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Unlike Margaret Thatcher Tony Blair was no conviction politician but he was a committed pragmatist driven by the desire to reverse the Labour Party’s electoral fortunes and replace the Conservative Party as the natural party of British government. Nowhere is this better illustrated than constitutional reform. He possessed a keen analysis of Britain’s constitutional dilemmas in a post-Thatcherite world but with the exception of those areas where there was a ready-made solution he was less certain about what needed to be done (Giddens, 2007). The main dilemma he confronted was that the essence of the constitutional crisis his government inherited was the product of the sovereignty of parliament which afforded untrammelled powers to the executive as long as it was able to discipline its majority. It was impossible, however, given the constraints of the British political tradition, to mitigate the sovereignty of parliament except through the constitution of a new sovereign. To do so would be federalism and federalism would inevitably constitute a radical assault on both English interests and his own powers as Prime Minister. This strategic paradox remains the fault line for understanding constitutional reformism in the Blair era, the contestation between centralism and reform and Blair’s governing style.

John Tyler’s selection of an independent strategy is initially quite surprising in the context of his unique position as the first accidental president. Even before he initiated actions as leader, Tyler faced a constitutional crisis. Whig Party leaders argued that Tyler was actually only an “acting president,” presumably with less power than a directly elected one. Henry Clay, at first, declared that Tyler would govern as a “regent” and Adams noted in his diary that “the event... made the Vice president … Acting President for four years less one month.”1 Not only did Tyler aggressively resist this view from the moment he assumed office, but he also opposed and vetoed the legislative agenda of his putative party. Tyler thus has received sharply mixed assessments as the first accidental president. One the one hand, he has been praised for setting a major constitutional precedent that has aided all subsequent accidental presidents. Presidents who assume office as the result of death or resignation possess the same authority (at least in terms of rex) as directly elected ones.2 Through his decisive actions in 1841, concludes one biographer, “John Tyler had placed all future vice presidents a heartbeat away from the presidency.”3

Sir Geoffrey Elton has breathed new life into the putrefying corpse of Elizabethan parliamentary history. In conjunction with others, notably Michael Graves, Norman Jones, and David Dean, he has succeeded in demolishing the standard interpretation of high politics, spirited opposition, and principled conflict perfected by Sir John Neale. Elton's analysis of the early Elizabethan Parliaments provides, for the first time, the detailed revisionist argument, one capable in many respects, moreover, of logical extension over the remainder of the reign and buttressed by a series of general overviews. For all the necessary emphasis on cooperation, bill procedure, and “business as usual,” Elton is well aware that politics intruded on legislative affairs, and at no time was this more obvious than during the troubled 1566 session. Neale had devoted forty-seven printed pages to his interpretation of constitutional crisis during these three months. Elton provides a far briefer, more taut, coverage but nonetheless the session figures very prominently in his portrayal of “great affairs.” It is not the intention of this article to dispute Elton's general interpretation of a political crisis orchestrated in good measure by privy councillors intent on exerting pressure on the queen to settle the succession issue. That portrayal is sensible and, in its broad outlines, generally supported by the known evidence. Nevertheless, in his desire to purge Neale's interpretations from the corpus of Elizabethan parliamentary history, Sir Geoffrey has, in a number of instances, permitted his arguments and beliefs to outrun his evidence. These occasions are important for the understanding of events and themes within Parliament.

THE year 1988 witnessed some remarkable events in Malaysia. Not only was the ruling party held by a High Court judge to be an illegal society, but this event led indirectly to executive interference with the judiciary resulting in the removal of the Lord President of the Supreme Court, the country's most senior judge, and two other judges of the Supreme Court. Put shortly the problem is not an unfamiliar one in the Commonwealth countries of Asia and Africa. A judiciary in the process of flexing its muscles and exercising the independence vouchsafed to it by the constitution incurred the anger of an executive which took a very different view from the judiciary of the nature of the separation of powers under the constitution. The particular form this familiar story took is, however, of great interest because it brings together a number of extraordinary factors, political, legal and cultural, and reveals much about the difficulties which face judges in the rapidly industrialising countries of Asia.

After the legislative election of March 1986, the French political system went through an unprecedented experiment that most Frenchmen called cohabitation. This new addition to the rich French political vocabulary refers to the major consequence of the 1986 election: the division and the sharing of governmental powers between a Socialist president of the Republic, Franqois Mitterrand, and a prime minister of the Right, Jacques Chirac, supported by a majority in the National Assembly. While such a situation had been expected to happen sometime in the course of the evolution of the French Fifth Republic, most analysts and some French politicians had argued that it could not possibly work such an experiment would bring about grave political controversies and would ultimately end in a constitutional crisis. Yet, cohabitation between President Mitterrand and Prime Minister Chirac avoided the severe problems that so many had predicted and lasted until the French presidential election of 1988. This article investigates the meaning of cohabitation, the reasons for its relative success, and its ultimate consequences in the present French political system. It presents four main points: the constitutional provisions responsible for cohabitation, the various theories and scenarios about cohabitation, the operation of cohabitation, and the present and future consequences of the experiment. The article concludes by discussing whether France is headed toward a system change.

(1990). Political and constitutional crisis in Vanuatu. The Round Table: Vol. 79, No. 313, pp. 43-64.

A 1909 article on the courts by political scientist W. F. Dodd observed that “In this field [public policy] decisions of the courts necessarily depend not upon any fixed rules of law but upon the individual opinions of the judges on political and economic questions; and such decisions, resting, as they must, upon no general principles, will be especially subject to reversal or modification when changes take place in the personnel of the courts.” Dodd presciently encapsulated what became the standout theme surrounding the twentieth-century Supreme Court. This chapter conveys how judging and judges on the Supreme Court in several different ways came to be perceived in instrumental terms. The events covered are the 1937 Court Packing Plan and its aftermath, the reforms brought by the Warren Court, and the backlash against those reforms as they played out in connection with later Supreme Courts, leading up to the present. Court packing plan President Franklin D. Roosevelt's failed 1937 “court packing plan” has been characterized as a “great constitutional war,” which culminated in a “constitutional revolution.” It was the closest the country had come to a genuine constitutional crisis since the Civil War and Reconstruction. Roosevelt's New Deal legislative program was an attempt to find solutions to the ongoing economic crisis and to ameliorate the most desperate social and economic consequences that continued to linger from the recent Depression.

The voluminous historiography of the‘Great Reform Act’ of 1832 and the more modest historiography of the Reform Act (Scotland) have tended to focus on how far the legislation effected a break with an aristocratic constitution. What this approach does little to illuminate, however, is the extent to which the reform legislation was framed and debated as a renegotiation of the relationship between England and Wales, Scotland, Ireland and the Empire. In Scotland, this meant that the extensive debate on reform tended to revolve around different interpretations of the Union of 1707 and Scotland's subsequent history and development. This article explores the reform debate among Scotland's political elite and, in particular, how the issue was tackled in Parliament. It demonstrates that in the fluid context provided by the developing constitutional crisis after 1829 simple divisions of ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ and even ‘Reformer’ and ‘Anti-reformer’ do not adequately describe the range of positions taken on the question of reform. The need to respond to the arguments of parliamentary opponents and to fast-moving events outside of Parliament ensured that responses to reform tended to be idiosyncratic. This article argues that the combination of the nature of reform as a renegotiation of the Union and the need to appeal to those outside of Parliament saw the reform debate prosecuted as a contest over the language of patriotism. Both sponsors and opponents of reform claimed to represent the voice of ‘the nation’, but this contest was far more complex than a straightforward confrontation between Anglophile ‘assimilationists’ and defenders of Scottish ‘semi-independence’.

The fragility of the post-martial law democratic process was, however, quickly exposed when President Zia-ul-Haq, to everybody's surprise, dismissed Junejo's government on 29 May 1988 under Article 58(2)(b) of the 1973 Constitution. The second use of Article 58(2)(b) occurred when President Ghulam Ishaq dismissed Benazir Bhutto's government in August 1990. On 18 April 1993, Nawaz Sharif's government was dismissed under Article 58(2)(b). In the end, the Supreme Court refused to reinstate Benazir Bhutto's government because the facts supported the grounds given by the President to justify the dismissal. It seems that all parties had by then accepted that the President was indeed entitled to dismiss a democratically elected government in circumstances of national crisis rather than see a complete breakdown of the constitutional machinery. The legality of the coup d'etat and its consequences was the subject of the case of Zafar Ali Shah v. Pervez Musharraf, Chief Executive.Keywords: Benazir Bhutto's government; constitutional crisis; coup d'etat; Junejo's government; Nawaz Sharif's government; post-martial law democratic process

With India breaking out from the ‘Hindu rate of growth’ following the implementation of major policy reforms, the overall developmental outcome in Sri Lanka — the pioneer of policy liberalisation in South Asia — has been thrown into sharper relief. After a promising start, both in the immediate aftermath of the 1977 liberalisation and then again after the ‘second wave of liberalisation’ in 1991/92, economic performance in Sri Lanka has fallen well below expectations, though the economy has now become the most open in South Asia. There is a palpable sense of mass dissatisfaction and disillusionment with political leadership across the whole political spectrum, and the country veers from one major political and constitutional crisis to another. As Sri Lanka’s dream of emulating the East Asian tigers — the stated goal of successive post-1977 governments — has receded, concerns and questions about the efficacy and impact of policy reforms have re-emerged. In particular, the merits of trade liberalisation as a means of achieving industrial growth and employment generation are being called into question. The political climate has become more receptive to calls for more ‘nationalistic’ and protectionist policies with the growth of popular disenchantment with the mainstream political parties, both of which have (despite occasional backsliding) implemented progressive trade liberalisation. Though major domestic and international constraints make it unlikely that there will be a sharp reversal of policies to embrace more closed-door policies, a backlash against liberalisation can not only make further progress in this direction more problematic but, more importantly, lead to misleading policy prescriptions that can perpetuate and aggravate current problems. In this context, understanding the causes of Sri Lanka’s developmental failure, at least in terms of its inability to match expectations, through a systematic, in-depth assessment of past policies and strategies is certainly both necessary and welcome.

In the first post-Glorious Revolution Parliament in Ireland in 1692, a constitutional crisis erupted over the House of Commons’ claim to have the ‘sole and undoubted right’ to initiate financial supply legislation in Ireland, and their rejection of the majority of the government’s legislative programme, including the most substantial provisions for financial supply. Not only did the ‘sole right’ claim result in the loss of desperately needed income for the government, it also represented an attack upon the existing constitutional framework in Ireland, in particular Poynings’ Law and the Crown’s prerogative in initiating legislation. The hasty prorogation of Parliament following these events led to political impasse in Ireland at the end of 1692. This article details the endeavours that were made to break that impasse, and examines the roles taken by leading English ministers, in particular those associated with the Whig party, and by a new generation of Irish politicians, many of whom were also whiggish in inclination, in the negotiation of a compromise settlement in 1694–5. The compromise solution eventually agreed upon in early 1695 resulted later in that year in the summoning of a new Irish Parliament, in which substantial necessary financial supplies were voted for the government. In the longer term, the 1695 compromise came to form the basis for a new constitutional framework for Irish executive-legislature relations that facilitated the advent of regular parliamentary sessions on a biennial basis in Ireland in the eighteenth century. Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences

The political and constitutional crisis which culminated in the dismissal of the Whitlam Government on 11 November 1975 is the most dramatic event in Australian political history. It had profound political implications: it enhanced the influence of the Senate; significantly affected public perceptions of the office of Governor-General, the role of constitutional conventions, and even the future of the monarchy; and arguably hardened political behaviour and contributed to public cynicism regarding government and politicians. However, while it is undoubtedly ‘one of the few genuinely interesting events in Australian history’, the suggestion that it had ‘more important implications for the conduct of a democratic state in Australia than federation itself’ is surely overstated. As Malcolm Fraser has noted, the conscription referendums of 1916–17 and the Australian Labor Party Split in the 1950s had more profound political effect than ‘the Dismissal’. Outline of the events The Whitlam Labor Government was elected on 2 December 1972, the first Labor Government for twenty-three years. Its majority in the House of Representatives was 9 seats, but it was in a minority of 26 to 34 in the Senate. Since the DLP and one Independent generally supported the Coalition and two Independents generally supported the Government, the Coalition enjoyed an effective Senate majority of at least 4 (32:28). The general election of December 1949, which brought the Menzies Coalition Government to power, had also faced a hostile Senate, being in a minority of 26 to 34.

INTRODUCTION In contrast with Taiwan's gradual transition, Mongolia presents a useful context for examining the position of a constitutional court created after a clear “constitutional moment.” Since 1990, Mongolia's democratization process has been unparalleled in socialist Asia and is as muscular as any postcommunist society in Europe. Several free and fair elections have been held, a new constitution with extensive human rights provisions ratified, and the formerly Leninist Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) has alternated turns in power with younger democratic parties. By any definition of the slippery concept of democratic consolidation, Mongolia has achieved it. The new constitutional court, called the Tsets , initially played an important role in this process, constraining legislative majorities and building up a body of constitutional law in a society where socialist traditions of parliamentary sovereignty had previously held sway. As democratic institutions developed, however, the court was increasingly criticized for making overly political decisions. Ultimately, the court provoked a constitutional crisis and found itself increasingly politicized from outside. Much of the controversy surrounding the court can be traced back to a single decision in 1996 that thrust the court into the center of heated political battle. This was the decision on the structure of government, issued immediately following the historic electoral victory of the National Democrat–Social Democrat coalition. That electoral victory had ended seventy-two years of continuous rule by the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP), the former communist party that had tried to steer post-1990 reforms.

Edwardian Britain saw the Drink question reach heights of acrimony and fierce political dispute, culminating in the controversies of the Liberal government’s licensing bill of 1908. This triggered massive demonstrations on either side in Hyde Park, elicited controversial pronouncements from prominent church leaders and contributed to the simmering constitutional crisis of 1909–11. In short, Drink became one of the major conflicts between the parties. This could hardly have been forecast at the turn of the century, when calmer waters had seemed to lie ahead. Then, the pattern had seemed to be set whereby Drink would increasingly be taken out of the cockpit of party politics, with renewed efforts being made by moderate social reformers, church leaders and the like to produce compromise solutions.

We might begin with a few comparative remarks about sex and politics in France and the US. Americans were treated in 1998 to a deliciously painful set of events that precipitated a full-scale constitutional crisis in the US and some rethinking of the relations of the public and private spheres. Despite what seemed to many French observers as a more or less unproblematic White House sex scandal, it was denied by American commentators left and right that Monicagate had anything at all to do with sex. Iťs not about sex, said Clinton's Republican accusers, it's about lying under oath and the rule of law. Iťs not about sex, said his Democrat defenders, iťs about his political enemies seizing any opportunity they can to undo two consecutive elections. Nor was the affair about sex for the principal actors: for Kenneth Starr, presidential sex was just a convenient way to set a legal trap for a slippery guy he couldn't nail any other way; for Linda Tripp, it was the royal road to personal revenge; for Monica Lewinsky it was a chance to consort with a powerful man. It wasn't even sex, as we have heard many times, for Bill Clinton himself, but something that never rose to the level of what New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd called "lying-down adult sex." Even Hustler publisher and cinema freespeech hero Larry Flynt, whom no one would accuse of being dismissive of sexuality, treated sex in this whole matter as an opportunity to expose the hypocrisy of his political enemies.

The decree by which the Cortes of 22 May 1809 were summoned by the Junta Suprema of the realm marked the beginning of a political debate of great intensity in Spain. Through this debate the different political positions and the various ideological profiles arising from the deep constitutional crisis of 1808 became gradually crystallised. This article approaches that debate from the regional perspective of one of the territories or provinces of the Bourbon monarchy—namely, the old Kingdom of Valencia— and by examining three figures relatively unknown to historians, José Canga Argüelles, Bartolomé Ribelles and Francisco Xavier Borrul. Through an analysis of their works we can identify the diverse political and ideological positions within a broad constitutional reconsideration of the monarchy. This reconsideration will ultimately transcend the stereotypes of a radical and universalising liberalism, on the one hand, and of conservative and historicist positions, on the other., El decreto de convocatoria de Cortes de 22 de mayo de 1809 de la Junta Suprema del Reino supuso para España el inicio de un debate político de gran intensidad a través del cual se fueron concretando los distintos posicionamientos políticos y los perfiles diversos de un primer liberalismo en el contexto de la profunda crisis constitucional abierta en 1808. Este trabajo quiere ser una aproximación a ese debate desde la óptica «regional» de uno de los territorios o provincias confirmadoras de la monarquía borbónica, la del antiguo Reino de Valencia, y a través de tres personajes de escasa fortuna historiográfica como José Canga Argüelles, Bartolomé Ribelles y Francisco Xavier Borrull. A través de la lectura de sus obras podremos ir concretando los diversos posicionamientos políticos e ideológicos dentro de un común replanteamiento constitucional de la monarquía que, finalmente, superará los más trillados estereotipos de un liberalismo radical y universalista, por una parte, y de posturas conservadoras e historicistas, por otra.

This Article reviews three different aspects of the constitutional protection of state sovereignty. The first section will introduce the issues arising from disputes over state sovereignty by reviewing the Supreme Court's application of state sovereignty concepts leading up to the constitutional crisis of 1933-36. The second section will discuss the abstract concept of sovereignty and its application in the system of American federalism. The third section of the Article will examine the Court's recent state sovereignty decisions in light of this abstract conception of sovereignty. The third section will place particular emphasis on the logical inconsistencies of the Court's new state sovereignty decisions. These decisions are justified by rationales that seem to incorporate the same broad conceptions of sovereignty described in section two, but in the end the modern Court has stopped short of providing states with the power to adopt and enforce policies that are exclusive and final in the sense that a coherent concept of sovereignty requires. The third section will conclude with a discussion of the implications presented by this anomaly.

Prior to the revelations about Clinton’s relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, the Clinton administration was experienced in defending the President against accusation of scandal. And yet, for all the expertise of the White House in suppressing accusation of presidential wrongdoing, the Lewinsky scandal presented a host of new problems. The sudden explosive disclosure of the President’s affair, in conjunction with his initial denials about a relationship with ‘that woman’, suggested that this episode was another overblown and over-hyped media exercise fuelled by Clinton’s opponents. For the Republican party it offered a golden opportunity to undermine the President’s credibility. Furthermore, the timing of the Lewinsky accusations was important. They came after an elongated effort by Paula Jones to sue the President for sexual harassment, and it initially appeared that Lewinsky might have fallen victim of the President’s reputation for womanizing. In a short period of time, the President found himself in a predicament which would test his own political judgement, and transform a discreet affair into a Constitutional crisis, with the attendant chance that he might be convicted and removed from office by the Senate, following impeachment by the House of Representatives.

Shortly after the independence of the Congo, the political crisis engendered by the conflict between President Kasavubu and Prime Minister Lumumba was accompanied by a serious constitutional crisis. The first Congolese constitution was almost a complete imitation of the Belgian constitution. It established a parliamentary regime with a politically accountable Prime Minister and a non-accountable President as Head of State. The confusing rubric that 'The Head of State appoints and dismisses the Prime Minister' was quickly misused by national and international opponents of Lumumba to persuade Kasavubu to remove him from power. A full and contextual analysis of the constitution, however, shows that dismissal is linked to several other formal procedures and political conditions. Every presidential decision, including the dismissal of the Prime Minister and of Ministers, has to be countersigned by a Minister. Furthermore, it can be deduced clearly from the whole constitutional model that dismissal of the Prime Minister can only take place when the government has been outvoted in parliament. The conclusion is that, in contradiction to the contrived interpretations of some advisers and Belgian jurists, the deposition of Lumumba was unconstitutional. At any rate, Kasavubu's unconstitutional act seriously damaged Lumumba's political position and placed him in a difficult situation of legal defence against it.KEY WORDS : Congo, Constitution, Lumumba, Politics

Yugoslavia enjoyed extensive links with the EC, dating back to a trade agreement with it in 1970. As a non-aligned state, Yugoslavia was in a relatively privileged position vis-a-vis its east European neighbours. Yet it was not until 1989 that Yugoslavia indicated that it wanted to build formal links with the EC by which time others, such as Hungary, were also making similar gestures. Although the Commission did respond in 1990 with a package of arrangements, including PHARE eligibility, further progress was blocked by Belgrade’s difficulties in meeting the EC’s standards and strictures, such as the need for open, multi-party federal elections organised in a democratic manner. Already by 1991, secessionist strains made the organisation of federal elections well nigh impossible. Under the Yugoslav constitution, the rotating Federal Presidency was due to be assumed by a Croat, Stipe Mesic. Jacques Delors offered, on behalf of the Community, substantial economic assistance in return for a peaceable dialogue on a solution to the brewing constitutional crisis. This was not only blocked by Slobodan Milosevic and other Serb nationalists, but opposed by a majority of Croats who made transparent their wish to secede from the federation in a referendum held on 19 May 1991. This followed an earlier resolution, of 20 February 1991, by which Slovenia disassociated itself from Yugoslavia. The EC, almost against all odds and defying the referendum, continued to support the idea of a federation with a rotating presidency with a variety of infrastructure programmes and by expanding PHARE. Informally, the implicit message was that potential EC membership would be endangered by Croatian independence. However, the secessionist strains gradually became more pronounced. Croatia and Slovenia gave notice of their intention to declare themselves independent states, which they formally did on 25 June 1991.

The new FRY president, Vojislav Kostunica adopted a policy aimed at integrating the FRY into international organisations and particularly into the United Nations. The international recognition of the FRY and its integration into international organisations after the downfall of Milosevic does not guarantee the stability or longevity of the "Third Yugoslavia." The FRY has in fact been in the process of disintegration since 1998, and the new president Vojislav Kostunica has not reversed this trend. The FRY is presently in the same political situation as was the SFRY between June and December 1991--namely in the process of internal dissolution. The question remains whether Montenegro and Kosovo will agree with this role for Kostunica. If there is no explicit commitment by the Serbs and Montenegrins to live in one state, then the FRY cannot be a viable federal state.

The paper evaluates the impact of the role of Non-Governmental Organisations in Lesotho on the constitutional crisis of 1994. It argues that Lesothos NGOs have come-of-age in many ways, and this was shown by the active role they played in mediating in a national crisis. This role has put them forth as possible watch-dogs for democracy. However, it also argues that some of the strength that was shown by NGOs during the crisis can be partly attributed to the quality of the leadership of the movement, as well as the nature of the crisis itself i.e. the issue that was disputed. It therefore concludes by predicting that the future of NGOs as watch-dogs for democracy will be determined by the extent of the involvement of international forces, such as SADC in regional conflicts as well as the capacity of NGOs to sustain themselves structurally. Review of Southern African Studies Volume 3 No. 2 December 1999, pp. 1-18

On 2 March 1127 the count of Flanders, Charles the Good, was murdered in his own church in Bruges, the seat of his government, by a group of desperate conspirators, people of unfree origin whom he had threatened to reclaim as his serfs. As the count, whose father King Canute IV of Denmark had been murdered in the church of St Albans at Odense in 1086, was childless, a fierce struggle for the succession in the rich and powerful county of Flanders followed. It was won in the summer of 1128 by Thierry of Alsace, who enjoyed the support of the English king, Henry I, as against William Clito, a son of Robert Curthose, who had the support of King Louis VI of France. The deplorable murder and the ensuing bloodshed caused a deep political and constitutional crisis and much debate on the ‘democratic’ issues that I hope to analyse in the course of this chapter.

This book argues that English royal justice evolved in the course of the fourteenth century to meet the changing needs of government and society. The resulting developments were shaped partly by the exogenous shocks of war, natural disaster and constitutional crisis, but also grew endogenously, from within, as the judicial system adapted to reflect longer-term changes in the society that it served. In Chapter 1, we repudiated the notion that evolution implies a process of advancement, and in subsequent chapters we have demonstrated how the primarily reactive nature of medieval law makes it unnecessary, as well as improbable, to say that the judicial system was any ‘better’ in 1390 than it had been in 1290. What we have not so far addressed is the question of why so many contemporaries seem to have thought that it had become ‘worse’ by the end of the fourteenth century. By way of conclusion to this study, the present chapter seeks to explore that issue by focusing on attitudes to justice. It begins with an analysis of the ways in which people spoke of, and complained about, the law in fourteenth-century England, and ends with a broader discussion of the nature, meaning and implications of these traditions of criticism.

The Liberal government’s attempt to find a solution to the problem of poverty through fiscal reform brought to a head a long-maturing conflict between the Liberal party and the House of Lords. When the Lords rejected Lloyd George’s ‘People’s Budget’ in November 1909, they ushered in a period of fierce political controversy which included two hard-fought general elections in 1910 and culminated in the struggle over the terms of the Parliament Act of 1911. In the course of this controversy, the futures of the government, the House of Lords, and even of the monarchy, were all, at various times, placed in jeopardy. Even the resolution of the crisis by the passage of the Parliament Act did not end altogether the political and constitutional turmoil, which continued to influence public affairs until the outbreak of war in 1914. This chapter will examine the origins of the constitutional crisis, describe the course which it took and discuss its outcome. In assessing its significance, an attempt will be made to decide whether, as Dangerfield believed, the crisis was symptomatic of growing extremism and loss of control in public life, or whether, for all its undoubted ferocity, it represented an ultimate victory for the parliamentary system of government and the values of democratic debate.

THROUGHOUT the evening of June 28, tourists and locals alike interrupted their stroll through Ottawa's club district to cluster just outside the doors of a local TV studio. Everyone was trying to catch a glimpse of one of the 20 monitors beaming the live federal election results to the street. Some of the passersby muttered in disbelief, some looked relieved, others merely shrugged. A few watched the talking heads inside the studio prep for their next on-air exchange. Despite predictions of a divisive left/right race too close to call, within minutes of the polls' closing in vote-rich Ontario and Quebec, the outcome was no longer in question. The Liberal Party would form a government for a fourth straight term, albeit with a minority of seats. Prime Minister Paul Martin would have to seek support for his legislative agenda from parties with fewer seats or face a quick and embarrassing defeat in Parliament. Professional political pundits had speculated for weeks about the consequences of a minority government, its inherent instability, and which parties could be persuaded to support particular slices of others' platforms. Was another constitutional crisis inevitable? Political junkies had been so consumed with the unfolding drama that they predicted that a sluggish and petulant Canadian electorate would stampede the polls, reversing several decades of declining voter participation rates, especially among young people. The chattering classes had been wringing their verbal hands for months over Canada's dismal record. With a turnout rate in the 2000 federal election of just 61.5%, Canada had fallen to 77th place in the international rankings of electoral participation. Even more troubling, only 25% of voters between the ages of 18 and 24 cast ballots in the 2000 federal election.1 On election night, as I watched alongside the young voters -- and nonvoters -- outside the TV studio, I overheard a conversation that would please any teacher who believes that the future of democracy is wandering the halls of our schools. In heavily French-accented English, a young man who looked to be about 16 years old explained the intricacies of parliamentary government to his mostly mute companion. He described not only the system of parties and constituencies but also the roles of ministers, backbenchers, and the Opposition. He went on to comment on the impact of the recent ruling that permits the reporting of early results across different time zones. For a finale, he recounted details of the 1926 political crisis that determined the role of the Canadian governor general in the event of elections that fail to produce majorities. It was an impressive performance, even if this young man's one-buddy audience was more interested in the club scene than the political one. I returned to the studio buoyed by my eavesdropping. Maybe it was true. Maybe the $11 million spent by Elections Canada to encourage higher voter turnout, especially among young people, had succeeded. Youth- targeted and self-consciously "hip" advertising had been claiming for weeks that voting was cool, and media of all varieties had plumbed the psyche of pretty well every young nonvoter in the country. At least some of the interviewees seemed exasperated by all the fuss. They complained that youth issues were being ignored in the campaigns and that all the parties had pitched their platforms to the preoccupations of older (i.e., more-likely-to-vote) generations. Like stubborn friends who have had a falling-out, some of these young people warned that, until the politicians paid attention to them, they weren't going to pay attention to the politicians. A few of the more aggressive anti-voters sported Urban Outfitter T-shirts that read, "Voting Is for Old People."2 Or at least it's reserved for adults. Perhaps the "old folks who vote" have underestimated the societal and economic shifts that have delayed adulthood for many youths. …

This book is about the politics and political culture of the ‘last decade’ of the reign of Elizabeth I, interpreted to mean the years from 1585 to 1603. It will open with a proposition, which goes like this: there were two reigns of Elizabeth I, each with distinctive features. Her ‘first’ reign ended about 1585 with the dispatch of an English expeditionary force to the Netherlands. This seemingly dramatic reversal of the queen's non-interventionist foreign policy was followed by the trial and execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, and by the outbreak of war with Spain and her ally, the French Catholic League. Mary's execution resolved one political and constitutional crisis, but precipitated another. For the war engulfed multiple theatres: English forces were deployed in France, the Netherlands, the Atlantic and latterly Ireland. Costs and casualties were high. England was several times threatened with encirclement by the superior forces of the Counter-Reformation. The physical and emotional strains were acute. In politics the anxiety of courtiers fused with the poverty of the crown and the competition for patronage to kindle factionalism, self-interest and instability which – in the shape of Essex's frustrated ambition – sparked an attempted coup. In the country xenophobia, war-weariness, and the turmoil created by rising prices, bad harvests and outbreaks of plague and influenza, fomented particularism and resistance to the crown's fiscal and military demands. All this, in turn, triggered an authoritarian reaction from privy councillors and magistrates, whose emphasis on state security, the subversiveness of religious nonconformity, and the threat of ‘popularity’ and social revolt became obsessional.

Two factors were instrumental in wresting Catholicism from the complementary assumptions of clerical nationalism and the emasculated religious conceptions of the Iglesia National. The first was the defeat of De Andrea in the archiepiscopal controversy of 1923–24. For the first time since the restoration of relations with the Vatican in the 1860s, Rome refused the government ’ s nomination of an Archbishop, so provoking a constitutional crisis. Faithful to the regalist model, Alvear ’ s government insisted on the state ’ s supremacy, rejected the Vatican ’ s nomination of the Bishop of Santa Fe, and stood by their choice of De Andrea. The see remained vacant for two years before a compromise candidate was found, during which time the opposition of those who had resisted andreismo came to the fore.1 De Andrea and his supporters later imputed Rome ’ s opposition to the campaigns of Christian Democrats and Jesuits; but they underestimated the importance to the Vatican of restoring the doctrinal basis of Catholicism in Argentina. The rejection of De Andrea was a decisive act by the Vatican to put an end to the Gallican tendencies of the Church hierarchy. Hereafter, the way was open for integral Catholicism.

This article examines media coverage of the Meech Lake and Canada rounds of the constitutional crisis. How media reporting may have influenced the negotiation process, the controversies that erupted over alleged political bias in the CBC's reporting and over the wide differences that seemed to separate anglophone and francophone journalists and the difficulties that television seemed to have in conveying complex issues are the central themes that are explored. It uses Joshua Meyrowitz's work to examine the extent to which television may have created a ``shared arena'' that intruded on and transformed the constitution-making process. Resume: Cet article analyse la couverture mediatique donnee au debat constitutionnel, a l'Accord du Lac Meech et a la crise qui les a entoures. L'article explore certains themes comme l'influence des reportages sur le processus de negociation, les controverses a propos des allegations de distorsion dans les reportages de la CBC et les profondes differences qui semblent separer les journalistes anglophones de leurs collegues francophones, de meme que les difficultes que rencontre la television quand il s'agit d'expliquer des questions complexes. A l'aide des theories de Joshua Meyrowitz, l'article tente de cerner dans quelle mesure la television reussit a creer un forum commun qui s'insere de maniere active dans le processus constitutionnel.

Many scholars question the constitutional validity of an advertising ban on tobacco products. There is also no question that some people seem to think that such a ban would constitute desirable public policy. However, there are several serious questions concerning both the costs and the benefits to be expected from any such restriction. This chapter attempts to compare the claims made for cigarette advertising bans by anti-smoking enthusiasts with the available economic evidence. A close look at the problem reveals several clear conclusions. First, the impact of advertising on consumers has been shown to be marginal and minor; cigarette advertising seems to have little, if any, effect on cigarette consumption. Second, cigarette advertising has not been shown to have a significant influence on smoking by young people. Third, cigarette advertising is a firm-specific phenomenon, which companies invest in for the purposes of competition, particularly in attempting to draw away existing market share from other companies and for promoting loyalty to their own brands. Fourth, the international evidence on smoking ad bans indicates that they have little, if any, effect on levels of cigarette consumption. Fifth, the U.S. Supreme Court has extended the protection of the First Amendment to “commercial speech” in a series of decisions, and any reversal of this trend would lead to a grave Constitutional crisis; and sixth, there is no meaningful link between advertising and cigarette “addiction.”

The landed aristocracy did not topple over, politically, when attacked, as perhaps some Radicals had intended. But there was at least this satisfaction to be derived from the situation. Organised Labour — and the clear majority of working-class voters — sided with the Radicals. The assault on feudalism, though it led to complications aplenty, at least helped Lloyd George in his attempts to win over the working man. For the Constitutional Crisis raised issues of fundamental importance to ordinary working people. After all, it was very much in the interests of Labour that Radicalism should prevail. The Labour Movement, for example, had a vested interest in securing a reduction in the powers of the House of Lords. Many Labour MPs would have preferred the total abolition of the Upper House, but they saw a removal of its absolute veto as a step in the right direction. Irish Home Rule was viewed with greater ambivalence. Labour supported Home Rule, but one senses a certain weariness with the everlasting complaints of relatively prosperous Irish tenant farmers. Perhaps what most brought the British Labour Movement out in warm support for Asquith’s Home Rule Bill between 1912 and 1914 was the unconstitutional nature of the opposition which it encountered.

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLES PRESENT important new perspectives on the Little Rock school desegregation crisis. When Arkansas governor Orval E. Faubus, in the name of preserving order, directed the Arkansas National Guard to prevent nine black young people from entering Little Rock Central High School on September 2, 1957, he precipitated a constitutional crisis. Blocking a federal court order upholding the Little Rock School Board's attempted compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions of 1954 and 1955 in Brown v. Board of Education, Faubus placed the governor's police powers at odds with city authorities, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the Supreme Court itself. Yet the constitutional issues engendered by Faubus's actions remained abstract to most people except for legal experts. At the time and ever since, it was the practical consequences that garnered public attention: the consequences for the school board's good-faith effort to implement the token desegregation of a single city school in the face of growing hostility on the part of the white community, for Faubus's purported political ambitions, for the Eisenhower administration's inconsistent stance on the Brown decision even as it wrestled with a Cold War propaganda battle over the same issue, for the authority of the Supreme Court as it confronted mounting opposition from southern segregationists and their northern conservative sympathizers, and, above all, for the courageous Little Rock Nine, bearing the painful assaults of racial animosity. The three essays that follow suggest how the litigation culminating in Cooper v. Aaron shaped these consequences and their ramifications for decades to come. The Cooper v. Aaron litigation went through several stages. The Supreme Court's Brown decision of 1954, holding that racially segregated public schools were inherently unequal and therefore violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause, precipitated the Little Rock School Board's efforts to comply. Shortly before the Court handed down the 1955 Brown II order, which required desegregation plans to proceed "with all deliberate speed" but left their formulation to community school boards-subject to local federal court oversight-Little Rock school officials published a plan that opened only Little Rock Central High to token desegregation, maintained racial segregation at all other schools, and left unstated when those schools might be desegregated. Once the limited scope of desegregation became apparent, the Little Rock branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) rethought its earlier trust in the school board's good faith effort, and, in the name of black parents and children, initiated suit in 1956. Styled Aaron v. Cooper, the case was tried and decided during August 1956. The black litigants lost at trial and upon appeal in April 1957. As the summer unfolded and the nine black students prepared to enter Central, Faubus and city school officials confronted mounting hostility from segregationists. Meanwhile, the federal government declined to become involved. After various public and secret maneuvers, Faubus implemented a strategy defying the federal court's desegregation order. The ensuing three-week crisis culminated in Eisenhower's dispatch of the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, which ended the violence and enforced the court order. Inside Central High, the Little Rock Nine-Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Pattillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, and Carlotta Walls-endured continuous harassment. School officials responded by asking the federal court for a two-and-a-half-year delay in implementation of the desegregation decree. Although the local federal court awarded the delay, the NAACP appealed. The U.S. circuit court, sustained by the U.S. Supreme Court, upheld the NAACP's argument that Little Rock's desegregation plan had to continue to be enforced. …

IN JUNE 2004, the member states of the European Union con cluded the negotiation of a treaty that, if ratified, would establish a European constitution that would make substantive changes to the way the union works. For the first time, an individual would be appointed president of the European Council, overseeing the regular summits of the heads of government of the EU nations and their foreign ministers. The EU would itself have a foreign minister. The amended rules on majority voting would allow a measure to pass if 55 percent of the member states were in favor, so long as they represented 65 percent of the EU'S population. And the EU would gain new powers in justice and home affairs, requiring co operation among interior minlstries on immigration, asylum, crime, and justice. The governments of all 25 countries have signed the treaty, but it cannot take effect unless ratified by each member state, through parliamentary vote or referendum. Ten EU countries have chosen to hold referendums. In February, the Spanish voted 77 percent in favor. A similar margin of victory is expected in Portugal and Luxembourg. Approval is less certain in the forthcoming French, Dutch, Polish, Danish, Irish, and Czech referendums, although opinion polls point to a positive result in all those countries. Only in the United Kingdom do the polls suggest that a majority will vote no. But that vote alone would throw the EU into a constitutional crisis.