Latin American Constitutions provides a comprehensive historical study of constitutionalism in Latin America from the independence period to the present, focusing on the Constitution of Cadiz, a foundational document in Latin American constitutionalism. Although drafted in Spain, it was applied in many regions of Latin America, and deputies from America formed a significant part of the drafting body. The politicization of constitutionalism reflected in Latin America's first moments proved to be a lasting legacy evident in the legal and constitutional world of the region today: many of Latin America's present challenges to establishing effective constitutionalism can be traced to the debates, ideas, structures, and assumptions of this text. This book explores the region's attempts to create effective constitutional texts and regimes in light of an established practice of linking constitutions to political goals and places important constitutional thinkers and regional constitutions, such as the Mexican Constitution of 1917, into their legal and historical context.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of capital punishment in the Australian colonies for the very first time. The author illuminates all aspects of the penalty, from shortcomings in execution technique, to the behaviour of the dying criminal, and the antics of the scaffold crowd. Mercy rates, execution numbers, and capital crimes are explored alongside the transition from public to private executions and the push to abolish the death penalty completely. Notions of culture and communication freely pollinate within a conceptual framework of penal change that explains the many transformations the death penalty underwent. A vast array of sources are assembled into one compelling argument that shows how the 'lesson' of the gallows was to be safeguarded, refined, and improved at all costs. This concise and engaging work will be a lasting resource for students, scholars, and general readers who want an in-depth understanding of a long feared punishment. Dr. Steven Anderson is a Visiting Research Fellow in the History Department at The University of Adelaide, Australia. His academic research explores the role of capital punishment in the Australian colonies by situating developments in these jurisdictions within global contexts and conceptual debates.

Now, more than ever, we need to avoid nostalgia in thinking about the Good War. This collection of essays reveals some of the challenges that Americans' commitment to the rule of law faced during the Second World War. As a total war, World War II required an unprecedented mobilization of society and growth of the federal government. The American state survived as a government of laws, not men, but in a very different form than its prewar counterpart. Using examples from the war era, this study demonstrates that major wars can imperil and transform one of our most deeply held values, the notion that public officials are constructed by law.

As a result of total war, the political landscape changed, and, with it, Americans' notions of what law could do. Supreme Court justices endangered their reputation as being above politics through their behind-the-scenes relations with FDR, and in several important constitutional decisions they relinquished the judicial supremacy that many Americans had considered a crucial safeguard of freedom. The national government's power to tax was dramatically expanded in ways that left tax resistors looking like cranks rather than freedom fighters. When New Dealers tried to realize the potential of law as a vehicle of social organization, they fell prey to conservative rivals in the federal bureaucracy and Congress, but this defeat did nothing to slow the overall expansion of the administrative state, which continued under the formal oversight of the federal judiciary.

The Dred Scott suit for freedom, argues Kelly M. Kennington, was merely the most famous example of a phenomenon that was more widespread in antebellum American jurisprudence than is generally recognized. The author draws on the case files of more than three hundred enslaved individuals who, like Dred Scott and his family, sued for freedom in the local legal arena of St. Louis. Her findings open new perspectives on the legal culture of slavery and the negotiated processes involved in freedom suits. As a gateway to the American West, a major port on both the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and a focal point in the rancorous national debate over slavery's expansion, St. Louis was an ideal place for enslaved individuals to challenge the legal systems and, by extension, the social systems that held them in forced servitude. Kennington offers an in-depth look at how daily interactions, webs of relationships, and arguments presented in court shaped and reshaped legal debates and public at titudes over slavery and freedom in St. Louis. Kennington also surveys more than eight hundred state supreme court freedom suits from around the United States to situate the St. Louis example in a broader context. Although white enslavers dominated the antebellum legal system in St. Louis and throughout the slaveholding states, that fact did not mean that the system ignored the concerns of the subordinated groups who made up the bulk of the American population. By looking at a particular example of one group's encounters with the law and placing these suits into conversation with similar en counters that arose in appellate cases nationwide Kennington sheds light on the ways in which the law responded to the demands of a variety of actors.