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"LEGAL REFORM"
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Abortion Legal Reform and Neonatal Mortality in Mozambique
IntroductionAbortion law reforms have been hypothesized to influence reproductive, maternal, and neonatal health services and health outcomes, as well as social inequalities in health. In 2014, Mozambique legalized abortion in specific circumstances. However, due to challenges implementing the law, there is concern that it may have negatively influenced neonatal outcomes.MethodsUsing a difference-in-differences design, we used birth history data collected via the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) between 2004 and 2018 to assemble a panel of 476 939 live births across 17 countries including Mozambique. We estimated the effect of the abortion reform on neonatal mortality by comparing Mozambique to a series of control countries that did not change their abortion policies. We also conducted stratified analyses to examine heterogeneity in effect estimates by household wealth, educational attainment, and rural/urban residence.ResultsThe reform was associated with an additional 5.6 (95% CI = 1.3, 9.9) neonatal deaths per 1,000 live birth. There was evidence of a differential effect of the reform, with a negative effect of the reform on neonatal outcomes for socially disadvantaged women, including those with no schooling, in poorer households, and living in rural areas.DiscussionGiven the delay in implementation, our analyses suggest that abortion reform in Mozambique was associated with an initial increase in neonatal mortality particularly among socially disadvantaged women. This may be due to the delay in effective implementation, including the dissemination of clear guidelines and expansion of safe abortion services. Longer-term follow-up is needed to assess the impact of the reform after 2018, when services were expanded. Abortion legal reform without adequate implementation and enforcement is unlikely to be sufficient to improve abortion access and health outcomes.SignificanceWhat is Already Known on this TopicWhile abortion reforms have been hypothesized to affect a host of maternal and neonatal outcomes, few empirical studies have examined the effect of abortion reforms on neonatal outcomes.What this Study AddsDue to challenges in the implementation of the 2014 abortion legalization in Mozambique, it may have negatively influenced neonatal outcomes, particularly for socially disadvantaged women. Abortion legalization alone without adequate implementation and enforcement is unlikely to be sufficient for substantial change in abortion access and health outcomes.
Journal Article
Rules for a flat world : why humans invented law and how to reinvent it for a complex global economy
\" If you want a simple representation of the twentieth-century economy, picture a large corporation as a box. To do the same for today's economy, though, we need to blow up that box and reassemble the pieces into a network. The network is global, stretching across the planet untethered to political and legal boundaries. This is the economy of the twenty-first century, characterized by ever-expanding global supply chains and communication systems. In 2005, Thomas Friedman reduced this phenomenon to one phrase, the title of his massively successful book: The World is Flat. Of course, the phrase is misleading. The world may be getting flatter in some places, but there are still many factors that tilt the odds in favor of some locations over others. Law and economics professor Gillian Hadfield picks up where Friedman's book left off, by peeling back the technological layer to look at what lies beneath-our legal infrastructure-and argues that the outdated legal system is, in fact, largely responsible for our still-slanted world. Put simply, the law and legal methods on which we currently rely have failed to evolve along with technology. Hadfield argues that not only are these systems too slow, costly, and localized to support economic complexity, they also fail to address looming challenges such as global warming, poverty, and oppression in developing countries. The answer, however, is not the one critics usually reach for-to have less of it. Through a sweeping review of law and the world economy over thousands of years, Hadfield makes the case for building a legal environment that does more of what we need it to do and less of what we don't. Hadfield offers, in engaging and accessible prose, a model for a more market- and globally-oriented legal system. Combining an impressive grasp of economic globalization with an ambitious re-envisioning of our global legal system, Rules for a Flat World will transform our understanding of how to best achieve a more sustainable and vibrant global economy. \"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Internationalization as a Leap of Faith: Arbitration Reforms in China and the Challenges of Implementation
Recent years have witnessed an increasing trend in Chinese arbitration reform that emulates international norms and practices. This article examines some of these key reform measures and major challenges to their implementation. It explores in both legal and practical terms why most of these reform techniques may remain largely ineffective, showing that engaging in international norms and standards in China can be highly challenging due to their potential illegality, the general lack of institutional capacity to sustain them, and the conflicts of local ideas about the purposes of arbitration. It is thus doubtful whether commitment to satisfying the formal requirements prescribed by the legal reforms would often prevail. When it does, it is questionable whether this form of commitment would become prevalent and how it could proceed in a sustainable and coherent manner from a practical perspective.
Journal Article
Sharهia scripts : an historical anthropology
In the first half of Sharهi°a Scripts, Messick looks at the principal types of theoretical or doctrinal juridical texts, which are collectively referred to as the \"library,\" while those of the second half, including the genres produced by the sharهi°a courts and by notarial writers, are termed the \"archive.\" Messick demonstrates the analytic significance of sustained attention to the textual form of written sources such as the doctrinal works, juridical opinions, court records and legal instruments studied here. He suggests that attention to form should be a precondition for wider research, for properly assessing the import of conventional source content, for the writing of history. Messick looks at historical sharهi°a through a particular instance, that of highland Yemen in the first half of the twentieth century. Yemen, of course, is an integral region of the Arabic-speaking heartlands of Islam, and the Zaydهi school of jurisprudence that is the specific focus of the book has been rooted there for a millennium. Elsewhere in the same period, colonial regimes and nationalist reformers had begun to alter the political, societal and epistemic existence of the sharهi°a. They acted to replace its criminal, commercial and real estate provisions with western law, and effectively narrowed its sphere of relevance to matters of personal status and family law. In contrast, under the twentieth-century Zaydهi imams the sharهi°a remained uncodified; highland sharهi°a courts maintained their historically broad competence; madrassa-trained judges employed classical sharهi°a rules of procedure and evidence; and archives had yet to upended by western-style standards of file-keeping and printed forms.
Book
Implications of perceived tenure security and property rights protection in Burkina Faso
The study examines perceived tenure security in Burkina Faso, focusing on socio-cultural factors, authority relations, state politics, and gender dynamics. It identifies challenges in tenure security despite legal reforms, emphasising the subjective nature of tenure security and its dependence on individual perceptions. The findings highlight significant disparities in perceived tenure security based on socio-cultural and gender factors, emphasising the need for policies that address these specific challenges and promote equitable access to land and property rights. This study contributes to understanding the complexities of tenure security in Burkina Faso and offers insights for policy formulation and implementation across similar geographical settings.
Journal Article
A law unto herself
\"A scathing critique of the legal status of women and their property rights in nineteenth-century America, Rebecca Harding Davis's 1878 novel A Law Unto Herself chronicles the experiences of Jane Swendon, a seemingly naive and conventional nineteenth-century protagonist struggling to care for her elderly father with limited financial resources. In order to continue care, Jane seeks to secure her rightful inheritance despite the efforts of her cousin and later her husband, a greedy man who has tricked her father into securing her hand in marriage. Appealing to middle-class literary tastes of the age, A Law Unto Herself elucidated for a broad general audience the need for legal reforms regarding divorce, mental illness, inheritance, and reforms to the Married Women's Property Laws. Through three fascinating female characters, the novel also invites readers to consider evolving gender roles during a time of cultural change\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Need for an Evolved Groundwater Justice in Rural Areas of Uttar Pradesh, India
As groundwater is the primary element of life, countries all over the world are experimenting with legal reforms. The degree to which law reforms combine justice and sustainability is a crucial question. In response to this question, the present article focuses on a case study of Uttar Pradesh, India. Our response is based on a content analysis of the Uttar Pradesh Groundwater (Management and Regulation) Act, 2019, and the Uttar Pradesh Groundwater (Management and Regulation) Rules, 2020. Three conclusions emerged from our investigation. First, the 2019 Groundwater Act and the 2020 Draft Groundwater Rules are primarily motivated by concerns about resource sustainability, particularly in areas where the water table is steadily declining. Still, neither the 2019 Groundwater Act nor the 2020 Draft Groundwater Rules propose any proactive groundwater justice measures. Second, we suggest that some locally defined basic elements are critical in supporting sustainability and – to a lesser extent – groundwater justice. These characteristics include a community’s ability to (1) recognize a crisis and show a willingness to address it; (2) establish a rule-bound community groundwater resource; (3) demonstrate leadership and a sense of community; and (4) make use of awareness, information, and knowledge. Our third conclusion is that there is a need for community practices and state-led groundwater law to co-evolve; this co-evolution has the potential to create groundwater arrangements that support both groundwater justice and sustainability.
Journal Article
Legal change in post-communist states: Contradictions and explanations. Introduction
Reformers had high hopes that the end of communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union would lead to significant improvements in legal institutions and the role of law in public administration. However, the cumulative experience of 25 years of legal change since communism has been mixed, marked by achievements and failures, advances and moves backward. This special issue of the journal Communist and Post-Communist Studies documents the nuances of this process and starts the process of explaining them. This introductory essay draws on the findings of the articles in this issue to explore the impact of three potential explanatory factors: regime type, international influences, and legal (or political) culture. Regime type matters, but allows for considerable variation within authoritarian and democratic states alike and the possibility of reversals. The influence of international organizations (like the European Union) is also far from predictable, especially once states have joined the organization. Finally, legal cultures and political traditions play a large role in explaining developments in individual countries, but there is nothing inevitable about their impact.
Journal Article
The Rhodes Blood Libel of 1840: Episode in the History of Ottoman Reforms
Since historians assume that the Rhodes blood libel of 1840 was a small-scale version of the contemporaneous Damascus Affair, Rhodian Jews, too, are believed to have been rescued by Moses Montefiore and other European Jews. Yet, unlike the Damascus crisis that turned into an international political emergency, the one on Rhodes was treated by the Ottomans as a domestic legal case and handled in accordance with the Tanzimat laws (a series of modernizing reforms), the 1840 penal code in particular. This article, based on newly discovered evidence, examines the legal means and mechanisms used to manage the Rhodes crisis, arguing that its resolution, advocated by the Jewish leadership in Istanbul, can be adequately understood only in the context of the Tanzimat judicial reform. This was the first instance when the Sublime Porte complied with its European allies' demand that it guarantee its non-Muslim subjects equal treatment and legal protection.
Journal Article