Download or read book Judicial Dictatorship written by William J. Quirk and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American society has undergone a revolution within a revolution. Until the 1960s, America was a liberal country in the traditional sense of legislative and executive checks and balances. Since then, the Supreme Court has taken on the role of the protector of individual rights against the will of the majority by creating, in a series of decisions, new rights for criminal defendants, atheists, homosexuals, illegal aliens, and others. Repeatedly, on a variety of cases, the Court has overturned the actions of local police or state laws under which local officials are acting. The result, according to Quirk and Birdwell, is freedom for the lawless and oppression for the law abiding. 'Judicial Dictatorship' challenges the status quo, arguing that in many respects the Supreme Court has assumed authority far beyond the original intent of the Founding Fathers. In order to avoid abuse of power, the three branches of the American government were designed to operate under a system of checks and balances. However, this balance has been upset. The Supreme Court has become the ultimate arbiter in the legal system through exercise of the doctrine of judicial review, which allows the court to invalidate any state or federal law it considers inconsistent with the constitution. Supporters of judicial review believe that there has to be a final arbiter of constitutional interpretation, and the Judiciary is the most suitable choice. Opponents, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln among them, believed that judicial review assumes the judicial branch is above the other branches, a result the Constitution did not intend. The democratic paradox is that the majority in America agreed to limit its own power. Jefferson believed that the will of the majority must always prevail. His faith in the common man led him to advocate a weak national government, one that derived its power from the people. Alexander Hamilton, often Jefferson's adversary, lacking such faith, feared "the amazing violence an

Download or read book Judicial Dictatorship written by William J. Quirk and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American society has undergone a revolution within a revolution. Until the 1960s, America was a liberal country in the traditional sense of legislative and executive checks and balances. Since then, the Supreme Court has taken on the role of the protector of individual rights against the will of the majority by creating, in a series of decisions, new rights for criminal defendants, atheists, homosexuals, illegal aliens, and others. Repeatedly, on a variety of cases, the Court has overturned the actions of local police or state laws under which local officials are acting. The result, according to Quirk and Birdwell, is freedom for the lawless and oppression for the law abiding. 'Judicial Dictatorship' challenges the status quo, arguing that in many respects the Supreme Court has assumed authority far beyond the original intent of the Founding Fathers. In order to avoid abuse of power, the three branches of the American government were designed to operate under a system of checks and balances. However, this balance has been upset. The Supreme Court has become the ultimate arbiter in the legal system through exercise of the doctrine of judicial review, which allows the court to invalidate any state or federal law it considers inconsistent with the constitution. Supporters of judicial review believe that there has to be a final arbiter of constitutional interpretation, and the Judiciary is the most suitable choice. Opponents, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln among them, believed that judicial review assumes the judicial branch is above the other branches, a result the Constitution did not intend. The democratic paradox is that the majority in America agreed to limit its own power. Jefferson believed that the will of the majority must always prevail. His faith in the common man led him to advocate a weak national government, one that derived its power from the people. Alexander Hamilton, often Jefferson's adversary, lacking such faith, feared "the amazing violence and turbulence of the democratic spirit." This led him to believe in a strong national government, a social and economic aristocracy, and finally, judicial review. This conflict has yet to be resolved. 'Judicial Dictatorship' discusses the issue of who will decide if government has gone beyond its proper powers. That issue, in turn, depends on whether the Jeffersonian or Hamiltonian view of the nature of the person prevails. In challenging customary ideological alignments of conservative and liberal doctrine, 'Judicial Dictatorship' will be of interest to students and professionals in law, political scientists, and those interested in U.S. history.

Download or read book The Specter of Dictatorship written by David M. Driesen and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-20 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals how the U.S. Supreme Court's presidentialism threatens our democracy and what to do about it. Donald Trump's presidency made many Americans wonder whether our system of checks and balances would prove robust enough to withstand an onslaught from a despotic chief executive. In The Specter of Dictatorship, David Driesen analyzes the chief executive's role in the democratic decline of Hungary, Poland, and Turkey and argues that an insufficiently constrained presidency is one of the most important systemic threats to democracy. Driesen urges the U.S. to learn from the mistakes of these failing democracies. Their experiences suggest, Driesen shows, that the Court must eschew its reliance on and expansion of the "unitary executive theory" recently endorsed by the Court and apply a less deferential approach to presidential authority, invoked to protect national security and combat emergencies, than it has in recent years. Ultimately, Driesen argues that concern about loss of democracy should play a major role in the Court's jurisprudence, because loss of democracy can prove irreversible. As autocracy spreads throughout the world, maintaining our democracy has become an urgent matter.

Download or read book Judges beyond Politics in Democracy and Dictatorship written by Lisa Hilbink and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-07-23 with total page 13 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did formerly independent Chilean judges, trained under and appointed by democratic governments, facilitate and condone the illiberal, antidemocratic, and anti-legal policies of the Pinochet regime? Challenging the assumption that adjudication in non-democratic settings is fundamentally different and less puzzling than it is in democratic regimes, this book offers a longitudinal analysis of judicial behavior, demonstrating striking continuity in judicial performance across regimes in Chile. The work explores the relevance of judges' personal policy preferences, social class, and legal philosophy, but argues that institutional factors best explain the persistent failure of judges to take stands in defense of rights and rule of law principles. Specifically, the institutional structure and ideology of the Chilean judiciary, grounded in the ideal of judicial apoliticism, furnished judges with professional understandings and incentives that left them unequipped and disinclined to take stands in defense of liberal democratic principles, before, during, and after the authoritarian interlude.

Download or read book Constitutionalism and Dictatorship written by Robert Barros and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-07-04 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is widely believed that autocratic regimes cannot limit their power through institutions of their own making. This book presents a surprising challenge to this view. It demonstrates that the Chilean armed forces were constrained by institutions of their own design. Based on extensive documentation of military decision-making, much of it long classified and unavailable, this book reconstructs the politics of institutions within the recent Chilean dictatorship (1973–1990). It examines the structuring of institutions at the apex of the military junta, the relationship of military rule with the prior constitution, the intra-military conflicts that led to the promulgation of the 1980 constitution, the logic of institutions contained in the new constitution, and how the constitution constrained the military junta after it went into force in 1981. This provocative account reveals the standard account of the dictatorship as a personalist regime with power concentrated in Pinochet to be grossly inaccurate.

Download or read book Judicial Independence in China written by Randall Peerenboom and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-11-23 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume challenges the conventional wisdom about judicial independence in China and its relationship to economic growth, rule of law, human rights protection, and democracy. The volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach that places China's judicial reforms and the struggle to enhance the professionalism, authority, and independence of the judiciary within a broader comparative and developmental framework. Contributors debate the merits of international best practices and their applicability to China; provide new theoretical perspectives and empirical studies; and discuss civil, criminal, and administrative cases in urban and rural courts. This volume contributes to several fields, including law and development and the promotion of rule of law and good governance, globalization studies, neo-institutionalism and studies of the judiciary, the emerging literature on judicial reforms in authoritarian regimes, Asian legal studies, and comparative law more generally.

Download or read book Courts Under Constraints written by Gretchen Helmke and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-19 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of how institutional instability affects judicial behavior under dictatorship and democracy.

Download or read book Democracy Dictatorship and Term Limits written by Alexander Baturo and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2014-02-03 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the factors that lead some presidents to hold on to power beyond their term limits

Download or read book Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America written by Scott Mainwaring and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-31 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a new theory for why political regimes emerge, and why they subsequently survive or break down. It then analyzes the emergence, survival and fall of democracies and dictatorships in Latin America since 1900. Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán argue for a theoretical approach situated between long-term structural and cultural explanations and short-term explanations that look at the decisions of specific leaders. They focus on the political preferences of powerful actors - the degree to which they embrace democracy as an intrinsically desirable end and their policy radicalism - to explain regime outcomes. They also demonstrate that transnational forces and influences are crucial to understand regional waves of democratization. Based on extensive research into the political histories of all twenty Latin American countries, this book offers the first extended analysis of regime emergence, survival and failure for all of Latin America over a long period of time.

Download or read book Democracy and the Rule of Law written by Adam Przeworski and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-07-21 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the question of why governments sometimes follow the law and other times choose to evade the law. The traditional answer of jurists has been that laws have an autonomous causal efficacy: law rules when actions follow anterior norms; the relation between laws and actions is one of obedience, obligation, or compliance. Contrary to this conception, the authors defend a positive interpretation where the rule of law results from the strategic choices of relevant actors. Rule of law is just one possible outcome in which political actors process their conflicts using whatever resources they can muster: only when these actors seek to resolve their conflicts by recourse to la, does law rule. What distinguishes 'rule-of-law' as an institutional equilibrium from 'rule-by-law' is the distribution of power. The former emerges when no one group is strong enough to dominate the others and when the many use institutions to promote their interest.

Download or read book From Democracy to Judicial Dictatorship in Canada written by Patrick Redmond and published by . This book was released on 2019-03-15 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FROM DEMOCRACY TOJUDICIAL DICTATORSHIP IN CANADA:THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE CHARTER OF RIGHTSCanada has been profoundly changed since our Constitution, including the Charter of Rights, came to be patriated in 1982. This took place without any national referendum or public support.The 1982 Patriation caused the transfer of power from the elected federal Parliament and provincial Legislatures which are accountable to the public, to nonelected, unaccountable judges sitting on the Supreme Court of Canada. The judiciary now make, without public input or accountability, fundamental decisions affecting our daily lives.From Democracy to Judicial Dictatorship in Canada reveals how this dramatic change came about. Based on documentary evidence, the authors disclose how Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau: An ardent socialist, became a member of the Liberal Party of Canada solely to use it as a platform to change Canada's Constitution according to his directions.Had no respect for the elected Members of Parliament, and preferred that elitist appointed judges make fundamental decisions, using the Charter as their tool to reshape Canadian values and society. Engaged in obnoxious behaviour deliberately misleading the public about the purpose and effect of his proposed Charter of Rights.Canadian judges have used the Charter to expand their role and influence, contrary to the clear intent of the drafters of the Charter. Time and again, judges have thrown aside judicial restraint, abandoned legal merit and precedent as the basis of their decisions, and instead have applied their own political ideology in reaching their decisions. They have now become the most powerful individuals in Canadian history.These startling events are examined through a critique of a number of Supreme Court of Canada and lower court cases, and the apparent mentality of the judges who believe that they are personally qualified to decide "what is best for Canadians."This book provides the reader with a three part assessment of our current state of constitutional crisis. The first part is a survey of the politics that went into the 1982 patriation of Canada's Constitution. The second, the loss of Parliamentary sovereignty and the rise of judicial activism. In the third part, the authors make the case that reform is not only necessary but possible. Both the courts and Parliament must actively seek to re-balance their respective roles based on principles of responsible government and electoral accountability, to ensure that Canada, once again, becomes strong and free, rooted in the consent of the governed.

Download or read book Courting Constitutionalism written by Moeen Cheema and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-16 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a deeply contextualized account of public law and judicial review in Pakistan.

Download or read book Judicial Review in an Objective Legal System written by Tara Smith and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-30 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book grounds judicial review in its deepest foundations: the function, authority, and objectivity of a legal system as a whole.

Download or read book The Condor Years written by John Dinges and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2012-03-13 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “compelling and shocking account” of a brutal campaign of repression in Latin America, based on interviews and previously secret documents (The Miami Herald). Throughout the 1970s, six Latin American governments, led by Chile, formed a military alliance called Operation Condor to carry out kidnappings, torture, and political assassinations across three continents. It was an early “war on terror” initially encouraged by the CIA—which later backfired on the United States. Hailed by Foreign Affairs as “remarkable” and “a major contribution to the historical record,” The Condor Years uncovers the unsettling facts about the secret US relationship with the dictators who created this terrorist organization. Written by award-winning journalist John Dinges and updated to include later developments in the prosecution of Pinochet, the book is a chilling yet dispassionately told history of one of Latin America’s darkest eras. Dinges, himself interrogated in a Chilean torture camp, interviewed participants on both sides and examined thousands of previously secret documents to take the reader inside this underground world of military operatives and diplomats, right-wing spies and left-wing revolutionaries. “Scrupulous, well-documented.” —The Washington Post “Nobody knows what went wrong inside Chile like John Dinges.” —Seymour Hersh

Download or read book Packing the Court written by James Macgregor Burns and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-06-25 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From renowned political theorist James MacGregor Burns, an incisive critique of the overreaching power of an ideological Supreme Court For decades, Pulitzer Prize-winner James MacGregor Burns has been one of the great masters of the study of power and leadership in America. In Packing the Court, he turns his eye to the U.S. Supreme Court, an institution that he believes has become more powerful, and more partisan, than the founding fathers ever intended. In a compelling and provocative narrative, Burns reveals how the Supreme Court has served as a reactionary force in American politics at critical moments throughout the nation's history, and concludes with a bold proposal to rein in the court's power.

Download or read book Reorganization of the Federal Judiciary written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary and published by . This book was released on 1937 with total page 2120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Perils of Judicial Self Government in Transitional Societies written by David Kosař and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-04 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the mechanisms of judicial control to determine an efficient methodology for independence and accountability. Using over 800 case studies from the Czech and Slovak disciplinary courts, the author creates a theoretical framework that can be applied to future case studies and decrease the frequency of accountability perversions.