This book considers what kind of binding force judicial decisions (should) hold in modern societies.

It focuses on the two most prominent legal traditions, common law and civil law. It explores the developing trend in civil law countries to expand the influence of judicial precedents, discusses the fundamental issues which arise from this trend, and looks at recent developments in common law countries.

Through this prism, the book looks at the implications of the doctrine of judicial precedents and how it is construed in jurisdictions that recognise it. It investigates the impact of newly recognised legislative or quasi-legislative powers vested in high courts on the doctrine of separation of powers. It considers whether courts in common law and civil law systems share a uniform understanding of precedents.

The book goes on to consider whether these developments are beneficial when it comes to addressing existing challenges or whether they lead to a host of new problems, potentially exacerbating the crisis of judicial legitimacy.

In relation to the hierarchical nature of civil law justice systems, it asks whether binding rulings from higher courts pose a potential threat to substantive judicial independence, limiting the open and pluralistic dialogue between lower and higher courts. It then goes on to reflect whether binding opinions from the highest judicial instances encroach upon the prerogatives of legislative bodies, resulting in the creation of suboptimal laws.

This book offers a comprehensive guide to the works of Seneca the Younger (4 BCE-65 CE), the foremost rhetorician, tragedian, and philosopher of his time who had a major role in the politics and culture of the age of Emperor Nero.

It provides readers with the historical, philosophical, and literary background to appreciate Seneca's works, and advances representative critical readings of his treatises and tragedies. Chapters highlight his life, political theory, Stoicism, and dramaturgy, as well as contemporary and later reception of his works, and suggest further readings for those interested in pursuing these topics in greater depth.

Seneca: The Basics is suitable for students and scholars of classics, philosophy, and ancient history, as well as general readers interested in learning more about Seneca and his thought.

This book explores AI's impact on legal evidence, with a particular focus on its use within Indian law, by identifying the key feature of an Artificial intelligence-driven Justice Delivery System. It seeks to bridge the gap in the literature on the intersection of AI and law, specifically the evaluation of evidence. The book focuses on AI's potential to enhance the evaluation of evidence in various legal contexts. It considers the reliability, admissibility, and standardisation of AI-generated evidence in legal proceedings.

The key features of the book are:

* Presents case studies and examples from multiple branches of law, exploring AI's use in evidence collection, analysis, and evaluation across diverse legal domains.

* Offering a unique perspective on AI and legal evidence within India, the book provides a critical look at how AI can be integrated into India's legal framework and the implications for the country's judicial system.

* Addresses the policy gaps and regulatory frameworks needed to govern AI in the legal sphere, with a focus on India's evolving stance on AI.

* Emphasizes the need for ethical standards and privacy protection while using AI to evaluate legal evidence, examines the challenges in ensuring the validity and fairness of AI-generated evidence.

* Highlights the future potential of AI in transforming the legal industry, particularly in terms of improving efficiency, reducing bias, and enabling more effective evidence evaluation.

The book will be useful for academicians and scholars interested in Artificial Intelligence's impact and use in the legal system.

How can European public law effectively address the profound rights challenges posed by AI systems?

This groundbreaking book delves into this pressing question by critically analysing the limitations of current regulatory frameworks, including the Artificial Intelligence Act, the General Data Protection Regulation, and European human rights law. Drawing on leading judgments from the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union, the book explores real-world case studies of AI systems employed by public authorities, highlighting their impact on fundamental rights.

Arguing that the EU's risk-based regulation approach falls short in protecting fundamental and human rights, the author introduces a compelling alternative: a rights-based inter-legal approach grounded in the theory of inter-legality. This innovative framework emphasises the 'publicness' and 'inter-systemic' nature of AI, advocating for a lifecycle perspective - from design to deployment and beyond.

Rich with legal insights and practical methodology, this book presents a three-step adjudication model to integrate the inter-legal approach into European legal practice, paving the way for a more robust protection of fundamental principles, rules and rights in the AI era. Essential reading for scholars, policymakers and practitioners, this work redefines how Europe can lead the charge in responsible AI regulation.

What does it take for someone-or something-to count as a legal person? Is it a matter of biology, ideology, or both?

This book explores how societies determine who or what qualifies as a legal person, from individual humans to corporations, from nation-states to environmental entities.

The author argues that legal personhood is not grounded in fixed, mind-independent properties or logical entailments. Instead, it develops from how humans experience their physical and cultural worlds through embodied cognition. Mapping these experiences onto seemingly discrete (legal) concepts yields a categorisation process that is creative yet patterned by culturally entrenched models and institutional aims.

The book introduces the "radial conception," which posits that legal personhood is a flexible, context-dependent category centred around a core case. The core case - often, in many legal systems, the adult citizen of sound mind - is a mental model that helps define the category and influences how we think about it. This makes the most typical features of a category the default ones we think of when encountering it. As new situations arise or social needs evolve, legal personhood expands outward from the core case to include a diverse range of entities. However, this expansion does not follow rigid rules; rather, it relies on conceptual mappings that derive much of their persuasive power from cognitive tools like metaphors, metonymies, and image schemas.

Of interest to students engaged in legal philosophy, academics exploring the interplay between cognitive science and law, practitioners aiming to deepen their knowledge of legal personhood, or anyone intrigued by the merging of legal concepts and psychological insights, this book charts new territory in understanding law's persons.

This book offers a critical examination of the due diligence frameworks employed by select Commonwealth Island Citizenship by Investment (CBI) programmes, where an investment of as little as USD $200,000 can secure a second passport, granting visa-free access to numerous countries. While these programmes have positioned themselves as lucrative avenues for economic development, they have drawn sharp international criticism for their susceptibility to financial crime.The study delves into the consequences of the weaknesses in the frameworks, highlighting how inadequate regulatory oversight can erode investor trust, invite international sanctions, and jeopardise the long-term economic sustainability of CBI programmes. Through a financial crime lens, it explores how these shortcomings have turned CBI programmes into potentially high-risk ventures, attracting scrutiny from international regulators, law enforcement agencies, and global watchdogs, in the region and beyond. It discusses how the European Union has emerged as a leading voice in scrutinising the vulnerabilities of CBI programmes, regularly highlighting the inadequacy of their due diligence practices and their susceptibility to misuse in facilitating financial crimes. With emerging technologies such as AI offering transformative solutions, it is argued here that the failure to integrate these tools into due diligence processes represents a missed opportunity to address the inherent vulnerabilities of the CBI industry. This critical shortfall highlights the urgent need to bolster due diligence practices, ensuring they are equipped to combat the sophisticated methods employed by financial criminals.The book will be of interest to academics, researchers and policymakers working in the areas of Financial Crime, In ternational Law, Global Security, AI and Law, Immigration and Citizenship Law.

In Over-Measure in Kant, Hegel, and Shakespeare: Putting the Principles Into Play, four Shakespeare plays become the experiential-dramatic playground where operations of "principled virtues" and their informing categories are meticulously tested.

Jennifer Ann Bates begins with Hegel's logic of measure and Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, showing essential measure is indeterminable. She then combines Kant's Pure Principles of the Understanding with Shakespearean Roman tragedy, exploring principles of measure through over-measure. Bookended by Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, she investigates over-measures of quantity in Antony and Cleopatra, quality in Titus Andronicus, and relation and modality in Julius Caesar.

She turns to Kant for epistemic measures that make experience possible, highlighting his warnings against exceeding those limits. Putting Kant's Principles into play produces "principled virtues," which are epistemic principles made practical and differ from Kant's Doctrine of Virtues, not just from Aristotle's virtues. Read through Shakespeare's plays, principled virtues are tragic: they miss the mark, and they are executed in both senses. The reason is that their over-measures are not grasped dialectically. The author finds a solution in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, which she calls his book of over-measures. In it, Hegel reveals the necessity of overmeasures in experience, thus providing the measure for measure.

Few have shaped the field of law, both as practitioner and writer, as Michael Beloff KC. This expertly curated collection tracks this impact through his writings and lectures.

In a work divided into four interrelated parts - Advocacy, Judges, History and Sport - each is singly illuminated by the author's own experience and insight reflected in the accompanying illustrations.

What was behind a legal life lived in the spotlight? In this extended conversation between Professor Adam Lazowski and Dame Eleanor Sharpston KC, one of the most important European lawyers of her generation, two friends lift the curtain on what was happening backstage.

Over nine chapters, they discuss Eleanor's early life, her university years, and her parallel career at the Bar and in academe. They move on to consider her leading cases in the English courts, which included Brown and Others (Operation Spanner) and the Metric Martyr, before laying out a thoughtful insider's assessment of her time on the Bench at the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg. The closing chapter of the book is dedicated to current events, including the rule of law crisis and the future of European integration. A candid, illuminating and often amusing discussion with a transformative European lawyer.

This engaging book provides a clear and comprehensive account of the legal system of Northern Ireland.

For many years it has been a go-to source for students and practitioners of law, yet is also accessible to readers with no prior legal knowledge.

The book begins by explaining how Northern Ireland became a separate legal jurisdiction, what its current constitutional arrangements are, how its legislation is made and what kind of courts and judges it has. It then looks at when international law is of importance in Northern Ireland, explaining the role of documents such as the Windsor Framework and the European Convention on Human Rights.

There follow chapters on laws applying to public bodies, on institutions involved in criminal justice and on rules governing criminal trials. A chapter on 'private law' summarises numerous important fields such as consumer law, employment law, succession law and family law. The book concludes with explanations of how civil cases are processed through Northern Ireland's courts and of the role of lawyers and legal aid schemes.

The appendices set out sample sources of law for illustrative purposes.

This new edition, now co-authored, has been thoroughly updated with a view to making it even more informative and relevant to readers' needs. It is a 'must have' for anyone wanting to come to grips with the detailed features of a jurisdiction which has long been the subject of political contention and which is constantly developing.

This book presents a unique study of the field of comparative law examining the key differences between schools and approaches and examining their contradictions.

Comparative law is depicted in this book as a field of contrarians, jurists who tend to oppose or reject prevailing opinions or established practices. Contrarianism has made it exceedingly difficult to find one's way in the field where there are drastically varying views on the basic issues.

The book guides readers through divisive debates and disagreements and helps to draw useful conclusions. Instead of lamenting comparative law's feeble place in the legal academia or fantasising about the supposed great future of a unified discipline, the book highlights the collisions and tracks their influence on the field. By focusing on tensions underlying the field, this book encourages readers to think critically while studying law comparatively.

This book investigates the availability in Asian jurisdictions of civil remedies against multinational businesses for human rights abuses.

Various means have been developed in Europe and elsewhere to hold businesses accountable to victims for human rights abuses. Techniques include legislating due diligence requirements for companies operating abroad, broadening court jurisdiction to include foreign companies having subsidiaries within a country, expanding international jurisdiction, promoting universal jurisdiction, and implementing international conventions and sanctions.

On the 15th anniversary of the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the book assesses whether the norms of the UN Guiding Principles have taken root in Asia, which has only had a mixed record for upholding human rights. The book first considers the international state of play in the field. It moves on to case studies of corporate governance and human rights in Asia (especially Japan, South Korea, India, Thailand and the Philippines). It then examines emerging issues (environmental damage and climate change, crimes against humanity, and compliance programs and corporate criminal responsibility), and considers how Asia has dealt and can deal with corporate responsibility in connection with those matters. By way of conclusion, the book offers an action plan for implementing the UN Guiding Principles in Asia.

This open access book offers an in-depth understanding of the challenges, dilemmas and strategies of reinstating the rule of law after the dismantling of a constitutional order.

Drawing on the case of Poland's democratic transition back to the rule of law, the volume explores the uncharted territory of restoring independent institutions within an EU Member State.

After eight years of autocratic interference with the judiciary, media and state institutions, the Parliamentary elections of October 2023 mark a turning point for Poland. The new government now faces the complex challenge of restoring the rule of law, with European and international law playing a pivotal role. Still, at numerous crossroads a dilemma comes up: Can the rule of law be disregarded to restore it? Or must the rule of law be adhered to at the risk of legal and institutional paralysis? This book presents strategies for solving this dilemma in theory and practice, thereby paving the way for other states' transitions to come.

Through a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, including historical and contextual analysis, the authors show that restoring the rule of law is more than just a legal challenge. This volume equips academics and policymakers with conceptual tools and practical guidance to address the pressing issue of reinstating the rule of law, both in Poland and beyond.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the University of Freiburg.

A timely new interpretation of Nietzsche's politics which reconciles the apparent contradictions in Nietzsche's texts by defining his politics as "ethical libertarianism."

Nietzsche's politics has been the subject of much debate, with the existing scholarship largely divided between aristocratic and anti-democratic readings on the one hand, and democratic readings on the other. This book takes its place in the emerging trend of trying to find a "third way" by arguing that Nietzsche's philosophy implies a form of libertarianism. This interpretation emphasizes individual self-transformation and the need to organize society in a way which best facilitates this for its members. While libertarianism is closest to Nietzsche's requirements, it needs to be reformulated to be made fully consistent with his philosophy. This requires a rejection of any grounding of the natural rights of the individual, presumed to be equal for all, in a metaphysical conception of the self. A Nietzschean "ethical libertarianism" would be based on protecting equal access of individuals to conditions which promote self-cultivation. It is thus democratic, but also meritocratic, as rights will be seen to accrue on the basis of individual development.