"The Lisbon Treaty states that national Parliaments shall contribute to a better functioning of the EU. Can they really do it and therefore enrich the European democracy? How far can they extend their original sovereignty without distorting political responsibilities that should be geared upon the European Parliament? The authors analyze the experience of the Italian Parliament under the light of these crucial questions and their exhaustive answers are greatly helpful to the readers of all over Europe." Giuliano Amato, Judge of the Italian Constitutional Court. This important new collection explores the role of the Italian Parliament in the Euro-national parliamentary system as an example of an increased role for national parliaments within the composite European constitutional order. It illustrates how parliamentary interactions within the European Union are highly systematic, with integrated procedures and mutual interdependence between the various institutions and stakeholders. The book argues that this dynamic is vital for both the functioning and the future equilibrium of democracy in the EU. This is significant, particularly given the challenges posed to democracy within the EU institutions and the Member States. Notwithstanding its peculiarities (a symmetrical bicameral system in which both Houses are directly elected, hold the same powers and are linked through a confidence relationship with the government), the Italian Parliament deserves specific attention as a lively active player of the European polity. The grid for its analysis proposed by this collection may also be applied to other national parliaments, so contributing to the development of comparative research in this field.

A series of laws passed in the 1970s promised the nation unprecedented transparency in government, a veritable "sunshine era." Though citizens enjoyed a new arsenal of secrecy-busting tools, officials developed a handy set of workarounds, from over classification to concealment, shredding, and burning. It is this dark side of the sunshine era that Jason Ross Arnold explores in the first comprehensive, comparative history of presidential resistance to the new legal regime, from Reagan-Bush to the first term of Obama-Biden.

After examining what makes a necessary and unnecessary secret, Arnold considers the causes of excessive secrecy, and why we observe variation across administrations. While some administrations deserve the scorn of critics for exceptional secrecy, the book shows excessive secrecy was a persistent problem well before 9/11, during Democratic and Republican administrations alike. Regardless of party, administrations have consistently worked to weaken the system's legal foundations.

The book reveals episode after episode of evasive maneuvers, rule bending, clever rhetorical gambits, and downright defiance; an army of secrecy workers in a dizzying array of institutions labels all manner of documents "top secret," while other government workers and agencies manage to suppress information with a "sensitive but unclassified" designation. For example, the health effects of Agent Orange, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria leaking out of Midwestern hog farms are considered too "sensitive" for public consumption. These examples and many more document how vast the secrecy system has grown during the sunshine era.

Rife with stories of vital scientific evidence withheld, justice eluded, legalities circumvented, and the public interest flouted, "Secrecy in the Sunshine Era" reveals how our information society has been kept in the dark in too many ways and for too long.

This book provides unique insights into the practice of democratic constitutionalism in one of the world's most legally and politically significant regions. It combines contributions from leading Latin American and global scholars to provide 'bottom up' and 'top down' insights about the lessons to be drawn from the distinctive constitutional experiences of countries in Latin America. In doing so, it also draws on a rich array of legal and interdisciplinary perspectives. Ultimately, it shows both the promise of democratic constitutions as a vehicle for social, economic and political change, and the variation in the actual constitutional experiences of different countries on the ground - or the limits to constitutions as a locus for broader social change. This book presents new perspectives on recurrent topics and debates that enrich comparative constitutional law in other regions of the world, both in the Global South and the Global North. The fine-tuned, in-depth approach of the contributors brings rigorous scholarship to this institutionally diverse and significant region, illuminating the under-explored relationship between constitutionalism, politics, ideology and leadership. This unique and challenging study will prove to be an indispensable tool, not only for academics interested in Latin America but for comparative constitutional law scholars across the globe. Contributors include: C. Bernal, J.l. Colon-Rios, J. Couso, R. Dixon, Z. Elkins, H.A. Garcia, R. Gargarella, T. Ginsburg, A. Huneeus, D. Landau, J. Lemaitre, L. Lixinski, G.L. Negretto, R.A. Sanchez-Urribarri, M. Tushnet, O. Vilhena Vieira

Constitutional orders constitute political communities - and international orders deriving from them - by managing conflicts that threaten peace. This book explores how a European political community can be advanced through EU constitutional law. The constitutional role of the Union is to ensure peace by addressing two types of conflict. The first are static conflicts of interests between the national polities in the EU. These are avoided by ensuring reciprocal non-interference between Member States in the Union through deregulation in Union law. The second are dynamic conflicts of ideas about positive liberty held by the peoples of Europe. These can be resolved through regulation in a European political space. Here, EU law enables a continuous process of re-negotiating a shared European idea of positive liberty that can be accepted as its own by each national polity in the EU. These solutions to the two types of conflicts correspond to the liberal and republican models for Europe. The claim of this book is that the constitutional design of Europe presents both liberal and republican features. Taking an innovative approach, which draws on arguments from substantive law, constitutional theory, case law analysis, insights from psychology and philosophy, it identifies how best to strengthen the Union through constitutional law.

The Continuity of Legal Systems in Theory and Practice examines a persistent and fascinating question about the continuity of legal systems: when is a legal system existing at one time the same legal system that exists at another time? The book's distinctive approach to this question is to combine abstract critical analysis of two of the most developed theories of legal systems, those of Hans Kelsen and Joseph Raz, with an evaluation of their capacity, in practice, to explain the facts, attitudes and normative standards for which they purport to account. That evaluation is undertaken by reference to Australian constitutional law and history, whose diverse and complex phenomena make it particularly apt for evaluating the theories' explanatory power. In testing whether the depiction of Australian law presented by each theory achieves an adequate 'fit' with historical facts, the book also contributes to the understanding of Australian law and legal systems between 1788 and 2001. By collating the relevant Australian materials systematically for the first time, it presents the case for reconceptualising the role of Imperial laws and institutions during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and clarifies the interrelationship between Colonial, State, Commonwealth and Imperial legal systems, both before and after Federation.

Joseph Story's famous and influential review of the origins, influences, and early interpretations of the U.S. Constitution is now presented in the author's own 1833 Abridged Edition-considered the most useful and readable version of this important work, from the Supreme Court's youngest Justice. The new, affordable hardcover edition adds a 2013 introduction by Kermit Roosevelt III. One of the United States' most influential legal scholars and jurists, Joseph Story wrote his landmark treatise before the Civil War, describing federalism, states' histories, freedoms, and constitutional structure. He abridged it into this usable book. Adding an informative foreword by constitutional scholar Kermit Roosevelt III of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the Quid Pro edition features modern and readable formatting (compared to mere photocopies of the original, with its expansive and dated print size), as well as embedded pagination from the original, for continuity of referencing and citation. Professor Roosevelt catalogs many instances in which the current Court has relied on this book to decide issues of gun rights, federalism, and privacy. In addition, he provides a fascinating biographical summary of Story and describes the origins of this monumental work, as well as the influence it has had on legal history since 1833. Part of the Legal Legends Series from Quid Pro Books. The series also includes legendary works, in quality ebook and print formats, from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, Roscoe Pound, Benjamin Cardozo, Thomas Reed Powell, John Chipman Gray, Woodrow Wilson, and Karl Llewellyn. These editions are introduced and explained by today's recognized scholars in the field, and they exhibit a care in reproduction and presentation often lacking in modern republications of historic books.

In this bold and timely work, law professor Jeffrey Shulman argues that the United States Constitution does not protect a fundamental right to parent. Based on a rigorous reconsideration of the historical record, Shulman challenges the notion, held by academics and the general public alike, that parental rights have a long-standing legal pedigree. What is deeply rooted in our legal tradition and social conscience, Shulman demonstrates, is the idea that the state entrusts parents with custody of the child, and it does so only as long as parents meet their fiduciary duty to serve the developmental needs of the child. Shulman's illuminating account of American legal history is of more than academic interest. If once again we treat parenting as a delegated responsibility-as a sacred trust, not a sacred right-we will not all reach the same legal prescriptions, but we might be more willing to consider how time-honored principles of family law can effectively accommodate the evolving interests of parent, child, and state.

"In short, we have a first-rate study of an important constitutional symbol of disunion." --Donald Roper, American Journal of Legal History 26 (1982) 255. Finkelman describes the judicial turmoil that ensued when slaves were taken into free states and the resultant issues of comity, conflict of laws, interstate cooperation, Constitutional obligations, and the nationalization of slavery. "Other scholars have defined the antebellum constitutional crisis largely in terms of the extension of slavery to the territories and the return of fugitive slaves. Finkelman's study demonstrates that the comity problem was also an important dimension of intersectional tension. It is a worthy addition to the growing literature of slavery." -- James W. Ely, Jr., California Law Review 69 (1981) 1755. Paul Finkelman is the President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy and Senior Fellow, Government Law Center, Albany Law School. He is the author of more than 200 scholarly articles and more than 35 books including A March of Liberty: A Constitutional History of the United States, with Melvin I. Urofsky (2011), Slavery, Race and the American Legal System, 1700-1872 (editor) (1988) and Slavery in the Courtroom (1985).