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The field of legal anthropology has widely debated Indigenous Peoples' justice practices. However, Indigenous Peoples' legal perspective on sexual offenses remains understudied. In this respect, this article approaches the spiritual and political dimensions of the Arhuaco People's justice system to examine its procedures and sanctions. We want to understand how the Arhuaco People administer justice in cases where male community members are allegedly responsible for committing sexual crimes against women. During fieldwork in the Arhuaco territory, the authors employ methodologies drawn from the procedural paradigm-legal conscience studies as an interpretive framework to understand how Arhuaco women conceive legal phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of law and literature as a transdiscipline has unravelled fascinating insights into the role of literary imagination in raising pertinent jurisprudential questions and envisioning alternative legal universes. The literary front can expand legal literacy, humanise the law, and offer perspectives that are otherwise overlooked in conventional jurisprudence. This article explores Petina Gappah’s representation of law and justice in The Book of Memory (2015) and Rotten Row (2016), focussing on how she innovatively deploys politico-aesthetic means to expose ambiguities, ambivalences and inadequacies in Zimbabwe’s legal system. It contends that Gappah uses the literary medium to underline how the exclusion of customary law from the country’s common law system undermines the delivery of justice. Considering that the texts are alive to the limitations of both customary and common law systems, the study argues for a legal pluralism that harnesses the progressive aspects of the two legal cultures. By drawing on Zimbabwe’s humanist philosophy of Unhu, the study places studied texts within a growing decolonial narrative that critiques the coloniality of legal frameworks in formerly colonised nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the turn of the twentieth century, Greek jurists insisted that the Ottoman Empire was legally pluralistic. While one jurist acknowledged the Sultan's 'political purpose' in respecting the Greeks' privileges, another denied Muslims any agency free from Sharia. The alleged incommensurability between the Christian and Islamic law was their common agenda. Greek historians, on the other hand, saw the privileges as the Turks' sign of goodwill, and emphasized the civilizational gap between the Catholic West and Ottoman East. Being a normative expression rather than a neutral description, legal pluralism functioned as a method of neglecting the Muslim quest for legal unity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper calls for a paradigm shift in the face of the remarkably common, but ultimately stereotypical and simplistic perceptions of 'Islamic' constitutions requiring all laws to conform to Shari'a. It problematizes the term 'Islamic' to describe disparate constitutions and constitutionalism(s) in Muslim majority countries demonstrating the plurality of 'Islamic' constitutions, locating this descriptor within varied socio-cultural, historical and political contexts of the Muslim world. Plural interpretations of the religious texts in Islam — i.e., the Qur'an and Sunna — and meanings of complex concepts — 'Shari'a' and 'Islamic law', are integral to Islam's (legal) traditions. In Muslimmajority countries, a variety of constitutional texts, court decisions and state practices, demonstrate this plurality. We argue that use of 'Islamic' as a descriptor for heterogeneous constitutional texts, is a product of 'realpolitik' and deployed in this manner, un-nuanced, simplistic, and reductive of the dynamic and plural nature of Shari'a [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Global South, anti-corruption initiatives continue to fail despite varying commitments to the international anti-corruption agenda. Concurrently, as this study demonstrates, researchers investigating this paradox appear confined within orthodox explanations for failing anti-corruption efforts. Through a systematic review of 58 studies, this paper demonstrates that South Africa's anti-corruption corpora from 1995 to 2022 fall to this critique. By employing socio-legal theoretical perspectives, the paper elucidates how and why the orthodoxy dominates the corpora and subsequently suggests a more nuanced understanding of the country's ongoing failure to combat corruption. For example, the paper argues that the intricacies of South Africa's corruption challenge the perspective that anti-corruption measures fail simply due to widespread rule-breaking. Through the prism of legal pluralism, this paper demonstrates that adherence to rules is indeed prevalent in South Africa, albeit often not aligned with formal state anti-corruption legislation and regulations. Finally, the paper posits innovative approaches to enhance and broaden our comprehension of why anti-corruption efforts fail, especially in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews recent literature on sanctions from international law, political science, sociology, anthropology, and history. It shows how the literature during the comprehensive sanctions decade (the 1990s), with a largely critical view on sanctions in the age of globalization, was co-opted by the targetization of sanctions in the sanctions miniaturization decade (the 2000s). It then reviews the sanctions literature in sociology and anthropology during the sanctions enforcement decade (the 2010s), addressing the transnational characteristics of sanctions, their infrastructural materiality in the digital economy, and the deputization of private actors to police their implementation. Last, the article reviews the literature in colonial governmentality to encourage sanctions specialists to take a longer-term view of transnational orders of sanctions. This section ends with a call to decolonize sanctions research—or rather, to question the colonial origins of sanctions as an instrument of world making so that a properly decolonial perspective on sanctions can be elaborated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses findings from a pre-pandemic study of the legal skills associated with customary law. The data were collected from documentary sources, qualitative interviews, observations of 15 Anglophone African university law schools and 100 informants from different Anglophone African jurisdictions as well as information from professors of Indigenous Law at one American law school. To provide a greater insight into the research phenomenon, the paper focuses on countries that use multiple justice systems in order to highlight a conflict of laws and the justification for using skills drawn from customary law. The findings suggest that litigating cases with elements of customary law and culture requires a diversity of skills that are often incoherently integrated into the existing curriculum of training lawyers. The paper, therefore, recommends the use of clinical methods for training lawyers so that they are able to resolve cases involving customary law and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In countries receiving foreign aid, non-state justice systems rooted in custom or religion generally handle most legal disputes. This dramatically influences the prospects of international efforts to promote the rule of law, yet scholars have paid little attention to foreign policy toward non-state justice. This paper explores how the nine largest rule-of-law-assistance providers engaged non-state justice between 2008 and 2018, illuminating the theory behind, and the reality of, donor-state policy. It proposes a new classificatory typology of donor approaches to non-state justice detailing five strategies (denial, acknowledgment, acceptance, transformation, and rejection) and four goals (judicial reform, symbolic recognition, state-building, and counterinsurgency). It then explores how the nine largest rule-of-law-assistance donor states addressed non-state justice through a structured comparison of policy documents as well as case studies of the five donors with the most comprehensive approaches. Donors strongly favored risk-averse approaches, even when this made success unlikely. Certain policy goals—such as state-building or counterinsurgency—sometimes prompted riskier choices, but only with a compelling justification and a reasonable prospect of success. Overall, major rule-of-law donors displayed risk-averse, superficial policy, minimal stakeholder engagement, a failure to grapple with the nuances of legal pluralism, and a lack of evidence to support existing policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A rapidly expanding area of marine space in the Pacific is being assessed under a process known as Marine Spatial Planning (MSP). Through the political process, MSP brings together an assemblage of national governments, private organizations and local communities to define how marine spaces should be governed. MSP results in numerous new marine spatial categories that delimit an area according to the respective principals and rules decided upon. The authors of this article argue that traditional powers to make and enforce decisions concerning the governance of marine spaces have been weakened through the political process of MSP in the Pacific. The responses that emerged from conducting qualitative semi‐structured interviews with participants in Fiji and the Cook Islands indicate that indigenous marine authority is being undermined through manipulation of the MSP process. The findings further revealed an underlying recognition that the MSP process has proven to be incapable of equitably weighing indigenous Pacific Islanders' interests in relation to the economic, environmental and security interests of external ocean stakeholders. The authors further argue that external ocean stakeholders can successfully pursue their own objectives through the MSP process in ways that bypass indigenous authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti-abortion regulation and criminalization in Nigeria raises questions about religious, societal, and cultural dispositions to abortion. If one defers to religious and cultural norms that are against abortion, what remains are concerns about discrimination based on gender, age, and economic status. At the regional level, the focus of abortion activism has consistently been on the legal justification for permitting abortion on recognized grounds, particularly under the African Women Protocol, known as the Maputo Protocol. This work analyzes socio-economic grounds for legal justifications for permitting abortion, focusing on how inequality and discrimination can shape the regulation and governance of abortion, especially within developing and highly genderunequal societies like Nigeria. This paper argues that the systematic maternal deaths resulting from unsafe abortions are avoidable as they stem from social status and an unequal distribution of economic resources. This paper adopts the theory of feminist intersectionality by Crenshaw to expose how inequities on multiple grounds contribute to ineffective reproductive governance, especially concerning abortion in Nigeria. It discusses the potential application of international and regional human rights instruments, especially the Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Maputo Protocol, and challenges in implementing their provisions within Nigerian reproductive rights jurisprudence. It identifies the doctrine of "Dual Publics" by Peter Ekeh and effects of legal pluralism on the regulation of abortion in Nigeria. It also draws lessons from similar treatment of such issues by the relevant human right bodies through their constituent instruments, case-laws, and jurisprudence. The paper argues that adopting an equality or intersectional approach to address the complexities surrounding abortion in Nigeria holds immense potential for mitigating the historical, legal, and cultural challenges that women face in accessing reproductive healthcare services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative law is a subject always in motion. Scholarly discussion about its methodology is always vivid, in search of better tools to make the different possible comparative endeavors. The paper explores the concept of lawscape and its link with comparative legal methodology. The concept of lawscape will be linked with other relevant concepts in comparative law, like those of legal pluralism, legal transplants, legal formants and legal fluxes to make the necessary connections and find its space within the tools of comparative law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the application of the concept of legal pluralism to the interaction between the European Union (EU) administrative legal order and the administrative legal orders of associated or candidate States as part of the process of aligning national legislation with EU standards. This process involves multiple sources of integration obligations derived from the Association Agreement, accession negotiations, conditions for economic aid, administrative cooperation, and EU-funded modernization programs. The authors suggest that a pluralistic approach may provide associated or candidate States with a degree of flexibility in choosing specific scopes, models, and time frames to align their national legislation with EU laws. This can help to mitigate and offset the imbalance in States’ relations with the EU resulting from the latter’s normative dominance. At the same time, various sources can lead to conflicts between integration obligations and approaches to harmonizing national administrative rules and practices.

In this article, I explore gender justice in relation to the sociolegal status of marriage practices and how women address marital disputes. My research is based on 9 months of immersive fieldwork in Uvira, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The eastern DRC has experienced extensive interventions to prosecute sexual violence and advance women's rights. However, these interventions have tended to miss the complexity of gender dynamics and how rights and justice are understood and sought by women in their everyday lives. I argue that gender justice is a process rather than an end goal and that legal pluralism, and its hybrid manifestations, is a space where that process can unfold. Through prioritizing women's experiences of marriage and separation, I contribute to the scholarship that challenges simple narratives of gendered harms in "othered" contexts and highlight the flexible space of legal pluralism to develop dialogue, ideas, and practices of contextualized gender justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Benge , the famous chicken poison oracle that Evans-Pritchard vividly described in his classic ethnography, subsequently disappeared from Zande lore. While contemporary Azande still talk about the vanished benge sorrowfully, the society turned to a neighboring ethnic group's oracle, the dabaya. The dabaya, or slaughtering, also uses chickens to arrive at an answer to questions. The dabaya operator cuts the throat of the chicken and, unlike the effect of the poison during benge, the location of the death and the positioning of the carcass gives the verdict. Using deep ethnographic description, oral history interviews, archival and historical sources, this article argues that the need for powerful oracles to determine the validity of public witchcraft accusations grows in times of turbulence and social upheaval, while in relatively calm times witchcraft and magic withdraws to the private sphere. In the last section, the article offers an analysis of the politicization of the new oracle and how chiefs are using bureaucratic measures to control dabaya and extend their judicial control over their subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mangu , what Evans-Pritchard translated into English as "witchcraft" and around which he built his landmark ethnography, has disappeared among the South Sudanese Azande. But other kinds of witchcraft and magic (ngua) arise continuously. Drawing on anthropological research in South Sudan's local courts and on interviews with disputants, chiefs, and judges, this article dives into the opaque, elusive, and mercurial world of witchcraft and magic. Whereas mangu was used solely to do harm, today's ngua can be categorized along a spectrum from benign self-protection to malevolent pillaging and attacking ngua. When witchcraft cases are brought to local customary courts, there is room for nuance, precision, and for attention to the less arcane friction which often preceded witchcraft. But when customary courts punish alleged perpetrators, clashes abound with statutory judges and United Nations officials who see witchcraft as a dangerous falsehood and the imprisoned alleged perpetrators as victims of human rights abuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In modern private international law (PIL), property and situs apparently go hand in hand in an established PIL monogamy to which there tends to be a collective commitment for all PIL aspects of a cross-border dispute for all PIL subcategories of property objects. This article argues that mechanistic deference to such apparent property-situs monogamy as an overarching rule in the PIL of property is not only misconceived; but is positively impeding progress in the modern PIL debates surrounding property rights in modern decentralised objects such as bitcoin. It therefore examines the discrete justifications for the situs rules to show that the apparent property-situs monogamy is actually the cumulative effect of a wide variety of situation-specific considerations in what is really a property-situs situationship. Hence, from an analysis of the situs rules, and the principles underpinning international jurisdiction and applicable law more generally, it suggests alternative property PIL solutions to the intractable problems posed by decentralised phenomena based on policy considerations rather than continued focus on the property object itself as the "natural seat" of a property relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enlightenment colonial actors never used the term 'terra nullius', they used the phrase 'uninhabited land or island'. In the 1780s, uninhabited did not mean nobody lived there, but rather signified a land without a sovereign. This article contrasts British East India Company deliberations on the habitation of islands in the Eastern Indian Ocean, with the discussions on habitation in Botany Bay prior to 1788. Between 1778 and 1786, there were proposals for British settlements in the Nicobar Islands, Andaman Islands, Junk Ceylon and Penang. The people who lived on these islands were not considered the inhabitants. Instead, the British looked at the relationship between people on the islands and mainland Asian sovereigns to determine who inhabited these islands. A retrospective discourse developed that Penang and Singapore were uninhabited prior to the British arrival. This discourse was part of plans to end legal pluralism in the settlements and assert colonial sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transplantation of European legal systems in the periphery often occurred via semi‐colonial institutions, where Europeans were subject to their own jurisdictions that placed them outside the reach of local courts. In nineteenth‐century Egypt, the option of extraterritoriality was extended to local non‐Muslims. Drawing on Egypt's population censuses in 1848 and 1868, we show that locals did not seek extraterritoriality to place themselves under more efficient jurisdictions. Rather, legal protection mitigated uncertainty about which law would apply to any contractual relationship in an environment where multiple legal systems co‐existed and overlapped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to analyse the emerging need to change customary law (adat law in Indonesia) and identify the role of adat functionaries. The experience of the Mollo adat law community (indigenous people) from the south-eastern part of Indonesia, Timor Island, shows that the sudden and massive collection of haukonof (Usnea barbata), a non-timber forest product, has caused forest destruction. How do the adat functionaries respond to the situation? Is adat law sufficient to respond to the sudden change of their livelihood? If it is not, then what to do? Furthermore, what are the impacts on the functionaries? What are their difficulties, and how do they solve them? This article is based on an in-depth ethnographic study held in July—September 2021. Data are collected through interviews and observation. The adat functionaries want to restrict the people from picking and collecting haukonof , but there is no adat law specifically ruling on it. Only the adat functionaries should protect the environment. The pickers and the collectors of haukonof are the members of the communities. The kinship relation between the functionaries and the members complicates legal enforcement. The adat functionaries' authority and the sustainability of the livelihoods are in danger. The immediate solution is borrowing state law which obliges a person who utilises non-timber forest products in the Protection Forest to hold a valid permit. It effectively reduces the number of haukonof picking and collection by the community members. Adat's law-making process does not work in isolation. It is an interactive process that needs continuous foresight observation from the adat functionaries to find the appropriate solution to protect the environment and the people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The doctrinal project of delineating the supervisory jurisdiction of the common law courts and the scholarly project of elucidating the public law–private law divide have had a long and close relationship. The Supreme Court of Canada strengthened this relationship in Highwood Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses (Judicial Committee) v Wall, establishing a bright-line test for the availability of judicial review that takes a presumed state/non-state dichotomy as its organizing principle. In this article, I build on existing critiques of the decision, describing how Wall's categorical paradigm has reduced the judicial oversight of powerful decision makers that have historically been subject to standards of fairness and rationality. However, I also use Wall to raise a more fundamental question, which is whether the public law–private law divide continues to provide the best vocabulary and framework for determining judicial review's boundaries. I explore legal pluralism, a project that has developed in parallel with the public law–private law scholarship and consider whether it might provide a superior framework for understanding the challenges to practices of normative decision making that lie at the heart of cases like Wall. I argue that legal pluralism is more phenomenologically correspondent than the public law–private law divide with cases involving norm-generating communities and more coherent with the values that the common law supervisory jurisdiction should be seeking to promote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Environmental & Social Management Journal / Revista de Gestão Social e Ambiental is the property of Environmental & Social Management Journal 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 doctrinal project of delineating the supervisory jurisdiction of the common law courts and the scholarly project of elucidating the public law–private law divide have had a long and close relationship. The Supreme Court of Canada strengthened this relationship in Highwood Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses (Judicial Committee) v Wall, establishing a bright-line test for the availability of judicial review that takes a presumed state/non-state dichotomy as its organizing principle. In this article, I build on existing critiques of the decision, describing how Wall's categorical paradigm has reduced the judicial oversight of powerful decision makers that have historically been subject to standards of fairness and rationality. However, I also use Wall to raise a more fundamental question, which is whether the public law–private law divide continues to provide the best vocabulary and framework for determining judicial review's boundaries. I explore legal pluralism, a project that has developed in parallel with the public law–private law scholarship and consider whether it might provide a superior framework for understanding the challenges to practices of normative decision making that lie at the heart of cases like Wall. I argue that legal pluralism is more phenomenologically correspondent than the public law–private law divide with cases involving norm-generating communities and more coherent with the values that the common law supervisory jurisdiction should be seeking to promote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The establishment of a regional organization in East Asia is a complex endeavor fraught with legal and institutional challenges. This article explores the institutional structures, legal frameworks, historical background, and policy consequences associated with the establishment of this kind of organization. This study draws on a thorough literature assessment to emphasize the political ideologies, long-standing historical tensions, and lack of trust amongst East Asian nations that impede cooperation efforts. Regional integration is made more difficult by legal heterogeneity, concerns about sovereignty, and economic inequality, which calls for creative approaches to institutional design and legal harmonization. While comparative studies of current regional models—like the European Union and ASEAN—provide insightful information, East Asian dynamics call for modifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of international human rights law in recent decades has given rise to a new form of legal pluralism, especially with regard to gender justice. The contemporary gender justice touches on issues concerning not only men and women but also the third gender. However, the lack of consensus at the international level still poses challenges to the gender justice regime. In India too, the situation regarding LGBTQ rights remains complicated. On a progressive note, previous judicial precedents have played crucial roles in ensuring their rights. The Legislature has also taken strong steps such as “The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Rules, 2020” to bring about a progressive change for the LGBTQ community. Despite these steps, the cultural and local acceptance of the community remains a huge barrier to fully achieving LGBTQ rights. Legal pluralism, especially based on the colonial mindset, has played a major role in discrimination against the LGBTQ community. This paper seeks to analyze the state of LGBTQ community, their fundamental and legal rights, cultural and social barriers, and the role of legal pluralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ghana's 1985 Intestate Succession Law (PNDC Law 111) is a notable example of attempts by postcolonial African states to introduce new forms of protection for widows and children in cases of death ‘intestate' (that is, when the deceased person had not made a valid will). Whilst some legal scholars depicted Law 111 as a radical departure from customary laws pertaining to marriage and property, feminist scholars have been more sceptical, pointing to deficiencies in both the letter and implementation of the law, and advocating for further reform. This article is driven by a historical question: given that several previous governments had considered the issue of intestate succession but had not actually reformed the law, why did the military regime of Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings decide upon Law 111 in 1985? The national archives for this period are fragmentary, but we draw from newspapers, ‘grey literature', and oral history interviews to trace the prolonged struggle over intestate succession, suggest what motivated the Rawlings' regime in 1985, and identify the compromises that were made. By locating Law 111 in Ghana's postcolonial political history, we nuance established typologies of women’s organisation, activism, and advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monetary expenses are said to prohibit poor rural litigants from accessing official justice institutions, which are often concentrated in urban centres, thus pushing these litigants towards customary forums. At the same time, the alternative customary courts have been shown to cost more than formal justice institutions such as official magistrates courts. This article examines the economics informing litigants' choices of judicial forums to contribute to a new analysis beyond state-centred legal pluralism. It argues that how money features in cases at barrays – the unofficial, unrecognised, customary courts in the capital city of Sierra Leone – not only explains why ordinary people engage with (extra)legal processes, but also demonstrates how justice is understood and (re)produced in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly work in the field of legal geography has grown dramatically in recent decades. While much legal geography scholarship has been influenced by a European-North American perspective, we argue that a distinctive legal geography scholarship also emanates from outside the dominant perspective. Here, we review research from Australia and New Zealand/Aotearoa and label this work as Antipodean legal geography (ALG). We suggest ALG research has made a significant contribution to global legal geography scholarship through an emphasis on environmental law and policy problem solving and through efforts to de-colonialise and expand legal geography's remit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report on legal geography explores everyday law and how law is discussed as lived, performed and re-created in mundane life. Everyday law means a legal pluralism that also includes informal parts of law, such as customs, norms, and alternative legal systems. It also refers to the manifestations, performances, contestations, and constitution of the law in mundane places. Focusing on ordinariness opens paths for thinking the normalized and taken-for-granted aspects of the law. Everyday law is mostly experienced at micro-scale—related to our bodies, homes, and neighborhoods. This report concentrates on these, with the focus on subjectivity, relationality, and resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her book From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect, Greta Olson argues for an expansive view of the legal, which encompasses both one's Rechtsgefühl and the sociocultural normative settings one is surrounded by. Acknowledging the existence of "a variety of competing nomoi " (Olson, From Law and Literature, p.7), i.e., diverse normative environments within a given legal order, notions of law as legality, and affect as law's new Other are conceptualized as projects fostering legal pluralism. Yet, is such a pluralistic, diversified notion of legality able to challenge those normative legal-cultural conditions which still privilege cis, male, heterosexual, White, able-bodied, propertied non-immigrants? Agreeing with Roger Cotterrell that "[l]aw's interpretive communities now reflect the patterned differentiation of the social" (Law, p.100), and Olson's claim that "ideas about law are negotiated outside of the courtroom, the parliament, or even the governmental office where law and legal ordinances are directly translated into everyday life experience" (From Law and Literature, p. 20), this article examines how legality may speak back to law, in its professionalized, dogmatic sense, and to legal orders, and analyzes in which ways an understanding of law as legality may affect LGBTQIAP* rights activism. This critical queer theoretical perspective thus challenges Olson's nomoi by approaching the limitations of legal affects for trans and queer legal subjects. By analyzing the design and logic behind two recent cases of anti-trans bills in the U.S., Arkansas' HB 1570 ('Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act') and Idaho's HB 500 ('Fairness in Women's Sports Act') from a cultural studies perspective, this article examines how an expanded understanding of law as legality may affect the gendered, cis-ed, and heteronormative nature of the U.S.'s dominant legal order(s). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is sometimes assumed that Talmudic civil law was barely more than a copy of Roman law. Rabbis indeed lived in a Roman-law environment and a superficial look at Talmudic and Roman law does reveal many similarities. However, an attentive analysis of the rules on liability for animals unveils Talmudic law's single characteristics and indeed its resistance to external influences in this context; most likely the rabbis endeavoured to preserve the independence of Talmudic law from the secular ruling authority rather than conforming with it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Foco (Interdisciplinary Studies Journal) is the property of Revista Foco 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 review examines the book by Fatima Mudakkam titled Muslim Women between Community and Individual Rights: Legal pluralism and Marriage Rights in South Africa (2024). The book explores the pluralistic nature of South Africa’s national legal system, focusing on the experiences of Muslim women governed by Muslim Personal Law. It provides a critical analysis of how this legal pluralism affects Muslim marriages and the civil rights of women within these marriages. The book is an essential contribution to the ongoing discourse on gender justice and legal pluralism in South Africa.

Language used before late medieval English equity courts can reveal social and cultural norms. The protracted legal battle of maligned rights, injury, unsettled debts, and stolen goods at the heart of this article illustrates the legal pluralism and gender-neutral claims to helplessness common at the time and noted by other scholars. Read carefully, the rhetorical strategies employed by litigants and their lawyers can be used as a rough proxy to understand the social experience of the marketplace referenced in courtrooms. In the dispute between Alice Playstowe and Lawrence Mongomery, men relied upon reputation while women often drew upon gendered expectations to wage their law. Combined, the written record of their complaints and defenses suggests a business world in which men were expected to rely upon formal networks of associates, in which women were presumed to be active participants, and in which written agreements and mutual trust were respected by all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common feature of Neal Stephenson’s speculative fiction is the richly imagined political communities inhabited by his characters. Geographically defined constitutional states are reimagined, often with a focus on associations based on shared social identity or beliefs, as opposed to nation-state citizenship. Stephenson’s works offer an imaginative space for exploring possibilities of alternative political communities, and questions of constitution and jurisdiction. Modern territorially sovereign nation-states have presented constitutional scholars with a fixed framework. People sharing physical space constitute a political association stemming from a moment of legal constitution. Thus constituted, the nation-state authorises governmental entities to oversee the populace within the shared geographical space. Stephenson’s rich imagination offers constitutional scholarship an imaginary for exploring alternative conceptualisations of constitution and jurisdiction. This article proposes that recovery of medieval conceptualisations of overlapping networked jurisdictions might aid in sensemaking of models of political communities beyond the territorially sovereign nation-state.

This paper attempts to reflect on the socio-legal dynamics affecting the Algerian nomadic society, with particular reference to the period between 1830 and 1960. Algeria, which has been affected at the institutional and formal level by a decisive wave of re-Islamization since the second half of the eighties of the twentieth century, has not completely left behind its rich history of linguistic, cultural, religious and legal pluralism. In addition to the kaleidoscopic complexity of its substrate and heritage, it still carries within itself a significant minority of the population that has not abandoned the condition of nomadism. At a time when migratory flows pose questions such as that of polyethnic and multi-contextual rights to the Europe of jurists, and doctrine questions the operational possibilities of an orderly pluralism (mainly as a result of the partial decline of sovereignty under the lash of the repercussions of the economy), while legal practice is unfolding in new directions, such as that of automation, the law seems to be put to the test by two sets of questions: the erosion and redrawing of geographical boundaries that determine its effectiveness on the one hand, and the unpredictable possibilities freed up by the global non-place of virtual and market negotiations on the other. Speed, movement, wars, and the instability of effective boundaries seem to be the new stumbling blocks brought about by globalization, and the uncertainty of possible solutions is almost frightening; Studying the regulatory dimension of Algerian nomads reveals ancestral solutions whose functional capacity is not undermined by the perennial change of territories, landscapes, alliances - solutions that are not immediately expendable in the contemporary world, but which constitute significant food for thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the place of ijtihad in the British Religious Education curriculum. It argues that the concept should be taught to high school students earlier than A-Level. Knowledge of ijtihad enables students to understand diversity of thought and legal interpretation in Islam, and why different conclusions can be reached from the same or similar corpus of Islamic sources. Ijtihad has always played an important role in the consolidation and evolution of Islamic legal thinking. Yet despite increased research about the value of a hermeneutical approach in the RE classroom in recent years, ijtihad is rarely taught in UK schools. The article presents real life classroom experience and tweaks to the established RE syllabi which have been implemented in schools where the majority of students identify as Muslims. Its principal author (Zameer Hussain) is a religious studies teacher who brings his own expertise in teaching to this debate in order to evidence how a hermeneutical approach to the study of Islam at all levels will benefit students' understanding of Islam and help them to understand the importance of legal pluralism within and between Islamic traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines guardrails and norms of democracy in defensive rule of law. It explores the U.S. rule of law program funding, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) rule of law policy, and European Union rule of law mechanism. It discusses different approaches used for defensive rule of law such as militant democracy, social support for the rule of law, legal pluralism and fourth-branch institutions for protecting constitutional democracy, and their applications in Albania.

A common feature of Neal Stephenson's speculative fiction is the richly imagined political communities inhabited by his characters. Geographically defined constitutional states are reimagined, often with a focus on associations based on shared social identity or beliefs, as opposed to nation-state citizenship. Stephenson's works offer an imaginative space for exploring possibilities of alternative political communities, and questions of constitution and jurisdiction. Modern territorially sovereign nation-states have presented constitutional scholars with a fixed framework. People sharing physical space constitute a political association stemming from a moment of legal constitution. Thus constituted, the nation-state authorises governmental entities to oversee the populace within the shared geographical space. Stephenson's rich imagination offers constitutional scholarship an imaginary for exploring alternative conceptualisations of constitution and jurisdiction. This article proposes that recovery of medieval conceptualisations of overlapping networked jurisdictions might aid in sensemaking of models of political communities beyond the territorially sovereign nation-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are different types of equitable estoppel under English law including promissory estoppel, estoppel by convention and proprietary estoppel. In this article the various types of estoppel under English law are considered and the doctrine of proprietary estoppel in the context of the creation of a trust is discussed. The English doctrine of equitable estoppel is compared to the principle of promissory estoppel in United States law, including the superimposition of the Statute of Frauds. Its protection of the principle of equitable estoppel has extended to the mixed jurisdiction of Louisiana which has adopted the civil law remedies which are equivalent and lead to similar outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Coastal development did not arise from sovereign property rights to the coast or efforts to fix moving shorelines in law. Instead, it emerged from ideas of the public good and public trust that vested the protection of shores and seas in modern states. State protection supported coastal development, especially ports, in the era of steamship technology. By examining case studies from seventeenth-century to late nineteenth-century coastal India, this essay illustrates how the idea of state protection emerged through legal disputes over the obligations of littoral societies, international law, customary practices, definitions of navigable waters, accretion, and the status of subterranean or derelict land. The resultant terraqueous framework was legally plural. Nevertheless, it strengthened state claims over coastal areas and facilitated coastal development by circumscribing the boundaries of littoral societies' claims that have traditionally relied on fishing or livelihoods tied to these waters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In complex, polycentric environmental governance systems, actors may choose to collaborate with one another to reduce their collective vulnerability and enhance system function. However, collaboration can be costly, and little evidence exists for how particular collaborative forums impact the broader governance system in which they are embedded. To address this gap, we investigate the role of intermediate collaborative forums, which support collaboration among a subset of system actors, in polycentric governance systems. Empirically, we analyze the structural and functional role of an intermediate collaborative forum called the Arizona Municipal Water Users Association (AMWUA) within the municipal surface water governance network for the Phoenix Metropolitan Area (PMA) in Arizona, United States. To do this, we draw from 21 interviews with water professionals in the PMA, which we analyze through a combination of network analysis and qualitative coding. We find that AMWUA facilitates strong bonding capacities among members, allowing for streamlined bridging to the rest of the network that enhances information processing and advocacy of member needs. Our findings advance theory on the role of collaboration in polycentric systems and inform the design of collaborative institutions to improve environmental governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, corporate developers have increasingly sought to conclude Impact and Benefit Agreements ("IBAs") with Indigenous groups when undertaking resource projects on traditional lands. Despite this development, significant concerns have been raised about the nature and scope of Indigenous consent, as well as the substantive deficiencies within IBAs. However, less has been written about how legal principles derived from contract law would apply to IBAs in the event of a dispute before an arbitrator or a judge. This article therefore considers the ways in which specific contractual principles can be reconceptualized for IBA disputes. First, it examines the relationship between IBAs, selfdetermination, and contract law itself. Second, it explores how such agreements depart from traditional commercial contracting: IBAs exist in the shadow of constitutional dynamics and legal pluralism, while balancing a range of sociocultural purposes that cannot be reduced to commercial norms. Third, the article analyzes how principles relating to contractual interpretation and good faith can be applied to give effect to the careful equilibrium at the heart of an IBA. Ultimately, the article concludes that IBAs are, in effect, sui generis contracts that differ in fundamental ways from ordinary forms of contracting. Consequently, adjudicators must adopt a tailored approach to contract law principles that incorporates Indigenous perspectives and that remains sensitive to the dynamics of IBAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional interest-based banking system in Ethiopia does not align with Islamic religious rule that prohibit any interest-based businesses including banking. While Ethiopian law introduced interest-free banking in 2008, there is no explicit constitutional recognition of the applicability of religious rules to banking and financial matters. This raises questions about whether Ethiopian business laws adequately incorporate interest-free banking principles, such as trade intermediation and profit-loss sharing, to accommodate financially sensitive stakeholders, including Muslims who do not accept interest-based banking. Using doctrinal research, the analysis in this article of secondary sources and publicly available primary data in Ethiopia reveals that the current laws were designed to suit interest-centred conventional banking principles and do not fully incorporate interest-free banking theories. The analysis also reveals non-removal of legal barriers for stringent separation of banking and non-banking business from Shari'ah compliant intermediation model which requires incorporation of non-interest banking theories. This lack of incorporation poses the risk of excluding Muslims from ownership in banking and limits their access to financial and credit services. To address these concerns, this article recommends amending banking, commercial, civil, and investment rules in Ethiopia to sufficiently incorporate the principles of interest-free banking. Lessons can be drawn from other jurisdictions that have adopted a universalist banking approach to reform current stringent separation of banking and non-banking businesses that poses significant barrier to the workability of interest-free banking business in Ethiopian dual banking settings. This would strengthen banking pluralism and ensure adequate inclusion and protection of religious investors and financial consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we examine how religious minorities in the densely populated Netherlands manage burial norms in the face of scarcity of land. Using legal pluralism, we explore how local and national authorities; funeral agents; and three religious minority communities deal with the spatial and temporal dimensions of death and burial, both inside and outside the Dutch conurbation The Randstad, in a context where the Dutch tradition of consociationalism lingers on. Based on fieldwork and legal analysis, our findings show that religious burial norms have peripheral existence, both within Dutch law where they are treated as exceptions, and geographically, as religious cemeteries still remain situated outside The Randstad. Furthermore, tensions can emerge not only between communities, but also within them, as exemplified by challenges faced by non-believers. In a context of migration, Dutch cemeteries become spaces where multiple normative orders concerning emotion, (non)belief, religion, society and the state intersect. This turns the space for the dead into a place where some members of minority groups can find the rest they are longing for, while others cannot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]