These essays, written in honour of retired ECJ judge Pernilla Lindh, reflect on the development of courts and judging in the EU since the founding of the Union. In particular they focus on recent reforms and proposals aimed at further increasing public confidence and democratic accountability throughout the EU judicial system.
This book establishes legisprudence, in contrast to jurisprudence, as a legal theory of rational law-making. It suggests that by rejecting the common wisdom about the nature of political law-making, legislation could be improved and streamlined. Using the methods, theoretical insights and tools of current legal theory and philosophy of law in a new way, the book suggests the creation of law by legislators rather than government. Raising new questions and problems of the validity of norms, the book opens a new perspective on legitimacy of norms, their meaning and the structure of the legal system. In distinguishing legitimacy and legitimation of law, the book ventures into the philosophical roots of legal theory and suggests the articulation of a new conception of sovereignty. In shifting the emphasis to the position of the legislator and legislation, this book opens a number of new insights into the relationship between legislative problems and legal theory. Its main claim is that legislation should be justified by the legislator.
When a child is conceived from sexual intercourse between a married, heterosexual couple, the child has a legal father and mother. Whatever may happen thereafter, the child's parents are legally bound to provide for their child, and if they don't, they're held accountable by law. But what about children created by artificial insemination? When it comes to paternity, the law is full of gray areas, resulting in many cases where children have no legal fathers.
In Papa's Baby, Browne C. Lewis argues that the courts should take steps to insure that all children have at least two legal parents. Additionally, state legislatures should recognize that more than one class of fathers may exist and allocate paternal responsibility based, again, upon the best interest of the child. Lewis supplements her argument with concrete methods for dealing with different types of cases, including anonymous and non-anonymous sperm donors, married and unmarried women, and lesbian couples. In so doing, she first establishes different types of paternity, and then draws on these to create an expanded definition of paternity.