The Collaborative Constitution

The Collaborative Constitution PDF Author: Aileen Kavanagh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108493262
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 509

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Book Description
Argues that protecting rights in a democracy is a collaborative constitutional enterprise between all three branches of government.

The Collaborative Constitution

The Collaborative Constitution PDF Author: Aileen Kavanagh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108493262
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 509

Get Book Here

Book Description
Argues that protecting rights in a democracy is a collaborative constitutional enterprise between all three branches of government.

The Collaborative Constitution

The Collaborative Constitution PDF Author: Aileen Kavanagh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110862247X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 509

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Book Description
Using a theoretical and comparative perspective, Aileen Kavanagh argues that protecting rights in a constitutional democracy is a collaborative enterprise between all three branches of government: the Executive, legislature, and courts. With examples from multiple jurisdictions, this book documents the dynamics of collaborative constitutionalism.

A Constitution for the Living

A Constitution for the Living PDF Author: Beau Breslin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780804776707
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
What would America's Constitutions have looked like if each generation wrote its own? "The earth belongs...to the living, the dead have neither powers nor rights over it." These famous words, written by Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, reflect Jefferson's lifelong belief that each generation ought to write its own Constitution. According to Jefferson each generation should take an active role in endorsing, renouncing, or changing the nation's fundamental law. Perhaps if he were alive today to witness our seething debates over constitutional interpretation, he would feel vindicated in this belief. Madison's response was that a Constitution must endure over many generations to gain the credibility needed to keep a nation strong and united. History tells us that Jefferson lost that debate. But what if he had prevailed? In A Constitution for the Living, Beau Breslin reimagines American history to answer that question. By tracing the story from the 1787 Constitutional Convention up to the present, Breslin presents an engaging and insightful narrative account of historical figures and how they might have shaped their particular generation's Constitution. For all those who want to be in the candlelit taverns where the Founders sat debating fundamental issues over wine; to witness towering figures of American history, from Abraham Lincoln to Booker T. Washington, play out hypothetical meetings and conversations that are startling and revealing; and to attend a Constitutional Convention taking place in the present day--this book brings these possibilities to life with sensitivity, verve, and compelling historical detail. This book is, above all, a call for a more engaged American public at a time when change seems close at hand, if we dare to imagine it.

Redrafting Constitutions in Democratic Regimes

Redrafting Constitutions in Democratic Regimes PDF Author: Gabriel L. Negretto
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108839843
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
This book analyzes how replacing democratic constitutions may contribute to the improvement or erosion of democratic principles and practices.

Constitutional Design for Divided Societies

Constitutional Design for Divided Societies PDF Author: Sujit Choudhry
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191021512
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
How should constitutional design respond to the opportunities and challenges raised by ethnic, linguistic, religious, and cultural differences, and do so in ways that promote democracy, social justice, peace and stability? This is one of the most difficult questions facing societies in the world today. There are two schools of thought on how to answer this question. Under the heading of accommodation, some have argued for the need to recognize, institutionalize and empower differences. There are a range of constitutional instruments available to achieve this goal, such as multinational federalism and administrative decentralization, legal pluralism (e.g. religious personal law), other forms of non-territorial minority rights (e.g. minority language and religious education rights), consociationalism, affirmative action, legislative quotas, etc. But others have countered that such practices may entrench, perpetuate and exacerbate the very divisions they are designed to manage. They propose a range of alternative strategies that fall under the rubric of integration that will blur, transcend and cross-cut differences. Such strategies include bills of rights enshrining universal human rights enforced by judicial review, policies of disestablishment (religious and ethnocultural), federalism and electoral systems designed specifically to include members of different groups within the same political unit and to disperse members of the same group across different units, are some examples. In this volume, leading scholars of constitutional law, comparative politics and political theory address the debate at a conceptual level, as well as through numerous country case-studies, through an interdisciplinary lens, but with a legal and institutional focus.

It's Even Worse Than It Looks

It's Even Worse Than It Looks PDF Author: Thomas E. Mann
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465096735
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Acrimony and hyperpartisanship have seeped into every part of the political process. Congress is deadlocked and its approval ratings are at record lows. America's two main political parties have given up their traditions of compromise, endangering our very system of constitutional democracy. And one of these parties has taken on the role of insurgent outlier; the Republicans have become ideologically extreme, scornful of compromise, and ardently opposed to the established social and economic policy regime.In It's Even Worse Than It Looks, congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein identify two overriding problems that have led Congress -- and the United States -- to the brink of institutional collapse. The first is the serious mismatch between our political parties, which have become as vehemently adversarial as parliamentary parties, and a governing system that, unlike a parliamentary democracy, makes it extremely difficult for majorities to act. Second, while both parties participate in tribal warfare, both sides are not equally culpable. The political system faces what the authors call &"asymmetric polarization," with the Republican Party implacably refusing to allow anything that might help the Democrats politically, no matter the cost.With dysfunction rooted in long-term political trends, a coarsened political culture and a new partisan media, the authors conclude that there is no &"silver bullet"; reform that can solve everything. But they offer a panoply of useful ideas and reforms, endorsing some solutions, like greater public participation and institutional restructuring of the House and Senate, while debunking others, like independent or third-party candidates. Above all, they call on the media as well as the public at large to focus on the true causes of dysfunction rather than just throwing the bums out every election cycle. Until voters learn to act strategically to reward problem solving and punish obstruction, American democracy will remain in serious danger.

Constitutional Morality and the Rise of Quasi-Law

Constitutional Morality and the Rise of Quasi-Law PDF Author: Bruce P. Frohnen
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674968921
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Americans are increasingly ruled by an unwritten constitution consisting of executive orders, signing statements, and other forms of quasi-law that lack the predictability and consistency essential for the legal system to function properly. As a result, the U.S. Constitution no longer means what it says to the people it is supposed to govern, and the government no longer acts according to the rule of law. These developments can be traced back to a change in “constitutional morality,” Bruce Frohnen and George Carey argue in this challenging book. The principle of separation of powers among co-equal branches of government formed the cornerstone of America’s original constitutional morality. But toward the end of the nineteenth century, Progressives began to attack this bedrock principle, believing that it impeded government from “doing the people’s business.” The regime of mixed powers, delegation, and expansive legal interpretation they instituted rejected the ideals of limited government that had given birth to the Constitution. Instead, Progressives promoted a governmental model rooted in French revolutionary claims. They replaced a Constitution designed to mediate among society’s different geographic and socioeconomic groups with a body of quasi-laws commanding the democratic reformation of society. Pursuit of this Progressive vision has become ingrained in American legal and political culture—at the cost, according to Frohnen and Carey, of the constitutional safeguards that preserve the rule of law.

Courting Constitutionalism

Courting Constitutionalism PDF Author: Moeen Cheema
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108831885
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Presents a deeply contextualized account of public law and judicial review in Pakistan.

From Dialogue to Disagreement in Comparative Rights Constitutionalism

From Dialogue to Disagreement in Comparative Rights Constitutionalism PDF Author: Scott Stephenson
Publisher: Holt Prize
ISBN: 9781760020675
Category : Civil rights
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
The bills of rights adopted in the Commonwealth countries of Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and, at the subnational level, Australia in recent decades, have prompted scholars and institutional actors involved in the process of constitutional design and reform to rethink how to evaluate and compare the different approaches to human rights protection. They have challenged a number of assumptions in the field, for example, that courts must have the power to invalidate laws that are found to violate rights (ie courts can now be given non-binding powers), that courts must have the 'final word' on rights issues (ie legislatures can now be given the power to override judicial decisions) and that bills of rights are enforced exclusively by courts (ie legislators can now be given new responsibilities to ensure that the laws they enact are compatible with rights).This book addresses three questions arising from these developments. How do these new bills of rights differ from the traditional approaches to rights protection? Why, if at all, should we consider the Commonwealth's approach over the traditional approaches? What compromises must be struck in the course of adopting a bill of rights of this variety? In answering these questions, the book sets out a new framework for comparison that focuses on the types of inter-institutional disagreement facilitated by and found in the different approaches to rights protection. It also identifies a previously unrecognised element of the Commonwealth's approach - the normative trade-offs with other constitutional principles and values - that is pivotal to understanding its operation. Finally, it seeks to contribute to future debates about rights reform in Australia and elsewhere by setting out a number of lessons that emerge from the answers to these three questions.**Dr Scott Stephenson, From Dialogue to Disagreement in Comparative Rights Constitutionalism, was joint winner of the inaugural Holt Prize 2015.

Policy Change, Courts, and the Canadian Constitution

Policy Change, Courts, and the Canadian Constitution PDF Author: Emmett Macfarlane
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487523157
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
Policy Change, Courts, and the Canadian Constitution aims to further our understanding of judicial policy impact and the role of the courts in shaping policy change. Bringing together a group of political scientists and legal scholars, this volume delves into a diverse set of policy areas, including health care issues, the regulation of elections, criminal justice policy, minority language education, citizenship, refugee policy, human rights legislation, and Indigenous policy. While much of the public law and judicial politics literatures focus on the impact of the constitution and the judicial role, scholarship on courts that makes policy change its central lens of analysis is surprisingly rare. Multidisciplinary in its approach to examining policy issues, this book focuses on specific cases or policy issues through a wide-ranging set of approaches, including the use of interview data, policy analysis, historical and interpretive analysis, and jurisprudential analysis.