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In 1523 the theologian John Stokesley was dismissed as a judge in the English court of requests following an investigation by the royal council. This article reconsiders the significance of this episode as part of continuous efforts to define royal justice across the sixteenth century. Grounded in unprecedentedly detailed research in the early Requests archive, the article studies the business and personnel of Requests before, during and after Stokesley's presidency. It demonstrates that Stokesley's indiscretions probably undermined the principles of royal justice and required amendment. But this was no simple victory for the common law over extra-legal, equitable justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As England extended its authority over Bombay, Calcutta and other localities in early imperial India, law served as a medium of transfer between metropole and colony and English judges faced complex questions about the law's relationship with its non-Christian subjects. While Hindus and Muslims were provided with authorised religious advisors at the English courts in India, Parsis remained officially excluded as a minority religious group. Judicial creativity, when faced with questions of Parsi marriage, divorce, child custody and conversion, was limited by judges' 'available conceptual resources'. Cases involving Jews in England from the eighteenth century proved to be uniquely relevant, as they rehearsed the fundamental challenges involved in the interaction of the Anglican establishment with non-Christian subjects. The common legal paradigm of Jews and Parsis was further manifested in the unconscious framing of outsiders in the courtroom using the metaphor of a 'body of people'. This phrase, which appears only twenty times in the corpus of English Law Reports, reflects the physicalisation or personification of a society of individuals with a shared history, values, and political and legal framework. It expresses a judicial conception of them as distinct and unified, with the corollary negative associations of being threatening and potentially subversive. Despite their strong mercantile ties to the colonisers, Parsis thus served as the 'Jews' of India in the sense that they helped define and secure the majority by contradistinction, and their separateness was reinforced both explicitly and implicitly in legal encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Banishment was vital to the efforts of the town council in the south German imperial city of Ulm to punish and control vagrants during the sixteenth century. While the efforts of Ulm's authorities to expel impoverished outsiders often faltered in the face of the determined recidivism offered by these seemingly powerless offenders, the local magistrates never despaired of banishing the alien poor. The continued centrality of banishment stems from the role expulsion played in the council's attempts to regulate the social and spatial boundaries of its domain by relegating deviants and outsiders. The ritual expulsion of vagrants purged the territory of marginal elements and served to display the margin between inclusion in and exclusion from the urban community, as well as the magistrates' authority to police these boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking an interdisciplinary approach the article offers a fresh legal historical understanding of the Fifth Story of the Eighth Day in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. Detailed analysis of the tale reveals much about the realities of the administration of justice in fourteenth century Florence and contemporary expectations of those exercising judicial authority. In making apparent the expectation that judges would look and act in a certain manner, the article suggests that Boccaccio's story can be interpreted as offering an insight into the extent to which public perception of a man's identity as a judge was dependent upon his appearance and attire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Collected Papers of the Law Faculty of the University of Rijeka / Zbornik Pravnog Fakulteta Sveučilišta u Rijeci is the property of Pravni fakultet Sveucilista u Rijeci and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The notion of a " fair and impartial trial which justice demands" requires jurors to have regard only to the evidence presented at trial and discount anything they may hear or read outside court. Prejudicial publicity and prejudgement challenging an impartial jury is not a new problem, but have proved problematic since at least the 1800s. This article considers how trial by media was a recurring 19th-century concern in both sensational and routine criminal cases in England and Australia. The authors draw on the extensive press archives of the period and through examples of 19th-century Australian case studies (reinforced by English examples) examine the problem of prejudicial pre-trial publicity and the various 19th-century remedies to address publicity and bias. It is argued that these remedies were of little utility and trust was placed in the ability of 19th-century jurors to heed judicial directions to have regard to only the evidence led at trial. Though this premise was (and remains) questioned, 19th-century juries proved capable of ignoring even the most hostile pre-trial publicity and an impartial jury was not an ignorant jury. It is argued that 19th-century jurors ultimately had to be trusted to follow judicial directions. This premise remains but its continued validity is now further challenged by the internet and social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the history of the District Court in New Zealand between its creation in 1858 and its closure in 1909, a history that has hitherto been largely neglected by historians. It argues that the creation of the District Court was largely a response to the problems of providing an adequate but cheap court structure for the widespread colonist settlements away from the major cities. It later acquired both a most important bankruptcy jurisdiction and a supervisory jurisdiction over the goldfields' courts, features which prolonged its existence despite the increased jurisdiction of the different Magistrates' Courts. The history of the Court, and its judges, is reflected in accounts of cases heard by the courts and by an analysis of the shift from part-time judges who continued to practice as barristers to judges who also served as Resident Magistrates, many of the latter being very inexperienced as lawyers. The article concludes with an examination of the relative volumes of litigation in the Magistrates' and the District Court which shows that litigants increasingly preferred to take their disputes to the former court. The District Court was then closed on the grounds of economy, ironically reflecting the main reason for its creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's legal system appears to harbor a major tension, or even a paradox. Certainty in law facilitates economic progress, which most observers agree the Communist Party requires to maintain its power--yet the Party has opted for a flexible legal system that often impedes predictability. Prior studies explain China's legal system as a product of certain constraints and as an expedient that allows for policy adjustments. These factors undoubtedly are at work but do not fully explain the rationale for a legal design seemingly at odds with the Party's economic goals. To obtain a fuller view, it is necessary to consult the historical circumstances in which the designers of China's legal system were embedded. This Paper argues that the Party's reformers achieved a percipient historical insight: the Party would require an ongoing competitive advantage in institutional entrepreneurship to survive after Mao. Moreover, the reformers understood this competency to embody not only the substance of policy, but also, crucially, the Party's institutional stewardship. Of its many advantages, flexible law reinforces the Party's dominance in institutional entrepreneurship, enabling the Party to impede rival entrepreneurs without disrupting the broader economic frameworks in place. Institutions with strategic functions emerge and viewed thusly, the economic tradeoffs inherent in China's flexible laws are not the paradox that they seem. The Paper briefly considers the implications of this historical context for multinationals' strategies in China and for states' strategic uses of flexibility in international legal institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May 1948, as the Cold War escalated and the Communist insurgency in Greece intensified, the assassination of CBS News journalist George Polk in Salonica became an international cause célèbre. Polk had openly criticized the Greek government and questioned the U.S. government's support of an undemocratic regime. Most probably, he was killed trying to reach an insurgent command post to interview guerrilla leaders about the civil war. With no claims of responsibility for the murder and no credible forensic evidence, suspicions of culpability fell on many actors, including the Communists, extreme rightwing elements, common criminals, and rogue British intelligence operatives. Although responsibility for identifying and bringing to justice the guilty fell squarely on the Greek authorities, the country's heavy dependence on U.S. assistance enabled U.S. officials and journalists to influence the case. Eager to blame the crime on the Communists and produce quick results, Greek police and justice officials fabricated a case against two known Communists (never apprehended) and a small-time reporter, Gregory Staktopoulos, whose incoherent confessions were clearly coerced. Staktopoulos's trial, conviction, long imprisonment, and failed appeals to the country's highest court left an indelible stigma on Greek justice. Polk's murder—which has never been solved—and Staktopoulos's cruel fate illustrate the powerfully corrosive impact of Cold War perceptions and priorities on the institutions of Western democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The words justice and judge have similar meanings because they have a common ancestry. They are derived from the same Latin term, jus, which is defined in dictionaries as "right"and "law." However, those definitions of jus are so broad that they obscure the details of what the term meant when it formed the words that eventually became justice and judge. The etymology of jus reveals the kind of right and law it signified was related to the concepts of restriction and obligation. Vestiges of this sense of jus survived in the meaning ofjustice and judge. Although justice and judge have similar meanings rooted in a shared ancestry, they are not quite the same. There are two reasons for this. First, they are constructed from the addition of different Latin suffixes to jus, and those suffixes had different meanings. Second, justice and judge entered the English language at different times; people began to use the word justice when England's legal system was different from how it was when they started to use judge. Centuries ago, these two facts combined to make justice refer to one who embodies the law and judge to mean one who speaks the law. There are more similarities than differences between the words justice and judge, but the differences are important. For example, justices may insist they are not judges, and judges sometimes correct people who call them justices. These distinctions can be difficult to keep straight. Trial and intermediate appellate court judges in most states and in the federal judicial system are called judges, while those on the highest courts are justices. But that is not the case in New York, where some trial judges are known as justices, or in Texas, where intermediate appellate judges are called justices, and some of the highest court judges are judges. The similarities and differences between justices and judges are not just matters of title or courtesy, they are also important matters of law. A justice of a final court of appeal might make new law through a judicial decision, while another justice might consider this an unconstitutional usurpation of legislative power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is almost a quarter of a century since the correctional legislation of 1993 came into effect. The importance of this regulation cannot be stressed enough since its focus was to facilitate Hungary's entry to the more up-to-date European norms. By analysing the social and legal circumstances of the era, the author presents the more important events of the codification, its provisions and long-term effects. The author concludes by stating that modern correctional philosophy has only had a brief impact on the legal evolution of the relevant fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extramarital sexuality has always been regarded as a transgression of the accepted norms. The increasing criminalization of extramarital sexuality after the Reformation led to an intensification of the prosecution of illegitimacy by secular authorities. But in the pluriform early modern legal landscape, a whole range of judicial, semi-judicial and extrajudicial institutions and mechanisms existed to exercise control over deviant behavior.  This paper focuses on the institutional setting in which social control over illegitimacy was exercised in the early modern period in Holland and Germany, working with Martin Dinges' concept of the "uses of justice." Both regions experienced several waves of criminalization of sexuality during and after the Reformation, and women were disproportionately affected by this. However, research for both regions has shown that women were not only "passive victims" in this process but also shaped the institutions by actively making use of them. It has been suggested in the literature that, in the early modern period, Dutch women enjoyed a rather favorable position compared to women in neighboring countries and that they were granted considerable leeway in social and legal respects. Considering the differences in the legal system in both countries, the question arises whether there were fundamental differences in the way that social control was exercised over illegitimacy in Germany and the Netherlands and whether Dutch women were truly granted more leeway in a social and legal respect with regard to illegitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study presents opinions on the liability for crime with unintended results formed before 1848 in Hungarian criminal jurisprudence and codification. It analyses the four tendencies (dolus indirectus, culpa dolo determianata, aggravation, transient category) of German criminal law, which was used as a model in the literature of Hungarian criminal law published from the middle of the 18th century to 1848 (manuals, studies), as well as in textbook manuscripts and bills. The transient category does not occur among these, and aggravation can only be found in one bill (1843). The wide-spreading of Feuerbach's theory started with a textbook manuscript in 1813, and it has become known and at least partly accepted by every author since 1820. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay which explored the meaning of counsel (consilium) through comparing western French acts recording judicial disputes with the case of William of Saint Calais, bishop of Durham, England who was sent to trial for abandoning King William II Rufus during the rebellion of 1088, is presented. Topics covered include counsel as an integral part of justice as illustrated by cases where direct speech is represented by the monastic writers who produced record of placita in the Loire valley.

Analyses of judicial procedure in an Iberian context overwhelmingly focus on the role played by experts and elites in the construction of rather nebulous “networks of power”. This article asks questions of the involvement at court of the “middling sort”, upwardly-mobile lay individuals embedded in or close enough to the village world to engage in humdrum and quotidian deals with its inhabitants: that is, people who were not counts, legal experts or churchmen, but were nonetheless locally important landowners. Via a series of case-studies, this article shines a light on what these individuals did at court and why they went to court. It also ponders how disagreements were settled outside of the courtroom, and reflects upon what the diversity of dealings encoded in the apparent formality of legal proceedings, and the incidental reports of extra-judicial agreements, actually tell us about social practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The settlement of justice has been seen in recent decades as a powerful tool of governance in the Early Middle Ages. This paper aims to study justice in the county of Castile between the tenth and eleventh centuries in order to observe different strategies of authority and consensus. These strategies acted in different political contexts and on different scales, and this paper focuses on the role played by counts, ecclesiastical aristocracies and rural societies in the construction of a political system at a time of continuous negotiation. Abbreviations:Albelda refers to Antonio Ubieto Arteta,Cartulario de Albelda (siglos X–XII)(Valencia: Anúbar, 1960); Andreva = Fernando García Andreva,El Becerro Galicano de San Millán de la Cogolla. Edición y estudio(Logroño: Instituto Orígenes del Español, 2010); Arlanza = Luis Serrano,Cartulario de San Pedro de Arlanza(Madrid: Ibañez de Aldecoa, 1925); Cardeña = Gonzalo Martínez Díez,Colección documental del monasterio de San Pedro de Cardeña(Burgos: Caja de Ahorros y Monte de Piedad del Círculo católico de obreros de Burgos, 1998); CC = Manuel Zabalza Duque,Colección diplomática de los condes de Castilla: edición y comentario de los documentos de los condes Fernán González, García Fernández, Sancho García y García Sánchez(Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León, 1998); Covarrubias = Luciano Serrano,Cartulario del Infantado de Covarrubias(Silos: Real Monasterio, 1907); Oña = Juan del Álamo,Colección Diplomática de San Salvador de Oña (822-1284)(Madrid: CSIC, 1950); Puerto = Manuel Serrano y Sanz, “El cartulario de la iglesia de Santa María del Puerto (Santoña)”,Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia73 (1918); SJP = Antonio Ubieto Arteta,Cartulario de San Juan de la Peña(Valencia: Anúbar 1962-1963); SMC = Antonio Ubieto Arteta,Cartulario de San Millán de la Cogolla (759-1076)(Valencia: Anúbar, 1976); Valpuesta = José María Ruiz Asencio, Irene Ruiz Albi and Mauricio Herrero Jiménez,Los becerros gótico y galicano de Valpuesta(Madrid: Real Academia Española – Instituto Castellano y Leonés de la Lengua, 2010). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As in other post-Soviet countries, carceral collectivism characterizes penal institutions in Lithuania. In these institutions, prisoners’ interactions are minimally controlled and convicts are responsible for the maintenance of order; hence, the informal rules of the criminal subculture prevail in Lithuanian correctional facilities. In this article, we examine the prison subculture and adaptation to imprisonment as a significant part of inmates’ social world in post-Soviet Lithuania. By using semi-structured interviews with male prisoners, semi-structured interviews with prison staff, and data from the inmates’ criminal records, we conceptualize both men’s adaptation to imprisonment and current transformations in the Lithuanian prison subculture. As our research shows, the importance of this subculture has decreased in recent years. This process has been influenced by structural changes such as stronger administrative control of convicts, their differentiation and division into smaller groups that limit their mutual contacts, and convicts’ motivation to obtain parole and participate in various rehabilitation programs. The prison subculture has also experienced transformations because of the increasing impact of financial resources on social life, subcultural rules, and interprisoner relationships. Despite these processes, the subculture still plays an important role in inmates’ attempts to choose different daily coping styles and types of adaptation to imprisonment. In this article, we argue that in reforming post-Soviet correctional institutions, a gradual transition to the system of individual cell–type confinement with some remaining elements of collective imprisonment would be desirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a list of report published in the periodical "Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte" on topics like divorce and restoration of marriage, administration of the judicial system in the Babylonian period, and perspective of other nations in Deuteronomy.

Historians have traced the right to silence to early canon law, the political conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and even The Prisoner's Counsel Act, which effectively silenced the accused by allowing his lawyer to speak for him. This article argues that changes in philosophical notions of truth best explain how, given the importance of the accused's testimony at the altercation trial, her silence could ever have been tolerated and ultimately enforced as a right. By the mid-eighteenth century, the rise of empiricism had shifted the trial's reliance on testimony to a preference for facts, which seemed more immediately verifiable. Once the accused was no longer seen as the most important evidentiary resource, he could be silenced and his lawyer could speak for him without compromising his verdict. Thus the right to counsel did not create the right to silence; rather, the rise of empiricism enabled the creation of both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay discusses representations of crime and justice in London during the years of Henry Fielding's Bow Street magistracy (1748-54), with an emphasis on his management of the press and its influence on popular feeling. Contemporary newspaper reports about Fielding and his thieftakers offered comforting narratives about authority triumphing over disorder. His Charge Delivered to the Grand Jury (1749) and Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers (1751), however, described a crisis of lawlessness. Finally, his Covent Garden Journal (1752) invested offenders' stories with strong elements of humor, compassion, and prurient interest. I conclude that Fielding's literary and commercial instincts inspired polyvocal representations of passion and compassion that undermined the "authorized" message of law and justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that, although people in the Middle Ages resorted to vengeance and private wars to solve conflicts, there were also controls other than violence. Therefore, Norbert Elias is wrong in attributing an uncontrolled aggressiveness to medieval society. Historian Marc Bloch is also wrong to suppose that violence was the consequence of an emotional instability or the uncivilized nature of the Feudal Age. On one hand, we claim that the progressive consolidation of monarchies and a renewed administration of justice since the twelfth century contributed to the reduction of violence. On the other hand, we state that this did not prevent private acts of justice from pursuing a purpose similar to that of the monarchy: peace above punishment. Finally, we conclude that these centralized powers, the papacy and monarchies, promoted their own violence against internal dissidents and Islam: the crusades, extremely violent wars. These theses are developed using the historiographic method, that is, the contrast between studies on violence today and in the Middle Ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of IBEROAMERICANA. América Latina - España - Portugal is the property of Vervuert Verlag and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Prohistoria is the property of Prohistoria Ediciones and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article is a case study of the short-lived international mixed court in Morocco (1871-1872); focusing on the regimes of proof employed in that court, the article examines the encounter between extraterritoriality and Islamic law in the Mediterranean. The evidence presented to the Moroccan mixed court was an amalgam of forms; some creditors presented informal contracts which might have held up according to European and North American standards of evidence, but were null and void according to Islamic law as it was practiced in Morocco. Although the court failed, it influenced the ways in which both diplomats and Muslim judicial officials approached elements of proof in their respective institutions. Rather than merely identifying the pluralism of the Moroccan legal system in the late nineteenth century, this study focuses on the mutual influence exerted by coexisting legal orders on one another and the outcomes of this interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws of 1935 generated legal commentary by Nazi jurists who eagerly extended its antisemitic principles—but not by Jewish lawyers, for whom the discrimination was too blatant and the risks of public criticism too dangerous. In the winter of 1936-37 in Leipzig, however, one obscure lawyer named Max Hellmann made an incisive commentary about the laws. Faced with prosecution for employing a female “Aryan” cook, Hellmann, a convert and widower in despair, responded boldly: he subpoenaed Adolf Hitler to testify and even moved to imprison him pending the judge’s decision. His defense was, in fact, a satire. It mocked the so-called Führerprinzip (leadership principle), i.e., the idea of law as the Führer’s will, at the heart of the Nazi legal system. Persistently contrasting the need for legal procedures with the primacy of irrational will, Hellmann showed that the leadership principle was incoherent with regard to the separation of powers, the role of the judiciary, the process of legislation, and the very nature of law itself. He provided a detailed critique of Nazi law that insiders, such as Nazi jurists, dared not think, and that outsiders, such as Jewish lawyers, had no reason to develop. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Secuencia: Revista de Historia y Ciencias Sociales is the property of Instituto de Investigaciones - Dr. Jose M. Luis Mora and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article reconstructs the genesis of the Imperial High Court during its formative years, 1942-44, and the implications of the 1942 and 1944 Anglo-Ethiopian agreements on the competence and composition of that court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Western academic historiography of Choson's legal system, legal practice, justice, gender and status by Korean scholars Sun Joo Kim, Jungwon Kim, and Jisoo Kim

The present article focuses on the authority of starostas and city officials based on the judicial system in the Volhynian Voivodeship from the 1560s, when castle courts were established, up until the end of the 16th century. I analysed the factors that affirmed the domination of starostas and defined the formal extent of their powers, as well as those that helped to maintain a certain degree of autonomy between a starosta and city officials, and facilitated the emancipation of the latter. The officials' oath, its perception in the gentry community and the judicial cases which concerned such issues were the focus of particular attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article briefly outlines the history of the colonial diamond industry of Sierra Leone from 1930 to 1961, highlighting its contingent aspects and the bonds guiding the decisions and actions taken by local social actors in different contexts and at different times. By drawing on colonial documents and memoirs of colonial officers, it shows how the colonial government of Sierra Leone and the mining company that exercised a monopoly on diamond extraction collaborated on the establishment of a series of legislative and disciplinary devices that encompassed forms of biopolitical expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers aspects of lay participation in the Irish justice system, focusing on some political dimensions of the trial jury in the nineteenth century. It then identifies some broad themes common to systems of lay participation generally, and particularly nineteenth-century European systems. These include perceptions of legitimacy, state involvement and interference with jury trials, and issues around representativeness. The traditional lack of scholarship in the area of comparative criminal justice history has meant that many of the commonalities between different jury systems have been hitherto unexplored. It is hoped that this paper will contribute to a wider discussion of the various commonalities and differences in the development of lay participation in justice systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The challenge to the vendetta, understood as a genuine legal and cultural system that regulated the organization of conflict and thereby constituted an instrument of social control, was a very important phenomenon in almost all the countries of Europe. One of the instruments adopted by the new state realities was the introduction of inquisitorial procedures, whose aim was not only to impose a different legitimization of violence but also to put a end to the connections between customary rites and judicial practices that had for centuries characterized the legal system of the vendetta. The new punitive justice was marked by both the imposition of severe penalties and by the absence of an active role in the resolution of conflicts of the parties involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

D. 3,5,8 and the rule 'ratihabitio mandato comparatur'. -- The rule 'ratihabitio mandato comparatur' is deduced from various texts (see D. 46,3,12,4; D. 43,16,1,14; D. 50,17,152,2). In D. 3,5,8 Scaevola appears to disagree when he says that ratihabitio of an improperly conducted business does not lead to a mandate but to negotiorum gestio. In order to explain this it has been suggested that the rule only dealt with the effects of ratihabitio vis-à-vis third parties and did not concern the relationship between principal and agent. If this were the case, one would have to explain why Ulpian in D. 50,17,60 explicitly mentions an actio mandati for that situation. Most scholars, therefore, assume an interpolation of D. 50,17,60, but it is equally possible that Ulpian's decision can be attributed to its original context or that the law changed between Scaevola and Ulpian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on recent works showing the role that legal institutions can play in attracting foreign capital (Jensen 2003, 2006; Li and Resnick 2003; Li 2006; Biglaiser and Staats 2010; Staats and Biglaiser 2012), and drawing on insights obtained from Powell and Rickard (2010), we use panel data for 114 developing countries from 1970 to 2007 to demonstrate that developing countries with common law legal systems attract greater foreign direct investment (FDI) than countries that have civil law or Islamic legal systems because common law systems are more inclined to promote the rule of law and protect property rights and can be understood to provide more efficiency in the law, better contract enforcement, more judicial autonomy, and more market-oriented regulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

General language interpreters of Lima's High Court of Appeal (Audiencia) played a significant part in gaining access to the Spanish system of justice for the indigenous populations of Peru. These interpreters worked as translators in lawsuits, notarial transactions, and other legal and administrative procedures conducted or supervised by the viceroy, the justices of theAudiencia, the public defender of the Indians, and other officials stationed at the viceregal court. But they also served as legal agents and solicitors for native leaders and communities litigating in Lima or aspiring to take their cases to the Supreme Council of the Indies in Spain. Through formal and informal dealings, these interpreters brokered between the king and his native subjects, thus connecting indigenous groups with the Habsburg royal court. The careers of these official translators illustrate the crucial roles played by indigenous subjects in the formation of what can be termed the ‘Spanish legal Atlantic,’ an organic network of litigants, judges, lawyers, attorneys, and documents bridging courtrooms on both shores of the ocean. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses the history and development of Portuguese law during the Medieval period. The author comments on the influence of the legal system in Castile y León, Spain, and describes the efforts by the Portuguese kingdom under the rule of John I to distance itself from the Spanish legal tradition and to establish a degree of autonomy regarding its own unique laws and legislation. The role of Alfonso X, the king of Castile y León, in the development of his kingdom's laws, is also explored.

This article discusses the history and use of trials by ordeal between the 4th and 7th centuries. The author comments on the development of such trials by the Roman Empire and Germanic Kingdoms at the time and describes their relationship with the judicial system, or lack thereof in the case of the Roman Empire. He also considers the use of the results of the trial by ordeal as evidence and as a means of solving a given dispute. The religious connotations and implications of these trials is also examined.

Copyright of Journal of Faculty of Letters / Edebiyat Fakultesi Dergisi is the property of Hacettepe University Faculty of Letters and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Contributions / Prilozi is the property of Institute for History, University of Sarajevo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the impact of the American Revolutionary War on colonial law and legal systems, focusing on the writings of artisan and state politician Benjamin Austin, Jr. who published a series of essays in the "Independent Chronicle" newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts under the pseudonym Honestus beginning in the spring of 1786. Shays's Rebellion and the 1786 Referee Act in Massachusetts are mentioned, along with English common law and the views of scholar Alexis de Tocqueville.

The study of judicial procedure in terms of history revealed that contemporary judicial procedure derived from the old public institutions. The notion of judgement as a trial phase is very important. Political and extraordinary bodies during the totalitarian regime breached the principle of equality before the law. This is why the viability of judicial and law reform as an indispensable component of the society reform is widely recognized by modern civilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of judicial procedure in terms of history revealed that contemporary judicial procedure derived from the old public institutions. The notion of judgement as a trial phase is very important. Political and extraordinary bodies during the totalitarian regime breached the principle of equality before the law. This is why the viability of judicial and law reform, as an indispensable component of the society reform is widely recognized by modern civilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]