In this incisive and thought-provoking book, Francois Venter illuminates the issues arising from the fact that the current language of constitutional law is strongly premised on a particular worldview rooted in the history of the states around the North Atlantic Ocean. Highlighting how this terminological hegemony is being challenged from various directions, Venter explores the problem that all constitutional comparatists face: that they all must use the same words to express different meanings. Offering a compact but comprehensive constitutional history, Venter investigates the ways in which the standard vocabulary does not fit comfortably in many contemporary constitutional orders, as well as examining how its cogency is increasingly being questioned. Chapters contextualize comparative constitutional methods to demonstrate how the language choices made by comparatists are shaped by their own perspectives, arguing that careful explanation of the meanings attached to constitutional terms is imperative in order to be persuasive or even understood. Tackling the foundational elements of the field, this book will be a critical read for constitutional scholars across the globe. It will also be of interest to high-level practitioners of constitutional law and political scientists for its investigation of terminology that is crucial to their work.

As the bicentenary of the Conseil d'Etat approaches, this new edition of the leading English-language text provides a detailed profile of the Conseil and offers an up-to-date overview of le droit administratif, which is regarded, alongside the Code Napoleon, as the most notable achievement of French legal science. The Conseil d'Etat is taken as a model for many administrative systems in Europe and beyond, and it continues to exercise a strong influence upon the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe and the Third World. The eleven expanded appendices, including statistics, model pleadings and other illustrations, provide an invaluable and accessible source of information on the French administrative courts, their procedure and case-load. Throughout the approach is comparative, with frequent references to developments in United Kingdom administrative law and in the EC institutions. The book will be an invaluable guide to all students of French law and comparative public law.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. This thought-provoking introduction provides an incisive overview of dignity law, a field of law emerging in every region of the globe that touches all significant aspects of the human experience. Through an examination of the burgeoning case law in this area, James R. May and Erin Daly reveal a strong overlapping consensus surrounding the meaning of human dignity as a legal right and a fundamental value of nations large and small, and how this global jurisprudence is redefining the relationship between individuals and the state. Key features include: Analyses of cases from a range of jurisdictions all over the world A history of the shift of the concept of dignity from a philosophical idea to a legally enforceable right Discussion of dignity as a value and a right in different major legal contexts, and its roots in African, Asian, European and Islamic traditions. This Advanced Introduction will be invaluable to scholars and students of law, particularly those interested in human rights, looking to understand this emerging area of law. It will inform lawyers, judges, policymakers and other advocates interested in how dignity and the law can be used to protect everyone, including the most vulnerable among us.

Storable votes are a simple voting scheme that allows the minority to win occasionally, while treating every voter equally. Because the minority wins only when it cares strongly about a decision while the majority does not, minority victories occur without large costs and indeed typically with gains for the community as a whole.
The idea is simple: consider a group of voters faced with a series of proposals, each of which can either pass or fail. Decisions are taken according to the majority of votes cast, but each voter is endowed with a total budget of votes to spend freely over the multiple decisions. Because voters will choose to cast more votes on decisions that matter to them most, they reveal the intensity of their preferences, and increase their probability of winning exactly when it matters to them most. Thus storable votes elicit and reward voters' intensity of preferences without the need for any external knowledge of voters' preferences. By treating everyone equally and ruling out interpersonal vote trades, they are in line with common ethical priors and are robust to criticisms, both normative and positive, that affect vote markets. The book complements the theoretical discussion with several experiments, showing that the promise of the idea is borne out by the data: the outcomes of the experiments and the payoffs realized match very closely the predictions of the theory. Because the intuition behind the voting scheme is so simple: "vote more when you care more," the results are robust across different scenarios, even when more subtle strategic effects are not identified by the subjects, suggesting that the voting scheme may have real potential for practical applications.
Alessandra Casella has used the tools of economics to develop this idea both theoretically and experimentally in major economics journals, but this is the first book-length treatment of the subject.

This thought-provoking book addresses the legal questions raised by the nexus between the rule of law and areas of limited statehood, in which the State lacks the ability to exercise the full depth of its governmental authority. Working from an international law perspective, it examines the implications of limited statehood for the traditional State-based framing of the international legal order. Featuring original contributions written by renowned international scholars, chapters investigate key issues arising at the junction between domestic and international rule of law and areas of limited statehood, as well as the alternative modes of governance that develop therein, both with and without the approval of the State. Contributors discuss the impact of contested sovereignty on the rule of law, international responsibility with regard to rebel governance in these areas, and the consequences of limited statehood for international peace and security. This book will be useful for students and scholars of international law and international relations, particularly those working on sovereignty and statehood, non-state actors, State responsibility, and the rule of law. It will also appeal to practitioners and policy-makers working in these same fields in either State or global governance apparatus.