The debut of a brand-new civics series for high school seniors and college freshmen that clearly, concisely, and cleverly explains how the United States elects its president.

This timely book offers a novel theory of constitutional revolutions, providing a new and engaging framework for critically assessing how revolutions and contra-revolutions, transitional periods and the phenomenon of oblivion influence constitutional change. Contributions by leading scholars in the field explore the relationship between revolutions and constitutional order and disorder, considering in particular the impact of political transitions, situations of emergency, coup d´etat and the role of memory and oblivion during times of revolution. Through a series of case studies, the book identifies ways in which these phenomena have, and will, affect the formation and amendment of constitutions in both the short and long term. This includes, most notably, those changes which seem to go against the spirit of constitutionalism. In so doing, it provides important insight into how constitutions and constituent powers deal with the influences of the past. Students and scholars engaged in the study of constitutional law, legal theory, theories of the state, transitions of democracy and the philosophy of law will find this ground-breaking book to be a must read.

Lawyers usually describe a revolution as a change in a constitutional order not authorized by law. From this perspective, to speak of a 'lawful' or an 'unlawful' revolution would seem to involve a category mistake. However, since at least the 19th century, courts in many jurisdictions have had to adjudicate claims involving questions about the extent to which what is in fact a revolutionary change can result in the creation of a legally valid regime. In this book, the authors examine some of these judgments. Adjudicating Revolution includes, first, cases in which courts decide to recognize the actions of a de facto regime under a doctrine of necessity, with the objective of maintaining public order. Second, cases where courts directly confront the question of whether a revolution has resulted in the creation of a genuinely new constitutional order. Finally, cases in which courts are asked by state officials to recognize, in advance, the validity of otherwise revolutionary changes (i.e. the irregular creation of a new constitution) proposed by state officials. The book examines, from a theoretical and comparative perspective, judgments from North and Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Placing the cases in their historical and political context, the authors provide an understanding of key moments in the constitutional history of the relevant jurisdictions. The resulting analysis will be of interest to academics and graduate students of comparative constitutional law and constitutional theory, political science, and related disciplines.

A work of extraordinary range and striking originality, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen traces the global history of written constitutions from the 1750s to the twentieth century, modifying accepted narratives and uncovering the close connections between the making of constitutions and the making of war. In the process, Linda Colley both reappraises famous constitutions and recovers those that have been marginalized but were central to the rise of a modern world. She brings to the fore neglected sites, such as Corsica, with its pioneering constitution of 1755, and tiny Pitcairn Island in the Pacific, the first place on the globe permanently to enfranchise women. She highlights the role of unexpected players, such as Catherine the Great of Russia, who was experimenting with constitutional techniques with her enlightened Nakaz decades before the Founding Fathers framed the American constitution. Written constitutions are usually examined in relation to individual states, but Colley focuses on how they crossed boundaries, spreading into six continents by 1918 and aiding the rise of empires as well as nations. She also illumines their place not simply in law and politics but also in wider cultural histories, and their intimate connections with print, literary creativity, and the rise of the novel. Colley shows how-while advancing epic revolutions and enfranchising white males-constitutions frequently served over the long nineteenth century to marginalize indigenous people, exclude women and people of color, and expropriate land. Simultaneously, though, she investigates how these devices were adapted by peoples and activists outside the West seeking to resist European and American power. She describes how Tunisia generated the first modern Islamic constitution in 1861, quickly suppressed, but an influence still on the Arab Spring; how Africanus Horton of Sierra Leone-inspired by the American Civil War-devised plans for self-governing nations in West Africa; and how Japan's Meiji constitution of 1889 came to compete with Western constitutionalism as a model for Indian, Chinese, and Ottoman nationalists and reformers. Vividly written and handsomely illustrated, The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen is an absorbing work that-with its pageant of formative wars, powerful leaders, visionary lawmakers and committed rebels-retells the story of constitutional government and the evolution of ideas of what it means to be modern.

With notes and an apparatus, a new translation of Hegel's essay "Machiavelli's "The Prince" and Italy," and the first pages of "The Prince" in the original Italian

At the end of an industrious political career in conflict-riven Italy, the Florentine diplomat Niccolo Machiavelli composed his masterpiece "The Prince," a classic study of power and politics, and a manual of ruthlessness for any ambitious ruler. Controversial in his own time, the work made Machiavelli's name a byword for manipulative scheming, and had an impact on such major figures as Napoleon and Frederick the Great. It contains principles as true today as when they were first written almost five centuries ago.

There has been renewed and growing interest in exploring the significant role played by law in the centralization of power and sovereignty - right from the earliest point. This timely book serves as an introduction into state theory, providing an overview of the conceptual history and the interdisciplinary tradition of the continental European general theory of the state. Chapters present a theory of the state grounded in cultural analysis and show liberal democracy to be the paradigm of today's western nation-state. The analysis includes the emergence of legal forms and institutions that are linked either to the constitutional state (the securing of civil liberties and fundamental rights), the welfare state (social and welfare law), or the network-state (regulation of complex digital technologies). Thomas Vesting focuses on illustrating the fundamental features of these evolutionary stages - the three layers constituting the modern state - and reveals their cultural and social preconditions. This book will be an ideal read for students, postgraduates, and other academic audiences with interests in state theory, jurisprudence, legal theory, political theory, and legal philosophy.