This book examines the idea of a fundamental entitlement to health and healthcare from a human rights perspective. The volume is based on a particular conceptual reasoning that balances critical thinking and pragmatism in the context of a universal right to health. Thus, the primary focus of the book is the relationship or contrast between rights-based discourse/jurisprudential arguments and real-life healthcare contexts. The work sets out the constraints that are imposed on a universal right to health by practical realities such as economic hardship in countries, lack of appropriate governance, and lack of support for the implementation of this right through appropriate resource allocation. It queries the degree to which the existence of this legally enshrined right and its application in instruments such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) can be more than an ephemeral aspiration but can, actually, sustain, promote, and instil good practice. It further asks if social reality and the inequalities that present themselves therein impede the implementation of laudable human rights, particularly within marginalised communities and cadres of people. It deliberates on what states and global bodies do, or could do, in practical terms to ensure that such rights are moved beyond the aspirational and become attainable and implementable. Divided into three parts, the first analyses the notion of a universal inalienable right to health(care) from jurisprudential, anthropological, legal, and ethical perspectives. The second part considers the translation of international human rights norms into specific jurisdictional healthcare contexts. With a global perspective it includes countries with very different legal, economic, and social contexts. Finally, the third part summarises the lessons learnt and provides a pathway for future action. The book will be an invaluable resource for students, academics, and policymakers working in the areas of health law and policy, and international human rights law.

Going beyond the more usual focus on Jerusalem as a sacred place, this book presents legal perspectives on the most important sacred places of the Mediterranean. The first part of the book discusses the notion of sacred places in anthropological, sociological and legal studies and provides an overview of existing legal approaches to the protection of sacred places in order to develop and define a new legal framework. The second part introduces the meaning of sacred places in Jewish, Christian and Islamic thought and focuses on the significance and role that sacred places have in the three major monotheistic religions and how best to preserve their religious nature whilst designing a new international statute. The final part of the book is a detailed analysis of the legal status of key sacred places and holy cities in the Mediterranean area and identifies a set of legal principles to support a general framework within which specific legal measures can be implemented. The book concludes with a useful appendix for the protection of sacred places in the Mediterranean region. Including contributions from leading law and religion scholars, this interesting book will be valuable to those in the fields of international law, as well as religion and heritage studies.

The negative results of referenda on the European Union (EU) Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands, and subsequent low-key adoption of the Treaty of Lisbon raise complex questions about the possible democratization of international organisations. This book provides a full analysis of the EU Constitutional Treaty process, grounded in broader political theoretical debates about democratic constitutionalisation and globalization. As international organizations become permanent systems of governance that directly interfere in individuals' lives, it is not enough to have them legitimated by the consent of governments alone. This book presents an evaluation of the present EU Treaty of Lisbon in comparison with the original EU Constitutional Treaty, and analyses the importance of consent of the people, asking if saving the treaty came at the cost of democracy. Drawing first-hand on the European Convention and the referendum in the Netherlands, this book outlines an original political theory of democratic constitutionalisation beyond the nation-state, and argues that international organizations can be put on democratic foundations, but only by properly engaging national political structures. Learning from the EU Constitutional Treaty will be of interest to students and scholars of European Union politics, history and policy.

Landsberg and Jacobs' Global Issues in Constitutional Law is designed to supplement constitutional law classes with international, comparative, and transnational law issues. This volume of West's Global Issues series covers: Constitutionalism Judicial review Horizontal and vertical separation of powers Individual rights Equal protection Due process Freedom of speech and religion You can pick and choose among the topics and the selections within the topics, inserting them as comparisons or elucidations in core constitutional law courses. Carefully drafted note materials and a teacher's manual make the book self-contained and allow you introduce international, transnational, and comparative law issues without additional background reading.

Since the United States' entry into World War II, the federal judiciary has taken a prominent role in the shaping of the nation's military laws. Yet, a majority of the academic legal community studying the relationship between the Court and the military establishment argues otherwise providing the basis for a further argument that the legal construct of the military establishment is constitutionally questionable. Centering on the Cold War era from 1968 onward, this book weaves judicial biography and a historic methodology based on primary source materials into its analysis and reviews several military law judicial decisions ignored by other studies. This book is not designed only for legal scholars. Its intended audience consists of Cold War, military, and political historians, as well as political scientists, and, military and national security policy makers. Although the book's conclusions are likely to be favored by the military establishment, the purpose of this book is to accurately analyze the intersection of the later twentieth century's American military, political, social, and cultural history and the operation of the nation's armed forces from a judicial vantage.

Traditionally few people challenged the distinction between absolute and selective conscientious objection by those being asked to carry out military duties. The former is an objection to fighting all wars - a position generally respected and accommodated by democratic states, while the latter is an objection to a specific war or conflict - theoretically and practically a much harder idea to accept and embrace for military institutions. However, a decade of conflict not clearly aligned to vital national interests combined with recent acts of selective conscientious objection by members of the military have led some to reappraise the situation and argue that selective conscientious objection ought to be legally recognised and permitted. Political, social and philosophical factors lie behind this new interest which together mean that the time is ripe for a fresh and thorough evaluation of the topic. This book brings together arguments for and against selective conscientious objection, as well as case studies examining how different countries deal with those who claim the status of selective conscientious objectors. As such, it sheds new light on a topic of increasing importance to those concerned with military ethics and public policy, within military institutions, government, and academia.

Many jurisdictions in Asia have vested their courts with the power of constitutional review. Traditionally, these courts would invalidate an impugned law to the extent of its inconsistency with the constitution. In common law systems, such an invalidation operates immediately and retrospectively; and courts in both common law and civil law systems would leave it to the legislature to introduce corrective legislation. In practice, however, both common law and civil law courts in Asia have devised novel constitutional remedies, often in the absence of explicit constitutional or statutory authorisation. Examining cases from Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, and the Philippines, this collection of essays examines four novel constitutional remedies which have been judicially adopted - Prospective Invalidation, Suspension Order, Remedial Interpretation, and Judicial Directive - that blurs the distinction between adjudication and legislation.

This, the first of two volumes of Liberty and Union, is a comprehensive constitutional history of the United States from the Anglo-American origins of the Constitution through the colonial and antebellum periods, to the Civil War and the consequent restructuring of the nation.

Written in a clear and engaging narrative style, it successfully unites thorough chronological coverage with a thematic approach, offering critical analysis of core constitutional history topics, set in the political, social, and economic context that made them constitutional issues in the first place. Combining a thoughtful and balanced narrative with an authoritative stance on key issues, the authors explain the past in the light of the past, without imposing upon it the standards of later generations.

Authored by two experienced professors of History and Law this textbook has been thoughtfully constructed to offer an accessible alternative to dense scholarly works avoiding unnecessary technical jargon, defining legal terms and historical personalities where appropriate, and making explicit connections between constitutional themes and historical events. For students in an undergraduate or postgraduate constitutional history course, or anyone with a general interest in constitutional developments, this book will be essential reading.

Useful features include:

• Full glossary of legal terminology
• Recommended reading
• A table of cases
• Extensive supporting artwork
• Companion website

Useful documents provided:

• Declaration of Independence
• Articles of Confederation
• Constitution of the United States of America
• Chronological list of Supreme Court justices

This collection studies the rise of neutral bodies as a challenge to the constitutional paradigm of the nation state. Administrative entities such as commissions, agencies, councils, authorities or 'independent agencies' as they are sometimes known, are relatively autonomous from majoritarian democratic control and by their institutional design fall outside the classical triad of powers or branches of government. They may even fall outside the confines of the nation state itself as with the EU Commission. The book is divided into theoretical-historical and empirical parts. Part I approaches the phenomenon through the rigorous normative conceptual lens of constitutionalism and constitutional law, questioning the implications of political neutrality on inherited normative categories, both at national and supranational level. Part II comprises case-studies reflecting the full spectrum of theoretical frameworks and concerns developed and explored by the theory-oriented chapters in the first part. The work explores a wide range of issues including the balance between autonomy, legitimacy and accountability, the taxonomy of agencies, the role and limits of expertise as a paramount justification for independence, 'agentification' as a result of internationalisation, and 'agentification' as a reflex and consequence of transnational polity-building within the EU.

Recent confrontations between constitutional courts and parliamentary majorities, for example in Poland and Hungary, have attracted international interest in the relationship between the judiciary and the legislature in Central and Eastern European countries. Several political actors have argued that courts have assumed too much power after the democratic transformation process in 1989/1990. These claims are explicitly or implicitly connected to the charge that courts have constrained the room for manoeuvre of the legislatures too heavily and that they have entered the field of politics. Nevertheless, the question to what extent has this aggregation of power constrained the dominant political actors has never been examined accurately and systematically in the literature. The present volume fills this gap by applying an innovative research methodology to quantify the impact and effect of court's decisions on legislation and legislators, and measure the strength of judicial decisions in six CEE countries.

The War on Terror has been going on for over a decade and it shows no signs of winding down in near future, a war which has directly contributed to growing security regimes in frontline states. This book focuses on the legal dimensions of the War on Terror and security in Pakistan. It highlights the growth of the security state in Pakistan, and questions the growing and by-now entrenched legal security regime in the country. The book traces the roots of the present security laws in colonial and post-colonial times. One broader dimension from which the legal security regime of Pakistan is approached in this book is through highlighting specific issues concerning the legal identity of the subject such as the rights of aliens in the background of state power versus liberal constitutionalism, and the rights of terrorism suspects in the background of deploying death sentence as a tactical, psychological tool versus the absolute right to life (of every individual). By critically reflecting on the increasingly institutionalized form of the security apparatus in Pakistan, the book (indirectly) suggests the legal ways to resist the growing legal security regime and derogation from human rights. Offering a theoretically engaged and critically reflective overview of the current state of individual identity, rights and freedoms in face of a burgeoning legal regime of security in Pakistan, this study makes advances in critical legal studies and critical IR. It will be of interest to academics working in the field of security studies, South Asian Studies, particularly Pakistan, and the War on Terror.

Almost two decades ago, the fall of the Santer Commission against a background of allegations of maladministration and nepotism had the effect of placing accountability on the political agenda of the EU institutions. More recently, the non-ratification of the Constitutional Treaty, the difficulties of the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty and the current financial crisis have increased the calls for accountability in the EU. This book investigates whether any progress towards more accountability and transparency has been made in the post-Lisbon era by taking a holistic approach to the subject. Marios Costa argues that currently the EU institutions and the Member States are not in a position to hold the so-called independent agencies as well as the various committees and expert groups accountable. Despite recent progress, the EU still needs to put forward an acceptable constitutional framework which will truly secure accountability at the EU level of governance.

In this book, Catherine Frost uses evidence and case studies to offer a re-examination of declarations of independence and the language that comprises such documents. Considered as a quintessential form of founding speech in the modern era, declarations of independence are however poorly understood as a form of expression, and no one can completely account for how they work. Beginning with the founding speech in the American Declaration, Frost uses insights drawn from unexpected or unlikely forms of founding in cases like Ireland and Canada to reconsider the role of time and loss in how such speech is framed. She brings the discussion up to date by looking at recent debates in Scotland, where an undeclared declaration of independence overshadows contemporary politics. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt and using a contextualist, comparative theory method, Frost demonstrates that the capacity for renewal through speech arises in aspects of language that operate beyond conventional performativity. Language, Democracy, and the Paradox of Constituent Power is an excellent resource for researchers and students of political theory, democratic theory, law, constitutionalism, and political history.

This, the concise edition of "Liberty and Union," is an abridged constitutional history of the United States, designed for short single-semester courses, comprising the key topics from Volumes 1 and 2.

Written in a clear and engaging narrative style, it successfully unites thorough chronological coverage with a thematic approach, offering critical analysis of core constitutional history topics, set in the political, social, and economic context that made them constitutional issues in the first place. Combining a thoughtful and balanced narrative with an authoritative stance on key issues, the authors deliberately explain the past in the light of the past, without imposing upon it the standards of later generations.

Authored by two experienced professors in the field, this concise edition presents seminal topics while retaining the narrative flow of the two full original volumes. An accessible alternative to dense scholarly works, this textbook avoids unnecessary technical jargon, defines legal terms and historical personalities where appropriate, and makes explicit connections between constitutional themes and historical events. For students in a short undergraduate or postgraduate constitutional history course, or anyone with a general interest in constitutional developments, this book will be essential reading.

Useful features include:

• Full glossary of legal terminology
• Recommended reading
• A table of cases
• Extracts from primary documents
• Companion website

Useful documents provided:

• Declaration of Independence
• Articles of Confederation
• Constitution of the United States of America
• Chronological list of Supreme Court justices

Debates about the regulation of drugs are inseparable from talk of children and the young. Yet how has this association come to be so strong, and why does it have so much explanatory, rhetorical and political force? The premise for this book is that the relationship between drugs and childhood merits more exploration beyond simply pointing out that children and drugs are both 'things we tend to get worried about'. It asks what is at stake when legislators, lobbyists and decision-makers revert to claims about children in order to sustain a given legal or policy position. Beginning with a genealogy of the relationship between the discursive artefacts of 'drugs' and 'childhood', the book draws on Foucauldian methodologies to explore how childhood functions as a device in the biopolitical management of drug use(rs) and supply. In addition to analysing decriminalisation initiatives and sentencing measures, it (unusually) reaches beyond the criminal context to consider the significance of the 'politics of childhood' for law- and policymaking in the fields of family justice and education. It concludes by arguing that the currency of childhood and 'youth' is not reducible to rhetoric; it shapes the discursive entities of drugs and addiction and is one of the ways in which particular substances become socially, culturally and politically intelligible. At the same time, 'drugs' serve as a technology of child normalisation. The book will be essential reading for policymakers as well as researchers and students working in the areas of Criminal Justice, Law, Psychology and Sociology.

This book examines the many attempts over the last three decades to revise Japan's constitution. As the book shows, these attempts at revision have been relatively conservative, aiming to embed in the constitution visions of a different future for Japan. Specific reforms advocated include: enabling Japan to have a more proactive foreign policy, more independent of the US-Japan alliance; strengthening the role of the Emperor, and excluding female succession to the throne; and emphasising more citizens' duties, rather than their rights, in order to strengthen community and societal cohesion. By far the most comprehensive analysis of constitutional reform debate in Japan to be published to date, it offers translations and analysis of more than two dozen amendment proposals. The book provides a comprehensive analysis of the details of the reform proposals, charts the so far unsuccessful attempts to bring about the reforms, discusses the different groups arguing for reform, and assesses the nature of the proposed reforms. It categorises different versions of the vision for Japan's future and shows that only a few campaigners are advocating anything like a return to Japan's pre-war constitution.

The existence of a structured enforcement system is an inherent feature of national legal orders and one of the core elements of State sovereignty. The very limited power to issue sanctions has often been deemed a gap in the EC legal order. Over the years, the situation has progressively changed. The Union's institutional setting is growing in complexity and a variety of agencies has been or is expected to be endowed with law enforcement responsibilities. In addition, the so-called competence creep has led the EU to play an increasingly prominent role in several areas of EU law enforcement, including the issuing of sanctions. This book examines these developments, focusing on both the general features of the EU legal order and the analysis of key-substantive areas, such as banking and monetary union, environmental law, and data protection. The work thus presents a general framework for understanding EU sanctioning based on structural features and general legal principles. Part I develops an analytical framework, tracking the most significant evolutive patterns of EU sanctioning powers. Part II adopts a more practical approach focusing on specific issues and policy areas. The book bridges a gap in existing literature and sheds new light on the relationship between the exercise of jus puniendi and the evolution of EU integration.

This work considers the role of local government in 13 EU Member States (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The book aims to provide an account of the system of local government in each of the countries studied along with a critical and contextual approach to the level of autonomy that local government enjoys. The approach is comparative, based on a questionnaire which all of the authors considered. There is then a detailed conclusion to the book which offers a detailed summary and comparative analysis of the responses in order to better consider the role of local authorities as the fourth level of governance in the EU. The book aims to offer a detailed introduction to and account of each system of local government which may appeal to those seeking an overview of the area, but also a critical and contextual approach that will be of interest to those actively researching in the areas of local and regional government or EU-central-local government relations. The book contains details of reform in local government up to November 2012, including an analysis of the impact of austerity measures on local autonomy where these have become significant.

The promulgation of the Fifth French Republic Constitution in 1958 marked the end of a complex constitutional history that has since 1789 seen more than twenty constitutions and five Republics. Lasting now for more than fifty years, the Fifth Republic Constitution has proven to be the right settlement for the French people; a consensual text.

However, while offering the appearance of stability, the Fifth French Republic Constitution has often been reconsidered and changed, not least in the year of its fiftieth anniversary, when the Constitution was 'modernised'. These dynamics of the Fifth Republic Constitution are neither a recent matter nor entirely the result of the successive constitutional amendments. Instead, the history of the Constitution has involved the resurgence of repressed archaic elements from the ancient regime, while the social, economic and environmental contexts have penetrated not only the text itself but more extensively its spirit, and behind it, the philosophy and our perception of the Republic.

In Dynamics in the French Constitution, David Marrani questions the foundations of the French Fifth Republic. In using specific themes, current and traditional debates, contemporary and archaic factors, that have enlightened the road of long lasting Republic, the book explores some of the changes of the last fifty years and the tensions that are present within the constitutional text. In combining theoretical concepts of constitutional law with key contemporary and historical developments, such as the European integration, the response to environmental challenges, the practice of human rights and the pillars supporting French republicanism, this book offers varied and creative tools for a better understanding of the Republic of today.

The U.S. Constitution is a blueprint for a free society as well as a source of enduring conflict over how that society must be governed. The competing ways of reading our founding document shape the decisions of the Supreme Court, which acts as the final voice on constitutional questions. This breezy, concise guide explains the central conflicts that frame our constitutional controversies, written in clear non-academic language to serve as a resource for engaged citizens, both inside and outside of an academic setting. After covering the main points of conflict in constitutional law, Marietta gives readers an overview of the perspectives from the leading schools of constititional interpretation--textualism, common law constitutionalism, originalism, and living constitutionalism. He then walks through the points of conflict and competing schools of thought in the context of several landmark cases and ends with advice to readers on how to interpret constitutional issues ourselves.

Every year firms close for a variety of reasons, including sale or merger, but what happens if you haven't prepared to exit the market? The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has stressed the need for firms to have an exit strategy in place to prepare for this eventuality, meet regulatory requirements and good practice standards, and avoid potential fines. The Exit Strategies Toolkit contains a mixture of commentary, procedural checklists, such as a notification checklist, draft policies and precedents, including sample letters to PI insurers and the SRA, to help you to prepare for this eventuality.

This book offers a comprehensive argument for why pre-existing international law on cluster munitions was inadequate to deal with the full scope of humanitarian consequences associated with their use. The book undertakes an interdisciplinary legal analysis of restraints and prohibitions on the use of cluster munitions under international humanitarian law, human rights law, and international criminal law, as well as in relation to the recently adopted Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM). The book goes on to offer an in-depth substantive and procedural analysis of the negotiations which led to the 2008 CCM, in part based on the author's experiences as an adviser to Cluster Munitions Coalition-Austria. Cluster Munitions and International Law is essential reading for practitioners and scholars of International Law, including International Humanitarian, Human Rights, International Criminal or Disarmament Law and anyone interested in legal and humanitarian perspectives on cluster munitions legislation and policy. It is unique in bringing a practitioner's perspective to a scholarly work.

State Violence and the Execution of Law stages a provocative analysis of how the biopolitical divide between human and animal has played a fundamental role in enabling state violence, including torture, secret imprisonment and killing-at-a-distance via drones. Analyzing the complex ways in which the United States government deploys law in order to consolidate and further imperial relations of power, Pugliese tracks the networks that enable the diffusion and normalization of the state's monopoly of violence both in the US and in an international context. He demonstrates how networks of state violence are embedded within key legal institutions, military apparatuses, civilian sites, corporations, carceral architectures, and advanced technologies. The author argues that the exercise of state violence, as unleashed by the war on terror, has enmeshed the subjects of the Global South within institutional and discursive structures that position them as non-human animals that can be tortured, killed and disappeared with impunity. Drawing on poststructuralist, critical race and whiteness, and critical legal theories, the book is transdisciplinary in its approach and value. It will be invaluable to university students and scholars in Critical Legal and Socio-Legal Studies, Cultural Studies, Race and Ethnicity Studies, International Politics, and Postcolonial Studies.

Theoretically, the right to privacy is an individual's right to space away from the public gaze to make life choices that are best for her or him, regardless of the beliefs of the majority. Yet the right to privacy in the United States has proven problematic for both political theorists and constitutional scholars, as it does not conform to theoretical conceptions of privacy or to existing theories of constitutional development. Mary McThomas provides a new model that helps us to think about both the right to privacy as well as constitutional development. She first divides privacy issues into two categories, and then illustrates how the two categories are treated differently. The first category, proprietary privacy, covers such issues as medical records and wiretapping. The second category, decisional privacy, involves making decisions about intimate matters such as the right to die, same-sex marriage, and abortion. McThomas tracks and assesses higher court cases in conversational privacy, representative of proprietary privacy, and court cases in marital privacy, representative of decisional privacy. She concludes that the most notable difference between the different types of privacy is that decisional privacy has evolved more slowly towards constitutionalization, and so is much more likely to be limited by community standards and social norms. This book brings the theoretical conceptions and the practice of privacy rights together, explaining what has happened in the area up until this point, and offering ways to predict how the courts will handle some of today's most contentious issues.

This comprehensive textbook applies economic analysis to public law. The economic analysis of law has revolutionized legal scholarship and teaching in the last half-century, but it has focused mostly on private law, business law, and criminal law. This book extends the analysis to fundamental topics in public law, such as the separation of government powers, regulation by agencies, constitutional rights, and elections. Every public law involves six fundamental processes of government: bargaining, voting, entrenching, delegating, adjudicating, and enforcing. The book devotes two chapters to each process, beginning with the economic theory and then applying the theory to a wide range of puzzles and problems in law. Each chapter concentrates on cases and legal doctrine, showing the relevance of economics to the work of lawyers and judges. Featuring lucid, accessible writing and engaging examples, the book addresses enduring topics in public law as well as modern controversies, including gerrymandering, voter identification laws, and qualified immunity for police.