This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. This innovative book explores the role of utopian thinking in law and politics, including alternative forms of social engineering, such as technology and architecture. Building on Levitas’ Utopia as Method, the topic of utopia is addressed within the book from a multidisciplinary perspective.

This Handbook provides an accessible overview of the different methods, approaches and theories which can be used to enrich labour law research. Drawing on cutting-edge research projects, leading scholars present insights and reflections on the past, present and future of labour law scholarship.

A standard legal resource since its first edition in 1978, this matchless book has proven itself the ideal overview of Dutch law for foreign lawyers. This Sixth Edition fully updates its systematic description of the legal sources, institutions, and concepts in all major fields of law. Recent developments covered include the progressive implementation of standards set by international conventions, the reorganization of the judiciary, the statute on environmental law, and the (re)codification of private international law. The continuing influence of European law is evident in many fields, perhaps most notably in family law. The various chapters are written by experts – scholars and lawyers – in particular fields, and provide an authoritative overview of each field. The historical sources of Dutch law are discussed, as well as Dutch legal culture, legal philosophy, judicial organization, legal education, and the legal profession. These chapters are followed by introductions to essential issues of private and public law and labour law. The last chapter examines financial law. The only resource of its kind available, this book is unmatched as a thorough guide to further research. It offers practitioners, particularly foreign lawyers, a quick and reliable way into any area of Dutch law that they may be required to research. It will also be of great value to comparatists (especially those studying the influence of European law on national legal systems), scholars, and students. Like previous editions, the Sixth Edition has been prepared under the auspices of the Netherlands Comparative Law Association.

Neo-Calvinism critically advances Reformed orthodoxy for the sake of modern life. Birthed in the Netherlands at the turn to the twentieth century, initiated by Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) and Herman Bavinck (1854-1921), it argued that a life before God entailed the leavening of faith over all human existence. While the movement originated in the Netherlands, the tradition now has a global reach, with practitioners and thinkers applying its insights in diverse ways and in their own contexts. This handbook is a genealogical introduction to this lively and modern branch of the Reformed tradition, with contributors that reflect its global reach. Its four sections chart the theological roots, important original figures, historical contours and the contemporary influence of neo-Calvinism across a diversity of fields.

Bringing together ten utopian works that mark important points in the history and an evolution in social and political philosophies, this book not only reflects on the texts and their political philosophy and implications, but also, their architecture and how that architecture informs the political philosophy or social agenda that the author intended. Each of the ten authors expressed their theory through concepts of community and utopian architecture, but each featured an architectural solution at the centre of their social and political philosophy, as none of the cities were ever built, they have remained as utopian literature. Some of the works examined are very well-known, such as Tommaso Campanella’s Civitas Solis, while others such as Joseph Michael Gandy’s Designs for Cottages, are relatively obscure. However, even with the best known works, this volume offers new insights by focusing on the architecture of the cities and how that architecture represents the author’s political philosophy. It reconstructs the cities through a 3-D computer program, ArchiCAD, using Artlantis to render. Plans, sections, elevations and perspectives are presented for each of the cities. The ten cities are: Filarete - Sforzina; Albrecht Dürer - Fortified Utopia; Tommaso Campanella - The City of the Sun; Johann Valentin Andreae - Christianopolis; Joseph Michael Gandy - An Agricultural Village; Robert Owen - Villages of Unity and Cooperation; James Silk Buckingham - Victoria; Robert Pemberton - Queen Victoria Town; King Camp Gillette - Metropolis; and Bradford Peck - The World a Department Store. Each chapter considers the work in conjunction with contemporary thought, the political philosophy and the reconstruction of the city. Although these ten cities represent over 500 years of utopian and political thought, they are an interlinked thread that had been drawn from literature of the past and informed by contemporary thought and society. The book is structured in two parts:

This book critiques the use of algorithms to pre-empt personal choices in its profound effect on markets, democracy and the rule of law.

Mulford Sibley, for many years a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, used to frequently quote Plato's complaint in the Laws "that man never legislates but accidents of all sorts . . . legislate for us in all sorts of ways. The violence of war and the hard necessity of poverty are constantly overturning governments and changing laws." But even if most legislation is a result of accident, Mulford Sibley holds out to us the idea that politics is a sphere of human freedom, in which men and women can collectively determine the conditions of their common life.

This book presents and engages the world-building capacity of legal theory through cultural legal studies of science and speculative fictions. In these studies, the contributors take seriously the legal world building of science and speculative fiction to reveal, animate and critique legal wisdom: juris-prudence. Following a common approach in cultural legal studies, the contributors engage directly, and in detail, with specific cultural ‘texts’, novels, television, films and video games in order to explore a range of possible legal futures. The book is organized in three parts: first, the contextualisation of science and speculative fiction as jurisprudence; second, the temporality of law and legal theory and third, the analysis of specific science and speculative fictions. Throughout, the contributors reveal the way in which law as nomos builds normative universes through the narration of a future. This book will appeal to scholars and students with interests in legal theory, cultural legal studies, law and the humanities and law and literature.

The legal and technical rules governing flows of information are out of balance, argues Julie E. Cohen in this original analysis of information law and policy. Flows of cultural and technical information are overly restricted, while flows of personal information often are not restricted at all. The author investigates the institutional forces shaping the emerging information society and the contradictions between those forces and the ways that people use information and information technologies in their everyday lives. She then proposes legal principles to ensure that people have ample room for cultural and material participation as well as greater control over the boundary conditions that govern flows of information to, from, and about them.