The law is a symbolic construction and therefore rests on a variety of undertakings. What gives law its meaning is,for some, ideology, for others, the welfare of the majority. However, what is manifest is a conception of the law as a material structure that carries symbols of everyday life. The analyses that are made in the law and semiotics movements show that the laws symbolism cannot be understood by reference only to itself, a strictly legal meaning. It is a symbol that conveys life, a symbol that in itself is contaminated with life, politics, morality and so on.

It has become increasingly difficult to speak or even think social or legal justice in an age when words have left their moorings. Perhaps images are more stable than words; maybe images and imagery possess a certain viscosity,even a sensory quality, which prevents them from evaporating. This 'maybe' is what this book is about. The contributors to this collection explore the issue of how the Imaginary (images, imagery, imagination) has a role in the production and reproduction of 'visions' of legal and social justice. It argues that 'visions' of justice are inevitably bounded.

In recent decades the world has experienced the rise of so-called 'low intensity conflicts'. Unlike conventional wars these very bloody armed conflicts are no longer the affair of state governments and their armies.

The “imagined community” of the nation,which served as the affective basis for the post-French Revolution social contract, as well as its institutional counter-part, the welfare state, are currently under great stress as states lose control over what once was referred to as the “national economy” In this book a number of authors – historians, legal scholars, political theorists – consider the fate of national democracy in the age of globalization.

Women lawyers,less than a century ago still almost a contradiction in terms, have come to stay. Who are they? Where are they? What impact have they had on the profession that had for so long been a bastion of male domination? These are key questions asked in this first comprehensive study of women in the world's legal professions. Answers are based on both quantitative and qualitative analyses, using a variety of conceptual frameworks.

International business transactions are heavily influenced by culture,practice and rule. The pursuit of business relationships within nation-states can be subject to differences in the generation of norms and the processing of disputes, but these conflicts are magnified many times over in cross-border transactions where nation-state control and support is weak or absent. This book seeks different explanations of the ways in which business people and their legal advisers try to minimise the effect of these magnified difficulties.

This exciting collection looks at the theory and practice of legal borrowing and adaptation in different areas of the world: Europe,the USA and Latin America, S.E. Asia and Japan. Many of the contributors focus on fundamental theoretical issues. What are legal transplants? What is the role of the state in producing socio-legal change? What are the conditions of successful legal transfers? How is globalisation changing these conditions? Such problems are also discussed with reference to substantive and specific case studies.

Las transformaciones a las que se está viendo sometido el Derecho del Trabajo del S.XXI, con el fin de adecuar la defensa de sus valores y postulados históricos a los desafíos planteados por las exigencias de la competitividad de las empresas en la economía globalizada, alcanzan una dimensión particular cuando analizamos el impacto que produce en la gestión del capital humano de las empresas la introducción de los cambios necesarios en la organización del trabajo innovadora para que resulte más eficiente desde la perspectiva de la competitividad empresarial.