The book outlines a dramatic history of the failed liberalization of Japanese private law during the Meiji era. Once Japan overthrew the shogunate and fully opened up to contact with the world, modernization of the backward country and its fragmented customary legal system became a crucial objective of the new ruling elites. The initiated codification of law included the drafting of the first Civil Code, designed to revolutionize the traditional societal ties in Japan. The legal project, seem...

This volume showcases a collection of Empirical Legal Studies (ELS) that were conducted at five universities in the Netherlands as part of the Law Sector Plan in the period between 2019 and 2025. The contributions to this volume use both quantitative and qualitative research methods to study the effects of court decisions and legislation in various fields of law, including civil law, criminal law, administrative law and EU law. Based on these contributions, this volume examines how ELS resear...

This book celebrates the career of Jeanne Gaakeer, professor emerita of legal theory, with a focus on narrative jurisprudence and Law and Humanities. The centerpiece of this volume is Jeanne Gaakeer’s farewell lecture in which she puts forward a compelling argument for the need to view law hermeneutically. This is not merely a theoretical proposition, hermeneutics is also a practical need of the art of judging. A narrative understanding of judicial practices is crucial to bring justice to p...

Far-reaching changes are presently occurring in legal systems. The rule of law is becoming less self-evident in several countries worldwide. New types of crime – like organizational crime, human trafficking, money laundering and various types of online crime – are on the rise. Several miscarriages of justice have been detected worldwide, creating an imperative for in-depth analysis of their potential causes. The involvement of disciplines other than the legal in the court system is becomi...

By the second century AD the Roman empire had grown into a vast multilingual and pluriform empire. Unlike in the Roman West, where the lingua franca was Latin, the inhabitants of the Roman East predominantly spoke Greek. From a legal perspective, these inhabitants of the Roman East lived in a legal culture not dominated by Roman law, but by norms from an Hellenistic legal culture. To resolve their legal controversies, these inhabitants of the Roman East, sometimes, asked advice from renowned ...

This liber amicorum is dedicated to Prof. dr. Hildegard Schneider who has shaped the study of European migration and asylum law and was a pioneer in fighting against legal and practical barriers to free movement. Hildegard’s profound impact on the faculty of law of Maastricht University is well noticeable due to her multidisciplinary research and teaching initiatives, the creation of several multidisciplinary institutes and because of her early emphasis on the societal relevance of legal re...

The pace at which media changes and new technologies are developed is unprecedented. Attempting to keep up with these evolutions, international and supranational organisations adopt legislative and non-legislative documents in order to clarify the roles, obligations and rights of governments, private actors and citizens. This codex offers students and practitioners an overview of the most relevant legislation and policy documents that have been adopted by the United Nations, the Council of Eu...