In the twenty-first century, as in the sixteenth, a blindfolded woman holding a sword and scales personifies justice; her blindfold conveys impartiality, her scales evenhandedness, and her sword the authority to compel obedience. In pre-democratic early modern England, Justice’s iconography was often used to legitimate the pain that the state imposed on those who broke the common peace. Simultaneously, the creative and cultural narratives within which the penal code was embedded often complicated and contradicted the state’s legally violent precepts. The relationship between legal violence and justice is at the center of this project: Must the law be violent to control violence? Does the law’s violence promote justice or disrupt it? How do the formal mechanisms of law and social control operate within the complex world of art, sermons, and literature? This project maps the late Elizabethan and early Stuart engagement with those questions. I examine a continuum of responses to legal violence embedded in the judicial institutions of Parliament, the Star Chamber, and the Queen’s Bench as well as in poetry, plays, sermons, broadsides, iconography, utopian narratives, paintings, and engravings. Often drawing on the metaphoric force of Justice’s symbols, the early modern response to legal violence was not purely semantic but strongly aesthetic, defending, mediating, reflecting, and refracting the state’s formal mechanisms of law. Reading case law along with works by Thomas More, Elizabeth I, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Edward Coke, John Donne, George Herbert, Thomas Hobbes, John Milton, and Margaret Cavendish, I trace law as a cultural practice, expressed and understood aesthetically through both codified and creative means.

This diploma thesis primarily deals with the legal frame of the restriction of legal capacity proceedings, which is contained in the Code on Special Court Proceedings (Act. No. 292/2013 Sb.) effective from 1. 1. 2014. For that purpose the thesis works with particular legal institutions of substantive law contained in the Civil Code (Act No. 89/2012 Sb.), such as legal capacity (a capacity to make juridical acts) and its restriction. The thesis is focused especially on the course of the proceedings resulting in the decision to restrict legal capacity or to accept any other appropriate measures. The author also describes two particular aspects of the proceedings, which are the duty of the court to see an individual whose legal capacity is subject to the consideration and the possible ways to make a decision by which the legal capacity is restricted. The aims of the thesis are to describe legal regulation of the restriction of legal capacity proceedings, previous and recent case law dealing with this issue and to evaluate their influence on the individuals whose legal capacity has been restricted. The author also seeks to propose a possible solution to the problems related to the restriction of legal capacity proceedings. The diploma thesis is divided into 4 main chapters. The first chapter is...

Toda vez que nova lei entra em vigor, surge na comunidade jurídica verdadeira avalanche de estudos, debates e discussões a respeito das possíveis mudanças que irá operar no ordenamento jurídico e, por conseqüência, na sociedade. O ponto de partida dessa empreitada é debruçar-se sobre o texto legal em debate, procurando determinar o que ele busca comunicar por meio de artigos de lei, ou seja, interpretá-lo. Considerando que o objeto da semiótica é o sentido que se depreende de textos e considerando que a lei manifesta-se textualmente, nada está a impedir a aplicação da teoria semiótica como método de interpretação dos textos legais. Lançando olhar semiótico em determinado texto jurídico, tomando-o como objeto e não como ponto de partida, é possível estudá-lo enquanto manifestação discursiva produtora de sentido, buscando em seus próprios elementos os efeitos de sentido que produz, as relações que estabelece com os demais textos jurídicos, o ethos que se forja na enunciação - instância produtora do sentido -, ou, como querem, \"a vontade do legislador\", \"o sentido da lei\". Nas relações que os textos jurídicos estabelecem entre si, recriando-se mutuamente, dialogando de maneira explícita ou velada, encontra-se espaço para a aplicação das teorias de linha francesa de análise do discurso, que permitem, também dentro do campo de análise exclusivamente discursiva, analisar com profundidade as condições para produção de sentido, a instância da enunciação deslocada para o interdiscurso. A entrada em vigor do Código Civil Brasileiro de 2002, revogando o Código Civil Brasileiro de 1916, dado à importância jurídica e social do tema e à sua atualidade, tornou óbvia a opção de tomar as codificações civis brasileiras como objeto de estudo, uma vez que abre a possibilidade de constatar a eficácia de tais modelos quando aplicados ao discurso jurídico e, ao mesmo tempo, propor um debate diferenciado sobre o tema, uma vez que afastado dos critérios mais comuns usados em direito para análise e interpretação das leis, que certamente abundarão nos demais estudos sobre a matéria / Every time that new law is published, appears in the legal community true avalanche of studies, debates and quarrels regarding the possible changes that will go to operate in legal system and, for consequence, in the society. The starting point of these studies is to lean over itself on the legal text in debate, being looked for to determine what it intends to communicate by means of law articles, or either, to interpret it. Considering that the object of the semiotics is the meaning through the analysis of texts and considering that the law is a text, nothing is to hinder the application of the semiotics theory as interpretation method for legal texts. Launching a semiotic look at the legal texts, taking it as an object and not as starting point, it is possible to study it while discursive manifestation, searching in its proper elements the effect of felt that it produces, the relations that establish with other legal texts, the ethos that it forges in the articulation - producing instance of the direction -, or, as one says, \"the will of the legislator\", \"the direction of the law\". In the relations that the legal texts establish between itself, recreating themselves mutually, dialoguing in explicit or guarded way, space is open for the application of the theories of French line of analysis of the speech, that allows, inside of the field of interspeech analysis to analyze with depth the conditions for direction production, the instance of the articulation dislocated for interspeech. The publication of the Brazilian Civil Code of 2002, revoking the Brazilian Civil Code of 1916, due to the legal and social importance of the subject and to its present time, became obvious the option to take civil codifications of Brazil as study object, as far as opens the possibility to evidence the effectiveness of such models when applied to legal speech and, at the same time, to consider an alternative debate on the subject, as long as moved away from the used criteria most common in legal analysis and interpretation of the laws, that certainly will proliferate in abundance into the studies on the subject.

This thesis is a study of the coerciveness of legal systems. I defend two main claims: that typical legal systems are much less coercive than most legal and political philosophers think, and that legal systems are not necessarily coercive. My defence is developed in three parts. The first is dedicated to building the necessary theoretical framework to defend the main claims of this thesis. This is where I offer a rigorous formulation of the questions that this thesis addresses and contextualise them within broader debates about the relationship between law and coercion. A substantial portion of the first part of the thesis is devoted to the development of two accounts: an account of coercion and an account of the conditions legal systems must satisfy in order to be coercive. The second part is where I advance two arguments for the claim that typical legal systems are much less coercive than it is usually thought. The first is an argument that establishes that our legal systems rarely issue conditional threats. Given that issuing conditional threats is a necessary condition for any legal system to be coercive - or so I claim in the first part of the thesis - the fact that our legal systems rarely do so undermines the view that our legal systems are pervasively coercive. The second argument is based on the reasons why citizens comply with legal mandates. I analyse the relevant empirical data and show that compliance is not frequently owed to the threat of unwelcome consequences. This should not have been the case had our legal systems been as coercive as philosophers generally think. The third part deals with the claim that legal systems are necessarily coercive. There I address some methodological concerns that this claim gives rise to and propose two arguments for viewing coerciveness as a contingent feature of our legal systems.

Toda vez que nova lei entra em vigor, surge na comunidade jurídica verdadeira avalanche de estudos, debates e discussões a respeito das possíveis mudanças que irá operar no ordenamento jurídico e, por conseqüência, na sociedade. O ponto de partida dessa empreitada é debruçar-se sobre o texto legal em debate, procurando determinar o que ele busca comunicar por meio de artigos de lei, ou seja, interpretá-lo. Considerando que o objeto da semiótica é o sentido que se depreende de textos e considerando que a lei manifesta-se textualmente, nada está a impedir a aplicação da teoria semiótica como método de interpretação dos textos legais. Lançando olhar semiótico em determinado texto jurídico, tomando-o como objeto e não como ponto de partida, é possível estudá-lo enquanto manifestação discursiva produtora de sentido, buscando em seus próprios elementos os efeitos de sentido que produz, as relações que estabelece com os demais textos jurídicos, o ethos que se forja na enunciação - instância produtora do sentido -, ou, como querem, \"a vontade do legislador\", \"o sentido da lei\". Nas relações que os textos jurídicos estabelecem entre si, recriando-se mutuamente, dialogando de maneira explícita ou velada, encontra-se espaço para a aplicação das teorias de linha francesa de análise do discurso, que permitem, também dentro do campo de análise exclusivamente discursiva, analisar com profundidade as condições para produção de sentido, a instância da enunciação deslocada para o interdiscurso. A entrada em vigor do Código Civil Brasileiro de 2002, revogando o Código Civil Brasileiro de 1916, dado à importância jurídica e social do tema e à sua atualidade, tornou óbvia a opção de tomar as codificações civis brasileiras como objeto de estudo, uma vez que abre a possibilidade de constatar a eficácia de tais modelos quando aplicados ao discurso jurídico e, ao mesmo tempo, propor um debate diferenciado sobre o tema, uma vez que afastado dos critérios mais comuns usados em direito para análise e interpretação das leis, que certamente abundarão nos demais estudos sobre a matéria / Every time that new law is published, appears in the legal community true avalanche of studies, debates and quarrels regarding the possible changes that will go to operate in legal system and, for consequence, in the society. The starting point of these studies is to lean over itself on the legal text in debate, being looked for to determine what it intends to communicate by means of law articles, or either, to interpret it. Considering that the object of the semiotics is the meaning through the analysis of texts and considering that the law is a text, nothing is to hinder the application of the semiotics theory as interpretation method for legal texts. Launching a semiotic look at the legal texts, taking it as an object and not as starting point, it is possible to study it while discursive manifestation, searching in its proper elements the effect of felt that it produces, the relations that establish with other legal texts, the ethos that it forges in the articulation - producing instance of the direction -, or, as one says, \"the will of the legislator\", \"the direction of the law\". In the relations that the legal texts establish between itself, recreating themselves mutually, dialoguing in explicit or guarded way, space is open for the application of the theories of French line of analysis of the speech, that allows, inside of the field of interspeech analysis to analyze with depth the conditions for direction production, the instance of the articulation dislocated for interspeech. The publication of the Brazilian Civil Code of 2002, revoking the Brazilian Civil Code of 1916, due to the legal and social importance of the subject and to its present time, became obvious the option to take civil codifications of Brazil as study object, as far as opens the possibility to evidence the effectiveness of such models when applied to legal speech and, at the same time, to consider an alternative debate on the subject, as long as moved away from the used criteria most common in legal analysis and interpretation of the laws, that certainly will proliferate in abundance into the studies on the subject.

In the twenty-first century, as in the sixteenth, a blindfolded woman holding a sword and scales personifies justice; her blindfold conveys impartiality, her scales evenhandedness, and her sword the authority to compel obedience. In pre-democratic early modern England, Justice’s iconography was often used to legitimate the pain that the state imposed on those who broke the common peace. Simultaneously, the creative and cultural narratives within which the penal code was embedded often complicated and contradicted the state’s legally violent precepts. The relationship between legal violence and justice is at the center of this project: Must the law be violent to control violence? Does the law’s violence promote justice or disrupt it? How do the formal mechanisms of law and social control operate within the complex world of art, sermons, and literature? This project maps the late Elizabethan and early Stuart engagement with those questions. I examine a continuum of responses to legal violence embedded in the judicial institutions of Parliament, the Star Chamber, and the Queen’s Bench as well as in poetry, plays, sermons, broadsides, iconography, utopian narratives, paintings, and engravings. Often drawing on the metaphoric force of Justice’s symbols, the early modern response to legal violence was not purely semantic but strongly aesthetic, defending, mediating, reflecting, and refracting the state’s formal mechanisms of law. Reading case law along with works by Thomas More, Elizabeth I, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Edward Coke, John Donne, George Herbert, Thomas Hobbes, John Milton, and Margaret Cavendish, I trace law as a cultural practice, expressed and understood aesthetically through both codified and creative means.

This thesis explores the imagery of underworld justice, and its associated beliefs and practices, as they developed throughout Chinese imperial history. Certain elements of the Chinese imperial legal system, including judges and trials, and laws and codes, were borrowed by the Daoists and applied to their construct of the afterlife. Underworld justice beliefs and practices flourished throughout China's imperial past, and are still influential to some devotees in today's Hong Kong. Among the various questions that are explored, this thesis examines the place of underworld justice in the legal consciousness, or everyday law, of the devotees in contemporary Hong Kong. There are two dimensions to this thesis: historical and empirical. In the historical part, I trace the development of underworld justice beliefs and practices in imperial China. I analyse some of the characteristics and rituals of underworld justice, and relate them to the imperial laws and procedures upon which they were modelled. Such tracing allows us to discern the considerable overlap between the imperial legal system and underworld justice beliefs and practices. In the empirical part, I present data gathered at mainly three City God temples in Hong Kong. Such data involve conversations with Daoist and Buddhist priests, temple keepers and devotees. The data gathered not only shed light on the general state of City God veneration in contemporary Hong Kong, but also the influence of underworld justice on the devotees' understanding of law. The data reveal that the studied devotees regard underworld justice, which administers the law of karma, as superior to the state legal system. Hence, underworld justice is not considered as an informal dispute resolution process alternative to that of the state, but as a mechanism that can intervene in court cases, due to its being more authoritative.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate and further the understanding of the interaction between law, technology and society. My original contribution to this understanding lies in an account and analysis of the process of emergence (or potential emergence) of new legal concepts and of how new and developing technologies and social responses influence that process. Specifically, the work focuses on identity, which I argue is a currently emerging legal concept, and the ways in which identity, variously understood, is impacted by new technologies and changes in the social landscape, what those impacts on identity might be, and the relationship of those changes to the representation (or otherwise) of identity in law. In the literature looking at law and technology and the legal responses to the issues of regulating technology, I critique the conceptualisation of law as “lagging behind” novel advances in technology. By drawing upon work in philosophy of technology, sociology and science and technology studies it is argued that emerging technologies have a modulating effect upon social values and moralities and that equally the modulation of society by technology and the complex dynamics of social change or resistance may also have an impact upon the law itself. In turn developments in law may be part of the ongoing process of the identification, conceptualisation, recognition and contestation over specific social issues and the way in which they should be addressed. Such dynamics and conflicts can lead to the shifting of accountability regimes and the recognition of new values, harms and interests and their own conceptualisation and justification. Studying the emergence of new legal concepts provides a link in to understanding this mutual coproducing relationship between law/regulation, technology and society. My approach to this study seeks to better understand the factors that precipitate formal recognition in law of specific concepts, an aspect of legal development that is not well considered by the existing literature in law and that in Science and Technology Studies (STS). In so doing it contributes a novel conceptualisation of an “emerging legal concept” and a conceptual analysis of identity as an emerging legal concept specifically as currently modulated by novel biotechnologies.

The problem of this investigation was to make an exploratory examination of attorney attitudes concerning legal service marketing. The study was confined to attorneys licensed to practice law in the State of Texas. Items of specific interest were the implicit and explicit marketing management philosophies of attorneys, attitudes toward various promotional and media issues with respect to legal marketing, and attitudes toward serving the interest of various publics in the practice of law.

Au stade de leur entrée en vigueur, la valeur des actes juridiques est essentiellement formelle. Cette force n'est cependant pas immuable. Divers mécanismes sont susceptibles de conférer aux actes juridiques une nouvelle valeur fonction de leur caractère (ou nature). Ce caractère repose sur une distribution des compétences matérielles entre les organes habilités à édicter des actes juridiques de portée générale. Ainsi, la prise en compte du critère matériel amène à reconsidérer la valeur des actes juridiques et de leurs dispositions. Le reclassement étudie les modalités par lesquelles les actes juridiques acquièrent une force autre que celle dont ils étaient initialement pourvus.De façon générale, la transmutation de l'acte juridique est due à une incompétence positive signalée, parfois rectifiée, mais non censurée par le juge : la délégalisation, le reclassement des « neutrons organiques », le reclassement des actes nationaux empiétant sur les compétences des institutions d'outre-mer, etc. Certains mécanismes de reclassement sont institués – la ratification des ordonnances –, d'autres sont incidents – les renvois organiques –. Les conséquences du reclassement constituent l'essentiel de l'étude. La valeur juridique détermine le régime applicable à chaque acte. Mais les instrumenta peuvent n'être que partiellement reclassés. Dans ce cas, chaque disposition est pourvue d'une force juridique propre. Après le reclassement de l'acte, l'autorité d'édiction perd sa compétence de modification et d'abrogation. Le régime contentieux de l'acte reclassé est remanié. L'étude du reclassement éclaire la distinction entre la valeur des sources formalisées et la valeur des normes juridiques, c'est-à-dire, de leurs significations prescriptives. / The instrumenta takes effect with legal force that is not immutable. Various mechanisms may give new strength to these legal acts and their provisions. These new strengths are then altered according to its distribution among the establishments empowered to enact legal measures of general application. This force is often determined by a distribution of material powers between the bodies empowered to pass legal acts of general application. This sharing is accomplished by various texts such as the Constitution or organic legislation. If the value of the acts are essentially formal at the stage of their entry into force, taking into account the material criterion this would lead to the reconsideration of their strength. Their reclassification is the process of studying the ways in which the legal acts acquire another force than they were originally filled.Generally, the transmutation of the legal act is not invalid due to incompetence, but simply corrected by the judge: the delegalisation and reclassification of neutral organic acts; the reclassification of national acts encroaching on the powers of the institutions of overseas, etc. Some reclassification mechanisms are instituted - the ratification of orders - and others are incidents - organic references - the consequences of the reclassification constitute the bulk of the study. The value determines the legal regime applicable to each act. But the Instrumenta may be only partially reclassified. In this case, each provision is provided with its own legal force. After reclassification, the enactment of authority loses its modification of skills and repeal the act (or its provisions). Sue to the act being reclassified, the litigation regime is overhauled. These theoretical implications are nonetheless not always observed in practice. The study of the reclassification and litigation that is generated confirms the distinction between the value of formal sources and the value of legal norms, in other words, their prescriptive meanings.