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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.

An essay is presented that discusses public law studies. The author examines the relations between constitutional law, state government, and the notion of sovereignty. Further discussion focuses on the impact of 21st-century events on international politics and government. The author argues against the notion that multi-level constitutionalism will replace discussions of public law in the 21st century, although he notes that emphasizing state matters may help constitutional studies flourish.