This pioneering study explores the problems of politics and law that lie behind the growing phenomenon of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard), a stance taken by residential property owners attempting to keep various types of facilities out of their neighborhoods. Denis J. Brion argues that the pejorative connotation that NIMBY carries is both unfortunate and unwarranted and seeks to expose the underlying problems for which NIMBY is a symptom. In particular, Brion examines the impact of siting decisions on those who will be the neighbors of a potential project and the political gridlock that so often results when they become aware of the nature of this impact. The discussion is illuminated by a review of the journalistic accounts of particular episodes chosen to demonstrate the pervasiveness and complexity of the NIMBY phenomenon.

Divided into three sections, the study begins by analyzing how a system of public decisionmaking, founded on the ideal of participatory democracy and built on the structure of representative government, is peculiarly subject to capture by small groups intent on pursuing their own narrow agendas. The result, Brion shows, is often allocational choices which yield benefits to few and harm to many. In Part II, he demonstrates the failure of the public remedial process to provide traditional common-law remedies to those harmed by Locally Unwanted Land Uses (LULUs). Brion then looks at the consequences of this remedial failure from both traditional and non-traditional points of view in order to provide a basis for devising an approach to the problems that underly the NIMBY syndrome. The concluding section proposes a solution that involves both expanding the focus of political and constitutional debate to include the notion of communality and narrowing the traditional conception of right to property. As a unique full-length treatment of the subject, this study makes a significant contribution to the ongoing debate over the NIMBY phenomenon and its consequences.

Writing of the France of the 1930s, the late Simone Weil declared, The state has morally killed everything smaller than itself. Liebmann asserts that a comparable development has recently taken place in the United States, fostering civic apathy and an inability to address serious social problems, and that, not for the first time, abuse of judicial review has caused the Constitution to be used as a tool of class interests. After a general survey of these consequences, Liebmann discusses the original constitutional debates and understanding. He then assesses First Amendment doctrine, through a discussion of the views of Harry Kalven, the most influential modern commentator on free speech issues, and then discusses the appropriate relationship of constitutional restraints to governmental fostering of public policy, on zoning, education, law enforcement, urban renewal, day care, traffic regulation, and care of the elderly, and illustrates the hopeful developments that are possible if judicial restraint is restored. A significant analysis for all scholars and researchers in the areas of constitutional law and current American public policy and politics.

Classicists and lawyers alike will find this a fascinating study that shows how certain principles of Athenian maritime law are still imbedded in the modern international law of maritime commerce. Cohen has made a unique and substantial contribution to our understanding of the Athens of Plato, Aristotle and Demosthenes. Athens was the dominant maritime power in the West from the eighth to fourth centuries BCE. Athenian preeminence insured that its maritime law was accepted throughout the Mediterranean world. Indeed, its influence outlasted Athens and is the only area of classical Greek law that wasn't replaced entirely by Roman models. Codified during the Roman period in the Rhodian Sea laws, it went on to influence the subsequent development of European commercial and maritime law. Using both ancient and secondary sources, Cohen explores the development of Athenian maritime law, the jurisdiction and procedure of the courts and the Athenian principles that have endured to the present day. He successfully treats the much-discussed problem of why they were termed "monthly" and describes how "supranationality" was a feature of all Hellenic maritime law. He goes on to show how their jurisdiction was limited ratione rerum, not ratione personarum, because a legally defined "commercial class" did not exist in Athens at this time. Edward E. Cohen, an attorney with a Ph.D. in Classics, is both distinguished historian of Classical Greece, Professor of Ancient History (adjunct) at the University of Pennsylvania and the Chief Executive Officer of Atlas America, a producer and processor of natural gas. His other books include Athenian Economy and Society: A Banking Perspective (1992) and The Athenian Nation (2000). "Cohen's competence in the history of law, his own experience as a practicising lawyer with a Ph.D. in Classics, and his belief that in the principles of Greek maritime commerce reside "the germinal cells of the complex modern international law of maritime commerce" (p. 5), ought to have won for this book a much wider audience than it is likely to have. (...) As the most detailed treatment of Athenian maritime law Cohen's valuable book must be given a place beside the important contributions of his predecessors, Paoli, Calhoun, and Gernet.": Ronald S. Stroud, American Journal of Legal History 19 (1975) 71. " A] learned and precise examination of certain terms and procedures associated in the fourth century B.C. with lawsuits that arose out of Athenian maritime commerce. (...) Argumentation throughout is responsible. Cohen knows the sources and has read critically in a wide range of secondary material. The book is a valuable addition to our understanding of a comparatively little known area of Athenian law.": Alan L. Boegehold, The Classical World 69, No. 3 (Nov., 1975) 214.

Accounting for participation, separation of powers and democratic accountability, federalism gains momentum in times when traditional democratic legitimacy of institutional decision-making is challenged. Its ability to include multiple interests makes federalism a means to ensure good governance. Based on a multidisciplinary analysis, the book tackles the question of whether federalism as a pragmatic governance tool provides answers to current challenges and what those answers are. Thirty-three leading experts critically examine to what extent federalism serves this purpose in compound states, looking at different countries and policies. The volume revolves around five sub-themes: 'federalism, democracy and governance', 'participation mechanisms and procedures', 'policy areas compared', 'institutional innovation and participatory democracy' and 'federalism: from theory to governance'.

Federalism remains a highly contentious issue in the United Kingdom, but however suspect the 'F' word may be, a substantial amount of devolution has already become part of the local landscape and more may yet follow. With the competence for a number of policies thus shifting from Westminster to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and in future perhaps even within England itself, foreign experience with federal and regional structures becomes a valuable source of ideas. In a series of contributions, distinguished experts from a wide range of legal systems including Canada, the United States, Germany, South Africa and the European Union present their experience, criticisms, and views concerning, inter alia, the distribution of power, judicial review and human rights protection in federalised and regionalised states. The book contains the papers from a conference jointly organised by the Institute of Global Law (UCL) and the Institute of Transnational Law (The University of Texas at Austin).

Attitudes Aren't Free: Thinking Deeply about Diversity in the US Armed Forces emerged from a vision to collect essays from the brightest voices of experts across the range of contentious social issues to catalyze productive discussions between military members of all ranks and services. Forty-nine experts contributed to the following 29 chapters writing on the primary themes of religious expression, homosexuality, gender, race, and ethics. Chapters appearing in this volume passed the scrutiny of a double-blind peer-review by one or more referees from the board of reviewers. The chapters are largely written in a colloquial, intellectual op-ed fashion and capture a "snapshot" of the current discussions regarding a particular topic of interest to uniformed personnel, policy makers, and senior leaders. Each section seeks to frame the spectrum of perspectives captured within the current debates and lines of argument. Authors were specifically asked not to address all sides of the issue, but rather to produce a well-reasoned argument explaining why they believe their well-known position on an issue is in the best interests of the military members and make specific recommendations about how best to address the policy issues from their perspective. The volume is arranged in four primary sections by theme: Religious Expression, Homosexuality, Race and Gender, and Social Policy Perspectives. Within each section, readers will find multiple chapters-each embracing a different perspective surrounding the section's theme. Thus, because of the unbalanced nature of many of the individual chapters, it is critically important that readers focus on the entire spectrum of perspectives presented within a section to ensure they have the context necessary to frame any single perspective. Diversity of opinion has been the hallmark of the United States since its dramatic birth in 1776 and has continued unfettered through today where we now have developed the most innovative and effective military the world has ever known. Thus, it is imperative that we continue to reflect upon the diversity of ideas about how best to formulate the "right" social policy to ensure our service members can most effectively execute their missions.

The Article 6 fair trial rights are the most heavily-litigated Convention rights before the European Court of Human Rights, generating a large and complex body of case law. With this book, Goss provides an innovative and critical analysis of the European Court's Article 6 case law. The category of 'fair trial rights' includes many component rights. The existing literature tends to chart the law with respect to each of these component rights, one by one. This traditional approach is useful, but it risks artificially isolating the case law in a series of watertight compartments. This book takes a complementary but different approach. Instead of analysing the component rights one by one, it takes a critical look at the case law through a number of 'cross-cutting' problems and themes common to all or many of the component rights. For example: how does the Court view its role in Article 6 cases? When will the Court recognise an implied right in Article 6? How does the Court assess Article 6 infringements, and when will the public interest justify an infringement? The book's case-law-driven approach allows Goss to demonstrate that the European Court's criminal fair trial rights jurisprudence is marked by considerable uncertainty, inconsistency, and incoherence.

This volume deals with questions of political party funding and campaign financing, issues which arouse controversy in many parts of the world. How are the central actors in the political arena supposed to gather the funds necessary to operate effectively on behalf of their chosen political ends? And, how may they spend money in furtherance of their political objectives? The aim of this volume, the first in a new series of Columbia University/London University collaborative projects, is to explore these issues in the specific context of a number of national settings.The studies presented here show that financing questions cannot be addressed independent of the constitutional conventions of the country, the nature of the political parties in the country, and the means of access to publication and the media in any given nation. The national studies in this volume reveal a rich diversity in the approach to regulation in Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, New Zealand, Quebec, the United Kingdom and the United States. The topicality of the issues considered is reflected in the fact that since the book was first mooted there have been major decisions of the US Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Canada, as well as an investigation and report by the Electoral Commission in the United Kingdom, all of which have a direct bearing on the legal and policy issues discussed in this book.

In Marbury v. Madison Chief Justice John Marshall defined the Constitution as "a superior, paramount law," one that superseded the laws passed by Congress and state legislatures. What makes it paramount? This book sets out to recover the enduring principles, purposes, and meanings that inform the founders' charter and continue to offer us political guidance more than 200 years later. In so doing it steers a middle course between "originalists" who constrict interpretation to constitutional specifics and "relativists" who adapt the Constitution to the moment by ignoring original meaning. "Original intent," Ralph Ketcham argues, is best discerned by a study of the political climate that nourished the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and, more particularly, by understanding the broader meanings, intentions, and purposes of the framers.

To recover this full context of political thinking, Ketcham delves not only into the meaning of the documents but also into the connotations of the framers' vocabulary, the reasoning behind both accepted and rejected propositions, arguments for and against, and unstated assumptions. In his analysis the fundamental or enduring principles are republicanism, liberty, public good, and federalism (as part of the broader doctrine of balance of powers).

Ketcham answers convincingly those who question the relevance to modern constitutional interpretation of the finding that the founders were both republican and liberal. He asserts that the rights-protecting character of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights derived from the founders' belief that private rights depended upon active government and public virtue. In other words, private liberties rested on the citizenry's right to self-governance.

James Madison sought to ensure a system of government that would serve as guardian "both of public Good and of private rights." In providing an interpretation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that incorporates both republican and liberal perspectives, Ketcham should find a wide readership among politically active citizens, lawyers, judges, and those who teach and study constitutional law and political theory.

In May It Please the Court, artist Xavier Cortada portrays ten significant decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States that originated from people, places, and events in Florida. These cases cover the rights of criminal defendants, the rights of free speech and free exercise of religion, and the powers of states. In Painting Constitutional Law, scholars of constitutional law analyse the paintings and cases, describing the law surrounding the cases and discussing how Cortada captures these foundational decisions, their people, and their events on canvas. This book explores new connections between contemporary art and constitutional law. Contributors are: Renee Ater, Mary Sue Backus, Kathleen A. Brady, Jenny E. Carroll, Erwin Chemerinsky, Xavier Cortada, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Leslie Kendrick, Corinna Barrett Lain, Paul Marcus, Linda C. McClain, M.C. Mirow, James E. Pfander, Laura S. Underkuffler, and Howard M. Wasserman.

While the supervision of the European Court of Human Rights constantly grows in importance, little is known about the people, especially the judges, inside the Court. To what extent are human rights sensitive to different traditions and is their work burdened through the plurality of legal, historical-political or vocational experiences among the judges? Looking at the first three years of permanent operation of the Court, this book suggests that it is the legal culture that brings the judges together. Based on interviews, field study observations and an analysis of case law, this book takes a novel approach on European human rights law and provides researchers and practitioners with an important basis for a full understanding of the Strasbourg case law.

'The fields of comparative administrative law and its close cousin, regulatory law, are now experiencing the explosion that occurred a while ago in comparative constitutional law. This Bignami and Zaring volume provides both excellent introduction into these newest developments and a record of substantial research achievements.' - Martin Shapiro, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law Regulation today is global. It affects everything from e-commerce to product safety to air quality and much more. How is regulation made and enforced in the multiple domestic and international jurisdictions called upon to address the problems of international markets and global society? To understand the global regulatory process, it is necessary to move beyond conventional sub-fields of law like administrative law and international law. Drawing on contributions from an international team of leading scholars with diverse subject and country expertise, Comparative Law and Regulation introduces a new field of legal research geared at understanding the operation of the regulatory process across the world. The volume affords cutting-edge analysis of the entire gamut of regulatory law: rulemaking by bureaucracies, legislatures, and private bodies; oversight by public and private actors; civil and criminal enforcement; and judicial review. The chapters cover over thirty different domestic and international jurisdictions, including the United States, Germany, the European Union, India, China, South Korea, Colombia, the World Trade Organization, and private investor-state arbitral tribunals. The theoretical and methodological innovations introduced in this book will make it compulsory reading for scholars of public law, comparative law, and international law as well as those working in public policy, political science, and economics. For legal professionals in government agencies and the private sector, it affords both a useful theoretical framing of the complex issues involved in international and comparative regulation and an up-to-date overview of the legal and technical aspects. Contributors include: J. Baert Wiener, F. Bignami, A.R. Chapman, C. Coglianese, E.A. Feldman, C. Fish, L. Forman, J. Fowkes, D.A. Hensler, H.C.H. Hofmann, C.-Y. Huang, R.D. Kelemen, E. Lamprea, D.S. Law, D. Lima Ribeiro, J. Ohnesorge, L. Peter, S. Rose-Ackerman, G. Shaffer, J.L. Short, S. Smismans, B. Van Rooij, W. Wagner, B. Worthy, J. Yackee, D. Zaring

Clearly, the structure of authority in this country rests on how Americans understand the nature and relationship of law and politics. Law consists of pronouncements from the courts, but also of what we think of these pronouncements: should abortion be a choice or is it murder? Law is formed as much through the dynamic tensions that govern how these laws are received as through their official decree. Legal forms - contracts, property, rights - similarly do not reflect pre-existing or natural categories but themselves constitute social and political life because they dictate how we conceptualize our world. Even activists who seek reform inadvertently reinforce the traditional legal remedies against which they rally, oftentimes relying on legal institutions while claiming to be free of them. John Brigham's book focuses on four particular ideological movements and their strategies, including the emphasis placed by gay men on their rights during the legal struggle over the closing of gay bathhouses in the early years of the AIDS crisis and the radical feminist use of rage and radical consciousness in anti-pornography campaigns. The effect of law in politics, Brigham convincingly reveals, is constitutive precisely when political life finds its meaning in various legal forms.

The struggle for civil rights in America was fought at the lunch counter as well as in the streets. It ultimately found victory in the halls of government-but, as Richard Cortner reveals, only through a creative use of congressional power and critical judicial decisions.

Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination in public accommodations, and shortly after its passage blacks were refused service at the Heart of Atlanta Motel and at Ollie's Barbecue in Birmingham, Alabama, as a test of the new law by business owners who claimed the right to choose their own customers. These challenges made their way to the Supreme Court, becoming landmark cases frequently cited in law. Until now, however, they have never benefited from book-length analysis. Cortner provides an inside account of the litigation in both decisions to tell how they spelled the end to segregation in the South.

The fact that blacks could not travel in the South without assured access to food and lodging led Congress to enforce civil rights on the basis of its authority to regulate interstate commerce. The Supreme Court unanimously sustained Title II's constitutionality under the commerce clause in both test cases, joining the executive and legislative branches in defining the power of the federal government to desegregate society, even by circuitous means.

Drawing on justice department files, Supreme Court justices' papers, and records of defense attorneys, Cortner provides the background for the cases, including previous legal battles over sit-ins. He describes the roles of key players in the litigation-particularly Solicitor General Archibald Cox and members of the Warren Court. In addition, he uses presidential files, oral histories, and other primary sources to give readers a clear picture of the forces at work in the creation, implementation, and validation of the Civil Rights Act.

Cortner's thorough account illuminates the nature of constitutional litigation and the judicial process, as well as the role of the Constitution and law, in two decisions that marked the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement and changed the face of America forever.

Koshner explores the increase in interest group participation before the U.S. Supreme Court. Since 1953, when less than 13 percent of the Court's full opinion cases were accompanied by friend of the court briefs, there has been a steady increase in interest group litigation. By the 1993 term, interest groups participated in 92 percent of the cases brought before the Supreme Court. While asking whether the rise in interest group activity in this supposedly independent arena should concern us, Koshner attempts to solve the fascinating political puzzle of this tremendous growth. He begins with the growth of interest group participation and asks, quite simply, why? In answering this question, Koshner draws on a series of studies that focus primarily on individual groups and their litigation decisions. He then uses them to explore the macro-level trends that pervade the relationship between the Supreme Court and interest groups. In particular, Koshner studies the roles of four important groups: the Court, Congress, the executive branch, and the interest groups themselves. Within each, he finds a series of changes or shifts in policy that begins to answer the puzzle, and examines his conclusions within the context of First Amendment church-state cases. Students, scholars, and other researchers dealing with contemporary public law issues will find this work of particular value.

A human right to housing represents the law's most direct and overt protection of housing and home. Unlike other human rights, through which the home incidentally receives protection and attention, the right to housing raises housing itself to the position of primary importance. However, the meaning, content, scope and even existence of a right to housing raise vexed questions. Drawing on insights from disciplines including law, anthropology, political theory, philosophy and geography, this book is both a contribution to the state of knowledge on the right to housing, and an entry into the broader human rights debate. It addresses profound questions on the role of human rights in belonging and citizenship, the formation of identity, the perpetuation of forms of social organisation and, ultimately, of the relationship between the individual and the state. The book addresses the legal, theoretical and conceptual issues, providing a deep analysis of the right to housing within and beyond human rights law. Structured in three parts, the book outlines the right to housing in international law and in key national legal systems; examines the most important concepts of housing: space, privacy and identity and, finally, looks at the potential of the right to alleviate human misery, marginalisation and deprivation. The book represents a major contribution to the scholarship on an under-studied and ill-defined right. In terms of content, it provides a much needed exploration of the right to housing. In approach it offers a new framework for argument within which the right to housing, as well as other under-theorised and contested rights, can be reconsidered, reconnecting human rights with the social conditions of their violation, and hence with the reasons for their existence. Shortlisted for The Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship 2013.