiting the different ways human rights stories are crafted and formed via the literary, the visual, the performative, and the oral contexts, tracing the development of the literature over time and in relation to specific regions and historical events impacts, considering the power and limits of human rights literature, rhetoric, and visual culture Drawn from many different global contexts, the essays offer an ideal introduction for those approaching the study of literature and human rights for the first time, looking for new insights and interdisciplinary perspectives, or interested in new directions for future scholarship. Contributors: Chris Abani, Jonathan E. Abel, Elizabeth S. Anker, Arturo Arias, Ariella Azoulay, Ralph Bauer, Anna Bernard, Brenda Carr Vellino, Eleni Coundouriotis, James Dawes, Erik Doxtader, Marc D. Falkoff, Keith P. Feldman, Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg, Audrey J. Golden, Mark Goodale, Barbara Harlow, Wendy S. Hesford, Peter Hitchcock, David Holloway, Christine Hong, Madelaine Hron, Meg Jensen, Luz Angélica Kirschner, Susan Maslan, Julie Avril Minich, Alexandra Schultheis Moore, Greg Mullins, Laura T. Murphy, Hanna Musiol, Makau Mutua, Zoe Norridge, David Palumbo-Liu, Crystal Parikh, Katrina M. Powell, Claudia Sadowski-Smith, Mark Sanders, Karen-Magrethe Simonsen, Joseph R. Slaughter, Sharon Sliwinski, Sidonie Smith, Domna Stanton, Sarah G. Waisvisz, Belinda Walzer, Ban Wang, Julia Watson, Gillian Whitlock and Sarah Winter.