Everybody uses the term social security, but definitions vary widely. This unique book may be conceived as a wide-ranging definition, although in fact it emphasizes only part of the concept: that administrative function that grants cash benefits to offset or compensate for such social risks as old age, disability, unemployment, costs of health care, and other instances occasioning the lack of means necessary for a decent existence. In an earlier form (1993), this book proved itself as a much-sought-after introduction to the field, for governments as much as for law students. In this...

Our society has never been so internationally connected. Companies operate worldwide, retail shelves are filled with products from far and wide, people travel like never before and maintain contacts from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Distant countries have never been so close. Anyone who is practising law today cannot escape this and will increasingly be confronted with cross-border legal issues. Therefore, today’s jurists are expected to have knowledge of their own legal system as well as the law of foreign countries. For this reason, comparative law is integrated today in nearly every law...