This informative, highly readable and comprehensive book offers a
balanced, current and comprehensive overview of the legal system and
administrative, criminal and civil law in cross-cultural context. The
book considers the most recent theories and research findings, and
emphasizes developing trends. It focuses on the evolution of modern
legal systems, current intellectual movements in law, interplay between
law and social change and the main concerns and issues in the profession
and practice of law. This is the only book that considers multicultural
and cross-cultural issues in a contemporary context with an
interdisciplinary emphasis. Extensive new material includes detailed and
up-to-date discussions on the transformation of legal systems in
Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and some of the
unintended consequences which promoted organized crime; critical race
theory; community policing in Japan; trends in sentencing guidelines;
and a variety of new developments in alternative dispute resolution and
in the death penalty controversy. For anyone with an interest in law and
society.