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Over the past decades, legal historians have become more cautious when it comes to rules that in the Middle Ages and the early modern period were defined as ‘(old) customs’. Earlier optimistic appraisals as to the age of such rules have been challenged. This article argues that efforts of debunking should be combined with a more thorough analysis of the legal consciousness of past societies. It proposes to look at old municipal private law, not as a set of rules fixed by tradition, but rather as a malleable body of norms. The symbolic qualities of law were such that renewal and rephrasal could be combined with an ideology of conservation. It was perfectly possible for administrators to promote new rules as being a part of an ‘age-old law’ of the city or the land, without breaching the implicit conventions as to the qualities of law. However, as will be demonstrated further, there were limits to the agency of administrators in this regard. The codes as to the features of law marked boundaries that had to be taken seriously.

Under the hopeful atmosphere of Turkey's accession to full membership to European Union, Turkey became oriented towards realizing extensive legal and constitutional amendments, as well as juridical reforms in restructuring the contemporary body of law and judicial institutions based on the promise of strengthening access to justice mechanisms and improving human rights laws and practices in Turkey that was shaped by the discourses of democratic governance, rule of law, and economic progress. At the beginning of the second decade of 2000, the affective atmosphere in Turkey abruptly changed by a series of national and international crises, leading into an impasse in the ordinary life in Turkey. This dissertation aims to examine the promise of legal change as the history of the present of law and legal practice in Turkey. Focusing on everyday personal and professional practices of avukats (attorneys) in addressing the legal issues of gender and sexuality, I explore how the narratives of legal change historically inform the aesthetic formation of the contemporary body of law, as well as the differences between ordinary and professional bodies. Building on theories of affect and queer theories, I argue that the law constitutes both a historical site of socio-cultural belonging and an everyday social space within and through which professional bodies become oriented towards generating the possibilities of socio-legal change, depending how their personal and professional experiences and encounters shape their everyday legal practices and how they reside within judicial and professional positionalities in practicing the law. Doctor of Philosophy Starting from early 2000s, the contemporary body of law and judicial institutions underwent drastic changes, which accelerated by Turkey's accession to full membership to European Union. Under the discourses of democratic governance, rule of law, and economic progress, Turkey realized extensive legal and constitutional amendments, as well as juridical reforms with an emphasis on strengthening access to justice mechanisms and improving human rights laws and practices in Turkey. A series of national and international crises, which broke out at the begging of the second decade of 2000s, led Turkey to enter into a political and economic deadlock. In this dissertation, I examine the historical meanings attributed to the body and practice of law in discussing how the legal professional bodies are affected from the recent crises. Focusing on everyday personal and professional practices of avukats (attorneys) in addressing the legal issues of gender and sexuality, I explore how the historical narratives concerning legal change shaped the conventions of the form and content of the law, as well as the differences between the personal and professional identities. I argue that law constitutes a historical site in which socio-cultural norms and hierarchies are negotiated and a social space within and through which professional bodies negotiate the possibilities of social change, depending on how they shape their everyday personal and professional practices and how they position themselves within judicial and professional relations.

Aristotle’s discussion of legal change in Politics II.8 is the subject of this article. The aim is to show that Aristotle viewed legal change positively, when changes to the law were required, and that his discussion was mainly concerned with the two rather distinct roles of the demos and of the legislator. This essay deals with a re-examination of 1268b 25ff. in book II of Aristotle’s Politics and its connection with book III. The analysis is also extended to Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Nicomachean Ethics, and to Plato’s Politicus and Laws. La discusión de Aristóteles sobre el cambio legal en Política II.8 es el tema de este artículo. El objetivo es mostrar que Aristóteles vio el cambio legal positivamente, cuando se requieren cambios a la ley, y que su discusión se refería principalmente a los dos roles bastante distintos del demos y del legislador. El análisis implica un nuevo examen de 1268b 25ss en el libro II de la Política de Aristóteles y su conexión con el libro III. El análisis también se extiende a la Retórica de Aristóteles y la Ética a Nicómaco, y al Político y las Leyes de Platón. MINECO HAR2015-63549-P FEDER HAR2015-63549-P

This study investigates the optimal nature of law making under uncertainty. I focus on a case in which a harmful activity will be subjected to some regulatory measures (a standard, exposure to liability, or a corrective tax). The benefits and costs of precaution are ex-ante uncertain, and this places a risk burden on both injurers and victims. The optimal policy should, at the same time, strike a balance between benefits and costs of the measures, and attenuate the ex-ante risk. Whether measures should be made stronger or softer depends on the size and the sign of the shocks affecting the parties (positive or negative) and their disposition towards risk. With corrective taxes, it also depends on the elasticity of precautions with respect to the tax rate.

On April 2018, the Argentine Congress began debating a bill proposing the legalization of abortion on request for the first time in the country´s history. Although it passed in the Lower Chamber, the bill failed to be approved by the Senate. However, the legislative debate showed the strength of the Argentinean abortion rights movement. Since the mid-2000s, and as a reaction to political paralysis in the area of abortion rights, activists in this country developed three main strands of strategies, which differed in terms of their time-frames, levels of institutionalization, targets, and scales. Based on original field research, this article analyzes the way in which each of these three tracks addressed the state, the current legal framework and the need for legal reform. It argues that, when legal reform is blocked, different movement sectors may develop parallel strategies to increase access to their demands within the existing normative framework. Through their diverse strategies, they test the limits of the law, challenge hegemonic legal interpretations and re-interpret what is permissible in alternative ways. In addition, the interaction between the different strategies created a powerful synergy that strengthened the movement and made the recent legislative debate possible, even under the leadership of an anti-choice president. Given the similarities of the Argentinean restrictive legal framework and movement strategies with those throughout Latin America, these arguments are relevant for the assessment of current developments within abortion rights movements and their interactions with the legal system in other countries in the region. Fil: Ruibal, Alba. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Centro de Investigaciones Jurídicas y Sociales. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Centro de Investigaciones Jurídicas y Sociales; Argentina Fil: Fernandez Anderson, Cora. Mount Holyoke College; Estados Unidos

From the earliest stages, the Greeks understood the distinction between legislation and day-to-day administration. They gave laws a special status and often created specific, separate procedures to enact them. In the Archaic period, specially appointed lawgivers were normally in charge of giving laws to the polis; these laws were intended to be immutable, and their stability secured through entrenchment clauses. Making laws was not considered to be among the normal tasks of the government of the polis, and there were no standard procedures to change the laws once these had been given. Assemblies in Greek city-states often enacted rules that had the force of law, but the legislative changes were not institutionally acknowledged, and the laws enacted by the lawgivers could not be changed. This gave rise to significant problems of legitimacy, and it introduced inconsistencies in the legal system of the polis, a problem that we can observe in 5th-century bce Athens. At the end of the 5th century, the Athenians introduced judicial review to vet new legislation and avoid the introduction of inconsistencies, performed a revision of the laws of the city, and finally institutionalised a distinction between nomoi (“laws,” general permanent norms) and psephismata (“decrees,” ad hoc enactments). They also created a complex new procedure, involving a board of nomothetai, to allow the demos to make new laws and change the existing ones. Similar yet not identical procedures are attested also outside Athens: Hellenistic kings often ordered the appointment of nomothetai or nomographoi to enact rules about political institutions, and nomographoi or nomothetic lawcourts are attested in various cities, with the task of “upgrading” decrees of the demos into laws, and entering them among the laws of the city.

This chapter explores the development of ideas about legislation and legislative procedures in ancient Athens. It isolates in Solon and in the Archaic lawgivers an ideology of legislation that mistrusted legal change. This ideology of legislation was still dominant throughout the fifth century BCE, but progressively came into conflict with democratic ideas and practices. The chapter examines how this conflict played out in the oligarchic revolutions and the democratic restorations at the end of the fifth century, and then discusses the creation of nomothesia procedures that reconciled the need for legal change with that for consistent and stable laws. The last part of the chapter follows the workings of these procedures throughout the fourth century BCE, and their progressive disintegration after the Lamian War.

Google News is an unusual case where the dominant firm of the market for searches allegedly abuses its position by using news which publishers consider as subject to their copyright. Publishers claim that there is an antitrust violation and Google’s service diverts users on its sites, reducing traffic for competitors. All such allegations hinge on the issue of snippets as really works of authorship, as such protected. Several interpretations of copyright laws are possible to provide an answer. Some states have responded by enacting new legislation and introducing neighboring rights on fragments of news, thus preventing Google from freely using headlines and excerpts for it purposes. Where protection was reinforced, Google’s reaction was to discontinue the service, while in other situations it entered into private arrangements with online publishers, thus confirming that in an evolutionary perspective copyright laws only set the stage for efficient solutions that are found by market players in the shadow of the law.

Network, organizational, and policy learning literatures indicate that when interest groups face failure they will seek out alternative ideas and strategies that will enhance their potential for future success. Research with regard to interest groups and legal change has found that interest groups, using arguments that were once accepted as the legal standard for Supreme Court decisions, were unwilling or unable to alter their arguments when the Court reversed its position on these legal standards. This research project examined the conflicting findings of these literatures. Using the Advocacy Coalition Framework as a guide, this project studied the separationist advocacy coalition in cases regarding state aid to elementary and secondary sectarian schools from 1971 to 2002. The legal briefs filed by members of the separationist advocacy coalition with the Court were examined using content analysis to track changes in their legal arguments. Elite interviews were then conducted to gain an understanding of the rationale for results found in the content analysis. The research expectation was that the separationist advocacy coalition would seek out and incorporate into their briefs new and innovative legal arguments to promote their policy goals. The research results demonstrated that prior to legal change interest groups did seek out and incorporate new legal arguments borrowed from other fora and sought to expand or reinterpret established legal arguments to better aid their policy goals. The changes that seemed to have the potential for adoption by the Court were quickly incorporated into the briefs of the other members of the coalition. Following legal change interest groups continued to analyze the decisions of the Court in order to seek out the best possible legal arguments to use in their briefs; however, the main focus of legal arguments examined and used by the coalition narrowed to those cited by the swing justice in the funding cases. Two innovative arguments were developed, but were either ignored or considered unsuitable, and were not used by the other members of the coalition. Counter to this project's research expectations new and innovative legal arguments were not adopted by the coalition. As the Court discontinued the use of various legal arguments the coalition quickly responded to these changes and dropped those obsolete legal arguments. Therefore, contrary to prior research, the interest groups and the coalition altered their arguments following legal change. Only those interest groups who no longer participated in coalition discussions reverted back to using pre-legal change arguments. Learning continued to occur in the coalition following legal change; however, the focus of analysis and the pool of arguments deemed worthy of use narrowed considerably. Ph. D.

Using documents from the Sant Cugat del Valles and Girona archives, this paper analyzes the conflict resolution mechanisms in Catalonia between the 9th and 13th century. Focusing on the evolution of the administration of justice I point out the most meaningful changes in this period. We can differentiate five periods: 1) between the 9th and 10th century characterized by the Lex Visigothorum; 2) the first half of the 11th century characterized by the continuity and erosion of this tradition; 3) between the late 11th and the early 12th century when the ordinary justice disappeared being substituted by agreements and arbitration; 4) the second half of the 12th century when the practices of the previous period coincide with the emergence of legal processes leaded by experts on roman and feudal law; and finally 5) the 13th century characterized by the rise of the written law, the jurisdictional plurality, the creation of professional jurists, the of the regularized processes according to the «roman canonic» rules, and the importance of roman Law, with the written customs, and the consolidation of feudal law. All these changes are related to the social and political evolution: first, by disappearance of the latest vestiges of a public conception of power based on a notion of collective rights and duties, and with the creation of a feudal state. Using a class struggle point of view, I analyze the institutional conflicts among the powerful and also betwwen the powerful and the lower classes, I conclude that the gradual disappearance of the regular processes and the distrust on written law, favored an informal system which in turn lead to more personal and oppressive mechanisms of social explotation. Althought I do not ignore the class content of the «hispano.goda» traditional justice (9th to 10th century) and also of the feudal institutionalized justice (13th century) I argue that for the working classes the legal precept was always better that the manorial arbitration., Con documentos procedentes del Cartulario de Sant Cugat del Vallés y del Cartulario de la sede de Gerona (llamado de Carlomagno) se estudian los mecanismos de resolución de conflictos en Cataluña en los siglos IX-XIII. La atención se centra en la evolución de la administración de justicia a fin de señalar los cambios más significativos. La investigación ha permitido distinguir cinco fases: 1) Los siglos IX y X, en que estuvo vigente la tradición hispanogoda basada en el derecho escrito y el cumplimiento, muy escrupuloso, de las normas procesales de la Lex Visigothorum: 2) la primera mitad del siglo XI, caracterizada por la continuidad y desgaste de esta tradición, que empieza a ser rechazada por los poderosos; 3) La segunda mitad del siglo XI y la primera del XII, en que la justicia ordinaria (en particular el tribunal condal) desaparece sustituida por pactos, acuerdos y arbitrajes; 4) La segunda mitad del siglo XII en que estas prácticas extrajudiciales conviven con la aparición de procesos presididos por expertos en derecho romano y feudal, en coincidencia con el retorno de la justicia condal o real, y 5) el siglo XIII caracterizado por la cristalización del derecho escrito, la pluralidad jurisdiccional, la profesionalidad de los juristas, la regularización de los procesos según las normas romanocanónicas y la importancia del derecho romano, junto a las costumbres escritas y las compilaciones de derecho feudal. Estos cambios se ponen en relación con la evolución social y política: primero, con la desaparición de los últimos residuos de una concepción pública del poder, basada en una cierta noción de derechos y deberes colectivos, y, después, con la creación del Estado feudal. El autor, que efectúa su análisis institucional de la justicia desde la perspectiva de la lucha de clases, toma para ello como referencia los conflictos entre poderosos y entre éstos y las clases inferiores. En sus conclusiones piensa que la desaparición temporal de los procesos regulares y de la confianza en el derecho escrito, en provecho de un sistema de pactos (siglos XI-XII), condujo a formas más personales, arbitrarias y opresivas de explotación social. Sin olvidar, por tanto, el contenido de clase de la justicia tradicional hispanogoda (siglos IX-X) y de la justicia feudal institucionalizada (siglo XIII), concluye que para las clases trabajadoras siempre ha sido mejor el precepto legal que el arbitrio señorial.