At the very beginning of the history of the covenant idea, human beings were conceived as entering into a morally grounded and informal pact with God. Politically, this pact, or covenant, involves the coming together of basically equal humans who consent with one another through a morally binding pact, setting the partners on the road to a new task. As a theological and political concept, covenant is designed to keep the peace in the face of conflicting human interests, needs, and demands. This pioneering continuation of Daniel J. Elazar's work is concerned with political uses of the idea of covenant and the political arrangements that flow from it. Covenant and Commonwealth is the second in a series of volumes exploring the covenantal tradition in Western politics. The first, Covenant and Polity in Biblical Israel, analyzed how the Bible set forth ideas of covenant in ancient Israel and the Jewish political tradition. In this volume, those themes are taken a step further to examine covenant as a political idea and tradition along with the culture and behavior that they produced. The book focuses on the struggle in Europe to produce a Christian covenantal commonwealth, a struggle that climaxed in the Reformed Protestantism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It also briefly examines covenant and hierarchy in Islam and other premodern polities that shape our present. The third volume in this series will examine the progressive secularization of the covenant idea in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Covenant and Commonwealth is a fundamental and original contribution to the scholarship of Western civilization. It ranks with commensurate efforts of Ferdinand Braudel and Joseph Needham. As such it will be of deep interest to historians, social scientists, and theologians of all persuasions.

In Commonwealth and Covenant Marcia Pally argues that in order to address current socioeconomic problems, we need not more economic formulas but rather a better understanding of how the world is set up -- an ontology of how we and the world work. Without this, good proposals that arise lack political will and go unimplemented. Pally describes our basic setup as "separability-amid-situatedness" or "distinction-amid-relation." Though we are all unique individuals, we become our singular selves through our relations and responsibilities to the people and environments around us. Pally argues that our culture's overemphasis on "separability" -- individualism run amok -- results in greed, adversarial and deceitful political discourse and chicanery, resource grabbing, broken relationships, and anomie. Maintaining that separability and situatedness can and must be considered together in public policy, Pally draws on intellectual history, philosophy, and -- especially -- historic Christian and Jewish theologies of relationality to construct a new framework for addressing present economic and political ills.

Modernity as the fruit of the Enlightenment is a theme that has been explored and analyzed for decades, both in Western and non-Western academia. There is strong consensus that one of the major foundations of this now three-hundred-year-old "project" is the understanding of the human individual as an autonomous actor, one capable of enormous discoveries through the application of rational intellect in his discovery and analysis of the natural world. It seems, however, that the Enlightenment framework, which has dominated modernity, could contain the seeds of its own undoing, and that this is evident in the loss of trust in civil society. This raises a question: Does modernity as the fruit of Enlightenment contain the elements necessary to deal with the loss of trust, both interpersonal and institutional, facing Western liberal democracy? If not, what possibilities does the Enlightenment framework offer as a corrective to human autonomy and its social consequences, especially for civil society, and its foundation in trust? If a new framework for human social relationships can be established, it would not need to discard the gains of the past centuries of modernity, but would serve as a corrective to it, both for cultures strongly shaped by Western modernity and for cultures that are seeking or are pressured to reach modernity at all costs. This framework would need to address both the communal (the nature of society) and the singular (the individual) without sacrificing either to the other. This work represents a fresh look at the societal consequences of the Enlightenment and proposes an alternative framework in terms of covenant.

Establishes the intellectual foundations of a new movement in American thought: communitarianism. Emerging in part as a response to the excesses of American individualism, communitarianism seeks to restore the balance between individual rights and social responsibilities.

The first textbook to address land law as it relates to the Commonwealth Caribbean, it encompasses all areas covered in an undergraduate course on the law of real property in the Caribbean. Primary and secondary source material on the law of property in the whole of the Commonwealth Caribbean is made easily and readily accessible to law students and legal practitioners. Statutory provisions from all States are discussed in relation to each topic and the similarities and differences are highlighted. Extensive discussion and analysis of the decisions of the courts in the region are also included alongside an in-depth analysis and critical discussion of English case law that is relevant to the Caribbean. The examination of whether or not English case law should be followed in the region is relevant and interesting to anyone studying or practising law in other Commonwealth jurisdictions. Essential reading for undergraduate law students in the Caribbean, this text will also prove useful to those studying for the certificate of proficiency in the practice of law in the Commonwealth Caribbean, while the footnote references to statutory provisions are an invaluable aid to any researcher of Caribbean land law.

This 5th edition of Commonwealth Caribbean Property Law sets out clearly and concisely the central principles of the law of real property in the region, guiding students through this core but often complex subject area. Fully revised and updated to include important new case law from the various Caribbean jurisdictions, the book provides comprehensive coverage of the key topics studied by undergraduates, including co-ownership, leaseholds, condominium, restrictive covenants, easements, mortgages and adverse possession. Emphasis is on those areas that are most commonly litigated in the region, and the book contains discussion of, or reference to, many unreported cases. This new edition features expanded coverage of freehold estates, a glossary of key terms, and a new question and answer section at the end of the book. Commonwealth Caribbean Property Law is essential reading for LLB students in Caribbean universities and students on CAPE Law courses and, with its analysis of the substantive laws across several jurisdictions, it will continue to be an invaluable reference tool for legal practitioners in the region.