Showing papers on "Constitution published in 2000"

Coloniality of Power and Eurocentrism in Latin America

Abstract: The globalization of the world is, in the first place, the culmination of a process that began with the constitution of America and world capitalism as a Euro-centered colonial/modern world power. ...

Governing with Judges: Constitutional Politics in Europe

Abstract: 1. Governing with Judges 2. Constitutional Adjudication and Parliamentary Democracy 3. Legislating 4. Protecting Rights 5. The Politics of Judging 6. Constructing a Supranational Constitution 7. Theory of Constitutional Politics

Persons and bodies : a constitution view

Abstract: What is a human person, and what is the relation between a person and his or her body? In her third book on the philosophy of mind, Lynne Rudder Baker investigates what she terms the person/body problem and offers a detailed account of the relation between human persons and their bodies. Baker's argument is based on the 'Constitution View' of persons and bodies, which aims to show what distinguishes persons from all other beings and to show how we can be fully material beings without being identical to our bodies. The Constitution View yields answers to the questions 'What am I most fundamentally?', 'What is a person?', and 'What is the relation between human persons and their bodies'? Baker argues that the complex mental property of first-person perspective enables one to conceive of one's body and mental states as one's own.

Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

Abstract: The United States was more a fragile hope than a reality in 1790 During the decade that followed, the Founding Fathers–-re-examined here as Founding Brothers–combined the ideals of the Declaration of Independence with the content of the Constitution to create the practical workings of our government Through an analysis of six fascinating episodes–--Hamilton and Burr’s deadly duel, Washington’s precedentsetting Farewell Address, Adams’ administration and political partnership with his wife, the debate about where to place the capital, Franklin’s attempt to force Congress to confront the issue of slavery and Madison’s attempts to block him, and Jefferson and Adams’ famous correspondence–FOUNDING BROTHERS brings to life the vital issues and personalities from the most important decade in our nation’s history

Legislative Institutions and Ideology in Chile

Abstract: Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Ideology and valence 2. Accident and force 3. Legislative institutions in the constitution of 1980 4. Roll-call votes and senate committees 5. The Labor committee 6. The Education committee 7. The Constitution committee 8. Legislative politics and Chile's transition toward democracy Conclusion Appendix: estimating preferences from voting records Bibliography Index.

Disaggregating Turkish citizenship and immigration practices

Abstract: There is a growing literature and academic interest increasingly questioning established notions of Turkish national identity and the boundaries of Turkish citizenship. The official formulation of Turkish national identity denies the existence of ethnic and cultural diversity in the country, the only exception being the religious minorities that were recognized in the Lausanne Treaty of 1923. The founders of the Turkish republic had embarked upon a modernist project that aimed to homogenize a society within the geographical area determined by the National Pact. A society that traditionally had been known as a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural one would be transformed into a uniform and homogeneous Turkish nation-state. A civic and territorially based formulation of Turkish nationalism became the ideological tool with which this was to be achieved. In 1924 following a fascinating debate concerning the definition of the term 'Turk', the parliament adopted Article 88 of the Constitution.' Accordingly, 'the people of Turkey regardless of their religion and race were, in terms of citizenship, to be Turkish' and as such would enjoy equal rights. This formulation has persisted across the 1961 and 1982 constitutions, and government officials frequently make references to it. The Turkish President, Siileyman Demirel, for example, in his end-of-the-year press conference in late December 1994 stated that the constitutions of the Turkish Republic did not specify origin, belief or language as the basis for citizenship or 'national belonging'. Membership to the Turkish nation merely entailed that one must be a Turkish citizen.2 Against such a formal definition of citizenship and national identity that emphasizes territoriality rather than ethnicity, actual state practice has been very different.3 The first signals of the gap that would evolve between the formal and substantive definitions of citizenship came as early as the mid1 920s. As the modernist project confronted growing challenges, the government increasingly resorted to policies that emphasized a preference for Turkish ethnicity and language. The initial civic or territorial conceptualization of Turkish national identity and citizenship became

Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace

Abstract: Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, by Lawrence Lessig, Basic Books, 1999, 230 pages. I. INTRODUCTION Just as Rachel Carson's classic Silent Spring awakened the world to environmental pollution in 1962, Larry Lessig's insightful Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace(1) (Code) seeks to warn longtime inhabitants of cyberspace of a major danger to the wild, unregulated, "1960s-like" environments to which they have grown accustomed. Code challenges the presumption of early Internet heroes, like John Perry Barlow, that technology has created an inherently free environment that can only remain so if governments leave it alone. Code observes, rather, that cyberspace is quite susceptible to alteration and that the gravest threats to online civil liberties in the United States are posed, not by laws, but by computer code--particularly those designed to commercialize the Web for e-commerce. Code explains how the business community's efforts (with government support) to make it easier to confirm cyberspace buyers' identities also unintentionally facilitate regulation of other conduct. Lessig's particular concern is with those civil liberties and other values central to American society, that the framers of the Constitution left without explicit legal protection; the limits of the technology of the time already safeguarded them. Now that the Internet and other new media have eliminated many physical and economic constraints on intrusive conduct-like the tracking of every page that an Internet suffer views--Code pleads for citizens to defend those privacy and other values they consider fundamental, lest they be diminished--if not eliminated--by code. In fact, the introduction of e-commerce-friendly Internet code is somewhat analogous to the genetic engineering of agricultural products. As Europeans--and increasingly Americans--have come to recognize, the manipulation of such basic codes may have widespread effects not limited to their targeted product markets or by national boundaries.(2) This has led many to demand public debate on the issue of what many call "Frankenfoods," and its effects on world ecosystems and human health. While Lessig certainly does not oppose e-commerce code, he advocates collective decision making where code may have major consequences with respect to important societal liberties. From an economist's perspective, Lessig understands that the "externalities" of e-commerce code--in terms of harm to social values--are too significant to expect private sector code writers to design a socially optimal architecture guided solely by Adam Smith's invisible hand. Rather, democratic principles require that, prior to the adoption of important varieties of what he terms "West Coast [computer],"(3) there be public discussions comparable to those associated with the adoption of "East Coast [legal] code."(4) Decisions about how much control over information society wants to allow and by whom, call for democratic decision making. With concerns similar to those of political activist Jeremy Rifkin,(5) Lessig implores citizens not to maintain blind faith in the social value judgments of the commercial marketplace where externalities may be given short shrift, if not ignored altogether, until irreversible harm is done. While Code focuses on issues arising from Internet technology, it also discusses the more general relationship between technology and law. Code observes that four principal forces regulate people's behavior: laws, norms, prices, and technology (although it calls the latter forces "market" and "architecture"). It explains how each of these limit individuals' actions, how the forces can work directly or indirectly in combinations, and how improvements in technology can dramatically alter the composite constraint on people's conduct. The middle third of Code is entirely devoted to identifying how technology--primarily the Internet--is significantly altering the net effect of these four forces on behaviors. …

The public culture of the Victorian middle class : ritual and authority and the English industrial city, 1840-1914

Abstract: Acknowledgements 1. The industrial city, the middle class and bourgeois culture 2. Building the city 3. The social uses of public space 4. Clubland: the private in the public 5. Spiritual culture 6. Music and the constitution of high culture 7. The rites of civic culture Epilogue: the decline of provincial bourgeois culture

Islamic Law and Legal System: Studies of Saudi Arabia

Abstract: Based on years of research in Saudi Arabia, this volume investigates the legal system of Saudi Arabia both for its own sake and as a case-study of an Islamic legal system As a study of Saudi Arabia, it is the first extensive treatment in English of the constitution and Islamic court system of Saudi Arabia As a study of an existing legal system in continuity with past Islamic law and practice, it sheds new light on Islamic legal doctrine, practice, and institutions, correcting for past scholarly neglect of Islamic law's application The book develops a framework of concepts, rooted in both Islamic and western legal theory, useful for the comparative description and analysis of Islamic legal systems and applications, past and present

Freedom's Law: The Moral Reading of the American Constitution

Abstract: In Freedom's Law, Ronald Dworkin propounds his theory of constitutional interpretation and applies it to some of the most controversial constitutional issues of the last twenty years, including abortion, affirmative action, pornography, hate speech, gay rights, euthanasia, and free speech. Although each of the chapters of the book was first published as a separate essay, together they provide an engaging and coherent account of Dworkin's constitutional philosophy. In the first part of the book, Dworkin elaborates and argues for what he calls the moral reading of the Constitution. The United States Constitution, like most contemporary constitutions, defines individual rights in very broad and abstract language. The Fourth Amendment, for example, protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures." The Eighth Amendment protects against "cruel and unusual" punishment. According to the moral reading, clauses that incorporate such terms should be construed as referring to "abstract moral principles and las] incorporatling] these by reference, as limits on government's power." (p. 7). The moral reading of the Constitution, on Dworkin's view, implies that "government must treat all those subject to its dominion as having equal moral and political status; it must attempt, in good faith, to treat them all with equal concern; and it must respect whatever individual freedoms are indispensable to those ends, including but not limited to the freedoms more specifically designated in the document, such as the freedoms of speech and religion." (p. 8). Since constitutional rights are not limited to those specifically mentioned in the Constitution, constitutional interpretation requires the sort of analysis that is common to applied moral philosophy. On Dworkin's view, then, one cannot resolve a constitutional question about what equal protection requires without resolving the corresponding moral question of what the moral notion of equality requires. In this way, Dworkin's theory "brings political morality into the heart of constitutional law." (p.2) Unfortunately, Dworkin does not always apply these doctrines consistently in addressing specific legal problems. For example, while the

The WTO constitution and human rights

Abstract: Human rights and liberal trade rules (including WTO rules) are based on the same values: individual freedom and responsibility (e.g. to adjust to competition); non-discrimination; rule of law; access to courts and adjudication to disputes; promotion of social welfare through peaceful cooperation among free citizens; parliamentary approval of national and international rules. The non-economic values of WTO law are no less important for the human rights and welfare of citizens than the economic welfare effects of liberal trade. Like the EC, the WTO can and should become an advocate not only of economic freedom, but of human freedom more generally. This article argues in favour of constitutional reforms of WTO law so as to take civil society and human rights more seriously. Copyright 2000 by Oxford University Press.

After Britain: New Labour and the Return of Scotland

Abstract: After Britain is a scathing analysis of the twilight of an ancient state: the United Kingdom. Its constitutional monarchy (lacking a written constitution), its parliamentary democracy (with a totally undemocratic second chamber) and its rule of law (without a full bill of rights or freedom of information) were once the envy of the world. Now, a 'modernizing' government is embarking on a last ditch effort to shore up the fragments of old glory. In this mordantly funny and brilliantly perceptive book, Tom Naim shows how self-government in Scotland and Wales will inexorably remove sovereignty from Westminster. He also paints a satirical portrait of New Labour that cuts through the glitz and spin to the emptiness beneath.

Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood

Abstract: Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood. By Peter S. Onuf. (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 2000. Pp. xi, 250. $27.95.) Peter S. Onuf, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia and past SHEAR president, tells readers in the introduction to Jefferson's Empire that he is an "antibiographer" who seeks "to take a fresh look at what we think we already know so well" (10-11). Onuf s latest book is firmly anchored in the scholarship of both the early national period and Jeffersoniana and draws directly from Jefferson's writings to construct "the large contours of Jefferson's political philosophy" (3), beginning with the American Revolution. According to Onuf, "Jefferson believed he made his greatest contributions to his country by articulating the widely shared principles, grounded in nature and self-evident to the common understanding, on which its republican government was founded" (105). The American Revolution was necessary, in Jefferson's mind, because the British empire was insufficiently republican. Because the British had no constitution that "defin[ed] spheres of authority" and "secure[ed] the rights of colonies and colonists" (8), the empire operated through the rule of force rather than the rule of law. As Americans opposed the centralized operation of the empire but settled their lands within the expansive scope of their royal charters, they "invent[ed] themselves as a people" (6) bound together by "ties of interest and affection" (2)-that is, land and liberty. This "empire of liberty" united classical ideals of "virtue" and modern, libertarian beliefs in the equal rights of individuals and equality among their "state-republics" (7-8, 38). Constant territorial expansion thereby guaranteed a lasting "federal union of self-governing republics" (58), cemented with the ratification of the United States Constitution. But by the 1790s, Jefferson saw his revolutionary legacy-his empire of liberty-as endangered from within by monarchists who undermined the federal and republican principles on which the nation rested. New England Federalists (especially those living in Massachusetts) refused to give up foreign attachments to Great Britain and tried to break the limits the Constitution imposed on the central government's powers. In the election of 1800, the American people foiled Federalist schemes by reaffirming their commitment to the nation that they had formed in the Revolution and sealed in the more perfect union established by the Constitution. During the War of 1812 and the Missouri crisis of 1820, New England Federalists again brought the nation to the brink of destruction. In 1813 and 1814, Jefferson welcomed a war with New England to "purif[y the nation] of the last vestiges of monarchical corruption... [and] redeem the promise of the American Revolution" (123). In 1820, he despaired that New England was again wrecking the constitutional "sovereignty and equality of the respective states" (116) and morosely obsessed that disunion and counter-revolution threatened the "legacy of the American Revolution, and of his whole political career" (129). In thinking for the revolutionary generation and working to guarantee its federal and republican principles, Jefferson squarely took on the intellectual problem posed by the existence of people within the American nation who did not share in the common experiences of Americans: Indians and blacks. Jefferson saw no place for Native Americans as members of distinctive cultures in his expanding republic because they occupied land destined for Americans, because most tribes allied themselves with the British during the American Revolution, and because Indian males "inflicted an `unjust drudgery' on their women" (29). …

Sharing the tools of the trade - The interactional constitution of workplace objects

Abstract: Despite a growing body of work across the social and cognitive sciences concerned with the relations between inanimate objects and sociality, we still have relatively little understanding of the wa...

Democratic Institutional Design: The Powers and Incentives of Venezuelan Politicians and Interest Groups

Abstract: List of tables List of figures List of abbreviations 1. Studying democratic institutions in Venezuela 2. The electoral system's impact on the role of congress in the policy-making process 3. The President's legislative role: the initiation of legislation and presidential decree authority 4. Influencing the executive branch during policy formation: consultative commissions 5. Participating in the execution of policy: the decentralized public administration 6. Institutionalized dominance and its dynamics: the relative participation of business and labor 7. The policy impact: the economic development strategy and patterns of government spending 8. Political institutions, crisis, and reform 9. Venezuelan institutional design in comparative perspective Postscript: the 2000 constitution Notes References Index.

English Society, 1660–1832: Religion, Ideology and Politics during the Ancien Régime

Abstract: Introduction: the nature of the Old Order 1. From restoration to reconciliation, 1660-1760 2. The social and ideological premises of the old order 3. National identity: the matrix of Church and State 4. Before radicalism: the religious origins of disaffection, 1688-1800 5. The old order on the eve of its demise: slow erosion 6. The end of the Protestant constitution, 1800-1832: sudden collapse.

Thailand's Crisis

Abstract: This is a review of what the IMF did, who got hurt, what worked and what failed in the economic and social management of Thailand's economic crisis. It shows how political change got bound up with economic crisis, resulting in a new constitution, a seismic shift in the political landscape and greater asssertiveness by civil society. It examines how the economic turmoil changed the ways people reacted to political scandal, viewed their own society and imagined their future. The final chapters review the changes and lessons from 1997-2000 and speculate on how these changes will frame the future.

The Politics of Institutional Choice: The Formation of the Russian State Duma

Abstract: Events in Russia since the late 1980s have created a rare opportunity to watch the birth of democratic institutions close at hand. Here Steven Smith and Thomas Remington provide the first intensive, theoretically grounded examination of the early development of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Federation's parliament created by the 1993 constitution. They offer an integrated account of the choices made by the newly elected members of the Duma in establishing basic operating arrangements: an agenda-setting governing body, a standing committee system, an electoral law, and a party system. Not only do these decisions promise to have lasting consequences for the post-communist Russian regime, but they also enable the authors to test assumptions about politicians' goals from the standpoint of institutional theory.Smith and Remington challenge in particular the notion, derived from American contexts, that politicians pursue a single, overarching goal in the creation of institutions. They argue that politicians have multiple political goals--career, policy, and partisan--that drive their choices. Among Duma members, the authors detect many cross currents of interests, generated by the mixed electoral system, which combines both single-member districts and proportional representation, and by sharp policy divisions and an emerging party system. Elected officials may shift from concentrating on one goal to emphasizing another, but political contexts can help determine their behavior. This book brings a fresh perspective to numerous theories by incorporating first-hand accounts of major institutional choices and placing developments in their actual context.

State Crime, Human Rights, and the Limits of Criminology

Abstract: THE AIM OF THIS ARTICLE IS TO SUGGEST HOW CRIMINOLOGY CAN REMEDY ITS neglect of the important phenomenon of state crime, without adopting such a broad definition of "crime" as to destroy what coherence criminology has as a distinct field of study. To assess the universality of our approach we employ examples from two different state traditions, Anglo-American and Turkish. Our definition allows us to examine countries as diverse as Turkey and the United Kingdom from the perspective of a continuum, rather than as two discrete, incomparable state formations -- authoritarian and democratic. One of our reasons for selecting Turkey as a comparative example is that it is a democratizing state with an authoritarian historical backdrop. Torture of detainees, extrajudicial killings and disappearances, violent public order policing, forced evacuations, the razing of whole villages, and the routine harassment of trade unionists, media workers, and human rights defenders form the human rights landscape in much of Turkey (see Amnesty International, 1998; European Commission, 1998; Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, 1997, 1998; Human Rights Watch, 1999). Torture is, however, in breach of Article 17 of the Constitution and Articles 243 and 245 of the penal code, and is punishable by up to five years of imprisonment. Proposals documented in the new draft penal code are set to increase the powers of the courts in punishing state officials found guilty of torture and ill treatment of detainees. In some celebrated cases, state officials have been charged with criminal conduct, but they are few and the crimes a re many. In 1999, six police officers were sentenced to five and one-half years each for torturing a suspect to death in 1993, but most other cases against state officials have resulted in very lenient sentences, fines, or acquittals. The violence of the Turkish state is of a different order of magnitude to that employed in most liberal democracies. Yet instances of violent crime by British and American state officials are not difficult to find -- recent revelations about the Los Angeles Police Department, and allegations of brutality against officers at the Wormwood Scrubs and Wandsworth prisons in England are among the more obvious examples. Less well-publicized is the extent to which legally unjustifiable violence is routinely used by police to enforce social discipline in some working-class areas (Choongh, 1997; Waddington, 1999). Despite the arguments of some theorists (e.g., Giddens, 1985) to the contrary, the use and threat of physical violence remain central to state power in liberal democracies. Cover's remarks on American criminal trials bring this out vividly: If convicted the defendant customarily walks -escorted--to prolonged confinement, usually without significant disturbance to the civil appearance of the event. It is, of course, grotesque to assume that the civil facade is voluntary." ...There are societies in which contrition and shame control defendants' behaviour to a greater extent than does violence.... But I think it is unquestionably the case in the United States that most prisoners walk into prison because they know they will be dragged or beaten into prison if they do not walk (Cover, 1986: 1, 607). The legal limits of legitimate force are inherently vague -- it is impossible to define in advance exactly what form of dragging or beating the prisoner may legitimately receive -- and strict enforcement of what limits do exist is intrinsically difficult and will often be contrary to the interests of the enforcing agency. It would therefore be surprising to discover any state in which criminal or legally ambiguous acts of violence by state agents did not occur. It would be equally astounding if any state were able to eliminate the innumerable opportunities for predatory crime inherent in economic regulation and revenue-raising (Smart, 1999). Some states, however, plainly commit far more and more serious crimes than others do, and it might be expected that these differences would be among the central concerns of criminology (Comfort, 1950). …

Law as Politics: Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism

Abstract: While anti-liberal legal theorist Carl Schmitt has long been considered by Europeans to be one of this century's most significant political philosophers, recent challenges to the fundamental values of liberal democracies have made Schmitt's writings an unavoidable subject of debate in North America as well. In an effort to advance our understanding not only of Schmitt but of current problems of liberal democracy, David Dyzenhaus presents translations of classic German essays on Schmitt alongside more recent writings by distinguished political theorists and jurists. Neither a defence of nor an attack on Schmitt, "Law as Politics" offers the first balanced response to his powerful critique of liberalism.One of the major players in the 1920s debates, an outspoken critic of the Versailles Treaty and the Weimar Constitution, and a member of the Nazi party who provided juridical respectability to Hitler's policies, Schmitt contended that people are a polity only to the extent that they share common enemies. He saw the liberal notion of a peaceful world of universal citizens as a sheer impossibility and attributed the problems of Weimar to liberalism and its inability to cope with pluralism and political conflict. In the decade since his death, Schmitt's writings have been taken up by both the right and the left and scholars differ greatly in their evaluation of Schmitt's ideas."Law as Politics" thematically organizes in one volume the varying engagements and confrontations with Schmitt's work and allows scholars to acknowledge-and therefore be in a better position to negotiate-an important paradox inscribed in the very nature of liberal democracy. "Law as Politics" will interest political philosophers, legal theorists, historians, and anyone interested in Schmitt's relevance to current discussions of liberalism. The contributors are: Heiner Bielefeldt, Ronald Beiner, Ernst-Wolfgang Bockenforde, Renato Cristi, David Dyzenhaus, Robert Howse, Ellen Kennedy, Dominique Leydet, Ingeborg Maus, John P. McCormick, Reinhard Mehring, Chantal Mouffe, William E. Scheuerman, and Jeffrey Seitzer.

The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788-1828

Abstract: The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788-1828. By Saul Cornell. (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Pp., xvi, 327. Maps. Cloth, $55.00; paper, $19.95.) American historians today love underdogs. Whereas our predecessors lavished attention on statesmen and generals, we now cast our spotlights on the unappreciated or overlooked, especially those who challenged now discredited norms of respectability and deference. The consensus emerging among historians of early America, as indicated by Jon Butler's new synthesis, Becoming America (2000), peels away the pretentious gentility of earlier portraits to reveal a boisterous and ribald popular culture taking shape in defiance of authority and tradition. Surely this is a propitious moment for taking a fresh look at those lovable losers of the early republic, the Antifederalists. It is clear from The Other Founders that Saul Cornell relishes the carnivalesque plebeian populism that sometimes sparked Antifederalist riots. If Americans failed to produce cat massacres, they did at least hang and bum in effigy Federalists such as James Wilson. Spontaneous popular uprisings, such as the 1787 protest against the Constitution in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791, gave honest working men a chance to thumb their noses at effete elites, and so give us a chance now to salute their heroic efforts. Unfortunately, compelling as that morality play may be to our own sensibilities, it cannot be sustained by the historical record. As Cornell's careful and subtle analysis makes clear, there are at least three problems with the attractive portrait of Antifederalists as plebeian democrats. First, the personnel and programs of those who opposed the Constitution varied so widely that it is difficult even to identify who they were and what they stood for. Only their common fears of centralization united Antifederalists. Plebeian democrats from the backcountry, such as William Petrikin, had little in common with wealthy, elite critics of the Constitution from New England and the South, such as Mercy Otis Warren and Arthur Lee, or even with middling democrats from New York and Pennsylvania, such as George Clinton and Melancton Smith, who championed commerce and economic growth. Moreover, the contributors to Antifederalist discourse who exerted the greatest influence, and whose writings were most often reprinted and distributed, tended to articulate middling or elite, rather than plebeian, arguments. Not only were Federalists outraged by the Carlisle riot and the Whiskey Rebellion, but almost all Antifederalists likewise condemned their erstwhile allies' lawlessness and, with William Findley, Albert Gallatin, and even William Manning, railed against the dangers of "mobocracy." The "fear of anarchy," Cornell writes, prompted middling democrats to create a loyal opposition rather than encouraging "extralegal action" (141). Second, most Antifederalists shared a commitment to what Cornell, taking his cue from Jurgen Habermas, calls the emerging public sphere. Whereas the anonymous print culture of that arena challenged and eventually displaced the politics of personal patronage and deference that preceded it, the premium placed on reasoned argument-even when advanced through satirical or raw-boned prose-did not jibe with a politics of violent protest. The ideal of deliberation that Cornell skillfully and painstakingly pieces together from the mass of Antifederalist writings required balancing and filtering different interests in order to achieve the common good, a still-vital republican ideal. Only a few Antifederalists, such as James Winthrop, ever articulated a straightforward politics of self-- interest; far more common in Antifederalist tracts were claims that the necessary balancing and filtering could be done better at the local or state rather than the national level. …

Common Law, Common Ground, and Jefferson's Principle

Abstract: Thomas Jefferson's famous argument that "the earth belongs to the living" - and therefore no generation has the right to rule another - is a standing challenge to anyone who believes that written constitutions (or, in many instances, statutes) are binding. Most answers to Jefferson's challenge rely, in one way or another, on a claim that being an American means owing an obligation of some kind to previous generations. These accounts should not be disparaged, but in a large and heterogeneous nation the obligation to adhere to decisions made decades or centuries ago should rest on something less contested. Our written Constitution performs two functions that justify adherence to it, without relying on a contested conception of American citizenship. First, the text, and the judgments of those who wrote and ratified it, are a source of precedents, roughly on a par with certain judicial decisions. Second, the text provides what game theory calls a "focal point": it establishes common ground on questions (such as the length of a President's term) that need to be settled one way or another. There are no other justifications, beyond these two, for requiring adherence to the text of a document adopted long ago. But this account helps explain current practices that might otherwise seem unjustifiable: an emphasis on the words of the text often without regard to the intentions of the drafters, as evidenced, for example, in the debate over the incorporation of the Bill of Rights; the highly selective use of historical sources (what is often called "law office history"); the fact that the text of the Constitution matters most for issues that are the least important; and popular attitudes about constitutional amendment.

Advice and consent : the politics of consultation in Japan

Abstract: Preface 1. Interest-group politics in Japan: competing interpretations 2. The Shingikai system 3. Shingikai in the spotlight 4. Amending Japan's labor constitution: revision of the labor standards act 5. Regulating the invisible giant: the introduction of financial futures markets 6. The god that fell: reducing the price of rice 7. Comparisons and conclusions.

The Constitution of Bilingual/ESL Education as a Disciplinary Practice: Genealogical Explorations

Abstract: This article provides a cultural and political critique of the constitution of bilingual/English-as-a-second-language (ESL) education as a disciplinary practice in the case of New Mexico. Using genealogy and postcolonial, post-structural, and critical frameworks, this article claims that the directions advanced by the Chicano/Chicana movement were lost. Instead, what emerged was a field that nurtured a mix of symbolic colonization and docilization through the construction of a settlement that controls thought and behavior, perpetuating misrecognition in a Bourdieuian sense. Illusion, collusion, and delusion have enabled the dominance of psycholinguistic approaches. Problematizing the constitution of bilingual/ESL education within a cultural and political sphere could foster an emancipatory education for marginalized students.

Working a Democratic Constitution: The Indian Experience

Abstract: This important book offers critical insights into four decades of the Indian Constitution. It charts the course of constitutional reform in India from the euphoric idealism of the post-independence period, through the crisis years of emergency, and up to Rajiv Gandhi's brief stay in power. The book analyzes the ways in which various legal and political vicissitudes of democracy have affected the making of the Indian Constitution.

Adjudicating Constitutional Priorities in a Transnational Context: A Comment on Soobramoney’s Legacy and Grootboom’s Promise

Abstract: This article discusses the first two social rights cases to go to the Constitutional Court under the 1996 Constitution. Soobramoney v Minister of Health, KwaZulu-Natal 1998 (1) SA 765 (CC) involved...

Freedom in Constitutional Contract: Perspectives of a Political Economist

Abstract: It is almost trite to call Professor Buchanan one of the original thinkers of our time, but the clarity and gentleness of his reasoning too often lets us take for common sense and common knowledge that which came through deliberate reasoning and was previously known by few. In this augmented collection of some of his existing work on the fundamental problems of social organizations, Buchanan faces the necessity of describing the conditions under which rules and agreements for community life must exist; he takes the alternative arrangements which exist or have been proposed and rotates them and examines each facet for coherence or flaw in their pattern; and he draws conclusions which are clear hypotheses or specific recommendations. It is orderly thinking and good writing, both as a collection and within each essay. But there is also passion in Buchanan's work. Passion and belief an example of that thin-spread ability to take a stand do not mar the analysis: the belief is clearly set forth, and the passion reserved for those who will analyze without recognizable description of the problem or conclude without analysis. As a humanist, believing in the greatest attainable happiness for individual human beings, and as an individualist believing that people can define for themselves alone what happiness entails, Buchanan seeks a plausibly attainable social constitution for a society of person's recognizable as his fellow human beings. That is what this collection, and all Buchanan's work, is about. The book is divided into five parts. In 'Anarchy, Law, and the Invisible Hand' structures are eliminated which seem to offer no hope of a generally desirable constitutional society. The contractarian approach to a constitutional society is set forth in 'The Structure of Social Contract'. The inevitable problem of enforcing chosen rules is faced in 'The Enforcement Dilemma. And the concluding two sections offer some 'Economic Applications of the contractarian-constitutionalist logic, and an examination of the current situation in the United States together with Buchanan's own prescriptions for reform and for escape from 'constitutional anarchy'. What is a constitutionalist-contractarian? One crucial principle underlies and justifies the use of this distended term: a constitutionalist recognizes

Civil Society, Constitution, and Legitimacy

Abstract: Spurred by recent governmental transitions from dictatorships to democratic institutions, this highly original work argues that negotiated civil society-oriented transitions have an affinity for a distinctive method of constitution making- one that accomplishes the radical change of institutions through legal continuity. Arato presents a compelling argument that this is the preferred method for rapidly establishing viable democratic institutions, and he contrasts the negotiated model with radical revolutionary change. This exceptionally engaging work will be of interest to students and scholars of comparative politics, constitutional law, and East European studies.

A land of liberty? England 1689-1727

Abstract: England after the Glorious Revolution The Glorious Revolution and the Revolution Constitution The Facts of Life A Bloody Progress The Political World of William III Wars of Words and the Battle of the Books Faith and Fervour England, Britain, Empire The Political World of Queen Anne Profits, Progress and Projects The Wealth of the Country The Political World of George I Urban and Urbane An Ordered Society Epilogue Chronology Bibliography Index