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Unlike many other countries, the United States has few constitutional guarantees of social welfare rights such as income, housing, or healthcare. In part this is because many Americans believe that the courts cannot possibly enforce such guarantees. However, recent innovations in constitutional design in other countries suggest that such rights can be judicially enforced--not by increasing the power of the courts but by decreasing it. In Weak Courts, Strong Rights, Mark Tushnet uses a comparative legal perspective to show how creating weaker forms of judicial review may actually allow for stronger social welfare rights under American constitutional law. Under "strong-form" judicial review, a...
Mark Tushnet presents the story of the NAACP's legal campaign against segregated schools as a case study in public interest law, which in fact began in the United States with that very campaign.
Mark Tushnet excels in updating the Advanced Introduction to Comparative Constitutional Law. In this second edition Tushnet includes new material based on developments in practice and scholarship since the original edition’s publication back in 2014. Topics which are given substantial additional attention include abusive constitutionalism, the idea of the constituent power, eternity clauses and unconstitutional amendments, recent developments in weak- and strong-form constitutional review, and expanded consideration of third generation rights. This title will appeal to those who fell in love with the first edition and those who are interested in learning more about Comparative Constitutional Law.
Twenty-first-century constitutions now typically include a new 'fourth branch' of government, a group of institutions charged with protecting constitutional democracy, including electoral management bodies, anticorruption agencies, and ombuds offices. This book offers the first general theory of the fourth branch; in a world where governance is exercised through political parties, we cannot be confident that the traditional three branches are enough to preserve constitutional democracy. The fourth branch institutions can, by concentrating within themselves distinctive forms of expertise, deploy that expertise more effectively than the traditional branches are capable of doing. However, several case studies of anticorruption efforts, electoral management bodies, and audit bureaus show that the fourth branch institutions do not always succeed in protecting constitutional democracy, and indeed sometimes undermine it. The book concludes with some cautionary notes about placing too much hope in these – or, indeed, in any – institutions as the guarantors of constitutional democracy.
At the heart of constitutional interpretation is the struggle between, on the one hand, fidelity to founding meanings, and, on the other hand, creative interpretation to suit the context and needs of an evolving society. This book considers the recent growth of constitutional cases in Singapore in the last ten years. It examines the underpinnings of Singapore’s constitutional system, explores how Singapore courts have dealt with issues related to rights and power, and sets developments in Singapore in the wider context of new thinking and constitutional developments worldwide. It argues that Singapore is witnessing a shift in legal and political culture as both judges and citizens display an increasing willingness to engage with constitutional ideas and norms.
Here a leading scholar in constitutional law, Mark Tushnet, challenges hallowed American traditions of judicial review and judicial supremacy, which allow U.S. judges to invalidate "unconstitutional" governmental actions. Many people, particularly liberals, have "warm and fuzzy" feelings about judicial review. They are nervous about what might happen to unprotected constitutional provisions in the chaotic worlds of practical politics and everyday life. By examining a wide range of situations involving constitutional rights, Tushnet vigorously encourages us all to take responsibility for protecting our liberties. Guarding them is not the preserve of judges, he maintains, but a commitment of t...
In an examination of Southern slave law between 1810 and 1860, Mark Tushnet reveals a structured dichotomy between slave labor systems and bourgeois systems of production. Whereas the former rest on the total dominion of the master over the slave and necessitate a concern for the slave's humanity, the latter rest of the purchase by the capitalist of a worker's labor power only and are concerned primarily with economic interest. Focusing on a wide range of issues that include contract and accident law as well as criminal law and the law of manumission, he shows how Southern slave law had to respond to the competing pressures of humanity and interest. Beginning with a critical evaluation of sl...
The answer to the debate will not be found in any holy writ, but in our values and our vision of the nation."--BOOK JACKET.
This book examines constitutional law and practice in five South Asian countries: India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bangladesh.
In his 1996 State of the Union Address, President Bill Clinton announced that the "age of big government is over." Some Republicans accused him of cynically appropriating their themes, while many Democrats thought he was betraying the principles of the New Deal and the Great Society. Mark Tushnet argues that Clinton was stating an observed fact: the emergence of a new constitutional order in which the aspiration to achieve justice directly through law has been substantially chastened. Tushnet argues that the constitutional arrangements that prevailed in the United States from the 1930s to the 1990s have ended. We are now in a new constitutional order--one characterized by divided government,...