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Full-Text Articles in Comparative Politics
Constitution-Making: A Process Filled With Constraint, Donald L. Horowitz
Constitution-Making: A Process Filled With Constraint, Donald L. Horowitz
Faculty Scholarship
Constitutions are generally made by people with no previous experience in constitution making. The assistance they receive from outsiders is often less useful than it may appear. The most pertinent foreign experience may reside in distant countries, whose lessons are unknown or inaccessible. Moreover, although constitutions are intended to endure, they are often products of the particular crisis that forced their creation. Drafters are usually heavily affected by a desire to avoid repeating unpleasant historical experiences or to emulate what seem to be successful constitutional models. Theirs is a heavily constrained environment, made even more so by distrust and dissensus …
Sovereignty And The American Courts At The Cocktail Party Of International Law: The Dangers Of Domestic Invocations Of Foreign And International Law, Donald J. Kochan
Sovereignty And The American Courts At The Cocktail Party Of International Law: The Dangers Of Domestic Invocations Of Foreign And International Law, Donald J. Kochan
Donald J. Kochan
With increasing frequency and heightened debate, United States courts have been citing foreign and “international” law as authority for domestic decisions. This trend is inappropriate, undemocratic, and dangerous. The trend touches on fundamental concepts of sovereignty, democracy, the judicial role, and overall issues of effective governance. There are multiple problems with the judiciary’s reliance on extraterritorial and extra-constitutional foreign or international sources to guide their decisions. Perhaps the most fundamental flaw is its interference with rule of law values. To borrow from Judge Harold Levanthal, the use of international sources in judicial decision-making might be described as “the equivalent of …
Constitutional Design: Proposals Versus Processes, Donald L. Horowitz
Constitutional Design: Proposals Versus Processes, Donald L. Horowitz
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Altered States: A Comparison Of Separation Of Powers In The United States And In The United Kingdom, James G. Wilson
Altered States: A Comparison Of Separation Of Powers In The United States And In The United Kingdom, James G. Wilson
Law Faculty Articles and Essays
This Article initially will compare the United States Constitution and the British constitution both to evaluate Young, Morrison, and Misretta, and to develop a sounder approach to all structural issues. Comparative constitutional law provides some of the "experience" needed to decide abstract structural cases. Predicting the reverberations of a proposed change within a system will be easier if one has studied how similar alterations have affected similar organizations. The British constitution is particularly germane because it was a model for the American Constitution. The two countries have a shared legal tradition and frequently generate similar positive law. The British constitution …