Author: Ronald MacDonald
Publisher: Brill Nijhoff
ISBN: 9789004146129
Category : Constitutional law
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
The world in which we find ourselves today is no longer governable entirely by resort to the classical system of international law. Even more seriously, it would seem that the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter are no longer being served sufficiently in light of new concerns. The text adopted in 1945 does not convey the image of a world tormented by terrorists. Nor does it reflect the most pressing commitments of our time: to democratic governance, to environmental responsibility, and to a freer and more equitable system of world trade. Increasingly, the international law community acknowledges the need to set new priorities in the development of international law. To that end it seems timely to reconsider the case for strengthening the constitutional framework of norms and institutions that seemed to offer the promise of fulfillment in the second half of the 20th century. The post-Cold War euphoria of the 1990s has virtually evaporated under the stress of new concerns at a time when states comprising the UN system are no longer capable of addressing these challenges. Towards World Constitutionalism argues the case for a more 'constitutionalized' system of international law and diplomacy. It is published at a time that the call for reform of the United Nations has become more insistent than at any time in its 60-year history. Even those most faithful to the purposes and principles enunciated in the Charter have had to admit to concerns about the management of certain sectors of the organization; and most concede the unrepresentative character of the powerful Security Council granted legal supremacy as the enforcer of international peace and security. Many go further and complain of unconscionable political bias in the General Assembly and in certain, over politicized, agencies. This collection of essays, by a selection of distinguished scholars representing various traditions of international law, constitutes a major contribution to this debate. It is an important resource for scholars and practitioners, and for all those concerned with the future of international law, and the world community.
Author: Jeffrey L. Dunoff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521735490
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 432
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Book Description
Ruling the World?: Constitutionalism, International Law, and Global Governance provides an interdisciplinary analysis of the major developments and central questions in debates over international constitutionalism at the UN, EU, WTO, and other sites of global governance. The essays in this volume explore controversial empirical and structural questions, doctrinal and normative issues, and questions of institutional design and positive political theory. Ruling the World? grows out of a three-year research project that brought twelve leading scholars together to create a comprehensive and integrated framework for understanding global constitutionalization. Ruling the World? is the first volume to explore in a cross-cutting way constitutional discourse across international regimes, constitutional pluralism, and relations among transnational and domestic constitutions. The volume examines the core assumptions, basic analytic tools, and key challenges in contemporary debates over international constitutionalization.
Author: Ran Hirschl
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674038677
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 306
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Book Description
In countries and supranational entities around the globe, constitutional reform has transferred an unprecedented amount of power from representative institutions to judiciaries. The constitutionalization of rights and the establishment of judicial review are widely believed to have benevolent and progressive origins, and significant redistributive, power-diffusing consequences. Ran Hirschl challenges this conventional wisdom. Drawing upon a comprehensive comparative inquiry into the political origins and legal consequences of the recent constitutional revolutions in Canada, Israel, New Zealand, and South Africa, Hirschl shows that the trend toward constitutionalization is hardly driven by politicians' genuine commitment to democracy, social justice, or universal rights. Rather, it is best understood as the product of a strategic interplay among hegemonic yet threatened political elites, influential economic stakeholders, and judicial leaders. This self-interested coalition of legal innovators determines the timing, extent, and nature of constitutional reforms. Hirschl demonstrates that whereas judicial empowerment through constitutionalization has a limited impact on advancing progressive notions of distributive justice, it has a transformative effect on political discourse. The global trend toward juristocracy, Hirschl argues, is part of a broader process whereby political and economic elites, while they profess support for democracy and sustained development, attempt to insulate policymaking from the vicissitudes of democratic politics.
Author: Ruth Rubio-Marin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107177022
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 405
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Book Description
Considers whether and how constitutions have affirmed women's equal citizenship status, from the birth of constitutionalism to the present.
Author: Martin Loughlin
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674276558
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
A New Statesman Book of the Year 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.
Author: Takao Suami
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108417116
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 625
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Book Description
Examines and compares East Asian and European perspectives of Global Constitutionalism.
Author: Bruce Ackerman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674238842
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 473
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Book Description
A robust defense of democratic populism by one of America’s most renowned and controversial constitutional scholars—the award-winning author of We the People. Populism is a threat to the democratic world, fuel for demagogues and reactionary crowds—or so its critics would have us believe. But in his award-winning trilogy We the People, Bruce Ackerman showed that Americans have repeatedly rejected this view. Now he draws on a quarter century of scholarship in this essential and surprising inquiry into the origins, successes, and threats to revolutionary constitutionalism around the world. He takes us to India, South Africa, Italy, France, Poland, Burma, Israel, and Iran and provides a blow-by-blow account of the tribulations that confronted popular movements in their insurgent campaigns for constitutional democracy. Despite their many differences, populist leaders such as Nehru, Mandela, and de Gaulle encountered similar dilemmas at critical turning points, and each managed something overlooked but essential. Rather than deploy their charismatic leadership to retain power, they instead used it to confer legitimacy to the citizens and institutions of constitutional democracy. Ackerman returns to the United States in his last chapter to provide new insights into the Founders’ acts of constitutional statesmanship as they met very similar challenges to those confronting populist leaders today. In the age of Trump, the democratic system of checks and balances will not survive unless ordinary citizens rally to its defense. Revolutionary Constitutions shows how activists can learn from their predecessors’ successes and profit from their mistakes, and sets up Ackerman’s next volume, which will address how elites and insiders co-opt and destroy the momentum of revolutionary movements.
Author: Anne Peters
Publisher: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers
ISBN: 9004251634
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 378
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Book Description
The law of immunity of states, of international organisations, and of public officials is one of the most important and most controversial topics of international law. The book consists of five parts: ‘State Immunity – National Practice’; State Immunity before the ICJ – The case Germany v Italy; ‘Commercial Activities and State Immunity’; ‘Immunity and Impunity’; and ‘Immunities of International Organisations’. Although immunities are in principle firmly anchored in international law, their precise legal implications are often unclear. The book takes up a number of new trends and challenges in this field and assesses them within the framework of global constitutionalism and multilevel governance. Contains chapters in both English and French.
Author: Mark A. Graber
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190245239
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 307
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Book Description
A New Introduction to American Constitutionalism is the first truly interdisciplinary study of the American constitutional regime. Mark A. Graber explores the fundamental elements of the American constitutional order with particular emphasis on how constitutionalism in the United States is a form of politics and not a means of subordinating politics to law.
Author: Poul F. Kjaer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317804805
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 226
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Book Description
This book develops a sociologically informed theory of constitutionalism in the global realm, addressing both national and transnational forms of constitutional ordering. The book begins with the argument that current approaches to constitutionalism remain tied to a state-based conception of constitutions, and overlooks underlying structural transformations that trigger the emergence of constitutional forms of ordering. Poul F. Kjaer aims to address this shortcoming by offering a sociological and historically informed analysis of the evolution of constitutionalism in the face of globalisation. The analysis contextualises on-going constitutional developments through the use of a long-term historical perspective, which is capable of highlighting the impact of deeper structural transformations unfolding within society. The book looks at the ways in which national and transnational legal forms have evolved alongside one another. It demonstrates that the formation of global constitutions has not resulted in a corresponding decrease in the power of nation states, but instead, legal and political aspects of both the nation state and the transnational have been reconfigured and intensified in a mutually supportive manner. In combining insights from a range of fields, this interdisciplinary book will be of great interest to students and scholars of constitutional law, sociology, global governance studies, and legal, social and political theory.
