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Central to the identity of the American legal profession are its systems of self-regulation. Throughout history, the legal profession has tried to hold tight to its traditional values and structure during times of self-identified crisis. This book analyzes the efforts of the legal profession to protect and maintain the status quo even as the world around it changed. The book argues that with striking consistency, the profession has resisted the societal change happening around it, and sought to ban or discourage new models of legal representation created by such change. In response to every crisis, lawyers asked: “How can we stay even more ‘the same’ than we already are?” The legal profession has been an unwilling, capitulating entity to any transformation wrought by the overwhelming tide of change. Any proactive changes were mostly levied against the newest members of the legal community in order to preserve the status quo, so that when the legal profession did have to change, it did so only because the changes in society, culture, technology, economics, and globalization could not be denied. This book aims to demonstrate how the profession has held to its anachronistic ways at key crisis points in US history: Watergate, communist infiltration, arrival of waves of immigrants, the litigation explosion, the civility crisis, and the current economic crisis that blends with dramatic changes in technology and communications and globalization. Ultimately, this book urges the profession to look outward and forward to find in society and culture the causes and connections with these periodic crises. Doing so would allow the profession to grow with the society, solve problems with, rather than against, the flow of society, and be more attuned to the very society the profession claims to serve.

In Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association v. Union of India [(2016) 5 SCC 1], a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court struck down the 99th Amendment to the Constitution and the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act, 2014, which replaced the existing collegium system with the NJAC, a new bipartisan model for appointing judges. This edited volume uses the judgment in the NJAC Case as a springboard to address the politics, doctrine, and developments pertaining to judicial appointments in India. It critically examines fundamental constitutional concepts such as rule of law, separation of powers, basic structure, and judicial independence which formed the basis of the judgment. It provides a rich and detailed history of post-Independence appointment of judges to locate the NJAC Case in its proper constitutional context. It also analyses reforms to judicial appointments in key South Asian and common law jurisdictions to understand what appointments in India might look like in the future. The volume has 21 essays across three parts—Part I provides an analysis of judicial appointments in India from the time prior to Independence to the present day, Part II analyses constitutional principles and their application in the NJAC Case, and Part III is a comparative enquiry into appointments processes in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Canada, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal.

In the context of the far-reaching reforms proposed for the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, this book considers the operation and reform of courts at the apex of the UK's legal systems. The chapters are linked by broad and overlapping themes. The first of these is the complexity of accommodating national differences within the UK into the institutional design of the new supreme court. It will be not only a court for the UK's three legal systems, and simultaneously a national institution of the whole UK, but it is also likely to be called upon to resolve division of powers disputes within the emerging system of multi-level government. A second theme is the scope for comparative lesson-learning from top courts in other legal systems: the Supreme Court of Canada, the US federal courts system, and the constitutional courts in Germany and Spain are considered. Thirdly, the connections between the UK's top-level court and other courts, especially intermediate courts of appeal, the European Court of Justice, and the European Court of Human Rights are examined.

Judges spend their public lives in courtrooms. They speak to the public through their judgments. But senior judges are frequently invited to contribute to professional, judicial, or academic conferences or publications, on whatever topic engages the attention of the audience at the time. This book contains a selection of the essays and addresses written or given by the present Senior Law Lord (as a Queen's Bench judge, Lord Justice of Appeal, Master of the Rolls, and the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales) over the last 15 years or so, touching on a wide range of legally related topics.

A sense of crisis in the administration of civil justice is present in many countries. Delays and high costs render access to the civil courts either useless or prohibitively expensive or both. The crisis takes different forms. In some jurisdictions the problems lie in high and unpredictable costs but in others there are overcrowded courts and exorbitant delays. Those interested in civil justice will be familiar with their own system but they will seldom have knowledge of other systems. The chapters in this book survey different systems of civil justice from other jurisdictions. An understanding of other systems will enrich reform discussions in each country by drawing attention to common problems, to their roots, to the solutions tried and, above all, to the consequences (for better or for worse) of reform. This book shows that we can learn from others' successes but that we may find the failures even more instructive.

This book explains how judges on the UK Supreme Court behave. It looks at different stages in the court's decision-making process—from the initial selection of cases, to the choice of judges to sit on panels, to the final outcome. The main argument of the book is that judges' behavior is strongly affected by their specialism in different areas of law. Cases in tax law (or family law, or public law) are more likely to be heard by specialists in that area, and those specialists are more likely to write the court's decision—or disagree with the decision when there is dissent. Legal factors like specialization in areas of law explains more of the court's work than do political differences between judges.

This book traces the impact that the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, has had on various areas of international law. A number of prominent international experts examine whether, and to what extent, international law has been shaped by the Court's jurisprudence. The informal development of international law through the Court's judgments contrasts with the development of international law through more deliberate means, such as treaty-making. Assessing key areas of international law over which the ICJ has exercised its jurisdiction, such as international environmental law, international human rights, the law of the sea, and the law of immunities, this book comprehensively details the impact of international jurisprudence on contemporary international law. This book provides key new insights into the role of the Court in wider international law. It makes required reading for anyone studying the ways in which international courts have in shaped the evolution of international law.

This fourth edition has been revised and updated to take account of significant changes in the substantive law, specifically: the effects of the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and Care of Churches Measure 2017; the overhaul of the procedure in the Consistory Court in consequence of the Faculty Jurisdiction Rules 2015; substantial repeals in the Statute Law (Repeals) Measure 2017 and the new procedure under the Legislative Reform Measure 2017; the effect of the House of Bishops' Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests concerning provision for traditionalists; and the role of the Independent Reviewer under the Priests (Resolution of Disputes Procedure) Regulations 2014. The book offers commentary, analysis, and various materials. Materials include: the Canons of the Church of England, together with the Measures and Rules (updated to 2018) regulating the faculty jurisdiction and clergy discipline.

In the final decade of the twentieth century the legal profession witnessed profound changes. First the Conservatives sought to apply laissez-faire principles to the profession. Then Labour transformed the legal aid scheme it had created half a century earlier. At the same time, the profession confronted cumulative changes in higher education and women's aspirations, internal and external competition, and dramatic fluctuations in demand. This book analyses the politics of professionalism, the struggles among individual producers (barristers, solicitors, foreign lawyers, accountants) and their associations, consumers (individual and corporate, public and private), and the state to shape the market for legal services by deploying economic, political, and rhetorical resources (including changing conceptions of professionalism). The profession had to respond to a greatly increased production of law graduates and the desire of lawyer mothers (and also fathers) to raise their families. It had to replace exclusivity with efforts to reflect the larger society (class, race, gender). The Bar needed to address challenges to its exclusive rights of audience from both solicitors and employed barristers and decide whether to retaliate by permitting direct access, thereby compromising its claim to be a consulting profession. Solicitors had to reconcile their invocation of market principles against the Bar with their resistance to corporate conveyancing and multidisciplinary practices. The government had to restrain a demand-led legal aid scheme; practitioners and their associations sought to pressure the government to expand eligibility and raise remuneration rates.

This book is about the role of lawyers in the movement to challenge economic inequality in one of America’s most unequal cities: Los Angeles. Covering a transformative period of city history—from the 1992 riots to the 2008 recession—the book examines how law has been used, and what it has achieved, in the struggle to make Los Angeles a more equal place. The backdrop is the dramatic growth of low-wage work powered by global outsourcing, declining unionism, increasing labor contingency, and surging immigration. The book’s narrative focus is on five pivotal campaigns in which lawyers allied with the city’s dynamic labor, immigrant rights, and environmental movements mobilize law to transform key sectors of the regional economy. These campaigns, analyzed through in-depth case studies, reveal how law has shaped low-wage work in Los Angeles—and at times provided a potent weapon to contest it. Drawing upon archival research, extensive interviews with key actors, and a review of court files, this book explores the role of lawyers in defining the city as a space for redefining work. Challenging critical accounts of lawyers in social movements, its central claim is that by advancing an innovative model of legal mobilization, the L.A. campaigns have achieved meaningful regulatory reform, while strengthening the position of workers in the field of local politics. Through multidimensional advocacy to promote worker organizing, lawyers and activists have succeeded in converting policy change into greater interest group power—forging a new model of progressive city-building for the twenty-first century.

This book defends an original and pluralist theory of when and why discrimination wrongs people. Sophia Moreau argues that although all cases of wrongful discrimination involve a failure to treat some people as the equals of others, these failures are importantly different. The first four chapters of the book explore different ways of failing to treat people as equals: through unfairly subordinating some to others, through violating someone’s right to a particular deliberative freedom, and through denying some people access to a basic good. Chapter Five explains why these different wrongs can be seen as parts of a coherent theory of wrongful discrimination, and it presents some of the explanatory advantages of that this theory has over others. Chapter Six argues that the theory enables us to see indirect discrimination as wrongful for many of the same reasons as direct discrimination, and that both should be seen as forms of negligence. Finally Chapter Seven argues that the duty to treat others as equals is a duty held not just by the state, but also by each individual member of society.

The power and influence of the federal judiciary has been widely discussed and understood. And while there have been a fair number of institutional studies of individual district courts or courts of appeal, there have been very few studies of the judiciary that emphasize the judges themselves. Although previous studies provide numerous statistical facts, they do not answer the two most important questions relating to the federal judiciary: who the judges are and what they do. Federal Judges Revealed considers approximately one hundred oral histories of Article Three judges, extracting the most important information. The material is organized thematically so that practitioners can easily access professional areas of interest. Topics include “How judges write their opinions” and “What judges believe make a good lawyer”. The book considers the background of the judges through college, law school, military service, clerkships, practice lives, and their appointments to the federal bench. It allows the reader to evaluate Federal judges based on their own words without an intermediary.

The past two decades have seen a significant proliferation of trade and investment treaties around the world. States are increasingly negotiating agreements that regulate both trade and investment, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The number of investor-state dispute settlement cases is growing dramatically each year, yet States’ enthusiasm for investor-state arbitration has become more qualified as concern has intensified that the system can be abused by foreign investors. Good faith is therefore becoming increasingly important as a principle, particularly in the investment context, due to disputes about investor conduct such as corporate restructuring in order to gain the protection of a particular investment treaty regarding an existing or foreseeable dispute, and states’ responses to public policy concerns through attempts to modify or terminate investment treaties in the face of ongoing or expected claims. Tribunals adjudicating investment disputes have used the principle of good faith in a haphazard and uncoordinated manner, causing serious problems of uncertainty and inconsistency. In response to these developments, this book contains the first comprehensive and integrated analysis of the treatment of good faith in international investment law, noting the broader implications of good faith in public international law and international trade law.

Access to justice, equality before the law, and the rule of law are three fundamental values underpinning the civil justice system. This book examines these values and how they are a crucial foundation of the civil justice system and a powerful argument for arrangements such as legal aid, the impartial application of law, and the independence of the judiciary. It also considers the role of procedure, often regarded as of secondary importance compared with substantive law. It discusses Lord Woolf's inquiry, and demonstrates how procedural reform can maximize a fundamental value like access to justice. This linkage is furthered in a later analysis of access to justice comparatively, in relation to civil and commercial law. It then looks at understanding how law works, and how it could be made to work better, and concludes that this demands both knowledge of law and of law's context. This theme deals with the machinery of the law, and discusses what the courts do, civil procedure, and the ethics of lawyers' conduct, all in relation to the broader context of access to justice. This broader context of the law is particularly prominent in the latter half of the book, which deals with various dimensions of the impact of the law.

The ascertainment by a court of a principle of law has a constitutive, and not merely a declaratory character. Accordingly, the judicial function plays an important role in the safeguarding of the coherence of the legal system in which it operates. The International Court of Justice, principal judicial organ of the United Nations, is no exception; the most august of all international courts, it sees significant normative force attached to its judgments, and is thus cast as an important player in the process of developing international law. In this book, the Court serves as a heuristic device, a magnifying lens to focus wider theorizing on the judicial role within the international legal process. The central thesis advanced is that the Court, designed to be objective and impartial, is also the institutional embodiment of a delicate compromise between the sovereignty of States and economic and political pressures for a stronger ‘international community’. One cannot properly understand the Court without moving away from a viewpoint which evaluates its work with a pre-conceived notion of its ideal purpose. First are considered the historical aspects of the Court's constitutive Statute and the manner in which it defines its judicial character as an international judicial organ. Secondly, the Court's inner processes are considered. Its drafting process, the value of dissent, the aspiration towards impartiality, and the theory of precedent are examined from the perspective of how the Court constructs its claim to normative authority. Finally, two conceptual issues are considered: its construction of the legal community in which it is situated, and its theory on the completeness of the international legal order in which it operates.

This volume delves into interrogation and torture at a unique moment as two novel and significant developments unfurl: (1) emerging scientific research reveals non-coercive methods to be the most effective interrogation techniques; (2) efforts are made to integrate this science and practice into international law and global policing initiatives. Of initial import, readers will find contributions presenting some of the burgeoning research to offer an introduction into the scientific literature. Also of genuine value, details are put forward of how this knowledge and science is being brought to bear on the realm of international law and evolving practices through the initiative launched in 2016 by the (now former) UN Special Rapporteur on Torture to create a Universal Protocol setting standards for non-coercive interviewing. Such advancements have the potential to transform the conversation on interrogation and torture in all disciplines, and the contributions in this edited book are meant to spark those discussions. Moreover, this volume can serve as a guide for the makers and implementers of policy who seek lawful, ethical, human-rights compliant—and the most effective—methods to obtain reliable information from those perceived to pose a threat to public safety. To achieve these aims, the editors have brought together highly experienced practitioners and leading scholars in law, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, social science, national security, and government (36 contributors from 14 different countries) to illuminate meaningful insights from various fields of study.

Lord Rodger of Earlsferry was a distinguished judge and scholar. He was a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and the author of many high quality law journal articles and two books. Written in memory of Lord Rodger, this book contains forty-seven chapters by Lord Rodger's friends and colleagues from the UK and Europe. The chapters reflect Lord Rodger's role as a leading judge and also his wide-ranging academic interests including Roman law, Scots law, legal history, and a miscellany of other topics. The contributors to this volume are leading academics or judges, and a particularly notable feature is the nine chapters written by Supreme Court justices. As the highest judges in the UK they provide a unique insight into the work of the Supreme Court, as well as Lord Rodger's work in the Court. The book also includes the memorial tributes to Lord Rodger which explain his remarkable legal career, including his roles as Lord Advocate (Senior Law Officer of Scotland) Lord President of the Court of Session, Lord of Appeal in Ordinary and, finally, Justice of the UK Supreme Court. The chapters include personal reminiscences of Lord Rodger, helping the reader to understand why he was so highly regarded and why his untimely death has dealt such a devastating blow to law in the UK.

This book covers the relationship between the jurisdictional immunities of States and international organizations, addressing their similarities and dissimilarities. Their relationship with diplomatic immunity is also examined. It considers that the immunity of international organizations was historically conceived in terms of diplomatic immunity and State immunity. The major aim of this book is to clarify the conceptual confusion that has often bedeviled the understanding of the law of the (different but interrelated) jurisdictional immunities of both States and international organizations. The approach is to holistically analyze and synthesize select and relevant opinions of international courts and national courts. To achieve this, the book focuses more on what the law is than on what it should be. An understanding of the law is more useful to a practitioner than a criticism of it. The book is not an exegesis on everything immunity. The distinct jurisdictional immunities of heads of State and of diplomats are beyond the scope of this book, and are only tangentially examined. The book concludes by making the case that the jurisdictional immunities of States and international organizations are not only sustainable but also necessary for the international legal order to foster international relations and cooperation. The author intends to position the book to be of use both to scholars and to practicing lawyers and legal advisers in government and international organizations, as well as to lawyers whose practice concerns issues and laws of privileges and immunities.

A pathbreaking work on judicial accountability and independence. The work is remarkable for its extraordinary erudition as well as its straightforwardness. The author has the exemplary courage to speak the truth. He has not spared anyone holding everyone to account. He refuses to treat the judiciary as the holy cow and explains how the independence and accountability of judges are complimentary and complementary to each other. He holds judges accountable both for their conduct as well as for their judgements which are extra-legal. He questions judicial delays which frustrate justice under a design. If his suggestions are followed, delays will be a thing of the past. Lawyers are totally mercenary defending the indefensible in the name of right to defend, and they try to bury justice forgetting their role as the officers of the court. He has also presented beautifully how the law changes colour with the status of the party making a mockery of the right to equality. The author bemoans that judges live in the bygone days with all the trappings of colonial power reflected in the way they are addressed ‘My Lord’.