Author: Tom Ginsburg Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1107020565 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 407
Book Description
Assesses what we know - and do not know - about comparative constitutional design and particular institutional choices concerning executive power and other issues.
Author: Paul Yowell Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1509913602 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 311
Book Description
The decisions courts make in constitutional rights cases pervade our political life and touch on our most basic interests and values. The spread of judicial review of legislation around the world means that courts are increasingly called on to settle matters of moral and political controversy, including assisted suicide, data privacy, anti-terrorism measures, marriage, and abortion. But doubts regarding the institutional capacities of courts for deciding such questions are growing. Judges now regularly review social science research to assess whether a law will effectively achieve its aim, and at what cost to other interests. They cite studies and statistical information from psychology, sociology, medicine, and other disciplines in which they are rarely trained. This empirical reasoning proceeds alongside open-ended moral reasoning, with judges employing terms such as equality, liberty, and autonomy, then determining what these require in concrete circumstances. This book shows that courts were not designed for this kind of moral and empirical reasoning. It argues that in comparison to legislatures, the institutional capacities of courts are deficient. Legislatures are better equipped than courts for deliberating and decision-making in regard to the kinds of factual and moral issues that arise in constitutional rights cases. The book concludes by considering the implications of comparative institutional capacity for constitutional design. Is a system of judicial review of legislation something that constitutional framers should choose to adopt? If so, in what form? For countries with systems of judicial review, practical proposals are made to remedy deficiencies in the institutional capacities of courts.
Author: Cindy Skach Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 9781400832620 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 168
Book Description
After the collapse of communism, some thirty countries scrambled to craft democratic constitutions. Surprisingly, the constitutional model they most often chose was neither the pure parliamentary model found in most of Western Europe at the time, nor the presidential model of the Americas. Rather, it was semi-presidentialism--a rare model known more generally as the "French type." This constitutional model melded elements of pure presidentialism with those of pure parliamentarism. Specifically, semi-presidentialism combined a popularly elected head of state with a head of government responsible to a legislature. Borrowing Constitutional Designs questions the hasty adoption of semi-presidentialism by new democracies. Drawing on rich case studies of two of the most important countries for European politics in the twentieth century--Weimar Germany and the French Fifth Republic--Cindy Skach offers the first theoretically focused, and historically grounded, analysis of semi-presidentialism and democracy. She demonstrates that constitutional choice matters, because under certain conditions, semi-presidentialism structures incentives that make democratic consolidation difficult or that actually contribute to democratic collapse. She offers a new theory of constitutional design, integrating insights from law and the social sciences. In doing so, Skach challenges both democratic theory and democratic practice. This book will be welcomed not only by scholars and practitioners of constitutional law but also by those in fields such as comparative politics, European politics and history, and international and public affairs.
Author: Donald S. Lutz Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1139460552 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 251
Book Description
This book is written for anyone, anywhere sitting down to write a constitution. The book is designed to be educative for even those not engaged directly in constitutional design but who would like to come to a better understanding of the nature and problems of constitutionalism and its fundamental building blocks - especially popular sovereignty and the separation of powers. Rather than a 'how-to-do-it' book that explains what to do in the sense of where one should end up, it instead explains where to begin - how to go about thinking about constitutions and constitutional design before sitting down to write anything. Still, it is possible, using the detailed indexes found in the book, to determine the level of popular sovereignty one has designed into a proposed constitution and how to balance it with an approximate, appropriate level of separation of powers to enhance long-term stability.
Author: Tom Ginsburg Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 1107379709 Category : Law Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
This volume brings together essays by many of the leading scholars of comparative constitutional design from many perspectives to collectively assess what we know - and do not know - about the design process as well as particular institutional choices concerning executive power, constitutional amendment processes and many other issues. Bringing together positive and normative analysis, this volume provides state of the art in a field of growing theoretical and practical importance.
Author: Wayne D. Moore Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400887453 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 310
Book Description
American constitutionalism rests on premises of popular sovereignty, but serious questions remain about how the "people" and their rights and powers fit into the constitutional design. In a book that will radically reorient thinking about the Constitution and its place in the polity, Wayne Moore moves away from an exclusive focus on courts and judges and considers the following queries: Who is included among the people? How are the people politically configured? How may the people act? And how do the people relate to government and other representative structures? Going beyond though not excluding relevant discussions of specific constitutional texts (such as the preamble, articles V and VII, and the ninth, tenth, and fourteenth amendments), Moore examines historical material from the antebellum period, such as the opinions of U.S. Supreme Court justices in the notorious Dred Scott case and significantly different perspectives from the writings and speeches of Frederick Douglass. He also looks at influential thinking from the founding period and examines precedents set during prominent controversies involving the establishment of a national bank, regulations of the economy, and efforts to limit sexual and reproductive choices. The penultimate chapter explores issues raised by claims of state interpretive autonomy, and the conclusion models various dimensions of the constitutional order as a whole. The book offers fresh insights into central problems of constitutional history, theory, and law. Originally published in 1996. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Jonathan Wheatley Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317083040 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 215
Book Description
To what extent does the constitution-making process matter? By focusing on three central aspects of constitution-making; the nature of the constitution-making body, how it reaches decisions and the way in which a new constitution is legitimized and by examining a wide range of case studies, this international collection from expert contributors provides answers to this crucial question. Bridging the gap between law and political science this book draws together divergent research on the role of constitution making in conflict resolution, constitutional law and democratization and employs a wide variety of qualitative and quantitative methods to unfold and explore the political frameworks of the states affected. Comparative analysis is used to investigate potential causal chains between constitution-making processes and their outcomes in terms of stability, conflict resolution and democracy. By focusing on both procedure and context, the book explores the impact of constitution-making procedures in new and established states and unions in Europe, South America and Africa.
Author: Tom Ginsburg Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing ISBN: 0857931210 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 681
Book Description
This landmark volume of specially commissioned, original contributions by top international scholars organizes the issues and controversies of the rich and rapidly maturing field of comparative constitutional law. Divided into sections on constitutional design and redesign, identity, structure, individual rights and state duties, courts and constitutional interpretation, this comprehensive volume covers over 100 countries as well as a range of approaches to the boundaries of constitutional law. While some chapters reference the text of legal instruments expressly labeled constitutional, others focus on the idea of entrenchment or take a more functional approach. Challenging the current boundaries of the field, the contributors offer diverse perspectives - cultural, historical and institutional - as well as suggestions for future research. A unique and enlightening volume, Comparative Constitutional Law is an essential resource for students and scholars of the subject.
Author: Sujit Choudhry Publisher: OUP Oxford ISBN: 0191021512 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 496
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.
Author: Andrew Reynolds Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199246459 Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 530
Book Description
This text discusses the successes and failures of constitutional design. Chapters analyse the effect of presidential and parliamentary systems, federalism and autonomy, and electoral systems.
Author: Tom Ginsburg
Author: Paul Yowell
Author: Cindy Skach
Author: Donald S. Lutz
Author: Tom Ginsburg
Author: Wayne D. Moore
Author: Jonathan Wheatley
Author: Tom Ginsburg
Author: Sujit Choudhry
Author: Andrew Reynolds