Legal Research

This Week's Highlighted Acquisitions

Halliday, Terence C. and Bruce G. Carruthers. Bankrupt : global lawmaking and systemic financial crisis.
Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, c2009. Call number: K1375 .H35 2009

Publisher's Description:
The Asian Financial Crisis dramatically illustrated the vulnerability of financial markets in emerging, transitional, and advanced economies. In response, international organizations insisted that legal reforms could help protect markets from financial breakdowns. Sitting at the nexus between the legal system and the market, corporate bankruptcy law ensures that the casualties of capitalism are treated in an orderly way.

Halliday and Carruthers show how global actors--including the IMF, World Bank, UN, and international professional associations--developed comprehensive norms for corporate bankruptcy laws and how national policymakers responded in turn. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in China, Indonesia and Korea, the authors reveal how national policymakers contested and negotiated domestic laws in the context of global pressures. The first study of its kind, this book offers a theory of legal change to explain why global/local tensions produce implementation gaps. Through its analysis of globalization, this book has lessons for international organizations and developing and transition economies the world over.

Artz, Lilian and Dee Smythe, eds. Should we consent? : rape law reform in South Africa.
Cape Town : Juta, c2008. Call number: KTL4202 .S56x 2008

Publisher's Description:
For more than a decade, South Africans have been advocating a reform of the country's laws on sexual offences. South Africa has one of the highest levels of reported rape in the world, and legislative reform was seen as an essential step towards shifting the understanding of rape and its treatment within the criminal justice system. Since 1996 the activism has focused on the South African Law Reform Commission's investigation into sexual offences, and the parliamentary process, which culminated at the end of 2007 in the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act.

Many of the authors of Should We Consent? were involved in substantive legal submissions, research and legislative drafting and promoting changes to the law to provide rape victims with effective redress and protection. Drawing on a body of empirical, social and legal scholarship, this unique text charts the critical social and legal debates and jurisprudential developments that took place during the rape law reform process. This book also provides important insights into the engagement of civil society with law reform and includes thoughtful and contemporary discussions on topics such as 'defining' rape, HIV, sexual offences against children and sentencing of sexual offenders.

Full post as published by LexLibris on June 16, 2009 (boomark / email).