In Australia, the regulatory oversight of credit and financial products is primarily vested at the federal level. Credit products are regulated by the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009 (Cth). This Act replaced the prior state-based system, notably the Uniform Consumer Credit Code. This chapter expounds upon the regulatory architecture governing financial products. It is paramount to acknowledge that additional regulations, regulatory guides and sector-specific codes are crucial to the Australian regulatory matrix concerning financial affairs. Before embarking on a detailed analysis, a brief overview of the historical context leading to the present regulatory system for financial products in Australia is warranted. Pivotal moments in this narrative are the Wallis Inquiry, the Murray Inquiry and the Banking Royal Commission, which largely shaped financial regulation as it is today. With this foundational understanding established, our subsequent focus transitions to the requisite licensing conditions and the salient duties incumbent upon licensees. The most recently introduced product design and distribution obligations and product intervention order are also discussed.

Chapter 7 presents German private law with special consideration given to the Civil Code. The coverage includes the history of the Code, its structure and contents, and its conceptual and methodological style. The way in which the German Civil Code differs from the French Code Civil is also discussed. The function and practice of the Civil Code are demonstrated through a suretyship case, which places the Akzessorietätsgrundsatz at the center of the dispute.

Chapter 9 considers German administrative law as part of the public law framework. The wide range of fields covered by administrative law are discussed. Administrative law disputes involving Muslim halal slaughter are used to present the administrative law framework and to consider the influence of the Islamic Law tradition in the German legal culture.

Chapter Six begins by looking at how Americans of different racial and ethnic stripes think about politics and how these views have changed over time. This chapter looks not only at racial divisions in policy preferences but also at racial differences in public trust and confidence in institutions. Excerpts examine the echo chamber and skepticism over polling and the measurement of public opinion.

Chapter 1 introduces students to the various approaches used to pursue comparative legal studies. It especially presents the orthodox “legal families“ approach to macro-comparative law. The chapter then considers several critiques of that tradition. H. Patrick Glenn challenges the concept of “legal families“ and suggests a “legal traditions” framework to replace it. The chapter then presents the social-contextual approach to comparative law as promoted by Legrand. Finally, the chapter urges students to recognize the ethical implications of comparative law through Frankenberg’s concepts of “distancing” and “differencing.”

Chapter 5 is the second of three chapters laying a basic foundation in German law and politics. The chapter presents the key institutions of German politics and law. It starts with a presentation of the German states and federalism. It then focuses on the strength of the chancellor in governance, including law-making and executive power. The chapter then presents the German judicial system, presenting the decentralized and specialized nature of the German judicial framework.

The outcomes that we should perhaps care most about are substantive representation and responsiveness, and in particular the extent to which policy matches the interests and preferences of different segments of the public. Here we systematically assess the link between individual preferences and aggregate policy outcomes and conclude that race, more than any other factor, determines who wins and who loses on policy. We also look at variation in responsiveness by time and across context to try to identify factors that lead to more equitable representation.

Chapter 12 considers the Europeanization of German law, resulting from the integration of Germany into the European Union and its project of harmonization of law. Basic devices for this process are explained, such as the direct effect and supremacy of European law. The tension this has created in German private law is demonstrated with a case study of the European antidiscrimination directive, which Germany reluctantly implemented. The case study presents a dispute under the German domestic regime that was eventually enacted. That dispute involved discrimination in the employment context on the basis of the applicant’s background growing up in East Germany. The tensions between the Europeanization of law and German constitutional law are also discussed.

Chapter 4 is the first of three chapters laying a basic foundation in German law and politics. The chapter focuses on German legal history, including a deep history dating from the Roman encounters with the German barbarians up to the codification movement in the nineteenth century. The deep history shows how Germanic customary law, Roman Law, and Canon Law mixed to form modern German law. The chapter then shows how the process of development proceeded differently for private law (leading to the great codification of private law) and public law (with a tumultuous process of constitutionalization).