Download or read book Contested Constitutionalism written by James B. Kelly and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 650 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The introduction of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 was accompanied by much fanfare and public debate. This book does not celebrate the Charter; rather it offers a critique by distinguished scholars of law and political science of its effect on democracy, judicial power, and the place of Quebec and Aboriginal peoples twenty-five years later. By employing diverse methodological approaches, contributors shift the focus of debate from the Charter’s appropriateness to its impact – for better or worse – on political institutions, public policy, and conceptions of citizenship in the Canadian federation.
Download or read book Against Constitutionalism written by Martin Loughlin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-17 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical analysis of the transformation of constitutionalism from an increasingly irrelevant theory of limited government into the most influential philosophy of governance in the world today. Constitutionalism is universally commended because it has never been precisely defined. Martin Loughlin argues that it is not some vague amalgam of liberal aspirations but a specific and deeply contentious governing philosophy. An Enlightenment idea that in the nineteenth century became America's unique contribution to the philosophy of government, constitutionalism was by the mid-twentieth century widely regarded as an anachronism. Advocating separated powers and limited government, it was singularly unsuited to the political challenges of the times. But constitutionalism has since undergone a remarkable transformation, giving the Constitution an unprecedented role in society. Once treated as a practical instrument to regulate government, the Constitution has been raised to the status of civil religion, a symbolic representation of collective unity. Against Constitutionalism explains why this has happened and its far-reaching consequences. Spearheaded by a "rights revolution" that subjects governmental action to comprehensive review through abstract principles, judges acquire greatly enhanced power as oracles of the regime's "invisible constitution." Constitutionalism is refashioned as a theory maintaining that governmental authority rests not on collective will but on adherence to abstract standards of "public reason." And across the world the variable practices of constitutional government have been reshaped by its precepts. Constitutionalism, Loughlin argues, now propagates the widespread belief that social progress is advanced not through politics, electoral majorities, and legislative action, but through innovative judicial interpretation. The rise of constitutionalism, commonly conflated with constitutional democracy, actually contributes to its degradation.
Download or read book Contested Constitutionalism written by James B. Kelly and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The introduction of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 was accompanied by much fanfare and public debate. This book does not celebrate the Charter; rather it offers a critique by distinguished scholars of law and political science of its effect on democracy, judicial power, and the place of Quebec and Aboriginal peoples twenty-five years later. By employing diverse methodological approaches, contributors shift the focus of debate from the Charter’s appropriateness to its impact – for better or worse – on political institutions, public policy, and conceptions of citizenship in the Canadian federation.
Download or read book The Invisible Constitution of Politics written by Antje Wiener and published by . This book was released on 2008-08-14 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the contested meanings of norms in a world of increasing international encounters.
Download or read book Fragile Democracies written by Samuel Issacharoff and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-17 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how constitutional courts can support weak democratic states in the wake of societal division and authoritarian regimes.
Download or read book Constituting Empire written by Daniel J. Hulsebosch and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2006-05-18 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the traditional understanding of American constitutional law, the Revolution produced a new conception of the constitution as a set of restrictions on the power of the state rather than a mere description of governmental roles. Daniel J. Hulsebosch complicates this viewpoint by arguing that American ideas of constitutions were based on British ones and that, in New York, those ideas evolved over the long eighteenth century as New York moved from the periphery of the British Atlantic empire to the center of a new continental empire. Hulsebosch explains how colonists and administrators reconfigured British legal sources to suit their needs in an expanding empire. In this story, familiar characters such as Alexander Hamilton and James Kent appear in a new light as among the nation's most important framers, and forgotten loyalists such as Superintendent of Indian Affairs Sir William Johnson and lawyer William Smith Jr. are rightly returned to places of prominence. In his paradigm-shifting analysis, Hulsebosch captures the essential paradox at the heart of American constitutional history: the Revolution, which brought political independence and substituted the people for the British crown as the source of legitimate authority, also led to the establishment of a newly powerful constitution and a new postcolonial genre of constitutional law that would have been the envy of the British imperial agents who had struggled to govern the colonies before the Revolution.
Download or read book Japan s Contested Constitution written by Glenn D. Hook and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan's Contested Constitution is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Japanese domestic politics and the international role of Japan. Subjects covered include; * the no war, `pacifist' clause * tension between the constitution and the US-Japan security treaty * the political import of the constitution for Japanese political parties * the significance of the constitution for the Japanese people
Download or read book Contestation and Constitution of Norms in Global International Relations written by Antje Wiener and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-23 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the involvement of local actors in conflicts over global norms at the intersection between international relations and international law.
Download or read book Japan s Contested Constitution written by Glenn D. Hook and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan's Contested Constitution is essential reading for anyone with an interest in Japanese domestic politics and the international role of Japan. Subjects covered include; * the no war, `pacifist' clause * tension between the constitution and the US-Japan security treaty * the political import of the constitution for Japanese political parties * the significance of the constitution for the Japanese people
Download or read book Conservatives and the Constitution written by Ken I. Kersch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-03-28 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1980s, a ritualized opposition in legal thought between a conservative 'originalism' and a liberal 'living constitutionalism' has obscured the aggressively contested tradition committed to, and mobilization of arguments for, constitutional restoration and redemption within the broader postwar American conservative movement. Conservatives and the Constitution is the first history of the political and intellectual trajectory of this foundational tradition and mobilization. By looking at the deep stories told either by identity groups or about what conservatives took to be flashpoint topics in the postwar period, Ken I. Kersch seeks to capture the developmental and integrative nature of postwar constitutional conservatism, challenging conservatives and liberals alike to more clearly see and understand both themselves and their presumed political and constitutional opposition. Conservatives and the Constitution makes a unique contribution to our understanding of modern American conservatism, and to the constitutional thought that has, in critical ways, informed and defined it.
Download or read book Democracy and Constitutions written by Allan C. Hutchinson and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bold and unconventional, this book advocates for an institutional turn-about in the relationship between democracy and constitutionalism.
Download or read book Constitutionalism written by Charles Howard McIlwain and published by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.. This book was released on 2005 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines of the rise of constitutionalism from the "democratic strands" in the works of Aristotle and Cicero through the transitional moment between the medieval and the modern eras.
Download or read book The Supreme Court and the Idea of Constitutionalism written by Steven Kautz and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-11-29 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Brown v. Board of Education to Roe v. Wade to Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court has, over the past fifty years, assumed an increasingly controversial place in American national political life. As the recurring struggles over nominations to the Court illustrate, few questions today divide our political community more profoundly than those concerning the Court's proper role as protector of liberties and guardian of the Constitution. If the nation is today in the midst of a "culture war," the contest over the Supreme Court is certainly one of its principal battlefields. In this volume, distinguished constitutional scholars aim to move debate beyond the sound bites that divide the opposing parties to more fundamental discussions about the nature of constitutionalism. Toward this end, the volume includes chapters on the philosophical and historical origins of the idea of constitutionalism; on theories of constitutionalism in American history in particular; on the practices of constitutionalism around the globe; and on the parallel emergence of—and the persistent tensions between—constitutionalism and democracy throughout the modern world. In democracies, the primary point of having a constitution is to place some matters beyond politics and partisan contest. And yet it seems equally clear that constitutionalism of this kind results in a struggle over the meaning or proper interpretation of the constitution, a struggle that is itself deeply political. Although the volume represents a variety of viewpoints and approaches, this struggle, which is the central paradox of constitutionalism, is the ultimate theme of all the essays.
Download or read book Our Unsettled Constitution written by Louis Michael Seidman and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2001 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ours is an age of growing doubt about constitutional theory and of outright hostility to any theory that defends judicial review. Why should a tiny number of unelected judges be able to validate or invalidate laws on such politically controversial issues as abortion, religion, gender, and sex--or even determine how the president is elected? In this provocative book, a leading constitutional theorist offers an entirely original defense of judicial review. Louis Michael Seidman argues that judicial review is defensible if we set aside common but erroneous assumptions--that constitutional law should be independent from our political commitments and that the role of constitutional law is to settle political disagreement. Seidman develops a theory of "unsettlement." A constitution that unsettles, that destabilizes outcomes produced by the political process, creates no permanent losers nursing deep-seated grievances, he says. An "unsettling" constitution helps to build a community founded on consent by enticing losers into a continuing conversation. The author applies this theory to an array of well-known cases heard by the Supreme Court over the past several decades, including the fall 2000 election decision.
Download or read book Deciphering the Genome of Constitutionalism written by Ran Hirschl and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-31 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Featuring key scholars of comparative constitutionalism, constitutional theory, and constitutional politics, this book provides a comprehensive, theoretical, comparative, normative, and empirical account of the concept of constitutional identity. It will appeal to scholars, students, jurists, and constitutional drafters alike"--
Download or read book An Unamendable Constitution written by Richard Albert and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the subject of constitutional unamendability from comparative, doctrinal, empirical, historical, political and theoretical perspectives. It explores and evaluates the legitimacy of unamendability in the various forms that exist in constitutional democracies. Modern constitutionalism has given rise to a paradox: can a constitutional amendment be unconstitutional? Today it is normatively contested but descriptively undeniable that a constitutional amendment—one that respects the formal procedures of textual alteration laid down in the constitutional text—may be invalidated for violating either a written or unwritten constitutional norm. This phenomenon of an unconstitutional constitutional amendment traces its political foundations to France and the United States, its doctrinal origins to Germany, and it has migrated in some form to all corners of the democratic world. One can trace this paradox to the concept of constitutional unamendability. Constitutional unamendability can be understood as a formally entrenched provision(s) or an informally entrenched norm that prohibits an alteration or violation of that provision or norm. An unamendable constitutional provision is impervious to formal amendment, even with supermajority or even unanimous agreement from the political actors whose consent is required to alter the constitutional text. Whether or not it is enforced, and also by whom, this prohibition raises fundamental questions implicating sovereignty, legitimacy, democracy and the rule of law.
Download or read book The Scepter of Reason written by Roberto Gargarella and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2001-11-30 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the origins of Anglo-American Constitutionalism, from both a philosophical and a historical perspective. It attempts to show that the institutional mechanisms incorporated into the American Constitution were modeled under a strong bias against collective discussion. The book also examines the alternative institutional system then proposed by a different and more radical tradition of thought, and evaluates this alternative from the ideal of a deliberate democracy. The Scepter of Reason challenges much of the current academic literature on the philosophical foundations of modern constitutionalism, and advances suggestions for a different approach. It will be particularly attractive for legal scholars, political scientists, and graduate and undergraduate students interested in Constitutional Theory, Anglo-American History, and Democratic Theory.
