Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Law
Active Judicial Governance, James A. Gardner
Active Judicial Governance, James A. Gardner
Journal Articles
Evidence marshaled in a new article by Jonathan Marshfield suggests strongly that unlike judges of U.S. federal courts, judges of American state supreme courts both recognize and embrace their role as active participants in the process of indirect popular self-rule. Consequently, they much more willingly serve as active and self-conscious vectors of governance. This is not to say that state judges lack appropriate judicial humility; it is to say merely that they possess a different and more nuanced understanding of the role of courts in American government than some of their federal counterparts.
Practice-Driven Changes To Constitutional Structures Of Governance, James A. Gardner
Practice-Driven Changes To Constitutional Structures Of Governance, James A. Gardner
Journal Articles
Among the methods of informal constitutional change, perhaps the least studied or understood is change resulting from alterations in the way governance is practiced. Such changes, typically initiated by political actors in the executive and legislative branches, is probably the most common kind of constitutional change, and is almost certainly the most common source of informal change to structural provisions. In the United States, the best known instances of practice-driven changes to constitutional structure come from the federal level – the rise of a formal party system, for example, or the dramatic twentieth-century expansion of presidential power. Yet by far …
Patriation And Patrimony: The Path To The Charter, John Finnis
Patriation And Patrimony: The Path To The Charter, John Finnis
Journal Articles
This annotated Coxford Lecture is the first account dedicated to tracing the part played in the 1980-82 patriation of the Canadian Constitution by the British House of Commons, particularly by its Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. This committee, for which author was the adviser, investigated the propriety of the UK Parliament’s acceding to a request for amendment of the British North America Act 1867 (as amended) if the amendment were opposed by a substantial number of Provinces and it would affect their powers. Against the firm opposition of the Canadian government (secretly being assisted by the British government), the Committee …
Book Review, G. Marcus Cole
Book Review, G. Marcus Cole
Journal Articles
G. Marcus Cole provides a thorough review of Towards a Post-Apartheid Future: Political & Economic Relations in Southern Africa by Gavin Maasdorp & Alan Whiteside (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992).
American Civil Liberties And Constitutional Change, Donald P. Kommers
American Civil Liberties And Constitutional Change, Donald P. Kommers
Journal Articles
This essay is an attempt to analyze, for the non-American reader especially, some of the factors that affect the condition of civil liberties in the United States. It deals mainly with the U.S. Supreme Court and its effort to define the limits of personal freedom within the framework of the American constitutional system. This effort has been a main preoccupation of the Supreme Court during the last two decades or so as the social conflicts besetting America have taken the form, as they usually do, of constitutional conflicts that the Court must eventually decide. Most of these questions have represented …