This open access book explains why a democratic reckoning will start when European societies win the fight against COVID-19. Have democracies successfully mastered the challenges of the pandemic? How has the coronavirus impacted democratic principles, processes and values? At the heels of the worst public health crisis in living memory, this book shines an unforgiving light on the side-lining of parliaments, the ruling by governmental decrees and the disenfranchisement of the people in the name of fighting COVID-19. Pandemocracy in Europe situates the dramatic impact of COVID-19, and the fight against the virus, on Europe's democracies. Throughout its 17 contributions the book sets the theoretical stage and answers the democratic questions engaged by health emergencies. Seven national case studies - UK, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Hungary, Switzerland, and France - show, each time with a pronounced focus on a particular element of democracy, how different states reacted to the pandemic. The book also shifts the analytical gaze beyond the nation state towards international settings, looking at the effects on the European Union and considering the impact on populist movements. Bridging disciplines and uniting a stellar cast of scholars on democracy, rule of law and constitutionalism, the book provides contours and nuances to a year of debates in political science, international relations and law on the impact of the virus on democracies. In times of uncertainty, Pandemocracy in Europe provides analysis and answers to the democratic challenges of the coronavirus. The ebook editions of this book are available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on www.bloomsburycollections.com.

Among the rights conferred on the citizens of Europe by the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms is the right to good administration. It is anticipated that the new Reform Constitutional Treaty will operate to make the Charter and its rights legally binding. This is the first time that any legal system has proclaimed such a right and then sought to constitutionalise it. Whether the right to good administration under the Charter represents a new right, and, if such a right exists, whether it varies according to whether the executive is mandated to control or steward, is the subject matter of this thoughtful, unblinkered book.Grounding her exposition in a deeply-informed engagement with relevant primary and secondary sources, the author exposes the serious difficulties and contradictions in the concept of the right to good administration. She demonstrates that the features of good administration cannot be fixed or fully enunciated, but are identified only when the conduct of the administration fails to reach an acceptable standard, a standard that varies over time and context. And in the modes of the concept most often embraced, such as the notion of citizen as consumer with marketplace choice, and the notion of consultation, a form of participatory democracy which privileges those individuals and communities who have the political sophistication to organize themselves and further marginalize large sectors of unorganized society; she finds a virtual denial of the democratic concept of citizen as sovereign, the creator of state power who can dictate the exact limits to be placed on personal autonomy.The extraordinary clarity and conviction of the author's approach is apparent in the details of her presentation, which include analysis of the following factors among others: the enforceable content of the right, including the role of the European Ombudsman; the relationship between good governance and good administration; the duties of the Commission as administrator; the uncertain reach of the concept of maladministration; damages in compensation actions as remedy for breach of good administration; pre-Charter principles of good administration as agreed in the Council of Europe and developed by the Courts; and the right of access to documentation, especially as it relates to the policy of language diversity. The final chapters examine the role of the right to good administration in the fraught contexts of competition law, Community finances, and the European environmental framework. This far-seeing study breaks new ground in the ever more politicized debate over the future of the European Union. As good administration is the mechanism by which the principles of good governance are to be delivered, the detailed attention given to this subject here is more than warranted. It is sure to be of exceptional value to all concerned with the development of an administrative institution of integrity and accountability in EU governance.

This book deals with one of the most important issues of philosophy of law and constitutional thought: how to understand clashes of fundamental rights, such as the conflict between free speech and privacy. The main argument of this book is that much can be learned about the nature of fundamental legal rights by examining them through the lens of conflicts among such rights, and criticizing the views of scholars and jurists who have discussed both fundamental legal rights and the nature of conflicts among them.
Theories of rights are necessarily abstract, aiming at providing the best possible answers to pressing social problems. Yet such theories must also respond to the real and changing dilemmas of the day. Taking up the problem of conflicting rights, Zucca seeks a theory of rights that can guide us to a richer, more responsive approach to rights discourse.
The idea of constitutional rights is one of the most powerful tools to advance justice in the Western tradition. But as this book demonstrates, even the most ambitious theory of rights cannot satisfactorily address questions of conflicting rights. How, for instance, can we fully secure privacy when it clashes with free speech? To what extent can our societies assist people in dying without compromising the protection of life? Exploring the limitations of the rights discourse in these areas, Zucca questions the role of law in settling ethical dilemmas helping to clarify thinking about the limitations of rights discourse.

A great deal has been written on the relationship between politics and law. Legislation, as a source of law, is often highly political, and is the product of a process or the creation of officials often closely bound into party politics. Legislation is also one of the exclusive powers of the state. As such, legislation is plainly both practical and inevitably political; at the same time most understandings of the relationship between law and politics have been overwhelmingly theoretical. In this light, public law is often seen as part of the political order or as inescapably partisan. We know relatively little about the real impact of law on politicians through their legal advisers and civil servants. How do lawyers in government see their roles and what use do they make of law? How does politics actually affect the drafting of legislation or the making of policy? This volume will begin to answer these and other questions about the practical, day-to-day relationship between law and politics in a number of settings. It includes chapters by former departmental legal advisers, drafters of legislation, law reformers, judges and academics, who focus on what actually happens when law meets politics in government.

Despite several decades' worth of explicit directives, green papers, white papers, proposals, and communications from the European Commission, the actual enforcement of competition law across the Member States today is rife with shifting patterns that escape a clearly bounded framework. The underlying cause of this disarray, the authors of this deeply engaged work contend, lies in a host of legal uncertainties scattered around the intersection where private enforcement encounters the mechanisms of decentralized public enforcement - an area where a number of general as well as special questions of EU competition law, even its very goals and principles, rise into prominence.

Germany's Constitution - the Basic Law of 23 May 1949 - created a democratic constitution which, despite amendments, has held up over the years, even providing the legal basis for German reunification in 1990. When it was written, the Basic Law was initially regarded as a temporary solution which would last until a pan-German constitution could be created, but over the years it has grown to become a mainstay of post-war stability and has even become one of Germany's most successful exports. Foreign scholars are particularly interested in the German conception of fundamental rights and the mechanisms in place for enforcing them in the courts, as well as in Germany's federal structure. Making and applying administrative law and working alongside the system of EU law are also subjects of great interest. This book, developed by a group of scholars in honour of the 60th anniversary of the Basic Law, presents examples of fundamental aspects of current scholarly debate. The analyses found in this book present the latest scholarly discussions, specifically for a foreign audience, touching upon constitutional law, administrative law and the place of the Federal Republic within the system of European Union law, with constitutional law providing the constant framework.

Since America's founding, the U.S. Supreme Court had issued a vast number of decisions on a staggeringly wide variety of subjects. And hundreds of judges have occupied the bench. Yet as Cass R. Sunstein, the eminent legal scholar and bestselling co-author of Nudge, points out, almost every one of the Justices fits into a very small number of types regardless of ideology: the hero, the soldier, the minimalist, and the mute. Heroes are willing to invoke the Constitution to invalidate state laws, federal legislation, and prior Court decisions. They loudly embrace first principles and are prone to flair, employing dramatic language to fundamentally reshape the law. Soldiers, on the other hand, are skeptical of judicial power, and typically defer to decisions made by the political branches. Minimalists favor small steps and only incremental change. They worry that bold reversals of long-established traditions may be counterproductive, producing a backlash that only leads to another reversal. Mutes would rather say nothing at all about the big constitutional issues, and instead tend to decide cases on narrow grounds or keep controversial cases out of the Court altogether by denying standing. As Sunstein shows, many of the most important constitutional debates are in fact contests between the four Personae. Whether the issue involves slavery, gender equality, same-sex marriage, executive power, surveillance, or freedom of speech, debates have turned on choices made among the four Personae-choices that derive as much from psychology as constitutional theory. Sunstein himself defends a form of minimalism, arguing that it is the best approach in a self-governing society of free people. More broadly, he casts a genuinely novel light on longstanding disputes over the proper way to interpret the constitution, demonstrating that behind virtually every decision and beneath all of the abstract theory lurk the four Personae. By emphasizing the centrality of character types, Sunstein forces us to rethink everything we know about how the Supreme Court works.

According to the accepted legal theory, the American colonists claimed the English common law as their birthright, brought with them its general principles and adopted so much of it as was applicable to their condition. Although this theory is universally adopted by the courts, a close study of the subject reveals among the early colonists a far different attitude toward the common law from that which is usually attributed to them. In none of the colonies, perhaps, was this more marked than in early Massachusetts. Here the binding force of English law was denied, and a legal system largely different came into use. It is the purpose of this work to trace the development of that system during the period of the first charter.

In a stinging dissent to a 1961 Supreme Court decision that allowed the Illinois state bar to deny admission to prospective lawyers if they refused to answer political questions, Justice Hugo Black closed with the memorable line, "We must not be afraid to be free." Black saw the First Amendment as the foundation of American freedom--the guarantor of all other Constitutional rights. Yet since free speech is by nature unruly, people fear it. The impulse to curb or limit it has been a constant danger throughout American history.
In We Must Not Be Afraid to Be Free, Ron Collins and Sam Chaltain, two noted free speech scholars and activists, provide authoritative and vivid portraits of free speech in modern America. The authors offer a series of engaging accounts of landmark First Amendment cases, including bitterly contested cases concerning loyalty oaths, hate speech, flag burning, student anti-war protests, and McCarthy-era prosecutions. The book also describes the colorful people involved in each case--the judges, attorneys, and defendants--and the issues at stake. Tracing the development of free speech rights from a more restrictive era--the early twentieth century--through the Warren Court revolution of the 1960s and beyond, Collins and Chaltain not only cover the history of a cherished ideal, but also explain in accessible language how the law surrounding this ideal has changed over time.
Essential for anyone interested in this most fundamental of our rights, We Must Not Be Afraid to Be Free provides a definitive and lively account of our First Amendment and the price courageous Americans have paid to secure them.

Originally published: London: William Du-Gard, 1652. xlvi], 500, 10], 37 pp. Reprint of the first edition in English. Mare Clausum (Dominion of the Sea) is the most famous British reply to the argument of Grotius's Mare Liberum, which denied the validity of England's claim to the high seas south and east of England. John Selden 1584-1654] argued that England's jurisdiction extends, in fact, to all waters surrounding the isles. His use of common-law principles to rebut Grotius's philosophical argument is quite impressive. Holdsworth notes that his case was enriched by "a vast historical knowledge, replete with references to the customs of peoples from the times of the Greeks to his time." Holdsworth, A History of English Law V: 10-11.

"The Constitutional Rights, Privileges, and Immunities of the American People" explores the idea that the Supreme Court should radically revise its general theory of constitutional rights and discusses various aspects of some special theories of constitutional rights in order to ensure a sufficient universe of discourse.

As a former deputy district attorney for Los Angeles County, Guminski gained a wealth of experience in preparing arguments for appellate courts. Based on his experience and careful research, he proposes a persuasive theory that explains why some but not all rights secured against infringement by the United States are also secured against infringement by the states by both the privileges or immunities and the due process clauses of the fourteenth amendment, adopted in 1868. He examines whether national citizenship before the Civil War was paramount and superior, addresses the procedural and substantive aspects of the due process clause, and recites the reasons supporting his general theory.

In presenting the essentials of his theory about how the Constitution should be judicially construed, Guminski thereby encourages other citizens to express their own opinions about constitutional law with the hope that these views may one day have an impact on the way the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution.

Judges don't just discover the law, they create it. A renowned and much-used analysis of the process of judicial decision-making, now in a library-quality cloth edition with modern formatting and presentation. Includes embedded page numbers from the original 1921 edition for continuity of citations and syllabi. Features a new, explanatory Foreword by Justice Cardozo's premier biographer, Andrew L. Kaufman, senior professor at Harvard Law School and author of "Cardozo" (Harvard Univ. Press, 1998).Justice Benjamin Nathan Cardozo (1870-1938) offered the world a candid and self-conscious study of how judges decide cases and the law - they are lawmakers and not just law-appliers, he knew - all drawn from his insights and experience on the bench in a way that no judge had done before. Asked the basic questions, "What is it that I do when I decide a case? To what sources of information do I appeal for guidance?," Cardozo answered them in his methodical, rich, and timeless prose, explaining the proper use of such decisional tools as logic and analogy to precedent; analysis of history and tradition; application of public policy, community mores, and sociology; and even the subconscious forces that drive judges' decisions. This book has impacted the introspective examination of the lawmaking process of the courts in a way no other book has had. It continues to be read today by lawyers and judges, law students and scholars, historians and political scientists, and philosophers - among others interested in how judges really think and the tools they employ.Judges are people, and lawmakers, too. "The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men, do not turn aside in their course, and pass the judges by. We like to figure to ourselves the processes of justice as coldly objective and impersonal. The law, conceived of as a real existence, dwelling apart and alone, speaks, through the voices of priests and ministers, the words which they have no choice except to utter. ...It has a lofty sound; it is well and finely said; but it can never be more than partly true." Beyond precedential cases and tradition, judges make choices, using methods of analysis and biases that ought to be examined.Famous at the time for his trenchant and fluid opinions as a Justice on New York's highest court - he is still studied on questions of torts, contracts, and business law - and later a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Cardozo filled the lecture hall at Yale when he finally answered the frank query into what judges do and how do they do it. The lectures became a landmark book and a source for all other studies of the ways of a judge. Brought to a new generation by Professor Kaufman, and presented as part of the properly formatted Legal Legends Series of Quid Pro Books, this edition is the understandable and usable rendition of a classic work of law and politics.

This book emerged from an extended seminar series held in Edinburgh Law School which sought to explore the complex constitutional arrangements of the European legal space as an inter-connected mosaic. There has been much recent debate concerning the constitutional future of Europe, focusing almost exclusively upon the EU in the context of the (failed) Constitutional Treaty of 2003-5 and the subsequent Treatyof Lisbon. The premise of the book is that this focus, while indispensable, offers only a partial vision of the complex constitutional terrain of contemporary Europe. In addition, it is essential to explore other threads of normative authority within and across states, embracing internal challenges to state-level constitutional regimes; the growing jurisprudential assertiveness of the Council of Europe regime through the ECHR and various democracy-building measures; as well as Europe's ever thicker relations, both with its border regions and with broader international institutions, especially those of the United Nations. Together these developments create increasingly dense networks of constitutional authority within the European space. This fluid and multi-dimensional dynamic is difficult to classify, and indeed may seem in many ways impenetrable, but that makes the explanatory challenge all the more important and pressing. Without this fuller picture it becomes impossible to understand the legal context of Europe today or the prospects of ongoing changes. The book brings together a range of experts in law, legal theory and political science from across Europe in order to address these complex issues and to supply illustrative case-studies in the topical areas of the constitutionalisation of European labour law and European criminal law.