Essays In Ghanaian Law 1876 1976

In The Claims of Kinfolk, Dylan Penningroth uncovers an extensive informal economy of property ownership among slaves and sheds new light on African American family and community life from the heyday of plantation slavery to the "freedom generation" of the 1870s. By focusing on relationships among blacks, as well as on the more familiar struggles between the races, Penningroth exposes a dynamic process of community and family definition. He also includes a comparative analysis of slavery and slave property ownership along the Gold Coast in West Africa, revealing significant differences between the African and American contexts. Property ownership was widespread among slaves across the antebellum South, as slaves seized the small opportunities for ownership permitted by their masters. While there was no legal framework to protect or even recognize slaves' property rights, an informal system of acknowledgment recognized by both blacks and whites enabled slaves to mark the boundaries of possession. In turn, property ownership--and the negotiations it entailed--influenced and shaped kinship and community ties. Enriching common notions of slave life, Penningroth reveals how property ownership engendered conflict as well as solidarity within black families and communities. Moreover, he demonstrates that property had less to do with individual legal rights than with constantly negotiated, extralegal social ties.

Volume 7 of "Law and Anthropology" brings together a collection of studies that discuss legal problems raised by cultural differences between people and the law to which they are subject. This volume developed from the idea that it can be useful to consider current discussions in various legal systems facing issues of cultural difference that cannot be regarded as legal problems related to indigenous societies alone. The book focuses on contradiction between national law and complex and diverse kinship structures, which are essential for the cultural identity of both indigenous groups and cultural minorities. The social construction of gender relations and gender conflicts is an important theme in many essays. Some of the essays examine the area of conflict between cultural practices and universal human rights standards. The demand for cultural rights may collide with human rights standards, especially with the principles of gender equality. This volume will be of great interest to academics and to all those with practical involvement in the field of cultural pluralism. Previously published by VWGO Verlag in Austria, "Law and Anthropology" will be published and distributed by Martinus Nijhoff Publishers from Volume 7 onwards.

This is the first ever index of contributions to common law Festschriften and fills a serious bibliographic gap in the literature of the common law. The German word Festschrift is now the universally accepted term in the academy for a published collection of legal essays written by several authors to honour a distinguished jurist or to mark a significant legal event. The number of Festschriften honouring common lawyers has increased enormously in the last thirty years. Until now, the numerous scholarly contributions to these volumes have not been adequately indexed. This Index fills that bibliographic gap. The entries included in this work refer to some 296 common law Festschriften indexed by author, subject keyword, editor, title, honorand and date. It therefore includes over 5,000 chapter entries. In addition, there are more than a thousand entries of English language contributions to predominantly foreign language, non-common law legal Festschriften from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

This insightful Research Handbook provides a global perspective on key legal debates surrounding marriage and cohabitation. Bringing together an impressive array of established and emerging scholars, it adopts a comparative approach to analyse cross-jurisdictional trends and divergences in relationship recognition and family formation.