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In Sweden, a system of group actions has been in force since 2003. The original aim was to see about 20 such actions a year. In actual fact, in the 17 years of the existence of the system, 21 group action cases have been initiated, a number of which ended successfully for the plaintiffs. In Finland, only a public group action is allowed by the Group Action Act and the only authority that can bring the action is the Consumer Ombudsman. Up to the present time, there have been no group actions filed in Finland, even though the Act has been in force since late 2007. This cautious start was made in order to guarantee safeguards against the abuse of the group action system and to reach consensus to accept group actions in the country. Thus, so far East-Nordic (ie Swedish and Finnish) group actions have not been very successful. This has led to discussions in both countries as to the reasons why. In Sweden, discussions examine how to make the group action procedure more effective in the future. In Finland, discussions explore the scope of group actions and the possibilities to make them broader. However, those who are opposed to the group action system per se and its widening repeat the argument that the American way of litigation brings risks and does not fit well into Nordic legal culture. This argument was already common at the time the group action system was adopted in Sweden and in Finland as well. Does, in fact, this argument hold true? Or, can group actions actually correspond with East-Nordic culture? This contribution explores—and offers answers—to these questions.

The first chapter introduces Malta as a mixed European jurisdiction with strong elements of Civil law and Common law. The Maltese legal culture is a reflection of its history, and the reader is introduced to the Maltese legal system as a microcosm of European legal history. Reference is made to the main state institutions, the set-up of the court system and how Malta has now become a Member State of the European Union.

A plea bargaining system is a novelty and originally a legal transplant in Northern European countries. It exists—in some form—for instance in Finland, Norway and Denmark, whereas in Sweden only the system of crown witnesses is likely to be introduced. In this chapter plea bargaining is put into the East-Nordic—Finnish and Swedish—contexts. How does plea bargaining fit into the East-Nordic court culture? Which ingredients does the contemporary legal culture consist of? In which way is court culture changing due to the new values in the society? Or are the amendments made primarily to reduce the costs of the state? Fairness, procedural justice, conflict resolution, negotiated law, pragmatically acceptable compromise, procedural truth, court service, communication and interaction are examples of the topics that are currently discussed in Finland and Sweden. At the same time, the use of written proceedings and proceedings in the absence of an accused are increasing. Is the plea bargaining system a step towards a more effective and economic criminal procedural system or is it mirroring new type of thinking concerning criminal proceedings? In this chapter, these elements are discussed. Finland is used as a main example. The Finnish situation is also compared with Sweden.

Since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted in 1948, the fundamental human rights and freedoms have been underway in the world as a common standard. Yet it is rarely remembered that this document, which seems to embody western “human rights” and values, also engages the wisdom of Chinese culture, contributed through its Chinese co-drafter Peng-chun Chang. Chinese Confucian legal culture not only addresses human rights thoughts but also the political governance. The core ideas of that culture may be put in concert with United Nations, the new goals of sustainable development, whose progress and impact depend on Member States’ commitment to the Organisation’s objectives.

Europeanisation, globalisation, privatisation, diversification and digitisation are trends that all exert an influence on courts and the justice system. Still, our understanding of the interrelationship between these currents in the legal landscape and national court culture is limited, which in turn impedes our comprehension of the on-going, potentially transformational processes related to courts. Nordic courts and court proceedings are, naturally, influenced by these trends both directly and indirectly, and their reactions to the developments are contingent on the underlying legal culture.

The story of the making of a Nordic legal culture and court culture appears, at first glance, to be a story of what should not have been. Culture is about commonalities arising from common experiences. However, the similarities between the Nordic countries’ political history are limited, with no common institutions before the late nineteenth century, large language similarities but no common legal language, and—most importantly—no common legal procedure. Still, the natural conditions in the very north of Europe came to shape the political and legal systems in similar ways, stimulating the desire to create a Nordic legal culture in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the Nordic Meeting for Lawyers playing a crucial role. Hence, law in the Nordic countries shares several characteristics today: a strong legislative tradition and strong courts with lay participation, accessible legal language in legislation and court decisions and orality in legal procedure, a small number of legal professionals and a small and pragmatic legal science. These characteristics can be viewed as building blocks in an overarching characteristic of Nordic legal culture and court culture: dialogue.

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to study informatization and digitalization of society which transform social life of people, opening up new vistas for expanding and deepening competences, knowledge and skills. In the context of the research, attention was given to special aspects and the need to search for ways and means of formation of legal awareness in an information society. Design/Methodology/Approach: Institutionalization of culture of the social order, where the creation and use of information is recognized as the main development factor, is largely taken into account in the state policy of the information society. This serves as a basis for forming new sociocultural elements and making changes in the functioning of all areas of society with a focus on values, knowledge, and technologies related to the acquisition and consumption of information, and norms of digital culture. Findings: Legal culture and legal awareness as part of it constitute a condition for the development of the information society. Legal and informational relations arising from informatization, digitalization and IT development are reflected in legal awareness. The features of formation of legal awareness are related to the characteristics of society’s mindset. The development of legal awareness of the citizens of the information society in Russia is affected by the mindset which has developed in the context of rigid vertical of power, ambiguous attitude towards power, and the underdevelopment of civil society. Originality/Value: The authors have found that the development of legal awareness of the citizens of the information society in Russia is affected by the mindset which has developed in the context of rigid vertical of power, ambiguous attitude towards power, and the underdevelopment of civil society. It was proved that morality, virtue is an acknowledged element of mindset for the Russian population, which serves as a criterion of public relations.

Omani society is fundamentally a tribal mosaic. The main tribal confederations since the eighteenth century civil war are the Hinawi and the Ghafiri. The patchwork of Omani tribes belongs to one of these confederations. Omani villages have conserved their tribal outlook, tribal values and tribal structure even if they form sedentarised units instead of a bedu nomadic lifestyle. Tribal alliances between tribes and tribal formation/deformation within tribes has been a continuous process. Tribal law has played an inherent part in the overall formation of Omani legal culture. Central for tribal law are its tendencies towards mediation and the avoidance of conflict. Tribes are egalitarian yet the collective interest is the foundation of tribal law. Every conflict is resolved through arbitration, negotiation or mediation by a third party. All members of the community are expected to do their part in resolving disputes, by restraining people from using force, participating in the mediation process or sharing the costs and the benefits of restitution. The mediation system is sophisticated and highly structured, and it involves a great deal of deliberate negotiation and dialogue to ensure that conflicting parties are content with the resolution. The dispute-resolution system relies on compromise and mutual benefit, rather than on imposed punishment or designation of losers and winners. Collective responsibility implies that tribes are ultimately responsible for the acts of their members and for forcing them to implement verdicts of mediation or arbitration.

Purpose This paper presents the analysis of the impact of the Internet on the development of legal culture of entrepreneurs and e-commerce entities in modern Russia. Design/methodology/approach It has been pointed out that today’s world network as a unified framework has become not only the most active member of the communications system, but also an integral agent of legal socialization of entrepreneurs. Findings Consideration is given to the problems of the integration of electronic and digital technologies in social structures that outline the cognitive functions of complex systems. Due to the social function of business activity, they are aimed at introducing technologies that one way or another required legal regulation. Originality/value Within the framework of the research, it has been established that the formation of legal culture increases the role of Internet technologies which influence not only economic, but also sociocultural and legal behavior patterns. Moreover, the paper emphasizes aspects of specific networking mechanisms for interchange of information, platforms that are based on Internet technologies, basic and legal considerations of their arrangement. The authors concluded that it is important to adopt a regulatory act with regard to the maintenance of appropriate cultural and legal standards on the Internet for business entities.

This chapter draws on literature about courts, constitutionalism, and legal mobilisation in and around authoritarian regimes. It adopts both the notion of the continuing importance of constitutional ‘moments’, and the concept of legal mobilisation as one form of contestation and resistance, to explain and explore some of the particular meanings that law, lawyers, and legal activism acquired before, during and beyond the Chilean transition of 1990. Interpreting legal mobilisation against the backdrop of prevailing legal-cultural traditions, the chapter contends both that the authoritarian regime´s constitution-making moment of 1980 should be viewed as—to date—the foundational critical juncture of Chile’s past four decades; and that subsequent ‘rights talk’ in Chile was hamstrung for many years by its obeisance to conceptions of legality that hark back to this phase of the dictatorship. The constitution-making process triggered by a late 2020 plebiscite however offered at least the promise of transformation of these self-limiting habits, won as it was in the street rather than the courtroom or even the legislature.

Samuel Pegge’s history of the Textus Roffensis offers the earliest account of the most important surviving manuscript of early English law. Although the accuracy of his account has not gone unchallenged, his essay nonetheless provides vital evidence concerning the early history of the manuscript as well as a vivid picture of English antiquarianism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Perhaps most importantly, Pegge’s essay contains the earliest complete biography of Elizabeth Elstob, commonly recognized as the first female scholar of Old English and a major figure in the recovery of early English legal culture. Despite its importance, Pegge’s essay is neither widely known nor easily available. The purpose of the proposed edition is to provide a fully annotated version of Pegge’s essay along with an introduction highlighting its contribution to the development of early English legal studies.

The introduction of information technology in the legal activities of state bodies of the Russian Federation reflects most in administration of justice. Use of information and technological tools in the activities of justice bodies inevitably raises the question of how the so-called “electronic justice” relates to the model of legal proceedings defined in the law, and what is the relationship between the legal principles of the administration of justice and the above-mentioned set of tools. Of greatest interest is the consideration of this issue within the framework of the economic justice model, since it is crucial in ensuring the activity of arbitration courts that the most noticeable results of introducing modern technologies have been achieved there.

This chapter takes the multiculturalization of the legal auditoria as a starting point, and starts out with a historical overview from the perspective of the University of Copenhagen. Due to lack of studies in the field, it is to a large degree based on the personal experience of the author in teaching multicultural classes (international and Erasmus students as well as immigrant Muslim students in Denmark and elsewhere) and comparing ‘extraordinary places’ such as Africa, Greenland, and China. At least at the Faculty of Law of the University of Copenhagen (UCPH), internationalization and globalization may have led to a decreased interest in comparative law among ordinary students, while it has at the same time brought new differences into the classroom. Comparative law has been linked to legal culture in (parts of) the Nordic area, and the contextual approach and a need for a more flexible methodology has been emphasized. The growth of students with an immigrant background and an experience with Muslim legal culture(s) is clearly felt at UCPH in the twenty-first century, and it might give rise to new legal and comparative questions and demands, which are at present unmet, as well as to sensitivities, which have been felt in politics and (symbolic) laws. The article suggests that a ‘pop up’ approach to concrete comparative issues, fields and topics may be one amongst other ways to secure future interest in comparative law amongst students.

Purpose: The article considers specific communicative features of the Internet which have an impact on the development of public legal awareness, particularly, that of today’s youth. Design/methodology/approach: The research methodology is based on the dialectic, historical legal, system-structural, and structure functional methods. Findings: The authors define the main threads in the use of Internet resources as effective agents for legal socialization. This approach should be primarily aimed at equipping the younger generation with skills which will enable them to use online information inculcating legal values. The paper shows how, with the rapid development of Internet communications and digital television, the public’s awareness is left defenseless in the face of “alternative” communicative influence. Originality/value: While the state and society used to directly control the communicative impact of the country’s mass media for centuries, since the beginning of the twenty-first century permissiveness and lack of control over subjects of mass communication have led to the situation when the younger generation is largely exposed to antisocial and criminal ideas and attitudes.

In this chapter, “multicultural class” is defined as “a law class consisting of students with multicultural backgrounds”. Applying this definition, I will report on one facet of the current teaching environment of comparative law in Japan, referring to the concrete example of Hitotsubashi University. Looking back at the history of modern Japanese law, we can see that Chinese, English, French, German, and American elements, besides indigenous Japanese ones, have all melted together. Japanese law is a complicated “amalgam” of Western legal cultures, including both civil law and common law cultures, and East Asian legal cultures. When we observe Japanese legal education in relation to multicultural classes, the undergraduate programmes would be the most important from a qualitative perspective. Multicultural law classes in Japan tend to consist of students from Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea. In multicultural classes of comparative law in Japan, East Asian students often notice that their laws cannot be classified properly by Western theories—even the latest ones—and come to realize their own “subjectivity” as well as the “relativity” of the concept of legal family. Education in multicultural classes can be regarded more as an “opportunity” than a “challenge” for comparative law.

In this commentary on Stewart Macaulay’s intellectual contributions, Elizabeth Mertz and Lawrence Friedman review just one part of Macaulay’s substantial legacy within legal and sociolegal studies. Within legal studies he is well known for his work on contract law, and on the relationship between private and public regulation in institutional settings more generally. However, this essay assesses his influence well beyond the field of contract law, reaching into such areas of sociolegal studies as law in popular culture, the legal profession, and interdisciplinary legal education. A consistent thread draws these interests together: Macaulay’s insistent concern with how law actually works out in real life, in other words, in social context. His approach is systematic and disciplined, based on careful engagement with the social sciences whose methods and theories shed particular light on how to study law in action. The chapter’s first section gives an overview of Macaulay’s early engagement with realist and sociolegal traditions, taking him from how business people actually deal with contract law, through the effects of bureaucracies and international differences on the administration of law on the ground, to struggles with formal law in divorce courts. The second section of the chapter reviews Macaulay’s crucial contributions to the study of “popular legal culture,” which examines how law is represented to—and understood by—everyday people. This opened the door to studying the effects of law outside of courts and legislatures, and to a broadened empirical lens for examining how social order is maintained—whether through law or in spite of it! Inspired by this broader lens, Macaulay continually pressed for law schools to incorporate a better-informed view of law-in-action within their curricula, arguing that legal educators are failing their students when they don’t reach beyond the study of formal doctrine to how law and legal careers actually work in real life. This interest in a kind of legal realism brought him, later in his career, to join a younger group of scholars who sought to revive interest surrounding law-in-action within the law schools. Hoping to reacquaint law professors and students with the considerable amount of scholarship that had been conducted within sociolegal studies in intervening decades, Macaulay and his colleagues formed the “New Legal Realism” movement, to which Macaulay again contributed a number of path-charting writings.

This is a chapter about societies in Southeast Asia where law rests on inherited tribal customs and Buddhist understanding of morals, values, the individual and law. The first unit clarifies basic terms in order not to confuse Buddhist law with the laws of Buddhist societies and then explains the complex relationship of these societies to Hindu India and its reach cultural heritage, law included. Next, a detailed legal history of Southeast Asian countries follows, concentrating on Burma, Thailand and Kambodia. The second unit is about the laws of the Mon people and their legacy on Burmese laws which is studied at some length highlighting its important sources, such as the dhammathats of Dhammavilasa, Wagaru and Manugye to be followed by basic principles of Burmese legal thinking. Next, Burmese legal institutions are scrutinised, concentrating on criminal law and family law. The next unit has the Thai-Lao legal culture in focus, first telling the story of the settlement of the Thai-Lao people, their early history and cultural heritage, customary laws included, which is followed by the analysis of the Three Seals Code, the last important compendium of Thai customary laws, with an eye on indigenous legal terms such as chōn and lamoet. The fourth unit tells the story of the Khmer law and its institutions, a curiosity because Khmers were followers of Hinduism and not Buddhism in the Middle Ages. The chapter comes to its end with a demonstration of the role Buddhist law has in contemporary Southeast Asian countries and their constitution.

This Chapter addresses the shift generated in criminal investigations by the digital turn. In Western legal culture, home and correspondence have traditionally been considered the beacons of privacy, against intrusion by public authorities. For this reason, interference into an individual’s privacy for investigative purposes has been considered legitimate only under specific and strict conditions, often regulated by international bills of rights and domestic constitutions. With the digital turn, the core of an individual’s private life is not necessarily confined to home and correspondence, any longer: personal, sensitive information is now almost always stored on digital devices, that may prove easily vulnerable to external intrusions. In this context, Law Enforcement Agencies are taking advantage of an unprecedented ‘regulation gap’, allowing for an easy and effective interference in people’s lives. Fundamental rights seem to be the basis for filling that gap, developing from an evolutive interpretation of traditional concepts, like home and correspondence.

Drawing on knowledge from the previous chapter comparative studies can facilitate harmonisation, in this context, the European Union (EU) harmonisation. Comparatists are in agreement that the European legal order and national legal orders require harmonisation projects to be tuned with the national legal cultures in order to avoid unwanted side-effects. Understanding the political process and the dynamics of legal culture are important skills of comparative law and should be employed “for easing the pain of European harmonisation”. This is especially important in the context of procedural rules, as these rules are more pertinent to the legal culture of a Member State, as they are a cultural product that reflects values and ideologies of those who enacted them. Therefore, without this ‘tuning’, the EU measures can lead to fragmentation of national legal systems—opening a gap between the “EU and Us”.

During the last few decades there has been an increasing tendency among legal professionals and jurists to look beyond their own borders. While the growing interest in foreign and transnational legal systems may well be ascribed to the dramatic growth of international transactions, this empirical parameter accounts for only part of the explanation. The other part, at least equally important, pertains to the expectation of gaining a deeper understanding of law as a broader socio-cultural phenomenon and a fresh insight into the current state and future direction one’s own legal system. Most legal professionals are situated within their own native legal culture and are conversant with the law of the land that they have grown up with and become accustomed to. They are familiar with the substantive and procedural rules of their system and may tend to assume that the solutions it provides to legal problems are the best. Sometimes they may be right. But they are likely just as often to be wrong. Being confined in one’s own legal culture can be insulating and distorting. The comparative study of foreign laws opens up avenues by which to know and assess diverse socio-legal cultures and traditions, different normative orders that shape people, institutions and society in particular historical contexts. It enables lawyers and jurists to integrate their knowledge of law into a cultural panorama extending well beyond their own country and provides them with a much broader knowledge of the possible range of solutions to legal problems than familiarity with a single legal order would allow. In this way, they can develop the standards and sharpen the analytical skills required to address the challenges they face in a rapidly changing world.

The state, a priori, is not capable to voluntarily reform itself. In this case, there is a need for a civil society that will actively use the legal instrument of lobbying. The world experience is a good evidence for this. Currently, the further development of civil society and state–legal modernization should be carried out in parallel in Ukraine. Lobbying of public interests promotes a significant correction of the legal culture and the level of social activity of the population. We mean three tendencies: first, the gradual deprivation of illusion of the paternalistic understanding of the state and the formation of its perception as a “location of competitors”—concentration of interests of various groups, formed in society, which define the content of the state policy. Second, there is the approach of the perspective of overcoming legal nihilism and spreading the persuasion of the power of law in society. Third, practices of lobbying public interests promote the generation of social leaders of a democratic style and correlate with the increase in social activity of citizens. Our contribution to this field is to implement an approach of studying the concept of lobbying public interests as a form of social leadership of a democratic style by experts in the field of law. The emphasis has been paid on the role of lobbying public interests in reforming legislation within the historical and contemporary aspects. We use the world and national dimensions of this issue, in particular, employing the example of Ukraine. Review of lobbying public interests in the context of the theory of leadership would greatly contribute to further deepening and expanding relevant research discourse. Currently, the preference is given to the study of professional lobbying, which somewhat reduces the understanding of the relations of the legal impact of citizens on state agencies in order to consolidate own interests or the interests of third parties in the enacted laws. Our results can be the answer to certain questions that arise during discussions about the feasibility to legalize lobbying in Ukraine.

Although the use of torture and other illegal means to gather evidence was prohibited in China in 1979, legislators did not begin to embrace exclusionary rules until the turn of the 21st century. However, this legislative promise has yet to be fulfilled in practice as few defendants request that illegally obtained evidence be excluded and even fewer judges approve such requests. Even if such a request is granted by the court, it remains highly unlikely that the outcome of the case will change. Such discrepancies between legislative endeavors and judicial practice might suggest that torture and other illegal means of acquiring evidence are not routine practice in China, that the Chinese culture tends to trust the government and to prefer substantive truth over procedural fairness, and places public interest above individual interests. As a result, the future of China’s exclusionary rules will depend upon transformation of China’s legal culture in addition to practical application of the corresponding changes to the law.

This introductory chapter sets out the book’s purpose and outlines the contributions which compose it. It connects the constitutionalisation of Contract law theme to questions of legal culture, thereby showing why this increasingly relevant topic in the theory and practice of Contract law ought to be approached contextually. In so doing, it further links this book’s content to the first volume of this two-book set: The Constitutional Dimension of Contract Law. A Comparative Perspective (published by Springer in 2017).

The traditional understanding of notaries in Europe almost exclusively relies on the dictionary meaning of the term notarius. Etymology and the strict meaning of that Latin word reveal the essence of the roles and functions of notaries that have traditionally existed in European legal culture from late antiquity onwards. Despite the fact that the basic idea of the notarial profession relied on the same grounds, their positions and authority or credibility of the documents they produced varied considerably throughout Europe and during different historical periods. This contribution contains an overview of the traditional and continuous roles and functions of notaries in Europe. It puts emphasis on the question whether these roles and functions referred exclusively to documentary work or whether notaries of medieval and later Europe could reliably be ascribed some other (regulatory) powers.

This chapter concerns the neutrality of the state with regard to religion, in particular to Islam. It confronts Dutch legal culture, where tolerance and equality play an important role, with the French model of laicite, or state secularism. The latter emphasizes the importance of strict state neutrality, which has resulted in a legal prohibition of Islamic headscarves at public schools and other public institutions. In the Netherlands, Muslim women are allowed to wear headscarves in public institutions, with the exception of members of the judiciary.

The decretal Ex litteris (X.1.4.2) is the starting point of the present research. Issued by Innocent III (1198), it fits into the flow of a series of decretals addressed to Denmark and Sweden in the 12th and 13th centuries and concerning cases of last wills, donations and pious bequests. The analysis of these sources provides some elements that help to evaluate the role of canon law in the definition of the law of succession in Denmark and Sweden. The ius decretalium sometimes complied with the process of configuration of the norms of the law of succession; other times it opposed customs contrasting with principles of the ius commune; in general, the ius decretalium had a propulsive role in the spreading of the culture of the ius commune in the Kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden. Local ecclesiastical hierarchies were called to put the norms elaborated in the papal Curia into practice. Through the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the ius decretalium, with the legal culture it expressed, spread out into the juridical experience with its moral principles and values, with its juridical categories and with the operative tools suitable for single cases. The final section of the essay highlights the importance of legal doctrine as it is shown in the Liber legis Scaniae of Anders Sunesen. This work is the fruit of a learned reading of the Law of Scania. The juridical culture of the author permeates the Liber, because Sunesen used the categories and the doctrines of the ius comnune to interpretate and rewrite the Lex Scaniae.

This chapter investigates medieval Sweden and its iconography of justice. The Swedish lay judges (noblemen, burghers and peasants) were without university education, and especially the commoners had few opportunities of seeing images of justice on artefacts or in secular buildings. Yet, the ecclesiastical imagery in churches was seen and understood by all, thanks to the Church’s teaching. Based on surveys of justice-related iconography in medieval Swedish and Finnish (then part of Sweden) churches, the chapter argues that the scope of these motifs was very limited. Images of the Last Judgment and Saint Michael weighing souls predominate, while some churches had murals with Moses receiving the Tables of the Law, Solomon’s justice, or truth- or justice-related Biblical verses in Latin. No images of Lady Justice (as one of the cardinal virtues) or other justice-related representations came up. Even only a fraction of the Finnish churches had a Last Judgment or Saint Michael to adorn them. However, these two images together, with images of devils tempting people to sin and perdition, were visualisations that had practical meaning in the Swedish legal culture. The practices of justice and judging were popular and daily reiterated, making each sworn oath a step towards either heaven or hell.