This book is a work of outstanding importance for scholars of comparative law and jurisprudence and for lawyers engaged in EC law or other international forms of practice. It reviews, compares and analyses the practice of interpretation in nine countries representing Europe as well as the US and Argentina in common and civil law; it also explores implications for general theories of interpretation and of justification. Its authors, who include Aulis Aarnio, Robert Alexy, Ralf Dreier, Enrique Zuleta-Puceiro, Michel Troper, Christophe Grzegorczyk, Jean-Louis Gardes, Enrico Pattaro, Michele...

What is the ultimate task of law? This deceptively simple question guides this volume towards a radically original philosophical interpretation of law and justice. Weaving together the philosophical, jurisprudential and ethical problems suggested by five general terms a thinking, human suffering, legal meaning, time and tragedy a the book places the idea of law's ultimate task in the context of what actually happens when people seek to do justice and enforce legal rights in a world that is inflected by the desperation and suffering of the many. It traces the rule of law all the way down to...

This profound and scholarly treatise develops a critical version of legal positivism as the basis for modern legal scholarship. Departing from the formalism of Hart and Kelsen and blending the European tradition of Weber, Habermas and Foucault with the Anglo-American contributions of Dworkin and MacCormick, Tuori presents the normative and practical faces of law as a multilayered phenomenon within which there is an important role for critical legal dogmatics in furthering law's self-understanding and coherence. Its themes also resonate with importance for the development of the European legal...

Recent social and political developments in the EU have clearly shown the profound structural changes in European society and its politics. This book deals with the emerging notion of European constitutionalism, its varieties and different contextualization in theories of EU law, general jurisprudence, sociology of law, political theory and more.

Questions of religious liberty have become flashpoints of controversy in virtually every area of life around the world. Despite protection of religious liberty at both supranational and individual state levels, there are an increasing number of conflicts concerning the proper way to recognize it, both in modern secular states, and in countries with an established religion or theocratic mode of government.

This book provides an analysis of the general concept of religious liberty with a close study of important cases that serve as a test bed for proposals. It combines the...