PER: 2012 Volume 15 No 3

Contents

25 September 2012

Preface

• Mixed and mixing systems worldwide: a preface / Donlan, SP

Conference papers

• The enigmatic but unique nature of the Israeli legal system / Platsas, AE
• What happens when the judiciary switches roles with the legislator? An innovative Israeli version of a mixed jurisdiction / Sandberg, H
• The mélange of innovation and tradition in Maltese law: the essence of the Maltese mix? / Andò, B
• Innovation in a hybrid system: the example of Nepal / Urscheler, LH
• The characteristics of an abstract system for the transfer of property in South African law as distinguished from a casual system / Schutte, PJW
• The methodology used to interpret customary land tenure / Pienaar, G

Editorial

In this volume the participating authors explore the complexity of contemporary scholarship on mixed and plural legal systems, both in the "third legal family" and beyond. Antonios Platsas and Haim Sandberg each investigate aspects of the Israeli tradition. Platsas provides a general overview of what he calls "the enigmatic but unique nature of the Israeli legal system", while Sandberg looks at Israeli constitutional review. Biagio Andò discusses Malta, a system closely related to the classical mixed system, but until recently largely overlooked by mixed scholarship. Lukas Heckendorn Urscheler goes still further afield to explore Nepal’s hybrid system. Finally, the two South African selections show how fertile the study of its legal system is. Flip Schutte looks at South African property law. Gerrit Pienaar looks beyond the two Western traditions to customary law; in particular, to land tenure. All of the articles reflect a thriving, flowering subject that is no longer the merely internal focus of isolated and ignored jurisdictions, but research of obvious import far beyond explicitly mixed systems, to comparative law, legal history, and legal theory.

Editor: Professor Francois Venter / Edition editor: Professor Christa Rautenbach