Search

This article presents an account of the work of the American constitutional law scholar, Paul W. Kahn, by situating it within a European tradition of political jurisprudence. After introducing certain basic features of this school of political jurisprudence, it proceeds to examine and evaluate Kahn's work relating to the political, the state, sovereignty, collective identity and constitution within the framework of that distinctive worldview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reviews Ran Hirschl's City, State: Constitutionalism and the Megacity, a study of 'the great constitutional silence concerning one of the most significant phenomena of our time: urban agglomeration and the rise of megacities' and which maintains that the solution to contemporary urban problems crucially depends on a 'constitutional emancipation' of the city. The essay argues that Hirschl is unable to deliver on his major claim. Launching his thesis on a skewed account of the development of the political role of the city, a one-sided presentation of the constitutional order of the modern state, and a failure to appreciate the impact of urbanization on the city's standing as a unit of government, Hirschl ignores the work of public lawyers on the challenges of metropolitan government and argues, unconvincingly, that these challenges can be resolved once we turn to the abstractions of constitutional theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of constitutional democracy has been a remarkable feature of the last 30 years, but during the last decade it has suffered a dramatic decline. That decline is marked less by constitutional democracies being overthrown than by an increase in regimes that retain the formal institutional trappings while flouting the norms and values on which constitutional democracies are based. This process of constitutional degradation is the subject of two recent books that together present the most comprehensive evaluation available on the current state of constitutional democracy. In this review article, the findings and analysis presented in Graber, Levinson and Tushnet's Constitutional Democracy in Crisis? and Ginsburg and Huq's How to Save a Constitutional Democracy are examined and appraised. The article argues that solutions to the contemporary crisis cannot be found only by strengthening liberal institutions; to survive, constitutional democracy must also seek to reinvigorate its democratic aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the 1978 Chorley Lecture by British jurist John Griffith about the political constitution. Topics covered include the history of political constitutionalism, Griffith's appraisal of the constitutional developments in Great Britain from the perspective of political science, and the positivist and functionalist method that drives his argument.

Sovereignty is the central tenet of modern British constitutional thought but its meaning remains misunderstood. Lawyers treat it as a precise legal concept – the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty – but commonly fail to acknowledge that that doctrine is erected on a skewed sense of what sovereignty entails. In particular, they do not see that the doctrine rests on a particular political conviction, that the British state depends on a central authority equipped with an unlimited power. These two facets of sovereignty are now so deeply intertwined in legal consciousness that they cannot easily be unravelled and this becomes the main barrier to thinking constructively about Britain's constitutional arrangements. This article substantiates these claims by explaining how the doctrine came into being, demonstrating how it is tied to a deeper political conviction, showing that its political underpinnings have been considerably weakened over the last century, and indicating how its re‐working is the precondition of constitutional renewal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1885 A.V. Dicey identified the rule of law as a key principle of British constitutional law. Presenting it both as a product of English common law method and an expression of classical liberalism, Dicey's concept lingered on into the twentieth century but mainly as a contentious ideological doctrine or simply as a vague rhetorical slogan. During the last fifty years, however, the concept has been revived, recrafted, relocated and reified. The rule of law has become a universal trope, albeit with a range of contestable meanings. This article traces this development, showing how it has been converted into a phrase of considerable political potency not only domestically but also in the international arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Glossing a passage from Benjamin Constant's Reflections on Constitutions, this article first assesses the roles performed by silences, gaps, and abeyances in constitutional texts and then examines recent initiatives that seek to fill those silences. The initiatives to fill those silences are evaluated by contrasting three conceptions of modern constitutions: the constitution as a framework for continuing political negotiation, the constitution as an order of values, and the constitution as facilitator of an evolving administrative order. The first, the framework conception, highlights the importance of political practices and in particular of the deliberative role of the legislature, the second, the value order conception, accentuates the moral dimension of constitutions and promotes the judiciary's role as guardian of constitutional values, and the third, the administrative order conception, emphasizes technical efficacy and the key role of the executive in promoting a governmental agenda. The article concludes by raising questions about those recent approaches that seek the elimination of constitutional silences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]