Books in the Cambridge Studies in Law and Society series

This book examines and answers the following question - can law, as a cultural practice, apply across cultural boundaries to bind people with vastly different beliefs and practices? The challenge for law is to maintain coherence while at the same time being attuned to the lived reality of people in different places, with different beliefs, engaged in different practices.

Through interviews with many of the most noteworthy authors in law and society, Conducting Law and Society Research takes students and scholars behind the scenes of empirical scholarship, showing the messy reality of research methods. The challenges and the uncertainties, so often missing from research methods textbooks, are revealed in candid detail. These accessible and revealing conversations about the lived reality of classic projects will be a source of encouragement and inspiration to those embarking on empirical research, ranging across the full array of disciplines that contribute to law and society. For all of the ambiguities and challenges to the social 'scientific' study of law, the reflections found in this book - collectively capturing a portrait of the field through the window of the research efforts - individually remind readers that 'good research' displays not an absence of problems, but the care taken in negotiating them.

Leading international scholars from political science and law/socio-legal studies present new research which focuses on the relationship between judicial review and bureaucratic behaviour. A large number of empirical case studies are presented from various parts of the world to offer an international, interdisciplinary and empirical perspective.

A collection of rich ethnographically grounded case studies which examine how ordinary people across the globe use the law as a form of protest against 'the state'. This process transforms both the law and the people using it and demonstrates that law's enabling and constraining potentials interact in unexpected ways.

A collection of rich ethnographically grounded case studies which examine how ordinary people across the globe use the law as a form of protest against 'the state'. This process transforms both the law and the people using it and demonstrates that law's enabling and constraining potentials interact in unexpected ways.

This is a unique analysis of the struggle to build a rule of law in one of the world's most dynamic and vibrant nations - a socialist state that is seeking to build a market economy while struggling to pursue an ethos of social equality and opportunity.

This study shows the impact of the ICTY on Bosnian society and its role in translating international law in domestic contexts.

Using an approach that combines anthropological and political analysis, this book examines the roles of military command, mystical powers, child soldiers, forced marriage and fact-finding in the Special Court for Sierra Leone, arguing that cultural differences have obstructed justice and that international justice requires a more multicultural approach.

The purpose of this book is to examine and discuss the violence perpetrated against women in politically conflicted or militarized areas. The voices of Palestinian women show how militaristic values and policies affect female victimisation and agency in conflict zones.

This book traverses three pivotal human rights struggles of the post-September 11th era: the American human rights campaign to challenge the Bush administration's 'War on Terror' torture and detention policies, Middle Eastern efforts to challenge American human rights practices (reversing the traditional West to East flow of human rights mobilizations and discourses) and Middle Eastern attempts to challenge their own leaders' human rights violations in light of American interventions. This book presents snapshots of human rights being appropriated, promoted, claimed, reclaimed and contested within and between the American and Middle Eastern contexts. The inquiry has three facets: first, it explores intersections between human rights norms and power as they unfold in the era. Second, it lays out the layers of the era's American and Middle Eastern encounter on the human rights plane. Finally, it draws out the era's key lessons for moving the human rights project forward.

In 2004, the State Department gathered more than a thousand interviews from refugees in Chad that verified Colin Powell's UN and congressional testimonies about the Darfur genocide. The survey cost nearly a million dollars to conduct and yet it languished in the archives as the killing continued, claiming hundreds of thousands of murder and rape victims and restricting several million survivors to camps. This book fully examines that survey and its heartbreaking accounts. It documents the Sudanese government's enlistment of Arab Janjaweed militias in destroying black African communities. The central questions are: why is the United States so ambivalent to genocide? Why do so many scholars deemphasize racial aspects of genocide? How can the science of criminology advance understanding and protection against genocide? This book gives a vivid firsthand account and voice to the survivors of genocide in Darfur.

As the Oslo Peace Process has given way to the violence of the second intifada, this book explores the continuing legacy of the Peace Process in the everyday life of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This book responds to an on-going perception of a 'crisis' in public accountability in modern-day governance caused by globalization and increased power of private economic interests. It provides the most comprehensive survey to-date of how different organizations hold persons acting in the public interest to account and the problems involved.

This book responds to an on-going perception of a 'crisis' in public accountability in modern-day governance caused by globalization and increased power of private economic interests. It provides the most comprehensive survey to-date of how different organizations hold persons acting in the public interest to account and the problems involved.

This book presents the definitive history of the passport and why it became so important for controlling movement in the modern world. It explores the history of passport laws, the parliamentary debates about those laws, and the social responses to their implementation.

The Chinese police have powers to detain people without trial for considerable periods. These powers have been seriously abused and are the focus of domestic and international criticism. This 2007 book examines the development of these powers since the 1950s, and the policy contexts in which they have been used.

The WTO intellectual property and services agreements (TRIPs and GATS) form the global legal framework in which governments regulate trade in knowledge. In this book, Christopher Arup analyses the provisions of the agreements, examines closely their implementation and revision and assesses the future of the WTO as a global law-making institution.

This volume focuses on the social relationships through which international justice is produced. Using case studies such as the International Criminal Court and the European Court of Human Rights, the contributors examine how the claims of international justice can take purchase in the midst of social conflict and political violence.

This book examines different hypotheses about Chilean judicial behavior before, during, and after the authoritarian interlude. The book explores arguments based on judges' personal policy preferences, social class, and legal philosophy, but contends that institutional features, grounded in the ideal of 'apoliticism', best explain judges' conservative and conformist conduct.

Human rights offer the prevailing global approach to social justice, but how they work is far less clear. Through ethnographic case studies in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, this volume of essays by leading scholars offers a rich and varied overview of human rights in practice.

This book explores how notions of justice are negotiated through everyday practices and made to represent the real, the law. It takes on the challenge of mapping the growth of the rule of law criminal justice movement alongside a range of other justice formations and in that process explores the processes by which justice is made.

This book is an unprecedented attempt to analyze the role of the law in the global movement for social justice. Case studies in the book are by leading scholars from both the global South and the global North, and combine empirical research with innovative sociolegal theory on various topics.

Planted Flags examines how the war between Israelis and Palestinians is reflected, mediated, and reinforced through the material and symbolic creation of two tree landscapes.

This book is the product of a collaboration between leading theorists in law and anthropology. It develops an innovative analysis of legal practices. Specifically, it focuses on how law produces persons and things, and develops new approaches to the question of ownership.