In recent years an increasing quantity of UK legislation has introduced blended or ‘hybridised’ procedures that blur the previously clear demarcation between civil and criminal legal processes, typically on the grounds of normatively-motivated political expediency. This paper provides a critical perspective on instances of procedural hybridisation in order to illustrate that, first, the relianc...

Medieval institutions contain an important strain of spontaneous order, especially from the pre-Christian period. A series of irregular successions after the Norman conquest made royal charters increasingly important in establishing the sovereign’s legitimacy. Henry I’s coronation charter (1100) formed the basis of Henry II’s aggressive program of reform legislation, as well as for Magna Carta ...

In the wake of the 2013 Presidential reelection, states now face the reality of implementing the healthcare reform, including ACA section 2302 (Concurrent Care for Children). The purpose of our study was to examine the influence of economic, political, and legal factors on state implementation of ACA 2302. Using data from 2010 to 2012, our analysis revealed that for early implementers economic,...

More than in any other sub-fields of European studies, the study of law-andpolitics in the European Union owes a great deal to U.S. scholarship. Given the differences in structure of the academic fields on both sides of the Atlantic, and the early development of socio-legal studies in the United States (which still has no equivalent in Europe), American scholars have been the first to challenge...

This paper focuses on a number of American stories which helped educate people and bring about legal or social change. There are many stories which caused major or minor legal and political change, particularly, in the United States. Some of them are written by Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Upton Sinclair and Sidney Kingsley. After the publication of White Jacket by Melville the novel...

After discovering the CRISPR-Cas9 as an extraordinary method for Gene editing it is necessary to reflect on the ethical, political and legal impact of this technology. This work pretends to offer a preliminary consideration of these problems. I do not pay attention to the potential of CRISPR-Cas9 in the fields of health or environment, nor to all the ethical, legal and political challenges it i...

Contrary to numerous other professionals, lawyers are political agents in their daily professional practices. They habitually act through legalistic struggles to alter allocation of public goods (Halliday and Karpik, 1997). Frequently, they either function in politics and/or have meaning in politics (Abel, 1989, 1995; Barzilai, 2005; Eulau and Sprague, 1964; Feeley and Krislov, 1990, Feeley and...

We live in a culture of contest and protest. Our economic, political, and legal institutions are structured as contests. Our efforts to reform these institutions frequently are characterized by protest. This article examines the social and ecological implications of this culture of contest and protest. It begins by demonstrating that our economic, political, and legal institutions form an integ...

Many social scientists rely on the rule of law in their accounts of political or economic development. Many, however, simply equate law with a stable government capable of enforcing the rules generated by a political authority. As two decades of largely failed efforts to build the rule of law in poor and transition countries and continuing struggles to build international legal order demonstrat...