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The aim of every law is to serve as instrument for positive social change, control of human behaviour and regulation of human conduct. It is necessary therefore for every law to take into consideration the socio-cultural and religious background of the people for whom it is made. If the law keeps a blind eye to those considerations, it will not command respect and obedience; hence the desired social change and respectability will not be achieved. Using this parameter, the paper examines the controversy surrounding the promulgation of Nigeria's Child's Right Act which has been passed into law by the National Assembly and duly assented to by the President in July, 2003. The Act is about the most important document which has incorporated the rights of the Nigerian child. The document had sought to set out human rights of the Nigerian child using the standard obtainable at international level. Specifically, the Act derived its inspiration from the following instruments: United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child, 1959 and the Millennium Development Goals. The Child's Right Act has made adequate provision for promotion of the welfare of Nigerian Child and promotes unity amongst the various interest groups in Nigeria.. The Act no doubt contained adequate provisions that will give legal cover to the all round development and welfare of the Nigerian child regardless of the circumstances of his birth, religion, culture and ethnic background. However, in a multi- ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-religious society as Nigeria, any form of legislation that affects the cultural life is bound to be greeted with opposition and protests. For instance, the Muslims were quick to point out certain gray areas that seem to be inconsistent with their cultural and religious values.Let's take a look at Section 10(1) and (2) under part two of this Act provides that "any discrimination against child on the grounds of sex … or deprivation by reason of circumstances of birth is prohibited". These provisions are in conflict with some rules under Islamic law and they have the capacity of negating those rules. The provision will render negative the Islamic rule which precludes an illegitimate child from inheriting the estate of his illegitimate father. Likewise, the section will invalidate the formula under Islamic law of inheritance where the male child gets twice the share of female child or a non-Muslim child cannot inherit his Muslim father and vice-versa. Under Chapter 4, Verse 11 of the Qur'an, a male child is entitled to twice the share of a female child in cases of inheritance. Likewise Shariah law prohibited right of inheritance between two persons of different religion. Not surprisingly, the Muslim- dominated Northern Nigeria mounted fierce opposition against the law since, according to them, a number of its provisions are violently opposed to their culture and religionKey Words: socio-cultural values, law, religion, shari,ahDr. Sulaiman Khalid is Associate Professor and Head, Department of Sociology, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto- Nigeria ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movements consist of organizations that usedifferent tactics to promote a common vision of social change.However, some movement tactics may receive more institutional supportthan others. For example, a tactic that produces substantial mediacoverage may allow organizations that perform that tactic to dominatea social movement by dictating its primary messages, goals, andidentity. In this paper, I will examine whether, in its coverage ofthe movement for LGBT rights, the mainstream media have focused onlitigation and legal framing and have downplayed other types ofmovement action and framing. This paper will expand upon empiricalstudies from the communications and sociolegal literatures, which findthat litigation often attracts publicity, whereas protest activityrarely receives any media coverage at all. I will present preliminaryempirical research on media coverage of LGBT movement activity from1980-2000 to evaluate whether the mainstream media have focused onLGBT legal tactics, organizations, and framing. This paper willevaluate the hypothesis that the mainstream media provide moresubstantive and positive coverage of a social movement's legal actionthan its protest action. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is extensive literature on interest groups that use litigation to bring about social change. One facet of this research investigates whether interest group litigation can increase media coverage of groups' activities and causes; that is, many scholars are concerned about the extra-judicial effect of litigation campaigns. Previous studies have focused only on the influence of key Supreme Court cases; thus, there has been no systematic study of the impact of a long term litigation campaign, including multiple cases litigated at all levels of the state and federal judiciary. Animal advocacy group sponsored litigation, which uses the courts to limit the exploitation of nonhuman animals for food, clothing, entertainment, and scientific research, is one area where extra-judicial effects are particularly salient. There is anecdotal evidence that animal advocacy group litigation can exert an important extra-judicial effect, but there has been no rigorous, quantitative test of whether animal advocacy group sponsored litigation has increased media coverage of animal advocacy concerns. This paper contributes to the interest group litigation and animal law literatures by examining the extent that animal advocacy group sponsored litigation at all levels of federal and state courts influences media coverage of animal advocacy issues in a sample of five media markets. I plan to study a twenty year timeframe (from 1986 through 2005), with each month as a unit of analysis, and the media markets that I plan to analyze are Washington, DC, Tampa Bay, Minneapolis, Dallas, and Seattle. I will use time-series statistical techniques and control for other possible influences on media coverage of animal advocacy issues. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization is a transformation within municipal legal spaces without a universal jurisdiction or a legitimate subject. Legal change and the generation of new legal rules is one of the substantive components of the intended or unintended outcomes of the social change in the developing societies. Acting within a rule-based foreign aid system, the international financial institutions (IFI) and multilateral donors promote two broad legal types of regime ordering: (1) diffusion and (2) harmonization. The multilateral donors intentionally diffuse rules to the national legal systems by generating new rules, mutate existing, or transplant metropolitan ones. The donors also harmonize legal rules between the international actors (sovereign states, international organizations and partial juridical personalities). Such rules lack many of the features of the locally generated legal rules (clear constitutional justification, legitimacy and adjudication mechanism), and therefore exists as soft, or 'quasi-legal' rules. Regardless of the sources, their policy character, the jurisdictional limitations and the legitimacy deficits, these rules are not less formal or less coercive than the rules which have a recognized pattern of emergence through the municipal legal systems. The paper will examine the practice of the World Bank within the foreign aid system about such rules and take a closer look at several country examples about the contents of such rules. This paper will attempt to inquire into the extent to which an international developing agency, such as the World Bank, can play the role of a 'global' jurist (subject) for creating quasi-legal rules, and how such rules 'behave' when governments and civic actors transmit and adopt them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a critical or meta-linguistic analysis of law. The fundamental premise underlying a metalinguistic approach to the study of language is that 'the structure of a human being's language influences the manner in which he understands reality and behaves with respect to it.' Metalinguists study how language patterns structure and direct our attention to selective portions of our environment, and how language patterns influence how we react to those selected portions of our environment. This paper contends that a meta-linguistic analysis of law will reveal that its language structure embodies an Aristotelian essentialism, an essentialist metaphysics that hinders attempts to use the law to effectuate social change and transformation. This paper argues that critical legal movements, in order to effectively challenge dominant legal ideologies and narratives must critically examine and restructure the language structure of its legal theories in order to produce transformative and creative representations of legal and social reality. This paper will examine the legal discourse on race and racial inequality to show how a critical linguistic examination can show how the way in which we talk about race actually undermines attempts to produce racial equality and justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores congressional understandings of the poor and market risk; focusing on the congressional debates leading up to welfare reform in 1996 and on those preceding the financial bailout of 2008. Not suprisingly, the relationship between individual responsibility and societal support when things go wrong changes depending on whether the actors who made choices that end up being bad ones are wealthy or poor. This paper focuses on how separation between decision makers and those needing support alters public policy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Supreme Court's decision in Kelo v. City of New London,545 U.S. 469(2005) upholding the use of eminent domain to take private property from one owner and give it to another in order to promote economic development angered many. Some felt that this decision meant the "public use" stipulation in eminent domain no longer had any meaning and that the Court was now prepared to endorse any taking for any reason, so long as compensation was paid. But this was not the first decision that property rights advocates saw as rendering the public use limitation moot. Following Poletown Neighborhood Council v. City of Detroit, 304 N.W.2d 455 (Mich. 1981) and Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff, 467 U.S. 229 (1984) similar laments were heard. This paper examines the mobilization of interests from Poletown and Midkiff leading up to the Kelo decision. The claim will be that the property rights litigation leading up to and producing the legislative responses to Kelo demonstrate the strength and efficacy of using the courts to secure legal change. Overall, the paper constructs a model of interest mobilization that demonstrates how groups use court decisions, change in court composition, and a legal, political, and public relations strategy to secure desired objectives both in the courts and in legislatures. In addition, the chapter will argue that contrary to assertions by scholars that the courts and litigation strategies are ineffective in securing social change, the property rights litigation from Poletown to Kelo demonstrates the efficacy of the courts to produce social and legal change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will try to uncover the cultural meaning of Law in Venezuela, its site of construction and the consequences of that construction in an era of apparent social change for the entire country. This study will approach Law from an ethnographic perspective, viewing it as a cultural phenomenon that cannot be fully understood as a set of rules that control and regulate society. Law, then, is a complex social and cultural event that can be created, changed, used, perceived and imagined in multiple ways. In the current Venezuelan scenario, Law has changed at least in two different ways; its norms and its cultural construction. Perhaps more than at any other time in its history, Law in Venezuela has come to be constructed in new ways and to mean different things, and it is the goal of this paper to investigate the complex social sources and processes of constitution and creation of these new cultural meanings. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Till today, there exists no straight-jacket formula for testing the legitimacy of governments. The idea of legitimacy is a predominantly fluid idea which changes with the change in society. This paper seeks to establish the relationship between the legal concept of legitimacy and the state of the society. The ideas to assess legitimacy that have been put forth are over simplified. This paper thus advocates an elaborate idea - initially put forth by Aspremont - which breaks legitimacy down into two - legitimacy of origin and legitimacy of exercise. Simply put, the first refers to how a government comes to power and the latter refers to the way in which utilizes the power. Thus a monochrome view of the concept of legitimacy needs to give way to a spectral view of both origin and exercise, under which both need to be accorded weight in testing for legitimacy. Thee paper also analyses the role of recognition in determining the legitimacy of a government. The main question that the paper would seek to answer is whether democracy has become the touchstone of legitimacy in the present day world? The answer to this would involve a discourse into the much talked about procedural and the less talked about substantive elements of a democracy. This would be buttressed by an analysis of some of the governments of the present as well as the past. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discourse of female genital mutilation has been pushed to the top of global agenda courtesy of international powerful media houses, feminist activism and international bodies. The normative anti FGM discourse champions for eradication of the practice. This trope of eradication orchestrated by powerful actors, namely some recurrent and emerging discourses from "Western" countries, international non-governmental organisations and international corporate bodies have mounted pressure on female circumcision practicing countries to enact laws outlawing the practice. In the case of Sierra Leone's Bundo secrete society, female circumcision is highly regarded and is an entry requirement into the powerful secret society in which women hold sway. The discourse of outlawing the practice thus clashes with the local cultural stock narratives. My paper will examine how the Sierra Leone legal fabric negotiates change to adopt the supra legal structure in the face of local resistance from the Bundo secret society who are not ready to abandon the age old practice of female circumcision. Outlawing the practice may lead to cultural shocks that may have a heavy impact on the society. It is this tensions that my paper seeks to explore and decentre. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars who study legal mobilization and its potential impacts on public policy have recognized the opportunities that exist for the strategic manipulation of ideas and information in the midst of campaigns for social and political change. These opportunities exist as a result of the multidimensional nature of information and the limited nature of attention. Social movement groups engage in issue framing across a variety of arenas - legislatures, courts, the media, internal communications, etc. Does group issue framing vary across different venues? How do the dynamics of mobilization and countermobilization shape issue framing across venues? For example, are groups more likely to respond to opposition framing in venues with a wider, more public, audience like the media? This paper will examine these questions in the context of Washington State, where same-sex marriage has been an issue for several decades. Using content analysis of groups' web pages and press releases, state court cases, case briefs, and legislative documents, the paper will focus on how social movement group framing in the context of litigation may or may not be different from framing strategies pursued in other policymaking arenas. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the emergence of a Roma Rights movement in the European Union and the role of the European Roma Rights Center (ERRC) in promoting this movement via litigation. The Roma, often commonly known as the Gypsies, are spread throughout the 25 member states of the EU and have a long history of experiencing discrimination and persecution which continues into current times. Established in 1996 the ERRC engages in a multifaceted strategy to fight discrimination, end segregation, and promote equality for the Roma. Using the NAACP in the U.S. as a template the organization focuses primarily on litigation as a means to achieving social change. The ERRC focuses especially on ways to best utilize emerging European spaces for litigation, politics, and cultural change. Thus, like the NAACP, the ERRC has turned to federal/supra-national political structures to challenge local/state racial hierarchies. This paper undertakes an analysis of the ERRC's emergence as European NGO, the first of its kind with regard to racial discrimination. Considering the criticism of the NAACP's litigation efforts within the American context (Rosenberg 1991), it asks how the structure and strategies of the ERRC replicate or differ from the NAACP and investigates too what extent the ERRC has learned from the experiences of the NAACP in the U.S. I then consider to what extent the ERRC has transformed the movement for civil rights into a uniquely European movement, and what American civil rights movements today could learn from the ERRC's efforts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper follows Luhmann's fundamental question as to how society achieves and maintains order against the odds of evolution. Luhmann answers this question with his finding of the differentiation of functional (sub-) systems. This finding requires that all observations and analyses of social change are made from the vantage point of the agency of functional systems rather than any other form of human practice. The paper re-examines the recent history of postcommunist societies with the focus on law as a result of the interaction between the legal, political, economic and family systems, seen here as a networking operation of world society rather than delineated by state borders. The networking aspect of world society is accentuated by looking at the communication operations of the functional systems in the spectrum of historic communication routes ranging from the Baltic Sea to the Silk Road linking Europe and China, spotted with populations and their historically accidental states from Sweden, via the Baltic States and the Central Asian States to China. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global climate change has triggered a period of great instability in the Canadian Arctic. Indigenous communities are experiencing rapid social and cultural transformation: changes in the physical landscape are threatening the survival of their cultural traditions, including homes and shelter, which are dependant on snow and ice. This paper asks what a human rights approach to climate change can offer Northern communities. It analyses the potential contribution of the human right to housing, which recognises that housing must be culturally adequate; that its location must allow access to employment and social facilities; and that certain services, materials, facilities and infrastructure be available to the dwellers. These elements take on special significance for the Inuit because of the unique nature of their homes and building materials, and the location and climate-specific nature of their ways of life. Secondly, the paper examines potential contributions of the emerging approach of the right to maintain cultural traditions. Can this principle respond to the threat of cultural extinction of practices that are jeopardized by climate change, such as the act of going out onto the land, and the skills that develop in this context?These human rights approaches may offer novel opportunities for the Indigenous communities in the North to resist and adapt to climate change. However, there are limitations in the human rights approach which must be identified. The paper attempts a critical analysis of the prospects and boundaries, so that human rights strategies can be pursued with greater awareness of their implications. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to historical and sociopolitical factors the achievement of democracy in Greece has lasted for a period of one century and a half. The institutions of the Greek State and administration have been imported but not embedded in the newly born, still premodern, country, during the 19th century. However, it took almost the 2/3 of the 20th century, that is until the fall of the military dictatorship in 1974, that democracy has been finally stabilized. The effort to establish the rule of Law in Greece seems connected to the social and political strive to participate in the E.U. The European integration project has been considered as a process of social change in order to achieve a higher status of economical and political development. At first the present paper will focus at the theoretical discussion regarding the relation between law and social change. It will also describe the recent theoretical debate which consider the process of European integration as a complex process of social change. Secondly the present paper will examine the social representations regarding law in general and especially European law as an instrument of changing the administrative practices p.e. through institutions such as the Greek Ombudsman. Finally, it will describe the latest activity of the Greek Ombudsman and it will discuss its possible interactive effect on Greek administrative practice ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Japan, as a result of societal and economic development and structural reform in the legal systems, there are/will be changes in their lawyer profession's culture. This paper analyses such changes and their implications on "legal professionalism" in Japan.The analysis will cover both the external and internal culture of the lawyers' profession. "External culture" refers to the manner and scope of lawyers' practice, and the extent of their role in the society. "Internal culture" refers to lawyers' value orientation, attitude and opinion. Internal culture in fact has both internal and external aspects. The internal aspect is the individual lawyers' real intention, which is almost impossible to ascertain. This paper will therefore, in relation to lawyers' internal culture, focus on the external aspect: the value orientation, attitude and opinion as held out by the profession and as seen by others. Although the external aspect may not fully reflect the internal aspect, it indicates what the profession perceives as such image, mission and role that are appropriate in the societal and economic environment at that time. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of legal transplants is defined as "the moving of a rule or a system of law from one country to another or from one people to another". The transplantation of legal rules has always been connected with legal reform, change and development. The importance of legal transplants has increased since the recent economic, political and social changes worldwide. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the political change in South Africa and Namibia, the economic globalisation etc, all paved the way for substantial political and legal change in many countries. This paper will focus on the effect of legal transplants on the local norms of recipient countries. This paper assumes that transplanting laws can be viable and effective in some fields of law than in others. It will study, on the one hand, the impact of social, political, economic factors on the process of transplanting laws. On the other hand it focuses on the role of civil society in the process of importations and adaptation. We argue that if the transplanted law subjected to adaptation, it will have the chance to achieve the necessary legal, social and economic change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rule of law is essential for maintaining a stable, democratic state. But how does a complex, pluralist and failed state institutionalize it, and what role do non-governmental organizations play - that is, under what circumstances does their work to build law through civil society activism succeed in creating legal and social change in a failed state? This paper builds on a year of ethnographic and legal research in Sudan. It compares the circumstances under which legal development in a failed state occurs and does not occur, and also when and how it contributes to broader economic and social development. Primary data analyzes legal groups' strategies to institutionalize the rule of law in three cases: human rights and legal aid groups, the environmental movement in Sudan, and business associations that seek to build the rule of law through the Sudanese judiciary and Constitutional Court.The paper uses Sudan as a primary source and existing scholarship on the rule of law in emerging and established democracies as secondary sources. It promotes exchange of ideas across disciplinary boundaries by employing an interdisciplinary approach linking law and development, and law and globalization in the global south, with social movements scholarship. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades or so, there has been a remarkable shift in the conception of the role of law and courts held by Latin American progressive groups. Once viewed as instruments of the powerful and privileged and thus, as obstacles to social change, law and courts have come to be viewed as potential bearers of social justice and emancipation (Couso, 2005 & 2006, forthcoming). This paper --which draws on previous work by the author now complemented by recent research--explores the sources of this dramatic change in the legal culture of a significant portion of the Latin American left, which is now actively pursuing social justice through the courts.Among others factors, the paper will analyze the influence that the heroic image of the 'Warren Court' has had in the imaginary of Latin America's socially progressive lawyers as the paradigm of a court willing to stand up against the political branches in defense of the marginalized. It will also analyze the role which the constitution of a highly professionalized international human rights field has played in the move towards an idealized account of law and legality within the region's left. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of those who support the right to same-sex marriage confine themselves to legal premises, insisting that there is a fundamental right to marriage for everyone or that denial of marriage licenses to same-sex couples violates equal protection of the laws. Others rely on predictions about the social benefits that would result if same-sex marriage were legally recognized. Some commentators maintain that the denial of equal rights to same-sex couples is gender discrimination. Others try to dispel the conservative fear of social change by explaining why equal rights for gays and lesbians would not require the complete rejection of traditional morality or undermine the institution of opposite-sex marriage.This paper takes a different tack, contending that the reasons that those who oppose same-sex marriage typically offer are too controversial to justify unequal treatment of same-sex couples. This paper is premised on the idea that Supreme Court opinions must be publicly justified. I explain what public justification is, why it is important, and how an ideal of public justification limits the interpretive latitude that judges have when they decide real cases. I then show why opposition to same-sex marriage does not meet this standard of public justification. If those who oppose same-sex marriage cannot find reasons that all fair-minded people can accept or at least not reasonably reject, then, constitutionally speaking, their opposition to the extension of the right to marriage to same-sex couples is unreasonable. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact and effectiveness of litigation as a vehicle for social transformation by comparing the struggle for equality of two groups: women rights activists and gay rights activists in Israel during the 1990ies. The struggle of women and gay people for equality share many common characteristics since both challenge the traditional conservative patriarchal social model. And, in Israeli society both gay rights activists and women equality activists faced the same political rivals: the powerful macho-type socio-political mentality, rooted in the central status of the military in Israeli society and the strong hold of Jewish Ultra-Orthodox parties in the political system. The strategies adopted by the two groups to overcome these obstacles, however, have been markedly different. While women groups adopted an elitist strategy of struggle that concentrated exclusively on legal measures, gay rights groups adopted a variety of tactics, which emphasized grass root, political tactics. The paper examines the success of each group to achieve its political objectives and argues that the comparison points to the relative weaknesses of legal and litigation-centered strategies as vehicles of social transformation. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the nature of the relationship between social change and legal and regulatory structures under a democratic government by examining the tension between changing demographics, economics, and perceptions of the landscape in the American West and existing public land law and administration. The discussion is situated in the context of the management of the 1.9 million acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah, which was created by Presidential Proclamation in 1996, generating outrage and ongoing opposition in the adjacent communities. The Proclamation explicitly declared the Monument would remain under the management of the Bureau of Land Management, making it the first national monument the BLM would manage, and signaling a new role for the agency. Residents of the region, environmental organizations, and county, state, and federal government officials are all taking part in the struggle to define what that role should be. In the process, existing federal land laws and regulations serve sometimes as resources and sometimes as barriers for these groups, who envision the Western landscape in different ways. The paper argues that, in seeking to actualize their visions for the future, these groups are exploring territory not clearly mapped by existing legal and regulatory structures governing public land, negotiating the meaning of these structures under new circumstances, and shaping the course of structural change. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based upon analysis of 3,000 plus entry-level civil disputes brought before the newly created native courts in the French Soudan, this paper examines inheritance disputes as "trouble spots" in the social dynamic of African households during a period of rapid social change. The period 1905-1912 coincided with the end of slavery in this region and this paper examines the impact of the end of slavery on the articulation of new forms of capital investment (mainly in cattle). I am especially interested in using court records to examine women's strategies in households to trace their property upon the deaths of their husbands. Secondarily, I am interested in examining what the death of a woman mean for heirs laying claims on her wealth. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, law serves both as an instrument of social order and as a mechanism of social change. To study how law interacts with race and justice, this paper traces major laws and cases in the United States, including the Slave Codes, the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education, and the Anti-Discrimination Laws from 1954 to 1989. Using a Marxist theoretical perspective, I examine how economic expansion and capitalist ideologies have enabled the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the rise of private systems for monitoring or certifying labor conditions in the global apparel industry. In response to anti-sweatshop activism, a number of different programs were created in the mid- to late-1990s, including (in the U.S. alone) the Fair Labor Association, Social Accountability International, Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production, and the Worker Rights Consortium. I describe the structure and content of each program and show that each is rooted not only in the interests of its founders, but also in the dynamic process through which competing organizations were created. In order to begin building a larger theory of private regulation through certification, I also briefly consider some similarities and differences between labor standards certification and forest certification. This comparison draws attention to the multiple roles of the state in supporting private regulatory systems, the varying configurations of labor rights and environmental NGO fields, the positions of retailers, and the structuration of a broader organizational field of certification and corporate social and environmental responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nontraditional families have grown in number and complexity over the past few decades. This is representative of a particular kind of social change, one in which there is greater and greater deviation from the traditional model of family. Many nontraditional families involve an adult willfully acting and serving as a parent to a child not genetically related to the adult, often with the encouragement of the biological parent. The nonbiologically related child-rearer has traditionally been legally classified as a ?third party? who has few to no legal rights to maintain the relationship s/he has formed with the child. In many recent state court cases these ?third party? individuals have tried to obtain legal parental status even though they do not fit the traditional legal model of a parent. Legal status as a parent is crucial in strengthening one?s claim to custody/visitation with a child and therefore maintaining one?s relationship with that child. Some states are resistent to expanding the legal definition of parenthood while other states are receptive. California in particular has judicially established a special legal status for these ?third party? individuals — de facto parenthood. In this paper I will examine the major California state court cases which discuss the meaning and limits of de facto parenthood. Who may acquire this status? How is this status acquired? And what does this new doctrine tell us about law?s reaction to the social change that we see evident in the rise of nontraditional families? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper picks up on the Legal Realists' complaint that judges use 'magic solving words' to decide cases. Concluding that the Realists were right that law works like magic but wrong about how magic works, I apply anthropological analyses of magic rituals to our system of adjudication. After cataloguing a number of practical similarities between adjudication and magic in other cultures, I investigate the tort doctrine of proximate cause as a form of ritual magic. If law works like magic and magic is understood to be a social practice with some contextual integrity, then likening law to magic might turn out to be a way to rehabilitate aspects of our legal system that appear stubbornly irrational. While not embodying scientific rationality, law seen as this sort of social magic may have renewed institutional potential to effect social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at three moments during which labor lawyers were particularly active and effective in supporting new forms of worker organizing: on a national level in the 1920s and 30s, before and just after the passage of the NLRA; on the state level in the 1960s and 1970s, with the founding and flourishing of the United Farm Workers in California; and on a local level in the 1990s and early 2000s, with the emergence of immigrant workers centers and a resurgence of interest among young lawyers in workers' rights organizing and advocacy. It traces commonalities between lawyers' strategies and views of the law over those three periods, and also analyzes the ways that divergent contexts shaped divergent approaches. Finally, and more broadly, it presents a framework for understanding the relationship of law and rights-based strategies to social change today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an account of the evolution of interpretive legal mobilization theory over the past thirty years. It focuses on legal mobilization research in the particular context of social movement or social reform projects. It begins with a comment on Scheingold's The Politics of Rights (1974) and then critically evaluates some lines of empirical research following after it (e.g. Handler 1978; Olson 1984; Milner 1986; Rosenberg 1991; McCann 1994; Silverstein 1996; McCann and Silverstein 1998). The discussion gradually telescopes to McCann's Rights At Work (1994). Reflections on McCann's framework then form the basis for a discussion of current theoretical difficulties in, and new possibilities for, interpretive legal obilization theory. I pursue two interconnected theoretical issues: First, how do we understand 'legal mobilization' itself, as well as its relationship to political mobilization? I argue for placing legal translation at the center of the broader and varied concept of legal mobilization, offer an account of how to do this, and specify several reasons for doing it. Second, assuming that we are interested in questions of practical utility, what are the implications of interpretive legal mobilization theory for litigation-involved reform practices? How might 'post-realist,' interpretive studies of legal mobilization inform and shape action in the world? I argue that (1) insights from the standpoint of legal realism have been absorbed by activists and reformers; and (2) "post-realist" scholarship should be thought of as a new observer's standpoint from which we can better understand and critically evaluate realistic ("politics of rights") practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To meet the challenges of globalization, East Asian countries are currently undergoing a process of becoming law-governed societies. As the step, Japan, South Korea, China, and Taiwan are currently instituting American-style law schools with the aim of mass-producing qualified lawyers. In the 1960s, a similar attempt was made as a means of economic development and social change in Latin America but failed. Why are East Asian countries adopting the American law school system, although a similar attempt was unsuccessful in Latin America? This paper does comparative analyses of East Asian challenge with the law & development movement in Latin America. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recently, political scientists and sociologists interested in law and social change have tended to work on parallel paths. Political scientists have stressed the formal mobilization of rights, while sociologists have stressed the diffusion of organizational practices. In this paper, we present a set of hypotheses about law and social change that incorporates both mobilization and diffusion. We test these hypotheses by measuring the response of organizations to accommodation provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act and related state and federal laws. Based on inspection data from 179 facilities in a single community, we find that both mobilization and diffusion contribute to organizational response. Further, our findings suggest that the two processes interact in ways that can only be understood when they are studied in tandem. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will introduce current situation of influx of women migrant workers in Korea and analyze it with perspectives of social changes and pluralism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore the role of the interwar civil liberties movement in rehabilitating the discourse of rights and the judicial forum as engines of social change. In the years after World War I, most proponents of free speech were hostile to Lochner-era legalism and preferred to pursue free speech through legislative and regulatory measures. For example, they called upon the federal government to devote airtime to dissenting voices, and they demanded administrative intervention in labor disputes on behalf of striking workers. They did not yet regard the state as a threat; rather, they sought to use government affirmatively to advance their agenda. Over time, however, the interwar civil libertarians manufactured an anti-state legalistic vocabulary that would eventually become the dominant idiom of American liberalism. The new ideology so thoroughly shook the foundations of legislative and administrative authority as to endear erstwhile Progressives to an adversarial, court-based alternative. By the early 1940s, with the encouragement of a newly friendly judiciary, civil liberties groups committed fully to litigation (and to constitutional litigation in particular) as a strategy. Henceforth, a new generation of liberals would rely on the courts, with their promise of individualized justice, to protect American rights from being trampled by the very Progressive state that they had earlier endeavored to create. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the central issues that has animated much discussion on the political left in recent decades surrounds the ways in which marginalized individuals and groups mobilize in search of recognition, redress and inclusion within social and political institutions from which they were historically excluded. Litigation, as a strategy for social reform, has been one of the many tools employed by various social movements, from women's to civil rights. Landmark decisions on abortion, desegregation, discrimination and gender equality were seen as significant victories. However, despite these gains, this paper argues that the use of litigation as a primary tool for social movements is costly, inefficient and moreover a potential impediment to social change. Within this context the legal turn of the left engenders questions about the dangers of an uncritical reliance on such tactics, which may obscure the way in which legal discourse continuously structures the boundaries of future political possibilities. For example, strategies that have focused on abortion and equal rights for women have limited the substance of the social movement to issues pertaining only to a minority of women by excluding issues of class, race, gender, sexual violence, and women's self-determination. Reading through the works of Wendy Brown, Janet Halley, Kimberle Crenshaw and Patricia Williams, my work attempts to rethink the relationship between social movements and the legal sphere. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the Open Method of Coordination from the extraordinary Lisbon European Council in 2000 has been considered by many academic and institutional commentators as a break-through for Social Europe. The OMC was seen as an example of 'new governance', and with it, an escape from a traditional and hierarchical Treaty structure that had been prejudicial to the development of social policies ('the European Economic Constitution').A closer examination of the evolution of European law in the two decades prior to Lisbon, however, may illustrate a different reading. Rather than being opposed to the original 'economic constitution' of the Communities, the OMC may be consistent with its reformulation, both in emphasizing cooperation between different levels of governance and intricately linking or 'bootstrapping' economic and social reforms.Our optimism about the OMC may depend not on it being an 'alternative' to European law, but an instrument that can complement, or carry-on at the political level, the attempt to reflexively reconcile these elements - on the one hand the sovereignty of states to protect and recalibrate the institutions of the welfare state, and on the other, the freedom of a trans-national European market. Examining the reforms carried out in the wake of the 'revised' Lisbon strategy, the paper will examine the capacities and limitations of the present-day OMC to meet this task. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on an on-going research project aiming to contribute to a reshaping of the international research agenda on the changing legal regulation of family life by examining the ways in which recent transformations of family law are part of longer-term processes of social change. It approaches the emergence of a concern with co-parenting in terms of the interlinked concepts of 'civilization' and 'governance', and outlines the beginnings of a comparative analysis of the differing pathways followed by these shifts in family law in the US, Australia, and Germany. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Socio-legal scholars attracted by Luhmann's theory face a problem. While the theory offers a compelling account of the nature of the relationship between law and other social systems and provides fresh insights into the limits that exist for law to effect social change, it seems then to prevent them from doing anything about it. Undaunted, some suggest that a new reflexive orientation of law is required in a world understood in autopoietic terms. Others, however, point out that law understood in this way runs counter to the theory. This paper revisits this debate and considers the implications of the theory for the socio-legal scholar: is the reflexive lawyer a heretic, not yet fully up to speed on the theory or simply unable to accept the full force of Luhmann's account? If the critics of reflexive law are right, does this mean that the reflexive lawyer's choice is between, on one hand, abandoning any pretence of working with systems theory and, on the other, accepting that the world is not amenable to change even in the modest way that they propose? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Palestinian legislator assigns a special priority to Palestinian and foreign large enterprises. In the early phase of the Palestinian Authority, most economic visions were focused on foreign large enterprises. A statement that was common then is that Palestine would become the Singapore of the Middle East. Of the pieces of legislation that served this approach was the Law of the Promotion of Investment, which concentrates on enterprises with large capitals. In addition, a number of other regulations were enacted to serve large enterprises. However, the PA did not allocate sufficient importance to the needs of the majority of enterprises: small enterprises. Consecutive economic and political developments could have caused the collapse of the Palestinian economy. However, active and sustainable small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have kept the Palestinian economy running. In the absence of security and stability, SMEs were able to adapt to economic, political and security changes for an extended period of time. On the other hand, large enterprises were greatly affected due to continuing changes, which led to the closure of several enterprises or dismissing a large number of workers and employees. SMEs could operate at the time when the state and its institutions faced various financial and security problems. The paper reviews the package of Palestinian economic, commercial and financial laws which are currently effective or are under discussion and preparation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students of judicial politics argue that legal discourse is epiphenomenal; little more than a tool used to legitimize the dominant political interests without any power to generate significant social change. According to this view, the epiphenomenal character of legal discourse should be most evident during times of crisis, when it is likely to be used as a means to legitimize unpopular governmental actions. This paper acknowledges the limitations of judicially-created social change, but it also challenges the assertion that legal discourse is epiphenomenal. It analyzes how the expansion of 'subsistence rights' discourse in Colombia facilitated legal mobilization and political actions that helped to prevent the crumbling of the middle class during the economic crisis of the late 1990s. On the other hand, and by that same token, it also shows how subsistence rights discourse helped to preserve the status quo through social rights' adjudication, despite having been created specifically to expand the distribution of goods and services to the lower classes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a debatable assumption that law generates social change. Another general assumption is that the efforts to democratize a state (in nascendi) and its success largely depend on its people, on their experience, their attitudes and willingness to participate in public matters. The focus of this paper shall be the analysis of these suppositions with regards to the Palestinian reality.Two questions are of particular interest: First of all, it should be explored whether Palestinian culture collides with fundamental democratic values such as freedom and equality? When discussing the latter, the concepts of gender awareness/ equality can be used as helpful examples. The second issue to be discussed is, whether or not law is an efficient and moreover desirable tool to generate social change in conflict matters. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the old question: "what is the role of law in development?" with particular relevance to the Millennium Development Goals, the most important contemporary development program. Part I is a general Introduction. Part II sets the historical context and warns about the dangers of generalization. Part III suggests five overlapping ideal types that characterize contemporary perceptions of the role of law in development: (a) social order view; (b) Rule of Law (formal legality) view; (c) free market view; (d) multifunctional view (in addition to (a) - and possibly (b) and (c), law is important at various levels and in necessary ways for structuring and regulating practices and procedures that enable development activities); (e) human rights-based perspectives on development.Part IV introduces the Millennium Development Goals. Part V applies the ideal types to Uganda's Poverty Reduction Strategy Plan (PRSP 2004), one of the first to be accepted by the international "donor community" as part of the MDG project. Despite appearing to be a market-oriented continuation of "structural adjustment" policies, the plan tries to balance economic development through the market with concerns about social protection, equity, environment, and poverty reduction that constrain free market ideas. Law is envisaged as playing a major, varied role in this. However, like most PRSPs, Uganda's avoids a "rights-based approach" to development. Part V will consider the role of non-state law and the MDGs, a topic not really addressed in Uganda's PRSP or most of the literature, which is markedly state-centric. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the constitutional conceptions and ideas of political radicalism in the XIXth Century in Latin America. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legal regime for the protection and promotion of foreign investment is considered tangible evidence of the spread of globalization, and so serves as a useful device for testing hypotheses about the role of the state and the spread of new constitutionalist institutions in the current era. It turns out that investment rules disparage state functions beyond those considered normal and consonant with investment rules strictures. They are considered, for the most part, untrustworthy custodians of social change. This is paradoxical in so far as the regime relies on states to serve certain legitimating functions. Social movement actors and transnational NGOs simply are excluded from the logic of the regime. To the extent that they enter into the picture, they are portrayed as dupes of rent-seeking and corrupt local actors. This is how San-Francisco based Bechtel Corporation characterized the mobilization of civil society protests in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2000. The notorious 'water wars' subsequently gave rise to an investment claim by the Bechtel subsidiary, Aguas del Tunari, for the sum of US $ 25 million. Remarkably, the company withdrew its claim after winning an initial award on jurisdiction. This paper uses the Cochabamba case in order to examine the reversibility of new constitutionalist rules and institutions, the extent to which these rules "lock in" states to predetermined policy outcomes, and the role of subaltern groups and transnational NGOs in generating counter-hegemonic resistance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A gender-free society is one of the visions that have been developed in feminist, transgender and intersex theory as an alternative to the existing gender order. These visions depart from the idea that through social change, gender can be "undone" to the point that it is not relevant any more as a normalising instrument prescribing the classification into either male or female and heterosexuality as a norm. In this utopian state of society, being "female", "intersex" or "transgender" is no reason for disadvantages or discrimination - or more radically, these classifications do not exist anymore. The paper explores how this vision could be used on one hand as a tool for reflection on the current use of the categories of sex and gender in law as well as in gender and law scholarship. On the other hand it might serve as a direction for legal reform for the 21st century. Thereby one of sociology of law's "classical" issues has to be addressed: the question of the use of law as an instrument of social change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses several questions revolving around change in the work orientations of judges and court administrators. What are alternative current work cultures and how does each one shape the way things get done? Can current work orientations be distinguished from preferred ways of conducting business in the future? How does a court go about changing its current culture and constructing a different one? A conceptual framework is formed marrying the local legal culture literature with techniques established by business school scholars to measure private sector culture and organizational effectiveness. The result is a fourfold typology of communal, networked, autonomous and hierarchical oriented judicial bodies. Each one has a distinctive approach to getting work done in the areas of case management, change management, judge-staff relations, and courthouse leadership. Using structured surveys, the values driving judges and administrators in 12 criminal courts in the States of California, Florida and Minnesota are measured and classified. Hypotheses are then tested on how closely courts with particular cultures achieve the goals of access, fairness, managerial effectiveness. Finally, this framework is used to assist two courts in the State of Utah in moving from their current cultures to preferred ones. Having compared the way things currently get done with the ways they would like to operate, judges and mangers undertook a process of adopting new practices. The process and the results of this transformation are highlighted, and the framework refined. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social business will be a new kind of business introduced in the market place with the objective of making a difference in the world. (Muhamad Yunus, Nobel Lecture, Oslo Dec 10, 2006)In 1948, when the State of Israel was founded, 125,000 people (about one fifth of the Jewish population) were members of credit cooperative societies, which provided over 20% of all market financing. For a number of years this number continued to rise to reach a total of 250,000 members in more than 100 credit associations. Credit associations - part of the thriving cooperative movement of early Zionism - symbolized the attempts to create a renewed just Jewish society, by fusing socialist and capitalist ideals. Beginning from the mid 1950s, however, in a rapid process of centralizing Israel's capital market and financial institutions, almost all credit associations were absorbed into Israel's central banks and dissolved. Today, Israel's two largest banks (Leumi & Hapoalim) control over 63% of credit provision, and 90% of credit is provided to less than 1% of borrowers. The official policy of The Bank of Israel is to rule out the establishment of credit associations, credit unions or other non-bank financial institutions. In an era of renewed interest in "social businesses", i.e., innovative business models designed to achieve desired social outcomes, this paper traces the waning of credit associations in Israel, and the role law has played in this process. Their vanishing from the capital market marked not only a change in economic policy but also the final abandonment of the ideals underlying the provision of cooperative financial services: mutuality, partnership and solidarity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role that courts currently under construction in Angola play vis-a-vis the poor. From a sociolegal perspective, it looks into the place of courts in the Angolan society and the state, and assesses their potential for emancipatory social transformation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of legal education focuses on litigation, even in the area of social justice. Although litigation has resulted in the recognition of legal rights (e.g., Brown v. Board of Education (U.S.)), it has failed to create economic parity and social justice. Two new offerings are helping students to understand - and to be agents in creating - social justice in more textured ways. Through an Urban Policy Clinic, students conduct non-litigation-based advocacy on issues such as environmental justice; child and family rights; and HIV/AIDS. Students have testified before state and local legislative bodies, have conducted extensive fact-finding and legal research to draft "white papers," and have developed diverse coalitions to achieve change at the executive and legislative levels. In a new Fordham Center for Social Justice and Dispute Resolution, we are discovering new ways in which problem-solving can be used to create social change. We bring parties to the table (during or to avoid litigation) to develop more universal solutions to long-term problems, addressing more than the immediate dispute; we work with elected and appointed officials and with community-based advocates and service providers on long-term issues of social inequity (hunger, homelessness). Participation in these programs serves three functions: 1) students think about social justice from a broader problem-solving, rather than dispute-oriented perspective; 2) students and the greater law school community provide desperately needed services and advocacy; 3) students are more likely to continue this type of thinking - and work - into their practices, whatever they may be. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When current law is challenged, this is done not from the core, but from the borders. Looking back at the development of gender-related law(s) during the past decades demonstrates this and proves at the same time that the invocation of individual rights can contribute to both social and legal change. Gender identity is now acknowledged as a human right - not everywhere and not undisputed, but to a far extent at least in Europe. Yet there are still legal problems with gender identity and human rights. The traditional heteronormative and binary fe/male gender line still works in spite of new laws protecting transgender people, and allowing same-sex registered partnerships. Most recently, the German Constitutional Court had to decide a case, where a transgender person was forced by law to decide between hir identity and hir right to marry or enter a legal partnership. And intersexed persons are still not accepted as such but registered as either male or female (after their bodies were made consistent through surgery when they were infants). This shows that many more legal fields than just civil status law affect gender identity: marriage law, custody law, penal law (and many more) interact in a way that becomes obvious only by taking the view of people who deny the traditional gender images. In the paper, I will map the different fields of law and the hidden currents between them, which work as a hindrance to full gender identity (and the other human rights) for all and everyone. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today America is engaged in an ideological war between progressives and conservatives with "cause lawyers" at the front line. Progressive and conservative cause lawyers live legal realism and attempt to harness the courts as agents of social change to advance their competing ideologies. This is a thick description and empirical study of Florida Cause Lawyers and Tobacco Litigation, and the Impact of Framing and Culture on Law and Social Change. This study begins an analysis of the complex interaction of cultural forces impacting cause lawyers and social change in Florida's tobacco litigation during the mid-1990s. Embedded in living society progressive cause lawyers acting as "private attorneys general" in alliance with strategically placed Florida "cracker" progressive and populist leaders in the legislative and executive branches of Florida's government with a message and legal strategy that was framed and covered in the print media to align with a dominant grundnorm shaped the legal and ideological landscape of Florida towards tobacco liability.This paper on cause lawyers, narrative framing, and Florida tobacco liability demonstrates the "dynamic," "decentered, bottom-up model" of judicial efficacy. The thick description and participant/observer data is complimented by a print media content analysis from 1987 to 1997, demonstrating the importance of narrative frame, symbols, and alignment with dominant grundnorm in order to advance social change through the courts. The findings track many insights of Emile Durkheim's 1893 work, The division of labor in society; and Max Weber's, The theory of social and economic organization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]