Referendums—the direct popular vote on an issue—appear to be the most democratic of decision mechanisms because the voice of the people is directly heard rather than mediated through elected representatives in legislatures. But referendums can be manipulated by elites using tactics such as timing and wording of the question submitted to a popular vote. Leaders can orchestrate referendum campaigns to their benefit while still claiming the popular legitimacy granted. This takes place in long-established democracies like France, authoritarian regimes like Pinochet’s Chile, and new democracies like those among the Post-Soviet states where competition is raw, rules are new, and institutions weak. Mark Walker sheds light on the appeal and dangers of referendums and why democratic ideals are not always served.

The book edition of "Constitutions of the World from the late 18th Century to the Middle of the 19th Century" is the most complete and academically thorough collection of its kind. It contains constitutional documents from all over the world, written from 1776 to the end of the year 1849. This collection includes about 1,000 constitutions, human rights declarations, and draughts of constitutions that never came into force, from this period. These early constitutional documents were collected and examined in archives and libraries all over the world, as part of a project by the Deutsche Forschungs-gemeinschaft (German Research Foundation).Using the original documents, experts from American and European universities reconstructed the authentic constitution texts for each country, and annotated them in their respective original languages. Each volume contains a short introduction, a main part with the edited constitution documents of a country, comments and an index.The unique value of the complete edition lies in its making all constitutions, from the early phase of modern constitutionalism, accessible in a reliable, authentic text version for the first time. These constitutions were widely scattered until now and, in many cases, unknown.

The volume is a thoroughly revised edition of the author's book on German Administrative Law which was first published in 1985. From the perspective of a common law jurisdiction the author presents the basic framework of German administrative law, along the lines administrative law is understood in the English speaking world. It covers all the essential elements of German administrative law. It is updated to include the latest developments and the impact of EC law in different spheres.

"Experimenting With The Consumer" exposes the hazards of the mass-market experimentation in which every American consumer and worker is unwittingly tapped for product risk data by manufacturers, scientists, and regulators. Vioxx, Heparin, Avandia, Paxil, fen-phen, estrogens, silicone implants, pacemakers, formaldehyde in FEMA trailers, 60 buckyballs in coatings ... the headlines are increasingly filled with hidden risks coming to light in popular products years after federal agencies approve them for the American public. Shapo shows readers how to get past unreasonable trust or fear and make the best risk-management choices for themselves and their families. He walks them through what questions to ask before consenting to be in a clinical trial; how to evaluate the implied bold-print claims against the small-print disclosures in advertisements for medical products; how to uncover product and environmental risks in their homes, workplaces, supermarkets, and neighborhoods; how to assess and control product risk while maximizing consumer choice and benefit; how to pressure government to tighten consumer protection; and how to seek legal redress.

Through a diverse selection of dramatic case studies, Shapo lays bare the incentives of companies and entrepreneurial scientists to fake or obscure experimental data before and after government approval; the fights between interested and disinterested scientists over data; the fights between scientists and doctors over patient rights; the campaigns of activists against government agencies to release experimental drugs; the impact of the journalistic and promotional media on public knowledge and perception of product risk; and the marketing tricks that manufacturers use to harness sexual desire to product launches and to shape the prescription choices of physicians.

In the era of globalization, comparative government and politics have come to the forefront due to the transformations of the social welfare state and the subsequent social, economic, political, cultural, technological and administrative changes. Taking a particular look at local government systems can uncover new perspectives on issues related to globalization, localization, governance, new democracy movements, managerial reformation, and privatization. Comparative Studies and Regionally-Focused Cases Examining Local Governments is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly research on the role played by local governments in overall administration, types and models of government at the local level, consequences of managerial reformations, and new develops regarding structure, process, personnel, and policymaking aspects of government. Highlighting relevant perspectives from comparative research and case studies, this book is ideally designed for students, government officials, politicians, civil society representatives, and academicians.

In various European countries such as France, Italy, and the Netherlands, lawmakers have adopted legislation in order to deal with the consequences of the economic crisis. These laws contain provisions aimed at speeding up administrative decision making and judicial proceedings which have an impact on various provisions of general administrative law. Alongside the aim of facing the economic crisis, these measures aim to make administrative law more up-to-date and ensure it meets the needs of contemporary society.However, acceleration measures concerning decision-making and judicial proceedings may clash with the need to preserve the quality of these proceedings. On the one hand, swift procedures can be considered to be one aspect of high-quality decision making. On the other hand, other aspects of quality such as public participation and the thorough consideration of all relevant aspects and interests, may be at risk when the speed of decision-making is the only focus of reforms.Quality and Speed in Administrative Decision-Making: Tension or Balance? presents six national perspectives on these issues, together with a comparative overview comparing and contrasting national approaches with regards to finding a balance between the pace of proceedings and the quality of administrative and judicial decisions.The book will be of interest to academics of European and comparative administrative law, as well as policy-makers at the national and European level.

Governments often act in the name of security to protect their citizenries. For example by legislation or by the recruitment and employment of large numbers of armed personnel to detect and prosecute violent crime, or via engagements in military interventions to repel or pre-empt foreign attacks. These practices are often taken to have strong moral justifications. The value of security is linked to the value of life and the disvalue of violence and injury, and all of these are central both to theoretical accounts of and common sense views about the difference between right and wrong. The essays in this volume seek to increase our understanding of state action in the name of security and take a range of viewpoints and approaches. Some articles attempt to delimit the concept of security, or dispute attempted delimitations; some consider security as a 'good' and ask what sort of good it is, and how valuable; whilst others consider the relation between state action in the name of security and state action in the name of other goods, notably liberty, or consider ethical issues in health security, climate security and cybersecurity. Overall, this collection of essays shows how appeals by governments to the value of security have grown out of relatively recent events and processes at a global level, such as the response to pandemics, the acceleration of climate change, and counter-terrorism. The volume features an introductory essay and forms part of a five-volume series on legal ethics and the enforcement of law.

In this work, Robert E. Brown applies the fruits of modern historical scholarship toward an understanding of Beard's groundbreaking and controversial work. With a perspective of forty years, Brown attempts to separate the valid from the bogus in this work.

The Constitution was written to shape human behavior and affairs, and it does so by appealing to people's hearts, not only their minds. An interdisciplinary analysis sheds new light on the emotions that underlie constitutional law, with many cogent examples.

THE ROMAN LAW DEALING WITH DAMAGES, LIABILITY AND GIFTS BETWEEN HUSBAND AND WIFEThe Lex Aquilia deals with unlawful and accidental damages and gives a civil remedy for damage to property. It is important as the basis of the general principle of liability to person and property in later Roman law. The Lex Aquila is difficult to interpret, and it has inspired a great deal of contemporary and later commentary. Thayer's bilingual edition presents the text with a summary of commentary (in English) by scholars from the Medieval era through the 1920s. The second part contains the Latin text of De Donationibus with extensive notes (in English) by Thayer.James Bradley Thayer [1831-1902] practiced law in Boston from 1856 until 1874.He was the Royall Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, 1874-1883, and WeldProfessor of Law, 1883-1902.CONTENTSAD LEGEM AQUILIAM (IX, 2)TEXT AND TRANSLATIONCOMMENTARYDE DONATIONIBUS INTER VIRUM ET UXOREM (XXIV, I)TEXT AND COMMENTARY

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.

This book examines the way in which judges in the top courts of nine different common law countries go about developing the law by devising new principles to allow themselves to be innovative and justice-oriented, and to ensure that human rights are universally protected.
The book surveys the decisions of these top courts over the last generation to determine how 'judicially active' they have been. It seeks to compare and contrast the different experiences and to identify the principles in accordance with which the various courts have decided to develop the law. How do they interpret legislation? What use do they make of standards derived from other countries or from international law? How willing are they to make law in areas which are traditionally the preserve of elected politicians?
The contributors are all experts in their own jurisdictions and have already published widely in the field of judicial activism. The jurisdictions covered include Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. The chapter on the judicial work of the House of Lords anticipates the transformation of that institution into the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in 2009 and the book as a whole suggests that there is plenty of scope for that new court to learn from other common law supreme courts about the appropriate limits of judicial creativity.

WITH A NEW FOREWORD ABOUT THE 2020 ELECTION "This urgent book offers not only a clear-eyed explanation of the forces that broke our politics, but a thoughtful and, yes, patriotic vision of how we create a government that's truly by and for the people."--DAVID DALEY, bestselling author of Ratf**ked and Unrigged In the vein of On Tyranny and How Democracies Die, the bestselling author of Republic, Lost argues with insight and urgency that our democracy no longer represents us and shows that reform is both necessary and possible. America's democracy is in crisis. Along many dimensions, a single flaw--unrepresentativeness--has detached our government from the people. And as a people, our fractured partisanship and ignorance on critical issues drive our leaders to stake out ever more extreme positions. In They Don't Represent Us, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig charts the way in which the fundamental institutions of our democracy, including our media, respond to narrow interests rather than to the needs and wishes of the nation's citizenry. But the blame does not only lie with "them"--Washington's politicians and power brokers, Lessig argues. The problem is also "us." "We the people" are increasingly uninformed about the issues, while ubiquitous political polling exacerbates the problem, reflecting and normalizing our ignorance and feeding it back into the system as representative of our will. What we need, Lessig contends, is a series of reforms, from governmental institutions to the public itself, including: A move immediately to public campaign funding, leading to more representative candidates A reformed Electoral College, that gives the President a reason to represent America as a whole A federal standard to end partisan gerrymandering in the states A radically reformed Senate A federal penalty on states that don't secure to their people an equal freedom to vote Institutions that empower the people to speak in an informed and deliberative way A soul-searching and incisive examination of our failing political culture, this nonpartisan call to arms speaks to every citizen, offering a far-reaching platform for reform that could save our democracy and make it work for all of us.

This volume is a compilation of the U.S. federal special prosecutor/independent counsel investigations spanning the complete twenty-one year tenure from 1978-1999 of the independent counsel statute. The entries include individuals who have served as investigators; those who have been targets of investigations; all attorney generals who have called for appointment of special prosecutors; all presidents during whose terms of office such prosecutors served; and all legal cases that served to argue for or against the constitutionality of the independent counsel statute. These historical precedents are traced from Ulysses Grant's appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the St. Louis Whiskey Scandal in 1875. More contemporary cases include Watergate, precipitated by Richard Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre dismissal of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973; Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh's Iran-Contra Investigation; and Special Prosecutor Ken Starr's Whitewater investigation of the Clintons and the ensuing permutations which brought individuals like Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky to prominence and also brought the statute calling for such investigations into constitutional debate.

The book is fully cross-referenced and contains a comprehensive bibliography and index. It will be of interest to scholars and students of American History and Constitutional History.

In two canonical decisions of the 1920s--"Meyer v. Nebraska" and "Pierce v. Society of Sisters"--the Supreme Court announced that family (including certain relations within it) was an institution falling under the Constitution's protective umbrella. Since then, proponents of "family values" have claimed that a timeless form of family--nuclear and biological--is crucial to the constitutional order. Mark Brandon's new book, however, challenges these claims.

Brandon addresses debates currently roiling America--the regulation of procreation, the roles of women, the education of children, divorce, sexuality, and the meanings of marriage. He also takes on claims of scholars who attribute modern change in family law to mid-twentieth-century Supreme Court decisions upholding privacy. He shows that the "constitutional" law of family has much deeper roots.

Offering glimpses into American households across time, Brandon looks at the legal and constitutional norms that have aimed to govern those households and the lives within them. He argues that, well prior to the 1960s, the nature of families in America had been continually changing--especially during western expansion, but also in the founding era. He further contends that the monogamous nuclear family was codified only at the end of the nineteenth century as a response to Mormon polygamy, communal experiments, and Native American households.

Brandon discusses the evolution of familial jurisprudence as applied to disputes over property, inheritance, work, reproduction, the status of women and children, the regulation of sex, and the legal limits to and constitutional significance of marriage. He shows how the Supreme Court's famous decisions in the latter part of the twentieth century were largely responses to societal change, and he cites a wide range of cases that offer fresh insight into the ways the legal system responded to various forms of family life.

More than a historical overview, the book also considers the development of same-sex marriage as a political and legal issue in our time. "States of Union" is a groundbreaking volume that explains how family came to be "in" the Constitution, what it has meant for family to be constitutionally significant, and what the implications of that significance are for the constitutional order and for families.

Whether in the form of Christmas trees in town squares or prayer in school, fierce disputes over the separation of church and state have long bedeviled this country. Both decried and celebrated, this principle is considered by many, for right or wrong, a defining aspect of American national identity.

Nearly all discussions regarding the role of religion in American life build on two dominant assumptions: first, the separation of church and state is a constitutional principle that promotes democracy and equally protects the religious freedom of all Americans, especially religious outgroups; and second, this principle emerges as a uniquely American contribution to political theory.

In Please Don't Wish Me a Merry Christmas, Stephen M. Feldman challenges both these assumptions. He argues that the separation of church and state primarily manifests and reinforces Christian domination in American society. Furthermore, Feldman reveals that the separation of church and state did not first arise in the United States. Rather, it has slowly evolved as a political and religious development through western history, beginning with the initial appearance of Christianity as it contentiously separated from Judaism.

In tracing the historical roots of the separation of church and state within the Western world, Feldman begins with the Roman Empire and names Augustine as the first political theorist to suggest the idea. Feldman next examines how the roles of church and state variously merged and divided throughout history, during the Crusades, the Italian Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the British Civil War and Restoration, the early North American colonies, nineteenth-century America, and up to the present day. In challenging the dominant story of the separation of church and state, Feldman interprets the development of Christian social power vis--vis the state and religious minorities, particularly the prototypical religious outgroup, Jews.

Using insights from multilevel governance and pluralism, this book provides an in-depth analysis of the development of European private law in the Dutch and German legal order. It focuses on the question whether the coexistence of national and European state and non-state actors is detrimental or beneficial for the predictability, consistency, accessibility and responsiveness of European private law. On the one hand, the discourse on multilevel governance draws attention to the possibility that problems may arise if interdependent actors do not sufficiently interact. This may be the case in European private law, where national and European legislators and courts have become increasingly interdependent on one another in ensuring that European private law develops predictably, consistently, accessibly, and responsively. The book analyzes the development of European private law by national and European state actors through codifications, blanket clauses, soft laws and general principles in the light of interdependence. In addition, non-state actors have played an increasingly important role in developing binding rules in European private law. This development necessitates more interaction between actors, and more attention for the potentially binding effect of privately developed rules on third parties' rights. The book accordingly develops a normative framework to determine the extent to which private actors should be able to develop binding rules, based on principles of democracy, private autonomy, and concerns for hetero-determination. On the other hand, pluralism perspectives advocate the development of European private law at different levels and jurisdictions in the light of responsiveness, regulatory competition, and opportunities for mutual learning. The book explores whether these benefits have materialized in the development of European private law, drawing attention to failed and successful instances of regulatory competition and mutual learning, and resulting innovations. The book sketches new governance techniques that may help interdependent actors take into account one another's initiatives and benefit from each other's insights, although they may also entail hetero-determination.

The US Supreme Court is arguably the most controversial institution in the American political system. Decisions on such 'hot-button' issues as abortion, race equality, the death penalty and gay marriage have sharply divided the Court, politicians and public opinion. Some say that the Justices are merely politicians in judicial robes, while others insist that the Court simply does its best to interpret the Constitution for a society that differs drastically from the late eighteenth century when it was written. All those studying or simply interested in American politics must therefore get to grips with the nature, power and role of the Supreme Court in American politics. This book provides a comprehensive and balanced account, written and organised in an accessible style. It assumes no prior knowledge of the Court or constitutional law, and will help readers to gain a full appreciation of this much-criticised and important institution. -- .