Download or read book Constitutional Myths and Constitutional Illusions About Heroic Past and Better Future written by Игорь Барциц and published by Litres. This book was released on 2019-07-10 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This working paper provides insight into the essence, content and destiny of constitutional myths and illusions as «load-bearing elements» of constitutional order, government system and political regime. Special attention is paid to the analysis of individual constitutional myths and illusions, such as the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, concept of social contract, nation-wide referendum, values of separation of powers, open government, etc., as well as examples of their embodiment in the Constitutions of Russia, China, the USA, France, Venezuela, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Ukraine, etc.
Download or read book Constitutional Myths and Constitutional Illusions written by Игорь Нязбеевич Барциц and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Constitutional Mythologies written by Alain Marciano and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-08-02 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our societies obviously rest on common beliefs. These "myths" are tools that help us to develop and build common identities; they form the structure around which societies function. This does not imply that these beliefs are “true,” in the sense that they would be supported by empirical facts. In social matters, myths have undoubtedly important functions to play even if no empirical facts support them. On the other hand, and precisely because they are not discussed, myths may be problematic: they may create illusions, conserve structures that are inefficient and unable to improve the situation of citizens. This is particularly true with constitutions. Constitutions are very important for societies: a constitution is a document — even in societies based on “unwritten” constitutions — which binds citizens together, creating unity among them, and which forms the framework within which our activities take place. As Nobel Prize laureate James Buchanan used to say: constitutions contain the rules of the social game we play in our everyday life. However, constitutions are not frequently debated by citizens. This is why we end up with common beliefs about these constitutions: they are above our heads, around us. We take them, their role, function, and nature as given. The purpose of this volume to investigate and challenge common constitutional myths. Featuring contributions from prominent economists, political scientists, and legal scholars, the chapters in this volume address such myths as “constitutions are binding social contracts,” “constitutions are economic documents” and “constitutions are legal documents.” Illustrating their analyses with historical and contemporary examples from the United States, Canada, and Europe, the authors build a multi-layered approach to understanding constitutions and their implications for social and political influence.
Download or read book Constitutional Illusions and Anchoring Truths written by Hadley Arkes and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-31 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arkes re-examines legal cases and concepts long thought settled, finding that their meaning is far less clear than commonly accepted.
Download or read book Wrong and Dangerous written by Garrett Epps and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2012-09-16 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The primary purpose of the United States Constitution is to limit Congress. There is no separation of church and state. The Second Amendment allows citizens to threaten the government. These are just a few of the myths about our constitution peddled by the Far Right—a toxic coalition of Fox News talking heads, radio hosts, angry “patriot” groups, and power-hungry Tea Party politicians. Well-funded, loud, and unscrupulous, they are trying to do to America’s founding document what they have done to global warming and evolution—wipe out the facts and substitute partisan myth. In the process, they seek to cripple the right of We the People to govern ourselves. In Wrong and Dangerous, legal scholar Garrett Epps provides the tools needed to fight back against the flood of constitutional nonsense. In terms every citizen can understand, he tackles ten of the most prevalent myths, providing a clear grasp of the Constitution and the government it established.
Download or read book Toward an American Revolution written by Gerald John Fresia and published by South End Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In simple direct language, Jerry Fresia reveals the true intent of our "Founding Fathers" who designed the Constitution to protect their property and ensure that the poorer majority would have no real voice in political affairs. Fresia reveals the Founders' fears of "too much" democracy, why the Constitution was opposed by most Americans, and how its ratification was gained through deception and physical coercion. Toward an American Revolution shows how the illegal wars, domestic repression, and economic inequity of late twentieth century America are not incongruous with our Constitutional design. Book jacket.
Download or read book The Illusion of Freedom written by Martyn Babitz and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Constitutionally sanctioned "how to" guide for restoring true liberty and opportunity in the United States, unmasking forgotten key principles of the U.S. Constitution.
Download or read book The Color Blind Constitution written by Andrew Kull and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1840 to 1960 the profoundest claim of Americans who fought the institution of segregation was that the government had no business sorting citizens by the color of their skin. During these years the moral and political attractiveness of the antidiscrimination principle made it the ultimate legal objective of the American civil rights movement. Yet, in the contemporary debate over the politics and constitutional law of race, the vital theme of antidiscrimination has been largely suppressed. Thus a strong line of argument laying down one theoretical basis for the constitutional protection of civil rights has been lost. Andrew Kull provides us with the previously unwritten history of the color-blind idea. From the arguments of Wendell Phillips and the Garrisonian abolitionists, through the framing of the Fourteenth Amendment and Justice Harlan's famous dissent in Plessy, civil rights advocates have consistently attempted to locate the antidiscrimination principle in the Constitution. The real alternative, embraced by the Supreme Court in 1896, was a constitutional guarantee of reasonable classification. The government, it said, had the power to classify persons by race so long as it acted reasonably; the judiciary would decide what was reasonable. In our own time, in Brown v. Board of Education and the decisions that followed, the Court nearly avowed the rule of color blindness that civil rights lawyers continued to assert; instead, it veered off for political and tactical reasons, deciding racial cases without stating constitutional principle. The impoverishment of the antidiscrimination theme in the Court's decision prefigured the affirmative action shift in the civil rights agenda. The social upheaval of the 1960s put the color-blind Constitution out of reach for a quartercentury or more; but for the hard choices still to be made in racial policy, the colorblind tradition of civil rights retains both historical and practical significance.
Download or read book Strangers to the Constitution written by Gerald L. Neuman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gerald Neuman discusses in historical and contemporary terms the repeated efforts of U.S. insiders to claim the Constitution as their exclusive property and to deny constitutional rights to aliens and immigrants--and even citizens if they are outside the nation's borders. Tracing such efforts from the debates over the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 to present-day controversies about illegal aliens and their children, the author argues that no human being subject to the governance of the United States should be a "stranger to the Constitution." Thus, whenever the government asserts its power to impose obligations on individuals, it brings them within the constitutional system and should afford them constitutional rights. In Neuman's view, this mutuality of obligation is the most persuasive approach to extending constitutional rights extraterritorially to all U.S. citizens and to those aliens on whom the United States seeks to impose legal responsibilities. Examining both mutuality and more flexible theories, Neuman defends some constitutional constraints on immigration and deportation policies and argues that the political rights of aliens need not exclude suffrage. Finally, in regard to whether children born in the United States to illegally present alien parents should be U.S. citizens, he concludes that the Constitution's traditional shield against the emergence of a hereditary caste of "illegals" should be vigilantly preserved.
Download or read book Superpower Illusions written by Jack F. Matlock and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-05 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This persuasive, occasionally provocative book corrects a number of pervasive myths about the Cold War”—from the former U.S. ambassador to the USSR (Publishers Weekly). In Superpower Illusions, Jack F. Matlock refutes the enduring idea that the United States forced the collapse of the Soviet Union by applying military and economic pressure—with wide-ranging implications for U.S. foreign policy. Matlock argues that Gorbachev, not Reagan, undermined Communist Party rule in the Soviet Union and that the Cold War ended in a negotiated settlement that benefited both sides. He posits that the end of the Cold War diminished rather than enhanced American power; with the removal of the Soviet threat, allies were less willing to accept American protection and leadership that seemed increasingly to ignore their interests. Matlock shows how, during the Clinton and particularly the Bush-Cheney administrations, the belief that the United States had defeated the Soviet Union led to a conviction that it did not need allies, international organizations, or diplomacy, but could dominate and change the world by using its military power unilaterally. Superpower Illusions is “a truly remarkable book, both wise and provocative, telling a sad yet instructive story of how the United States failed to exploit a triumph in the Cold War to build a new international order reflecting U.S. interests and principles” (Dimitri Simes, President and CEO, The Center for the National Interest). “A well written, clearly reasoned and thoroughly informed tour of the past half century of American diplomacy—including the roots of its successes and failures—led by a superbly qualified participant. A brilliant book.”—Sidney Drell, Stanford University
Download or read book Political Illusion and Reality written by David W. Gill and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2018-09-27 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are all governments—east and west, Muslim and secular, authoritarian and constitutional, Republican and Democratic—fundamentally the same, all of them under the extraordinary, growing power of “technique” and bureaucracy? Is all politics, then, just an illusory affair of lies, deception, propaganda, partisan passions, and chaos on the surface of government and party? In his vast and penetrating writings, Bordeaux sociologist Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) points in those directions. Political Illusion and Reality is a collection of twenty-three essays on Ellul’s political thought. Veteran as well as younger Ellul scholars, political leaders, activists, and pastors, discuss aspects of Ellul’s thought as they relate to their own fields of study and political experience. Beginning with his 1936 essay “Fascism, Son of Liberalism,” translated and published here in English for the first time, Ellul and these authors will provoke readers to think some new thoughts about politics and government, and think more deeply about the main issues we face in our politically divided and troubled times.
Download or read book Abuse Your Illusions written by Russ Kick and published by Red Wheel Weiser. This book was released on 2003-05-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third of Russ Kick’s bestselling Disinformation Guides gathers another all-star line-up of exposés: Juries have ruled in recent trials that Watergate was really about a Democratic Party prostitution ring. Ignored in the U.S. and distorted elsewhere, the Milosevic tribunal hasn’t gone the way authorities were anticipating. (We present exclusive first-hand reporting from the trial). Most theologians don’t believe in the physical Resurrection of Jesus. In 2001, the U.S. uncovered the biggest spy ring in the country since WWII, yet most people never heard about it. The U.S. is engaging in bioweapons research that violates international treaties and federal law. (The New York Times knows about this but refuses to report it). Teddy Roosevelt and Wall Street created Panama for profit. Gandhi wasn’t so wonderful, after all. These are just some of the revelations in the third of our all-star anthologies. Following up on bestsellers You Are Being Lied To and Everything You Know Is Wrong, editor Russ Kick has again assembled a line-up of leading investigative journalists, academics, activists, commentators, and independent researchers, covering CIA assassinations, the anthrax attacks, fluoride, TWA 800, Abraham Lincoln, child protective services, the tobacco industry, forgotten uprisings, the government's missing trillions, even more revelations about 9/11 and much more. Contributors include Gary Webb, Greg Palast, Noreena Hertz, Howard Zinn, Douglas Valentine, Jim Hougan, Kristina Borjesson, Arianna Huffington and many more well-known writers—some of whom you’ll be extremely surprised to see in these pages!
Download or read book The Broken Constitution written by Noah Feldman and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice An innovative account of Abraham Lincoln, constitutional thinker and doer Abraham Lincoln is justly revered for his brilliance, compassion, humor, and rededication of the United States to achieving liberty and justice for all. He led the nation into a bloody civil war to uphold the system of government established by the US Constitution—a system he regarded as the “last best hope of mankind.” But how did Lincoln understand the Constitution? In this groundbreaking study, Noah Feldman argues that Lincoln deliberately and recurrently violated the United States’ founding arrangements. When he came to power, it was widely believed that the federal government could not use armed force to prevent a state from seceding. It was also assumed that basic civil liberties could be suspended in a rebellion by Congress but not by the president, and that the federal government had no authority over slavery in states where it existed. As president, Lincoln broke decisively with all these precedents, and effectively rewrote the Constitution’s place in the American system. Before the Civil War, the Constitution was best understood as a compromise pact—a rough and ready deal between states that allowed the Union to form and function. After Lincoln, the Constitution came to be seen as a sacred text—a transcendent statement of the nation’s highest ideals. The Broken Constitution is the first book to tell the story of how Lincoln broke the Constitution in order to remake it. To do so, it offers a riveting narrative of his constitutional choices and how he made them—and places Lincoln in the rich context of thinking of the time, from African American abolitionists to Lincoln’s Republican rivals and Secessionist ideologues. Includes 8 Pages of Black-and-White Illustrations
Download or read book The Nexus of Governmental Integrity and the Survivability of American Constitutional Democracy written by George J. Gatgounis and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American government is in a state of crisis--a crisis of integrity. Law is not what holds nations together; rather, cultural values and prevailing social conditions sustain an undergirding belief in the legitimacy of law. Moral and religious consensus must come before a legal order. This book discusses several cases of the erosion of credibility as examples--Gorbachev's failed attempt to modernize Russia, the deceptions of the Vietnam War, and the Iran-Contra arms scandal. Next comes a study of how civil religion and governmental integrity interplay. The final chapter is a well-documented historic overview and examination of the Supreme Court's challenging task of constitutionally defining religion, especially in cases of conscientious objections and religious exemptions to state mandates. The issues are timely, and Gatgounis is uniquely qualified to examine them as both a constitutional lawyer and religious scholar.
Download or read book The Making of a European Constitution written by Michelle Everson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-09-21 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction -- Constitutional mo(u)rning -- Retelling the legal integration story -- Forgetting law -- Adjudicating non-authoritative law -- Constitutionalising the institutional balance of powers -- The principled judicial mechanics of constitutional morphogenesis -- Constitutionalism beyond constitutions.
Download or read book The Common Good of Constitutional Democracy written by Martin Rhonheimer and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Common Good of Constitutional Democracy offers a rich collection of essays in political philosophy by Swiss philosopher Martin Rhonheimer. Like his other books in both ethical theory and applied ethics, which have recently been published in English, the essays included are distinguished by the philosophical rigor and meticulous attention to the primary and secondary literature of the various topics discussed
Download or read book Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution written by Woody Holton and published by Hill and Wang. This book was released on 2008-10-14 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Average Americans Were the True Framers of the Constitution Woody Holton upends what we think we know of the Constitution's origins by telling the history of the average Americans who challenged the framers of the Constitution and forced on them the revisions that produced the document we now venerate. The framers who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 were determined to reverse America's post–Revolutionary War slide into democracy. They believed too many middling Americans exercised too much influence over state and national policies. That the framers were only partially successful in curtailing citizen rights is due to the reaction, sometimes violent, of unruly average Americans. If not to protect civil liberties and the freedom of the people, what motivated the framers? In Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution, Holton provides the startling discovery that the primary purpose of the Constitution was, simply put, to make America more attractive to investment. And the linchpin to that endeavor was taking power away from the states and ultimately away from the people. In an eye-opening interpretation of the Constitution, Holton captures how the same class of Americans that produced Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts (and rebellions in damn near every other state) produced the Constitution we now revere. Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution is a 2007 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.
