This is the first comprehensive journey of its kind throughout the modern world of ideas and institutions relating to legislative and other features of sovereignty and state. Following A. London Fell's previous book on the Western Hemisphere (Volume Seven, Book I), Origins of Legislative Sovereignty and the Legislative State: Volume Seven: World Perspectives and Emergent Systems for the New Order in the New Age, the present Book II: Eastern Hemisphere deals in sequence with each continent, from Europe to the Middle East, from Asia to Africa. Taken together, the two books offer an exhaustive examination of emergent systems for the new order in the new age. As in Book I, Fell explores numerous issues that bear on the present world order. For example, he examines how current fundamentalist "laws" drive Islamic radicals in their ideological struggles with Western legal systems of democracy. And he shows how the broad, diverse spectrum of African nations can be viewed from the common theme of their legislative statehoods. The main subjects and sources of both halves of Volume Seven revolve around current news history, with issues and viewpoints uppermost in the public mind as expressed in the public press.

This is the first comprehensive journey of its kind throughout the modern world of ideas and institutions relating to legislative and other features of sovereignty and state. Following A. London Fell's previous book on the Western Hemisphere (Volume Seven, Book I), Origins of Legislative Sovereignty and the Legislative State: Volume Seven: World Perspectives and Emergent Systems for the New Order in the New Age, the present Book II: Eastern Hemisphere deals in sequence with each continent, from Europe to the Middle East, from Asia to Africa. Taken together, the two books offer an exhaustive examination of emergent systems for the new order in the new age. As in Book I, Fell explores numerous issues that bear on the present world order. For example, he examines how current fundamentalist "laws" drive Islamic radicals in their ideological struggles with Western legal systems of democracy. And he shows how the broad, diverse spectrum of African nations can be viewed from the common theme of their legislative statehoods. The main subjects and sources of both halves of Volume Seven revolve around current news history, with issues and viewpoints uppermost in the public mind as expressed in the public press.

This is Book I ("Western Hemisphere") of Volume Seven ("World Perspectives and Emergent Systems for the New Order in the New Age") in the series Origins of Legislative Sovereignty and the Legislative State), including coverage of North and South America. Another book on the Eastern Hemisphere, comprising a larger expanse from Western Europe to Eastern Asia, will follow to round out global or worldwide considerations. Three main parts deal in turn with United States Government and Society, United States Foreign Policy, and Latin American Governments and Societies, with an Annex on Canada and North American Blocs and an Epilogue on U.S. and Other 'Union' Models. The lengthy first chapter in Part I continues the focus on U.S. presidents from the Founders to Reagan, moving ahead here from Reagan to George W. Bush. As in the case herein of Latin America, the fading out of the old order of Cold War dictatorships gave rise in the 1990s to an emergent new order of more democratic (and free trade) tendencies, often patterned around U.S. models, albeit often imperfectly or incompletely so, within the contexts of their own cultures and traditions. The nascent new order for the new decade of the 1990s and then for the new century and new millennium is still an ongoing work in progress.

In a different sense, the United States itself experienced an emerging new order in its domestic and foreign affairs in the 1990s and beyond-first with the call for a new world order under George H.W. Bush around 1991, then with the impetus toward a more global economy under Clinton, and more recently through the crusade against international terrorism under George W. Bush. As indicated in the titles of the present Book I on the Western Hemisphere and in its sequel Book II on the Eastern Hemisphere, the main subjects and sources revolve around current news history. Issues and viewpoints uppermost in the public mind as expressed in the public press through reports and accounts are crucial here.

This first book of the sixth volume centers on the Revolutionary and Constitutional eras in early American history, while also carrying the story ahead into the early 19th century. How did the American founders adapt and utilize European thought in their political and legal ideas on sovereignty, state, and legislation? Because of the seismic impact of European thought (and classical traditions) on America's foremost founders, it should come as no surprise that some of the most basic documents in the emergent new Republic were significantly influenced by European writings. Subsequent studies will take up the same basic themes in American thought and events from the mid-19th century to the present period. The common denominator of legislation is seen to underlie their concepts of sovereignty and the state across a diverse range of isms such as utilitarianism, positivism, idealism, socialism, and nationalism, in the 19th century and in related neo and anti-neo forms in the 20th century. The organization and classification of these and other issues is on the whole novel and comprehensive. As various reviewers have indicated, nothing of this magnitude on the subjects at hand has ever before been attempted.

This book is the fourth in a projected eight-volume series that addresses the origins and development of the idea of legislative sovereignty and the legislative state. A. London Fell's study, which traces ideas and contributions from the Renaissance thinker and legal scholar Corasius to the present, has been praised by such scholars as J. Russell Major in American Historical Review and Dennis M. Patterson in "The American Political Science RevieW." In this volume, the focus is on ancient, medieval, and early modern Europe, as Fell charts the overall patterns of historiographical debates in modern discussion on the origins of legislation, public law, sovereignty, and the state.

The work begins with a brief introduction, and is followed by six sections that cover the different periods and geographical aspects of the topic from a historiographical perspective. Section one proceeds chronologically throughout the entire spectrum of early Europe, from the ancient and medieval periods, through the Renaissance and Reformation, to post-sixteenth-century developments. In each case, the theories that attribute the origins of state to that period are thoroughly examined. In sections two through six, the study proceeds on a nation-by-nation basis, focusing in each case first on the Middle Ages and then on the Renaissance. The nations covered include Italy, France, England, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands. The study concludes with a summary chapter, followed by a series of supplemental bibliographical essays that serve as an appendix to the first four volumes. Like the previous volumes in the series, this work is a substantial contribution to the study of jurisprudence and political theory, and will be an important reference source for students and professors of history, law, and political science, as well as philosophy.

In keeping with the preceding book on the American Founders, this volume deals mostly with U.S. Presidents and their ideas in the 19th and 20th centuries, from Lincoln (along with his contemporaries Davis and Stevens), Theodore Roosevelt, and Wilson, to Franklin Roosevent, Lyndon Johnson, and Reagan. Part One centers on "Civil War and Reconstruction;" Part Two on "Progressivism and New Deal;'" and Part Three on "Toward Contemporary America." In all three, the overriding concern will be with "Legislative Perspectives of Sovereignty and State." In the mid-19th century, the main central imprints of Abraham Lincoln upon the Union, of Jefferson Davis upon the Confederacy, and of Thaddeus Stevens upon Reconstruction were manifested in ways crucial to this study. Throughout the 20th century, there was a long succession of Presidents whose chief slogans signaled the country's main agenda during their Administrations. Most prominent were Theodore Roosevelt's "Square Deal," and "New Nationalism," Woodrow Wilson's "New Freedom," Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal," John Kennedy's "New Frontier," Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society," and Ronald Reagan's "Revolution" in government. In these cases, Presidential viewpoints on legislative sovereignty and the legislative state had great impact upon the nation as well as on Congress, notwithstanding the separation of powers. Certain contemporary points of view also loom large. Some emerging hopeful trends toward an American neo-Progressivism are considered, taking their lead from historical frameworks explored in the main body of the book.

Focusing on the 17th and 18th centuries, this volume centers around six ideological "isms" that the author seeks to exploit as well as deconstruct. The six "isms" are absolutism, constitutionalism, rationalism, empiricism, liberalism, and conservatism--all of which have long presented problematical "constructs" that the author seeks to "de-construct." The unusually broad range of famous thinkers studied here includes Hobbes, Locke, Richelieu, Bossuet, Rousseau, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Hume, Smith, Burke, and various French revolutionaries. Although the focus here is historical, the contemporary import of the subject is often brought out.

The first book of the fifth volume treats "the Background of Machiavellism" in sixteenth-century Europe. The focal point is Niccolo Machiavelli's reputed modernistic "Machiavellism" and "statism," in relation to that of Jean Bodin, King Henry VIII, and Giovann Botero. Machiavelli, even more than Bodin, has usually been considered crucial background to the development of modern state theory in seminal later theorists such as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Bentham, Hegel, and Savigny who promoted the institutions of modern nation-states. His "revolutionary" ideas have long been deemed paradigmatic for later thought and activity concerning the state. This book will be of interest to historians, to students of the history of ideas, and to legal and constitutional historians.

This book brings to a culmination in later modern times the long and complicated history of ideas on sovereignty and the state that has occupied previous volumes in this series. The 19th and 20th centuries have witnessed the fruition of the legislative state "par excellence" as well as its companion concept, legislative sovereignty. This book tackles the ideas of numerous writers such as Bentham, Austin, Hegel, Marx, Savigny, Kelsen, Lenin, Bosanquet, Rawls, Hart, to mention a few, along with the views of many leaders like Gladstone, Lloyd George, Napoleon III, Bismarck, Cavour, Hitler, and Mussolini.

The common denominator of legislation is seen to underlie their concepts of sovereignty and the state across a diverse range of isms such as utilitarianism, positivism, idealism, socialism, and nationalism, in the 19th century and in related neo and anti-neo forms in the 20th century. This book's organization and classification of these and other issues is on the whole novel and comprehensive. As various reviewers have indicated, nothing of this magnitude on the subjects at hand has ever before been attempted. Finally, the book brings historical issues together to bear on the shape of sovereignty and the state today and into the future.