Since the mid-1970s American presidents have, with growing frequency, claimed that they have the power to ignore any law they believe is unconstitutional. Beginning with a review of the English constitutional backdrop against which the U.S. Constitution was framed, this book demonstrates that the Founders did not intend to confer on the president a power equivalent to the royal prerogative of suspending the laws, which was stripped from the English Crown in 1689. The author examines each of the nearly 150 instances in which presidents from George Washington to Jimmy Carter have objected to the validity of a law, in order to determine whether or not the president then ignored the law in question. This examination of the historical record reveals that prior to the mid-1970s the White House only rarely failed to honor a law that it believed to be unconstitutional.

As broadcasting systems transform - both in societies marking a post- communist transition and in the rest of Europe and the United States - opportunities for "access" are frequently put forward and debated. Just as frequently, little is done to analyze what is meant by access and how the concept fits into a theoretical framework. Access issues proliferate, not only for the new statutes concerning broadcasting licenses, but for cable television regimens and for the information infrastructures of the future. Access becomes the hope of social groups, religious organizations, politicians, redemptive in its impact on the democratic process. Given the range of uses, given the consequences imputed to access, in the broadcasting field, more attention to its various meanings is long overdue. This volume of essays is a partial answer. The book has its origins in a conference held in June 1993 at the Institute for Constitutional and Legislative Policy at the Central European University in Budapest. The purpose of the conference was to gather scholars with a commitment to exploring the theoretical and actual implications of various access regimes as they have been or were then being practised or proposed. The time was a vital one as debates continued throughout the region on the shape of proposed broadcasting legislation. The conference offered an opportunity to review the political context in which access was being considered at a raw and early moment in the transitions to democracy. Hungary was still deadlocked in its "media wars", a confrontation between the major political parties over the course of society in which the conduct and control of broadcasting was seen as a defining issue. The Czech Republic had just split from its Slovak counterpart and the implications for the role of broadcasting in the building of a nation were self-evident. Problems of hate speech and lustration - a negative form of access: access by society to information about the personal past of public figures - compounded the difficulty of policy-making. Access issues yielded concerns about privatization since the ownership of instruments of the press are a key factor in access and that implicated the choice of licensees, the conditions under which they should operate, whether and to what extent foreign investment should be allowed. The inevitable, underlying problem concerns the role of the state in establishing rules, maintaining a hand in establishing the narratives of continuity and, indeed, in letting go and fostering the processes of change. The responses are organized in four sections: theories of media access; access to media in Europe and the United States; judicial review of access to the media; and the media and the political arena.

Moore argues that there is a fundamental incompatibility between race and governance. She examines the formal procedures used to enact the thirteen major civil rights laws and the policy concessions necessitated by the use of those procedures and notes the impact of the divisive nature of the politics of race upon procedure and substance.

Her analysis of 40 years of congressional civil rights lawmaking reveals that whenever race is introduced into the normal policy process, that process breaks down. In its place emerges an abnormal policy process--one that is inordinately demanding with respect to skill, input, and support/votes. She concludes that the substantive provisions of policies produced by this process are too weak to reduce huge racial disparities in education, housing, and employment. The reason race regularly generates abnormal process and policies is that it is too contentious for the standard governmental apparatus. This apparatus is designed to redress problems and issues undergirded by some measure of consensus. Race lacks such a consensual undercurrent and, therefore, is incompatible with standard governance processes. A provocative analysis of particular interest to scholars and researchers involved with American racial politics, minorities, and party politics.

This is a comprehensive guide to challenging decisions of criminal courts and public bodies in the criminal justice system using judicial review. Written by a team of criminal and public law practitioners, it considers claims for judicial review arising in the criminal justice system, which now represent a distinct area of public law. These claims are set apart by special considerations and rules; for example, on the limits of the High Court's jurisdiction or the availability of relief during ongoing proceedings. Criminal practitioners may lack the background to spot public law points. Equally, public law specialists may be unfamiliar with criminal law and types of issues that arise. Criminal Judicial Review is intended as a resource for both. The book deals with the principles, case law, remedies and, the practice and procedure for obtaining legal aid and costs. It will be of assistance to any practitioner preparing or responding to judicial review claims involving the following: - The Police and the Crown Prosecution Service. - Magistrates' courts, the Crown Court and Coroners. - Prisons and the Parole Board. - Statutory bodies such as the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the Legal Aid Agency. - Claimants who are children, young persons or have mental disorders. - The international dimension including extradition proceedings and European Union law. - Practical considerations such as CPR Part 54, remedies, legal aid and costs. From the Foreword by The Rt Hon Lord Judge "The book is offered in clear and simple style, focussing less on esoteric theoretical considerations and more on the practical needs of the practitioner. It brings together materials relating to public law with which a criminal specialist may be less well informed, and material relevant to the criminal justice processes which may not be immediately apparent to the public law specialist. It will assist with the preparation of arguments, and also enable submissions which are unarguable to be discarded. It will therefore provide valuable guidance in this broad and developing area of practice."

Although Americans generally think that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is focused only on preventing terrorism, one office within that agency has a humanitarian mission. Its Asylum Office adjudicates applications from people fleeing persecution in their homelands. Lives in the Balance is a careful empirical analysis of how Homeland Security decided these asylum cases over a recent fourteen-year period. Day in and day out, asylum officers make decisions with life-or-death consequences: determining which applicants are telling the truth and are at risk of persecution in their home countries, and which are ineligible for refugee status in America. In Lives in the Balance, the authors analyze a database of 383,000 cases provided to them by the government in order to better understand the effect on grant rates of a host of factors unrelated to the merits of asylum claims, including the one-year filing deadline, whether applicants entered the United States with a visa, whether applicants had dependents, whether they were represented, how many asylum cases their adjudicator had previously decided, and whether or not their adjudicator was a lawyer. The authors also examine the degree to which decisions were consistent among the eight regional asylum offices and within each of those offices. The authors' recommendations , including repeal of the one-year deadline , would improve the adjudication process by reducing the impact of non-merits factors on asylum decisions. If adopted by the government, these proposals would improve the accuracy of outcomes for those whose lives hang in the balance.

Poor public resource management and the global financial crisis curbing fundamental fiscal space, millions thrown into poverty, and authoritarian regimes running successful criminal campaigns with the help of financial assistance are all phenomena that raise fundamental questions around finance and human rights. They also highlight the urgent need for more systematic and robust legal and economic thinking about sovereign finance and human rights. This edited collection aims to contribute to filling this gap by introducing novel legal theories and analyses of the links between sovereign debt and human rights from a variety of perspectives. These chapters include studies of financial complicity, UN sanctions, ethics, transitional justice, criminal law, insolvency proceedings, millennium development goals, global financial architecture, corporations, extraterritoriality, state of necessity, sovereign wealth and hedge funds, project financing, state responsibility, international financial institutions, the right to development, UN initiatives, litigation, as well as case studies from Africa, Asia and Latin America. These chapters are then theorised by the editors in an introductory chapter. In July 2012 the UN Human Rights Council finally issued its own guidelines on foreign debt and human rights, yet much remains to be done to promote better understanding of the legal and economic implications of the interface between finance and human rights. This book will contribute to that understanding as well as help practitioners in their everyday work. The authors include world-renowned lawyers and economists, experienced practitioners and officials from international organisations.

This much revised and expanded edition guides researchers to sources that provide information about the general and specific subjects which form the jurisdiction of the U.S. Government. A tool that correlates legal authorities, principal offices, and financial resources and clarifies their patterns of interaction, the book points out the most appropriate methods and authors for accessing all fields of federal data. Students, teachers, public administrators, policy analysts and citizen activists will find that this easy-to-use guide reliably maps out the jurisdictions of government business and policymaking. This much revised and expanded edition guides researchers to sources that provide information about the general and specific subjects which form the jurisdiction of the U.S. Government. A tool that correlates legal authorities, principal offices, and financial resources and clarifies their patterns of interaction, the book points out the most appropriate methods and authors for accessing all fields of federal data. This research aid translates the universe of public responsibilities into topical categories that chart the structure and functions of the policymaking branches and their various subunits. By helping students, teachers, public administrators, policy analysts, and citizen activists to understand the role of jurisdiction in the business of government, it enables them to develop their own best research strategies.

This new book in the Constitutionalism in Asia series considers the idea of origins, and of change and continuity in terms of 'constitution-making', which is an on-going process in the Northeast Asian states. The book examines the drafting, nature, core values, and roles of the first modern constitutions during the founding of the 8 modern states/territories in Northeast Asia: China (1949), Taiwan (1947), Hong Kong SAR (1997), Macau SAR (1999), Japan (1889), North Korea (1948 and 1972), South Korea (1948), and Mongolia (1924). The collection provides: - an exploratory description of the process and substantive inputs in the making of the first constitutions of these nations/territories; - analysis of the internal and external (including intra-regional) forces surrounding the making of these constitutions; and - theoretical construction of models to conceptualise the nature and role of the first constitutions (including constituent documents) in the founding of the modern nation-states/territories and their subsequent impact on state-building in the region.

This reference volume will assist the attorney who needs to understand inheritance laws, administration, and probate proceedings in other states and foreign jurisdictions. Among the areas covered are rights of intestacy, rights of pretermitted and posthumous children, and rights of election by surviving spouses. The book also addresses problems inherent in probate, administration, and kinship proceedings and furnishes the attorney with a method for gathering the information these proceedings require. Henner also highlights Western European estate tax treaties and their interaction with the laws of the United States, thus providing a rudimentary foundation for understanding the conflict of laws. He also provides commentary on common law, community property, administrative duties, etc. Finally, the volume contains organizational charts and informational data sheets, as well as a directory of bar associations.

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""Mixed Race America and the Law" is...a provocative introduction to racial mixture and the law."
-- "Journal of Ethnic History"

"The first work of its type. . . It offers a wide selection of material, almost all of it thoughtful and provocative>"
-- "Trial"

"In Mixed Race America and the Law: A Reader, Kevin R. Johnson has edited one of the most important and timely anthologies on the general topic of race mixture and the law."
--"The Law and Politics Book Review"

For the first time in United States history, the Year 2000 census allowed people to check more than one box to identify their race. This new way of gathering data and characterizing race and ethnicity reflects important changes in how racial identity is understood in America. Besides acknowledging the presence of mixed race citizens, this new understanding promises to have major implications for American law and policy.

With this anthology, Kevin R. Johnson brings together ground-breaking scholarship on the mixed race experience in America to examine the impact of law on these citizens. The foundational essays that comprise the collection present the historical, social, and political contexts surrounding the body of law that addresses race while analyzing the implications of multiracialism. Divided into 12 sections, the reader includes an introduction by Johnson and essential essays by contributors such as Garrett Epps, Judith Resnick, Richard Delgado, Ian Haney-LA3pez, Randall Kennedy, and Patricia Hill Collins. Selections address miscegenation, racial classification, interracial adoption, the 2000 census, "passing," and other topics; eachsection includes questions to promote further discussion. This book is an invaluable resource for examining the complexities of racial categories in modern America.

Saudi Arabia has never commanded more attention and yet it remains one of the world's least understood countries. In The Normalization of Saudi Law, Chibli Mallat dives into the heart of Saudi society, politics, and business by exploring the workings of its courts. Legal practitioners and scholars will find a comprehensive analysis of the law's operation in the kingdom. The practitioner will access full thematic coverage of all important fields: judicial organization, contracts and torts, crime, family, property, administration, commerce, companies, banking, insolvency, the stock market, the constitution, succession, and human rights, with major statutes and a large number of court decisions distilled in 16 chapters. The scholar is presented with an assessment of a dynamic legal process, a 'normalization' of Saudi law where developing norms are both 'normal' (usual) and 'normative' (carrying moral force). This includes judges reshaping Islamic law by applying it in everyday transactions and disputes as they interpret classical treatises and modern statutes. In whole, The Normalization of Saudi Law paints a compelling picture of a fast-changing country. The book is a systematic study of Saudi law over nearly a decade, and its analysis draws from Mallat's involvement as a legal expert in landmark decisions around the world and as a law professor in leading universities in the Middle East, Europe, and America. The book reflects his work with Saudi law students and practicing colleagues, from cases in commercial law to those involving government and human rights. The Normalization of Saudi Law will interest both readers following the fast-changing world of comparative law and those intrigued by Saudi Arabia.

In 1997, a Mexican national named Jose Ernesto Medellin was sentenced to death for raping and murdering two teenage girls in Texas. In 2004, the International Court of Justice ruled that he was entitled to appellate review of his sentence, since the arresting officers had not informed him of his right to seek assistance from the Mexican consulate prior to trial, as prescribed by a treaty ratified by Congress in 1963. In 2008, amid fierce controversy, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the international ruling had no weight. Medellin subsequently was executed.
As Julian Ku and John Yoo show in Taming Globalization, the Medellin case only hints at the legal complications that will embroil American courts in the twenty-first century. Like Medellin, tens of millions of foreign citizens live in the United States; and like the International Court of Justice, dozens of international institutions cast a legal net across the globe, from border commissions to the World Trade Organization. Ku and Yoo argue that all this presents an unavoidable challenge to American constitutional law, particularly the separation of powers between the branches of federal government and between Washington and the states. To reconcile the demands of globalization with a traditional, formal constitutional structure, they write, we must re-conceptualize the Constitution, as Americans did in the early twentieth century, when faced with nationalization. They identify three "mediating devices" we must embrace: non-self-execution of treaties, recognition of the President's power to terminate international agreements and interpret international law, and a reliance on state implementation of international law and agreements. These devices will help us avoid constitutional difficulties while still gaining the benefits of international cooperation.
Written by a leading advocate of executive power and a fellow Constitutional scholar, Taming Globalization promises to spark widespread debate.

Affirmative action can generally be described as preferential treatment for minorities and women in jobs, educational opportunities, and receipt of other benefits. However, its origin and meaning remain relatively obscure. This study is designed to provide clarity and to strengthen the position of affirmative action amidst the controversy that surrounds it. Under attack across the nation, affirmative action is at a nadir. Gray contends that the grounds for defending affirmative action are based in ideas of social justice and can be found in the writings of philosophers, polemicists, and judges. One can organize these ideas according to four modes of thought which allow exhaustive treatment of the subject.

Each mode of thought is concisely explained and then developed through the analysis of current philosophical thought; next, it is applied to the case law. This study boldly defines affirmative action as part of the quest for social justice. It takes affirmative action away from the tort law of causation by going as far back as Aristotle to show that private corrective justice is not an apt model for affirmative action. Gray concludes that such action is best promoted by the voices of diversity and rhetoric. Thus, dialogue and debate remain the best support for affirmative action.

Drawing on essential historical records--many newly discovered or published--and citing relevant judicial precedents, this book is the first systematic exposition of the legal problems relating to the convention clause. Constitutional historian Russell Caplan examines the constitutional crises that have let to convention drives--from the antifederalist movement of the 1780s to the recent campaigns to abolish the one-person, one-vote rule and prohibit abortion, showing how state drives for a constitutional convention, which occur on a regular basis, have been crucially affected by advocacy from partisans and opponents alike that obscures the true legal issues and dictates the course of these (so far) unsuccessful campaigns.

Through the prism of the U.S. Constitution and other foundational documents, Edd Applegate's Political and Social Changes in the United States will discuss major transformations in American social and political life since the Founding, beginning with England's expansion in North America, the War of Independence, and the early national period. It proceeds through industrialization, the Civil War, economic growth, progressivism, and the emergence of the United States on the world stage. It concludes with considerations of the Cold War and post-Cold War worlds and new threats and challenges to the United States and its institutions.

In recent years a strand of thinking has developed in private law scholarship which has come to be known as 'rights' or 'rights-based' analysis. Rights analysis seeks to develop an understanding of private law obligations that is driven, primarily or exclusively, by the recognition of the rights we have against each other, rather than by other influences on private law, such as the pursuit of community welfare goals. Notions of rights are also assuming greater importance in private law in other respects. Human rights instruments are having an increasing influence on private law doctrines. And in the law of unjust enrichment, an important debate has recently begun on the relationship between restitution of rights and restitution of value. This collection is a significant contribution to debate about the role of rights in private law. It includes essays by leading private law scholars addressing fundamental questions about the role of rights in private law as a whole and within particular areas of private law. The collection includes contributions by advocates and critics of rights-based approaches and provides a thorough and balanced analysis of the relationship between rights and private law.

This book addresses the principle of proportionality, which is currently one of the most important instruments of judicial review, from both analytical and theory of law perspectives. As such, the analysis provided is far more comprehensive and can be applied to all areas of law, not just constitutional law. On the one hand, the volume offers a broad perspective on several aspects related to proportionality, such as its structure, the balancing methodology and the distinction between rules and principles. On the other, it provides an innovative, normativist and analytical approach to proportionality, helping readers understand its structure and behaviour.

This remarkable book covers the impact of human rights on intellectual property law in the most comprehensive review ever undertaken. It is destined to influence the future development of this field and constitutes an essential resource for both scholars and practitioners.' - Jerome H. Reichman, Duke University School of Law, US'Professor Geiger has assembled an extraordinary group of leading legal scholars, human rights lawyers, judges, and international civil servants to provide comprehensive, up-to-the-minute coverage of all the major issues implicated by the interaction between human rights and intellectual property. This volume will be required reading for anyone interested in this increasingly important topic.' - Beebe Barton, New York University School of Law, US 'Intellectual property law draws boundaries around human creativity. In doing so it intersects with the principles and values of the human rights tradition. In this remarkable volume, Professor Christophe Geiger has brought together a great team of scholars to explore this intersection. The result is a Research Handbook that is comprehensive in its coverage of jurisdictions, issues and debates. It is an indispensable starting point for researchers wishing to understand the field and its many topics.' - Peter Drahos, Australian National University and Queen Mary University of London, UK Research Handbook on Human Rights and Intellectual Property is a comprehensive reference work on the intersection of human rights and intellectual property law. Resulting from a field-specific expertise of over 40 scholars and professionals of world renown, the book explores the practical and doctrinal implications of human rights considerations on intellectual property law and jurisprudence. The various chapters of the book scrutinize issues related to interactions among and between norms of different legal families and the role of human rights in the development of a balanced intellectual property legal framework. The innovative approach of the book is reflected in its structure: the first part provides a foundation for the human rights and intellectual property discourse; the second sheds light on the human rights implications for the development of intellectual property; and the third (characterized by a human rights perspective) is devoted to the specific issues of interaction between human rights and intellectual property. Exploring in depth a variety of interactions between human rights and intellectual property law, the book will be of great interest to academics and experts working within human rights, intellectual property, development, international relations and international public law. Contributors include: A. Abdel-Latif, T. Aplin, C. Avila Plaza, D.B. Barbosa, A.Brown, C. Chiarolla, J. Christoffersen, C.M. Correa, T. Dreier, P. Ducoulombier, L.Falcon, S. Farran, S. Frankel, D. Gangjee, M. Ganzhorn, C. Geiger, D. Gervais, G. Ghidini, J. Griffiths, H. Grosse Ruse-Khan, L.R. Helfer, P. von Kapff, A. Kupzok, J.D. Lipton, D. Matthews, T. Mylly, A. Peukert, A. Plomer, J.M. Samuels, M. Senftleben, X. Seuba, C. Sganga, R. Smith, A. Stazi, T. Takenaka, C. Trautmann, D. Voorhoof, C. Waelde, H. Wager, J. Watal, G. Westkamp, P.K. Yu

This book focuses on the separatist trend in Hong Kong, which it approaches by drawing on historical studies, political analysis, social studies and legal analysis. It offers a comprehensive and interdisciplinary guide to the topic, addressing the historical evolution of "Hong Kong Nativism," the theoretical connotations and fallacies of "Hong Kong Independence," and the legal measures taken to forestall it. Written by mainland scholars who approach the subject matter from a legal perspective, the book offers revealing insights for all students and researchers who are interested in Hong Kong Basic Law and the current political situation in Hong Kong.

This book is about privacy interests in English tort law. Despite the recent recognition of a misuse of private information tort, English law remains underdeveloped. The presence of gaps in the law can be explained, to some extent, by a failure on the part of courts and legal academics to reflect on the meaning of privacy. Through comparative, critical and historical analysis, this book seeks to refine our understanding of privacy by considering our shared experience of it. To this end, the book draws on the work of Norbert Elias and Karl Popper, among others, and compares the English law of privacy with the highly elaborate German law. In doing so, the book reaches the conclusion that an unfortunate consequence of the way English privacy law has developed is that it gives the impression that justice is only for the rich and famous. If English courts are to ensure equalitarian justice, the book argues that they must reflect on the value of privacy and explore the bounds of legal possibility.