Reforming Law Reform

Reforming Law Reform PDF Author: Michael Tilbury
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888208241
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Get Book

Book Description
As a special administrative region of China, Hong Kong has its own legal system rooted in the common law. Reforms to this system take into account Hong Kong’s unique conditions as an international city and draw widely on practices around the world. Since 1980, recommendations from a Law Reform Commission, chaired by the Secretary for Justice, have resulted in comprehensive revisions in key areas of law, ranging from commercial arbitration and interception of communications to divorce and copyright. Recently, however, the government has been slow to act on the Commission’s recommendations. Questions have also arisen about whether the Commission — under-resourced, part-time and government-led — can really meet the needs of an increasingly sophisticated society. Is law reform itself also in need of reform? This collection of essays by distinguished experts from around the world seeks answers to the question. The book explores the varied experience of law reform in Hong Kong and other common law jurisdictions and makes recommendations for strengthening the process of law reform both in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Michael Tilbury is Kerry Holdings Professor in Private Law in the Faculty of Law, the University of Hong Kong. Simon N. M. Young is a professor in the Faculty of Law, the University of Hong Kong and was formerly Director of the Centre for Comparative and Public Law. Ludwig Ng is a partner in ONC Lawyers, Hong Kong. "This important book should be a wake-up call to lawmakers in Hong Kong and beyond on the urgent need for effective law reform. It is especially important for Hong Kong whose competitive advantage is being harmed by institutional paralysis and official lethargy. The editors’ modest recommendations deserve urgent action by Hong Kong’s governors to bring up to date its archaic and outmoded legislation." —Lord Lester of Herne Hill, QC "Law reform is essential, especially in these fast-changing times. The law reform agency plays an important role in this process. This work examines the experience of the agency in Hong Kong and elsewhere and discusses how its effectiveness can be enhanced. This valuable contribution deserves to be read." —The Hon. Andrew Li, Chief Justice of Hong Kong, 1997–2010 "This is probably the first collection in Hong Kong of writings on law reform, examining clinically how law reform is, and can be processed with reference to other law reform institutions, in the pursuit of effectively meeting the often shifting needs of society and economy. Important chapters on reform of different areas of law are also included in this book. The editors and contributors are to be congratulated for masterminding such an admirable source of information and inspirational ideas." —Stephen Kai-yin Wong, Barrister, Secretary of the Law Reform Commission of Hong Kong "In this collection of essays the learned editors—Tilbury, Young and Ng—have drawn together an outstanding group of authors, representing many years of experience in law reform across the common law world. From the UK, Canada, Australia and Hong Kong, the insights of the authors are both reflective and forward-looking, providing a rich resource towards 'reforming law reform'." —Professor Rosalind Croucher, President, Australian Law Reform Commission

Reforming Law Reform

Reforming Law Reform PDF Author: Michael Tilbury
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888208241
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Get Book

Book Description
As a special administrative region of China, Hong Kong has its own legal system rooted in the common law. Reforms to this system take into account Hong Kong’s unique conditions as an international city and draw widely on practices around the world. Since 1980, recommendations from a Law Reform Commission, chaired by the Secretary for Justice, have resulted in comprehensive revisions in key areas of law, ranging from commercial arbitration and interception of communications to divorce and copyright. Recently, however, the government has been slow to act on the Commission’s recommendations. Questions have also arisen about whether the Commission — under-resourced, part-time and government-led — can really meet the needs of an increasingly sophisticated society. Is law reform itself also in need of reform? This collection of essays by distinguished experts from around the world seeks answers to the question. The book explores the varied experience of law reform in Hong Kong and other common law jurisdictions and makes recommendations for strengthening the process of law reform both in Hong Kong and elsewhere. Michael Tilbury is Kerry Holdings Professor in Private Law in the Faculty of Law, the University of Hong Kong. Simon N. M. Young is a professor in the Faculty of Law, the University of Hong Kong and was formerly Director of the Centre for Comparative and Public Law. Ludwig Ng is a partner in ONC Lawyers, Hong Kong. "This important book should be a wake-up call to lawmakers in Hong Kong and beyond on the urgent need for effective law reform. It is especially important for Hong Kong whose competitive advantage is being harmed by institutional paralysis and official lethargy. The editors’ modest recommendations deserve urgent action by Hong Kong’s governors to bring up to date its archaic and outmoded legislation." —Lord Lester of Herne Hill, QC "Law reform is essential, especially in these fast-changing times. The law reform agency plays an important role in this process. This work examines the experience of the agency in Hong Kong and elsewhere and discusses how its effectiveness can be enhanced. This valuable contribution deserves to be read." —The Hon. Andrew Li, Chief Justice of Hong Kong, 1997–2010 "This is probably the first collection in Hong Kong of writings on law reform, examining clinically how law reform is, and can be processed with reference to other law reform institutions, in the pursuit of effectively meeting the often shifting needs of society and economy. Important chapters on reform of different areas of law are also included in this book. The editors and contributors are to be congratulated for masterminding such an admirable source of information and inspirational ideas." —Stephen Kai-yin Wong, Barrister, Secretary of the Law Reform Commission of Hong Kong "In this collection of essays the learned editors—Tilbury, Young and Ng—have drawn together an outstanding group of authors, representing many years of experience in law reform across the common law world. From the UK, Canada, Australia and Hong Kong, the insights of the authors are both reflective and forward-looking, providing a rich resource towards 'reforming law reform'." —Professor Rosalind Croucher, President, Australian Law Reform Commission

Reforming the Reform

Reforming the Reform PDF Author: Susan L. Moffitt
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226825854
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
An expansive study of the problems encountered by educational leaders in pursuit of reform, and how these issues cyclically translate into future topics of reform. School reform is almost always born out of big dreams and well-meaning desires to change the status quo. But between lofty reform legislation and the students whose education is at stake, there are numerous additional policies and policymakers who determine how reforms operate. Even in the best cases, school reform initiatives can perpetuate problems created by earlier reforms or existing injustices, all while introducing new complications. In Reforming the Reform, political scientist Susan L. Moffitt, education policy scholar Michaela Krug O’Neill, and the late policy and education scholar David K. Cohen take on a wide-ranging examination of the many intricacies of school reform. With a particular focus on policymakers in the spaces between legislation and implementation, such as the countless school superintendents and district leaders tasked with developing new policies in the unique context of their district or schools, the authors identify common problems that arise when trying to operationalize ambitious reform ideas. Their research draws on more than 250 interviews with administrators in Tennessee and California (chosen as contrasts for their different political makeup and centralization of the education system) and is presented here alongside survey data from across the United States as well as archival data to demonstrate how public schools shoulder enormous responsibilities for the American social safety net. They provide a general explanation for problems facing social policy reforms in federalist systems (including healthcare) and offer pathways forward for education policy in particular.

Reforming the City

Reforming the City PDF Author: Ariane Liazos
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231549377
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 237

Get Book

Book Description
Most American cities are now administered by appointed city managers and governed by councils chosen in nonpartisan, at-large elections. In the early twentieth century, many urban reformers claimed these structures would make city government more responsive to the popular will. But on the whole, the effects of these reforms have been to make citizens less likely to vote in local elections and local governments less representative of their constituents. How and why did this happen? Ariane Liazos examines the urban reform movement that swept through the country in the early twentieth century and its unintended consequences. Reformers hoped to make cities simultaneously more efficient and more democratic, broadening the scope of what local government should do for residents while also reconsidering how citizens should participate in their governance. However, they increasingly focused on efficiency, appealing to business groups and compromising to avoid controversial and divisive topics, including the voting rights of African Americans and women. Liazos weaves together wide-ranging nationwide analysis with in-depth case studies. She offers nuanced accounts of reform in five cities; details the activities of the National Municipal League, made up of prominent national reformers and political scientists; and analyzes quantitative data on changes in the structures of government in over three hundred cities. Reforming the City is an important study for American history and political development, with powerful insights into the relationships between scholarship and reform and between the structures of city government and urban democracy.

Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage

Staging Reform, Reforming the Stage PDF Author: Huston Diehl
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501734083
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Get Book

Book Description
Huston Diehl sees Elizabethan and Jacobean drama as both a product of the Protestant Reformation—a reformed drama—and a producer of Protestant habits of thought—a reforming drama. According to Diehl, the popular London theater, which flourished in the years after Elizabeth reestablished Protestantism in England, rehearsed the religious crises that disrupted, divided, energized, and in many respects revolutionized English society. Drawing on the insights of symbolic anthropologists, Diehl explores the relationship between the suppression of late medieval religious cultures, with their rituals, symbols, plays, processions, and devotional practices, and the emergence of a popular theater under the Protestant monarchs Elizabeth and James. Questioning long-held assumptions that the reformed religion was inherently antitheatrical, she shows how the reformers invented new forms of theater, even as they condemned a Roman Catholic theatricality they associated with magic, sensuality, and duplicity. Using as her central texts the tragedies of Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, and John Webster, Diehl maintains that plays of the period reflexively explore their own power to dazzle, seduce, and deceive. Employing a reformed rhetoric that is both powerful and profoundly disturbing, they disrupt their own stunning spectacles. Out of this creative tension between theatricality and antitheatricality emerges a distinctly Protestant aesthetic.

Reforming the Public Sector

Reforming the Public Sector PDF Author: Giovanni Tria
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815722885
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book

Book Description
Many countries are still struggling to adapt to the broad and unexpected effects of modernization initiatives. As changes take shape, governments are challenged to explore new reforms. The public sector is now characterized by profound transformation across the globe, with ramifications that are yet to be interpreted. To convert this transformation into an ongoing state of improvement, policymakers and civil service leaders must learn to implement and evaluate change. This book is an important contribution to that end. Reforming the Public Sector presents comparative perspectives of government reform and innovation, discussing three decades of reform in public sector strategic management across nations. The contributors examine specific reform-related issues including the uses and abuses of public sector transparency, the "Audit Explosion," and the relationship between public service motivation and job satisfaction in Europe. This volume will greatly aid practitioners and policymakers to better understand the principles underpinning ongoing reforms in the public sector. Giovanni Tria, Giovanni Valotti, and their cohorts offer a scientific understanding of the main issues at stake in this arduous process. They place the approach to public administration reform in a broad international context and identify a road map for public management. Contributors include: Michael Barzelay, Nicola Bellé, Andrea Bonomi Savignon, Geert Bouckaert, Luca Brusati, Paola Cantarelli, Denita Cepiku, Francesco Cerase, Luigi Corvo, Maria Cucciniello, Isabell Egger-Peitler, Paolo Fedele, Gerhard Hammerschmid, Mario Ianniello, Elaine Ciulla Kamarck, Irvine Lapsley, Peter Leisink, Mariannunziata Liguori, Renate Meyer, Greta Nasi, James L. Perry, Christopher Pollitt, Adrian Ritz, Raffaella Saporito, MariaFrancesca Sicilia, Ileana Steccolini, Bram Steijn, Wouter Vandenabeele, and Montgomery Van Wart.

Reforming Chile

Reforming Chile PDF Author: Patrick Barr-Melej
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807875619
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 307

Get Book

Book Description
Highlighting the crucial yet largely overlooked role played by society's middle layers in the historical development of Latin America, Patrick Barr-Melej provides the first comprehensive analysis of the rise of Chile's middle-class reform movement and its profound impact on that country's cultural and political landscapes. He shows how a diverse collection of middle-class intellectuals, writers, politicians, educators, and bureaucrats forged a "progressive" nationalism and advanced an ambitious cultural-political project between the 1890s and 1940s. Together, reformers challenged the power of elite groups and sought to quell working-class revolutionary activism as they endeavored to democratize culture and fortify liberal democracy. Using sources that range from archival documents and newspapers to short stories, novels, and school textbooks, Barr-Melej examines the reform movement's cultural ideas and their political applications, especially as they were articulated in the areas of literature and public education. In the process, he provides a new framework for understanding Chile's cultural and political evolution, as well as the complicated place of the middle class in a society experiencing the swift changes inherent in capitalist modernization.

Reforming Higher Education

Reforming Higher Education PDF Author: Christine Musselin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400770286
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Get Book

Book Description
This book analyzes the reforms that led to a differentiated landscape of higher education systems after university practices and governance were considered poorly adapted to contemporary settings and to their new missions. This has led to a growing institutional differentiation in many higher education systems. This differentiation has certainly contributed to making the institutional landscape more diverse across and within higher education systems. This book covers this diversity. Each part corresponds to a different but complementary way of looking at reforms and highlights what can be learnt on specific cases by adopting a specific perspective. The first part analyzes the ongoing reforms and their evolution, identifies their internal contradictions, as well as the redefinitions and reorientations they experience, and reveals the ideas, representations, ideologies and theories on which they are built. The second part includes comparison between countries but also other comparative perspectives such as how one reform is developed in different regions of the same country, as well as how comparable reforms are declined to different sectors. The last part addresses the impact of the reforms. What is known about the effectiveness of such instruments on higher education systems? This part shows that reforms provoke new power games and reconfigure power relations.

Reforming Women

Reforming Women PDF Author: Lisa J. Shaver
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822986469
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book

Book Description
In Reforming Women, Lisa Shaver locates the emergence of a distinct women’s rhetoric and feminist consciousness in the American Female Moral Reform Society. Established in 1834, the society took aim at prostitution, brothels, and the lascivious behavior increasingly visible in America’s industrializing cities. In particular, female moral reformers contested the double standard that overlooked promiscuous behavior in men while harshly condemning women for the same offense. Their ardent rhetoric resonated with women across the country. With its widely-read periodical and auxiliary societies representing more than 50,000 women, the American Female Moral Reform Society became the first national reform movement organized, led, and comprised solely by women. Drawing on an in-depth examination of the group’s periodical, Reforming Women delineates essential rhetorical tactics including women’s strategic use of gender, the periodical press, anger, presence, auxiliary societies, and institutional rhetoric—tactics women’s reform efforts would use throughout the nineteenth century. Almost two centuries later, female moral reformers’ rhetoric resonates today as our society continues to struggle with different moral expectations for men and women.

Reforms at Risk

Reforms at Risk PDF Author: Eric M. Patashnik
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400828856
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Get Book

Book Description
Reforms at Risk is the first book to closely examine what happens to sweeping and seemingly successful policy reforms after they are passed. Most books focus on the politics of reform adoption, yet as Eric Patashnik shows here, the political struggle does not end when major reforms become enacted. Why do certain highly praised policy reforms endure while others are quietly reversed or eroded away? Patashnik peers into some of the most critical arenas of domestic-policy reform--including taxes, agricultural subsidies, airline deregulation, emissions trading, welfare state reform, and reform of government procurement--to identify the factors that enable reform measures to survive. He argues that the reforms that stick destroy an existing policy subsystem and reconfigure the political dynamic. Patashnik demonstrates that sustainable reforms create positive policy feedbacks, transform institutions, and often unleash the ''creative destructiveness'' of market forces. Reforms at Risk debunks the argument that reforms inevitably fail because Congress is prey to special interests, and the book provides a more realistic portrait of the possibilities and limits of positive change in American government. It is essential reading for scholars and practitioners of U.S. politics and public policy, offering practical lessons for anyone who wants to ensure that hard-fought reform victories survive.

Economic Policy Reform

Economic Policy Reform PDF Author: Anne O. Krueger
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226454481
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 634

Get Book

Book Description
"Anne O. Krueger has assembled and deftly summarized an excellent set of papers on the major issues in economic reform in developing countries at the turn of the century."--Stanley Fischer, International Monetary Fund The papers and commentary collected in this volume discuss vital contemporary thinking on economic policy reform--in particular, the difficulties that leave so much of the world mired in poverty. Distinguished contributors address issues ranging from education and privatization to exchange rates and telecommunications reform, providing an excellent overview of the current situation and the possible paths into the future.