Shafia Lati

Many individuals and institutions are exempt from the jurisdiction of foreign local courts in international law. The main ones are sovereign states and foreign state representatives, diplomatic officers, consuls, and international institutions, their officials and staff. Often recognized as sovereign immunity, state immunity reflects its roots in the sanctity of kingship.  Sovereign immunity or government immunity is a rule of customary international law that one sovereign state cannot be tried without its permission before the courts of another sovereign state.  The rule has its roots in the international law maxim par inparem non habet imperium which means “that equal has no power over an equal”. Immunity does not confer exclusively on an individual as such, but rather on an office, and the actual occupant of that office retains the immunity attached to that office at any point in time. In many countries, the concept of absolute immunity has now been discarded to adopt the idea of a restricted approach to immunity that does not grant immunity to a sovereign's commercial actions.

The article under review falls under broad category of Islamic Personal Law. It deals with history of Waqf based on the literature of four Sunni schools, focusing on the Hanafi fiqh. The perspective adopted is primarily of Hanafi School but it brings together the opinion of other school as well.

Dworkin’s work has consistently been concerned with judicial interpretation of law and the role of judges. Dworkin is clear as to the political values he is committed to. His philosophy stresses a ‘Right’ approach over utilitarian calculations.
      It is suitable to describe that Dworkin’s theory of law lies in the best moral interpretation of existing social practices. His theory of justice is that all political judgments ought to rest ultimately upon the injunction that, people are equal as human beings, irrespective of the circumstances.

FOCUSED AREA:
The following research questions have been broadly identified:

1. What is Legal Positivism?
2. What is law according to Austin?
3. What are the Attacks and Criticism on Austin’s theory of legal positivism?
4. What are the differences between Austin and Bentham?