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.

What changes occurred and what remained the same in Chinese civil justice from the Qing to the Republic? Drawing on archival records of actual cases, this study provides a new understanding of late imperial and Republican Chinese law. It also casts a new light on Chinese law by emphasizing rural areas and by comparing the old and the new.

"The United States Code is the official codification of the general and permanent laws of the United States of America. The Code was first published in 1926, and a new edition of the code has been published every six years since 1934. The 2012 edition of the Code incorporates laws enacted through the One Hundred Twelfth Congress, Second Session, the last of which was signed by the President on January 15, 2013. It does not include laws of the One Hundred Thirteenth Congress, First Session, enacted between January 2, 2013, the date it convened, and January 15, 2013. By statutory authority this edition may be cited "U.S.C. 2012 ed." As adopted in 1926, the Code established prima facie the general and permanent laws of the United States. The underlying statutes reprinted in the Code remained in effect and controlled over the Code in case of any discrepancy. In 1947, Congress began enacting individual titles of the Code into positive law. When a title is enacted into positive law, the underlying statutes are repealed and the title then becomes legal evidence of the law. Currently, 26 of the 51 titles in the Code have been so enacted. These are identified in the table of titles near the beginning of each volume. The Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives continues to prepare legislation pursuant to 2 U.S.C. 285b to enact the remainder of the Code, on a title-by-title basis, into positive law. The 2012 edition of the Code was prepared and published under the supervision of Ralph V. Seep, Law Revision Counsel. Grateful acknowledgment is made of the contributions by all who helped in this work, particularly the staffs of the Office of the Law Revision Counsel and the Government Printing Office"--Preface.

A broad history of the western European legal tradition. Bellomo discusses the great jurists who gave common law its intellectual vigor as well as the humanist jurists of the period.