The Defence of Constitutionalism PDF Download

Author: Jiří Přibáň
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788024634241
Category : Constitutional history
Languages : en
Pages : 312

View

Book Description

Author: J. H. H. Weiler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521796712
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 256

View

Book Description
Leading scholars of European constitutionalism highlight different facets of the constitutional discussion.

Author: Richard Bellamy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139467913
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

View

Book Description
Judicial review by constitutional courts is often presented as a necessary supplement to democracy. This book questions its effectiveness and legitimacy. Drawing on the republican tradition, Richard Bellamy argues that the democratic mechanisms of open elections between competing parties and decision-making by majority rule offer superior and sufficient methods for upholding rights and the rule of law. The absence of popular accountability renders judicial review a form of arbitrary rule which lacks the incentive structure democracy provides to ensure rulers treat the ruled with equal concern and respect. Rights based judicial review undermines the constitutionality of democracy. Its counter-majoritarian bias promotes privileged against unprivileged minorities, while its legalism and focus on individual cases distort public debate. Rather than constraining democracy with written constitutions and greater judicial oversight, attention should be paid to improving democratic processes through such measures as reformed electoral systems and enhanced parliamentary scrutiny.

Author: Jiří Přibáň
Publisher: Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press
ISBN: 8024634236
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

View

Book Description
More than a century after the publication of Czech politician Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk’s study The Czech Question, Czech politics has become a pragmatic question of democratic constitutionalism and civility. Originally published in major Czech newspapers, these essays on contemporary European politics demonstrate that this new understanding involves both technical questions of power-making and critical questions of its meaning. Democracy, Jirí Pribán shows, is the proces of permanent self-correction. It possesses both the capacity to respond to unexpected problems and crises and intrinsic tensions between principled arguments and everyday administrative processes. Defending constitutionalism, therefore, draws on principles of civil rights and freedoms, limited government, and representative democracy, the validity and persuasive force of which are at stake not only in the Czech Republic, but also in the European Union and our global society at large.

Author: Charles Howard McIlwain
Publisher: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.
ISBN: 1584775505
Category : Constitutional history
Languages : en
Pages : 172

View

Book Description
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.

Author: Louis Michael Seidman
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9780300085310
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 280

View

Book Description
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.

Author: Goodwin Liu
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199752834
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 274

View

Book Description
Chief Justice John Marshall argued that a constitution "requires that only its great outlines should be marked [and] its important objects designated." Ours is "intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs." In recent years, Marshall's great truths have been challenged by proponents of originalism and strict construction. Such legal thinkers as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argue that the Constitution must be construed and applied as it was when the Framers wrote it. In Keeping Faith with the Constitution, three legal authorities make the case for Marshall's vision. They describe their approach as "constitutional fidelity"--not to how the Framers would have applied the Constitution, but to the text and principles of the Constitution itself. The original understanding of the text is one source of interpretation, but not the only one; to preserve the meaning and authority of the document, to keep it vital, applications of the Constitution must be shaped by precedent, historical experience, practical consequence, and societal change. The authors range across the history of constitutional interpretation to show how this approach has been the source of our greatest advances, from Brown v. Board of Education to the New Deal, from the Miranda decision to the expansion of women's rights. They delve into the complexities of voting rights, the malapportionment of legislative districts, speech freedoms, civil liberties and the War on Terror, and the evolution of checks and balances. The Constitution's framers could never have imagined DNA, global warming, or even women's equality. Yet these and many more realities shape our lives and outlook. Our Constitution will remain vital into our changing future, the authors write, if judges remain true to this rich tradition of adaptation and fidelity.

Author: Robert Barros
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139433628
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 371

View

Book Description
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.

Author: John Adams
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Constitutional history
Languages : en
Pages : 472

View

Book Description

Author: A.V. Dicey
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 134917968X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 729

View

Book Description
A starting point for the study of the English Constitution and comparative constitutional law, The Law of the Constitution elucidates the guiding principles of the modern constitution of England: the legislative sovereignty of Parliament, the rule of law, and the binding force of unwritten conventions.