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This paper explores select themes relating to legal culture in European criminal justice post-Brexit by focusing on aspects of the common law trial process in the Irish courts. The incorporation of EU law and the ECHR within the domestic legal order has necessitated the nurturing of a constructive co-existence with the country's longer standing constitutional and common law traditions. Ireland and the United Kingdom have collaborated closely as common law Member States and the departure of the UK from the EU will affect Ireland's position in EU criminal justice in many and varied ways. Using the examples of victim participation in criminal trials and pre-trial access of suspects to legal assistance, the paper seeks to illuminate trends of consonance and dissonance in Ireland's relationship with European law. Drawing on the shared commitment to the protection of fundamental rights in the EU and the ECHR, the discussion reflects on some of the longer term implications of Brexit for the common law presence in European criminal legal culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Issue considers the situated and contextualized development of socio-legal, or law and society, scholarship within two materially different legal and academic cultures, namely Germany and the United Kingdom, with a view to achieving a better understanding of why and how such differences in understanding and practice have arisen. The contributions are grouped into three themes. The first reflects upon the influence of institutional contexts and scholarly traditions in terms of the development of those approaches that come under the banner of socio-legal studies. The second features contributions that adopt a comparative perspective in terms of selected areas of law, pointing to notably different approaches taken in Germany and the UK, and considering the development of these respective situations. The third looks at the key contemporary trends, theoretical applications, and methodological approaches taken within both countries' socio-legal academic contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how legal culture influences judicial interpretation of environmental legislation, which in turn affects how effectively public authorities are legally held to account for environmental decisions. Analysis of initial case law from the UK's transposition of the EU Environmental Impact Assessment Directive shows English administrative courts interpreting the directive so restrictively as to undermine the purpose of the legislation itself. It will be suggested that the political sensitivity and legal complexity of administrative law, combined with the legally challenging nature of environmental problems, contribute to a legal culture of narrow interpretation. In contrast, the purposive and effectiveness-orientated approach of EU legal culture facilitated the House of Lord's later reinterpretation of the Directive, allowing increased judicial engagement in the challenge of environmental law. This article therefore contends that ensuring effective environmental law after Brexit will require a reframing of the legal culture of administrative law itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early modern England, bestiality was tied to cultural and social perceptions and realities and (alongside other sexual behaviours viewed as lewd or subversive of the natural order) had a powerful cultural resonance. This paper investigates early modern English attitudes (social, religious, and cultural) to bestiality and argues that, while contemporary pamphlet literature, sermons, broadsides, and legal texts strongly condemned bestiality and hint that occurrences of it were rife, prosecutions for the crime were relatively rare and this asymmetry may be explained by analyzing the political atmosphere at specific moments when bestiality was legislated against. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]