Law as tradition

This essay argues that to understand much that is most central to and characteristic of the nature and behaviour of law, one needs to supplement the time-free conceptual staples of modern jurosprudence with an understanding of the nature and behaviour of traditions in social life. The article is concerned with three elements of such an understanding. First, it suggests that traditionality is to be found in almost all legal systems, not as a peripheral but as a central feature of them. Second, it questions the post-Enlightenment antinomy between tradition and change. Third, it argues that in at least two important senses of tradition, the traditionality of law is inescapable.This article is part of a project on law and tradition, research for which has been aided by a grant from the Australian Research Grants Committee. It was written while I was a visitor at the Cente for the Study of Law and Society, University of California, Berkeley, and revised while I visited the Centre for Criminology and the Social and Philosophical Study of Law, University of Edinburgh. I am grateful to the members of both centres for generously providing me with extremely congenial and stimulating conditions for work. Versions of the paper were presented to seminars at these centres, to the 12st World Congress on Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy, held in Athens in August, 1985, and to seminars at the universities of Warsaw, Lodz and Glasgow. I am grateful to participants in these seminars, especially Nel MacCormick, Philip Selznick, Wojciech Lamentowicz, Daniel Sinclair and Jerzy Szacki, and to Edward Shils for useful discussions and criticism.     

The institutional foundations of surf break governance in Atlantic Europe

Public Choice - The sport of surfing is best enjoyed with one rider on one wave, but crowding makes that optimal assignment increasingly hard to attain. This study examines the phenomenon of surf...     

Die artgerechte Fütterung von Wildtieren und der Schutz männlicher Hühnerküken

Natur und Recht - Die EU hat keine originäre Regelungskompetenz für das Tierschutzrecht, verfügt aber in zahlreichen für den Tierschutz sehr relevanten Regelungsbereichen, wie...     

Market power and journalistic quality

European Journal of Law and Economics - The political news media play an important role in the successful working of democratic societies. In order to fulfill this role, a sufficient level of...     

'Fortress Europe' and Third World immigration in the post-Cold War global context

This paper examines the conjuncture of economic and political developments in the world economy and demographic and environmental factors that, in the aftermath of the Cold War, have caused millions of immigrants and refugees to migrate worldwide, increasingly to the EU and North America where they are marginalised and have become, with greater frequency, victimised by right-wing political groups. Factors under study include the proliferation of civil wars and ethnic conflicts; the increase of inequalities and poverty on a world scale; the effects of neoliberal economic policies on Third World development; overpopulation, urbanisation and environmental degradation in peripheral sites of the world economy; and the impact of economic conditions in the EU on immigrant and native workers.     

Cananea consolidated copper company from nationalization to privatization: 1972-1991

Copper, a base metal, became important in the late nineteenth century with the development of electricity and other industrial uses. La Cananea, a Mexican copper mine, was acquired and worked by an American, Colonel Greene, between 1896 and 1907. From 1907 until the mine was nationalized in 1972, the mine was successfully worked by Anaconda, an American multinational copper company. Poor performance under nationalization and a change of policy by the Mexican government led to the reprivatization of the mine in 1990. The process of re-privatization was complicated by two factors: the value of the mine and employee redundance. This paper considers the problems of ownership and management from nationalization to privatization from 1972 to 1991.