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Courts, Codes, and Custom

Courts, Codes, and Custom Legal Tradition and State Policy toward International Human Rights and Environmental Law

Author: Dana Zartner
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA
ISBN: 9780199362103
Published In: May 2014
Format: Hardback , 352 pages
Jurisdiction: International ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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A novel cultural-institutional theory of legal tradition to explain state policy toward international human rights and environmental law.
Brings in the concept of legal culture to a comprehensive study of state policy toward norms.

Courts, Codes, and Custom addresses the question of why some states recognize and comply with international human rights and environmental law, while others do not. To address this question, Dana Zartner has developed a novel cultural-institutional theory to explain the manner in which a state's domestic legal tradition shapes policy through the process of internalization. A state's legal tradition—the cultural and institutional factors that shape attitudes about the law, appropriate standards of behavior, and the legal process—is the key mechanism by which international law becomes recognized, accepted, and internalized in the domestic legal framework. Legal tradition shapes not only perceptions about law, but also provides the lens through which policy-makers view state interests, directly and indirectly influencing state policy.

The book disaggregates the concept of legal tradition and examines how the individual cultural and institutional characteristics present within a state's domestic legal tradition facilitate or hinder the internalization of international law and, subsequently, shape state policy. In turn it explains both the differences in international law recognition across legal traditions, as well as the variance among states within legal traditions. To test this theory Zartner compares case studies within five of the main legal traditions in the world today: common law (U.S. and Australia), civil law (Germany and Turkey), Islamic law (Egypt and Saudi Arabia), mixed traditions (India and Kenya), and East Asian law (China and Japan). She addresses the differences among legal traditions as well as between states within the same tradition; the important role that legal culture and history play in shaping contemporary attitudes about law; and similarities and differences in state policy towards human rights law versus environmental law.

Readership: Students and scholars of political science, international relations, sociology of law, comparative politics, comparative law, international law, human rights, environmental law and politics.

Acknowledgements
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter 2: Constructing the Cornerstone: The Role of Legal Tradition in Shaping State Policy Toward International Law
Chapter 3: The Common Law: Legal Culture, Courts, and the Continuity of Policy in the United States and Australia
Chapter 4: The Civil Law: History and Nationalism in Germany and Turkey
Chapter 5: Religious Legal Traditions: The Role of Islam in Shaping Policy in Egypt and Saudi Arabia
Chapter 6: Mixed Legal Traditions: The Impact of Custom and Colonialism in India and Kenya
Chapter 7: East Asian Legal Tradition: Confucius, Communism, and Community in China and Japan
Chapter 8: Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Dana Zartner is an Assistant Professor in the International Studies Program and Adjunct Professor in the School of Law at the University of San Francisco.