The law and policy applicable to the not-for-profit sector is of growing importance around the world. In this book, legal experts address fundamental questions about not-for-profit law from a range of theoretical and comparative perspectives. The essays provide scholarly analysis of not-for-profit law, organised around four themes: (1) Politics, in the broader sense of living as a community, and the narrower sense of political power; (2) Charity, how it is defined and changes in its meaning over time; (3) Taxation, including the rationale for government support of the sector through the tax system; (4) Regulation, which is of increasing significance as governments establish increasingly complex forms of regulation of not-for-profit activity. The fundamental aim of the book is to deepen our understanding of not-for-profit law and of the rationales and modes of government support for the not-for-profit sector.

Matthew Harding is an Associate Professor in the Melbourne Law School. He has published widely on philosophical foundations and doctrinal aspects of equity and trusts, the law of land registration, and charity law. He is a director of the Australian Charity Law Association. Ann O'Connell is a Professor in the Melbourne Law School. She is a member of the Advisory Panel to the Board of Taxation, a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Tax Law, University of Cambridge and a member of the Australian Treasury Not-for-Profits Tax Concessions Working Group. Miranda Stewart is a Professor in the Melbourne Law School where she teaches tax theory, policy and law. She is also an International Fellow of the Centre of Business Taxation at the University of Oxford and a member of the Australian Treasury Not-for-Profits Tax Concessions Working Group.