Chapter 6 propose the CoE pursues a more proactive, judicious, rapprochement with areas of conflict in Europe in line with the object and purpose of the organisation. This rapprochement requires political will, but can be substantially shaped by and based on the vision and associated initiatives of the Secretary General. It seeks to reflect on several legal, political or operational activities might contribute to satisfying the ordre public imperative described in Chapter 3. The objective is to begin to identify practical initiatives which could be pursued in accordance with the Statute to enable progress in a fully impartial, standards-based manner.

This chapter provides an introduction to Swiss law in general by firstly addressing the Federal structure of Switzerland including the three different levels of government and the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the Swiss Confederation. This chapter then goes to describe the judicial system in Switzerland, focusing on the Federal and Cantonal courts and the manner in which Civil law disputes are dealt with in Switzerland. This chapter thereafter explores the sources of law in the Swiss legal system, namely statutory legal sources, case law and legal doctrine

This chapter examines the impact of state formation, in the form of the rise of the civil parish, on manorial governance structures. Through examining churchwardens’ accounts, it demonstrates that these officials at Worfield and Cratfield transformed from being local managers in the parish to being important agents of the state. However, comparison of the identities of churchwardens and manorial officials reveals that, throughout this transformation, the same individuals continued to hold both manorial and parochial roles. Moreover, qualitative evidence reveals that the powers of churchwardens and manorial officials were combined to meet the same objectives by these individuals, helping them meet their obligations to the lord and the crown. This questions a model of replacement of manor by parish which has been put forward by some early modernists, instead suggesting that the local parochial elite that state formation is often argued to have created was deeply rooted in the governing structure of the medieval manor.

George Garnett explores the roles of time and history in English Common Law, and how they gave the Common Law its political salience. He begins by picking apart F.W. Maitland’s celebrated contrast between the ‘logic of evidence’, deemed to be characteristic of historical understanding, and the ‘logic of authority’, deemed to be characteristic of legal understanding. Celebrated as this statement has been, Garnett contends that the almost – but crucially not quite – antithetical relationship has never been properly understood, and that it rests in part on Maitland’s misunderstanding of how legal development and continuity worked in the period before judicial precedent became central, in the late sixteenth century. The chapter is therefore concerned both with Maitland and with the peculiar problems encountered in tracing legal development and continuity in a system which was primarily customary rather than statutory. By extension, Garnett considers the implications for explaining the use of English legal history in political thinking, particularly in the seventeenth century. Emphasis is laid on Maitland’s distaste for Sir Edward Coke, then as now, the most influential Common Law jurist.

[35.1] In a society in which it is often said that the quantity, variety and sources of law made by or under the authority of parliaments is expanding at a significant rate, resolving apparent conflict is a staple activity of the courts. Interpretative resources are drawn on to resolve such conflict.

Equitable remedies grew out of the Chancellor’s aim to put both parties in the positions that reflected the merits of the case, the parties’ circumstances and circumstances of any other persons who might be affected by his orders. The Chancellor’s judgment was always discretionary, and might call for both the plaintiff and defendant to take remedial steps. The Chancellor’s court was not shy about the need to unravel complex problems. There is a real sense in which the court did whatever was necessary to achieve an appropriate balance between the parties. That flexible attitude still informs modern equitable remedies. Remedies are important in every case extracted in this book. This chapter merely attempts to provide the flavour of equity in action, to demonstrate equity unravelling complex interactions between parties, imposing obligations on the plaintiff as well as on the defendant, and taking into account the interests of third parties. The cases exhibit many of the objectives of equitable remedies, such as compensation, disgorgement, restitution, reformation, coercion and vindication.

Mediation confidentiality can be characterised as the cornerstone of the mediation process. The legal protection of mediation evidence can emanate from common law privilege, contract and statute. If comprehensive statutory protection is available, parties may not have to protect from disclosure mediation evidence in their contract, or rely on common law privilege with its various exceptions. There is often a lacuna between the general perception that complete confidentiality applies to the participants in a mediation, and the more limited protection conferred by the courts. While a balance is required between supporting mediation and not freezing litigation or upholding illegality, this balance is not easy to achieve. The approach of making mediation confidentiality ‘absolute’ appears to create straightforward rules for an informal process, but it can prove to be either overreaching or inappropriate. While uniform laws offer consistency, experience indicates that they fail to gain sufficient traction or acceptability to have widespread impact. In protecting mediation confidentiality, it is important that courts retain the power to admit mediation evidence in appropriate cases.

While women may have partly profited from the relatively recent rights-revolution in Latin America, the pregnant sisters among them have seemingly had to sit in the back of the bus or stay off altogether. Even modest progress on abortion entitlements has ostensibly come at a high price and slow pace, perchance thanks to the opposition of an alliance of age-old and up-and-coming religious congregations. On a positive note, though, the struggle for emancipation on this front seems to be moving forward.

The pervasive stigma surrounding nonmedical substance use and substance use disorder relates to policy along multiple bidirectional pathways. To meaningfully reduce substance use stigma, we need members of the public to be able to readily identify positive examples of people benefiting from evidence-based substance use services and thriving in their daily lives. To saturate the public with these types of positive examples, public and institutional policies must shift to support widespread delivery of effective substance use interventions, including prevention, treatment, and harm reduction approaches. This chapter introduces a conceptual framework for delineating key ways in which stigma and policy relate to one another; synthesizes the evidence on what is known about the relationship between substance use stigma and policy; and discusses the evidence surrounding strategies to reduce stigma and increase support for policies benefiting people who use substances and/or experience substance use disorder.

No animal is immune from becoming a victim of human abuse and cruelty. Whether wild, or domestic, animals unfortunately often suffer at the hands of humans. This chapter explores how the criminal justice system, specifically within the confines of Colorado law, aims to hold animal abusers accountable and provides an overview of applicable statutory provisions and case examples. Written from one Colorado prosecutor’s perspective, this chapter asserts that the prosecution of animal cruelty offenders is essential for three primary reasons. First, the pursuit of criminal charges can be the impetus for the removal of the victim animal from the defendant-abuser’s custody (and thereby helps to safeguard the victim animal). Second, the levying of criminal charges sends a strong message to both the defendant-abuser and society as a whole that the proper and humane treatment of animals matters. Third, the imposition of a sentence upon conviction – whether punitive, rehabilitative, or a combination thereof – serves as an intervention and helps to ensure that the conduct is not repeated

In the eighteenth century, the Massachusetts House criminalized speech, and the general sessions courts prosecuted it, for being impolite as well as ungodly. Politeness became a core element of social order and elite white masculine identity. This study identified more than 1,600 criminal speech prosecutions in the records of justices and courts. These include any document that specified verbal threats or abuse; profane cursing or swearing; verbal noise; lying; false reports; defamatory speech; or perjury. Criminal procedure was simple and discretionary, and required widespread community participation in order to effectively prosecute impolite speech. Such prosecutions helped to define elite identity and status around matrices of sensibility, civility, and credibility. Sensibility was a moral and genteel quality not manifested by those prosecuted for noisy or abusive speech. Civility connoted pleasurable sociability that was undermined by contempt, cursing, and defamation. Credibility was the gentlemanly reputation for truthfulness, destroyed by lying, perjury, false news, and mumpers (pretended gentlemen). The Revolution replaced this regime with one based on respectability.

This chapter offers an account of the state of Roman law and Hellenistic philosophy at the beginning of the period of interaction, for which the Roman embassy of the Athenian philosophers in 155 BCE offers a convenient starting point. In the 2nd century BCE the inegalitarian and expert-guided manner of dispute resolution in Rome is secularised, with case law becoming its main product. In philosophy the most important schools that attract the attention of the Romans are the dogmatic Stoics and their sceptical adversaries, the Academics.