In The Legality of a Jewish State, the author traces the diplomatic history that led to the partition of Palestine in 1948 and the creation of Israel as a state. He argues that the fate of Palestine was not determined on the basis of principle, but by the failure of legality. In focusing on the lawyer-diplomats who pressed for and against a Jewish state at the United Nations, he offers an explanation of the effort in 1947-48 by Arab states at the UN to gain a legal opinion from the International Court of Justice about partition and the declaration of a Jewish state. Their arguments at that time may surprise a twenty-first-century reader, touching on issues that are still at the heart of the contemporary conflict in the Middle East.

This important book considers whether the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), which was established jointly through an unprecedented bilateral treaty between the United Nations (UN) and Sierra Leone in 2002, has made jurisprudential contributions to the development of the nascent and still unsettled field of international criminal law. A leading authority on the application of international criminal justice in Africa, Charles Jalloh argues that the SCSL, as an innovative hybrid international penal tribunal, made useful jurisprudential additions on key legal questions concerning greatest responsibility jurisdiction, the war crime of child recruitment, forced marriage as a crime against humanity, amnesty, immunity and the relationship between truth commissions and criminal courts. He demonstrates that some of the SCSL case law broke new ground, and in so doing, bequeathed a 'legal legacy' that remains vital to the ongoing global fight against impunity for atrocity crimes and to the continued development of modern international criminal law.

This book charts the writing of the English constitution through the work of four of the most influential jurists in the history of English constitutional thought-Edmund Burke, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Walter Bagehot and Albert Venn Dicey. Stretching from the French Revolution to the death of Queen Victoria, their writing is both representative of and formative to the Victorian constitution. Ian Ward traces how constitutional writing changed over the course of the long nineteenth century, from the poetics of Burke and the romance of Macaulay, to the pragmatism of Bagehot and the jurisprudence of Dicey. A century on, our perception of the English constitution is still shaped by this contested history.

In this second installment of G. Edward White's sweeping history of law in America from the colonial era to the present, White, covers the period between 1865-1929, which encompasses Reconstruction, rapid industrialization, a huge influx of immigrants, the rise of Jim Crow, the emergence of an American territorial empire, World War I, and the booming yet xenophobic 1920s. As in the first volume, he connects the evolution of American law to the major political, economic, cultural, social, and demographic developments of the era. To enrich his account, White draws from the latest research from across the social sciences-economic history, anthropology, and sociology-yet weave those insights into a highly accessible narrative. Along the way he provides a compelling case for why law can be seen as the key to understanding the development of American life as we know it. Law in American History, Volume II will be an essential text for both students of law and general readers.

Common Law, Civil Law, and Colonial Law builds upon the legal historian F.W. Maitland's famous observation that history involves comparison, and that those who ignore every system but their own 'hardly came in sight of the idea of legal history'. The extensive introduction addresses the intellectual challenges posed by comparative approaches to legal history. This is followed by twelve essays derived from papers delivered at the 24th British Legal History Conference. These essays explore patterns in legal norms, processes, and practice across an exceptionally broad chronological and geographical range. Carefully selected to provide a network of inter-connections, they contribute to our better understanding of legal history by combining depth of analysis with historical contextualization. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This book is a topical study of populist constitutionalism and illiberal democracies,exploring their roots in constitutional imagination as well as their normativeentrenchment and performance in political reality. It provides insightful analysis ofrepublican constitutionalism, focusing on the role of people in radical democracyand revolutionary constitutional reform. Furthermore, the outlook, adequacyand performance of constitutional principles in times of democratic ruptures areassessed. The contributors examine the rise of populist constitutionalism and themain trends that have led to the current, ongoing crises in liberal democracy. Thebook includes original analyses of populist constitutionalism from the viewpointof emotions and constitutional imagination, as well as a special chapter devotedto the challenges posed to constitutional democracy by COVID-19. Combiningtheoretical contributions, comparative typologies and important case studies, thespread of populism and illiberal democracy in Europe is critically explored.Populist Constitutionalism and Illiberal Democracies is a timely contribution to thelively discussion surrounding constitutional law, comparative constitutional law,comparative constitutionalism and political science regarding the rise and spreadof illiberal democracies, authoritarian political regimes and revolutionary, radicaldemocratic and populist constitutionalism.