More than two millennia ago, Aristotle is said to have compiled a collection of ancient constitutions that informed his studies of politics. For Aristotle, constitutions largely distilled and described the varied and distinctive patterns of political life established over time. What constitutionalism has come to mean in the modern era, on the other hand, originates chiefly in the late eighteenth century and primarily with the U.S. Constitution—written in 1787 and made effective in 1789—and the various French constitutions that first appeared in 1791. In the last half century, more than 130 nations have adopted new constitutions, half of those within the last twenty years. These new constitutions are devoted to many of the same goals found in the U.S. Constitution: the rule of law, representative self-government, and protection of rights. But by canvassing constitutional developments at the national and state level in the United States alongside modern constitutions in Eastern and Western Europe, Africa, and Asia, the contributors to Modern Constitutions—all leading scholars of constitutionalism—show that modern constitutions often seek to protect social rights and to establish representative institutions, forms of federalism, and courts charged with constitutional review that depart from or go far beyond the seminal U.S. example. Partly because of their innovations, however, many modern constitutional systems now confront mounting authoritarian pressures that put fundamental commitments to the rule of law in jeopardy. The contributions in this volume collectively provide a measure of guidance for the challenges and prospects of modern constitutions in the rapidly changing political world of the twenty-first century. Contributors: Richard R. Beeman, Valerie Bunce, Tom Ginsburg, Heinz Klug, David S. Law, Sanford Levinson, Jaime Lluch, Christopher McCrudden, Kim Lane Scheppele, Rogers M. Smith, Mila Versteeg, Emily Zackin.

Locates the origins of the modern sense of a Founder's Constitution in Antebellum debates over slavery in the nation's capital.

Hilaire Barnett’s Constitutional and Administrative Law has consistently provided students with reliable, accessible and comprehensive coverage of the Public Law syllabus. Mapped to the common course outline, the Fifteenth edition equips students with a thorough understanding of the UK constitution’s past, present and future by analysing and illustrating the political and socio-historical contexts that have shaped the major rules and principles of constitutional and administrative law, as well as ongoing constitutional reform. This edition has been fully updated throughout, including a restructure to Chapters 22 and 26, as well as additional pause and reflect sections in order to aid student understanding of this complex area of the law. The online digital content also includes updates to the Multiple Choice Questions, Instructor Test Bank and Web Links. Ideal for students studying constitutional and administrative law for the first time, this is an indispensable guide to the challenging concepts and legal rules in public law.

In its modern history, Africa has experienced different waves of constitutional ordering. The latest democratisation wave, which began in the 1990s, has set the stage over the past decade for what is now a hotly debated issue: do recent, new, or fundamentally revised constitutions truly reflect an African constitutional identity? Thoughtfully navigating a contested field, this volume brings to the fore a number of foundational questions about African constitutionalism. Constitutional Identity and Constitutionalism in Africa asks whether the concept of constitutional identity clarifies our understanding of constitutional change in Africa, including an exploration of the relationship between constitutional identity and a country's unique culture(s) and histories. Building on this, contributions examine the persistent role of colonial heritages in shaping constitutional identity in post-Independence African nations, and the question of path-dependency. Given the enduring influence of the colonial experience, the volume asks how, why, and to what end African constitutions must be 'decolonised' to form an authentic constitutional identity. This theoretical insight is supplemented and further deepened by detailed case studies of South Africa, Ethiopia, Cape Verde, Cameroon, and Egypt and their diverse experience of constitutional continuity and change. This volume in the Stellenbosch Handbooks in African Constitutional Law series, brings together contributions from established scholars and emerging voices on the study of constitutional processes. They provide an urgent critical analysis of existing paradigms, concepts and normative ideologies of modern African constitutionalism in the context of constitutional identity.

It is well known that the US Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times since its creation in 1787, but that number does not reflect the true extent of constitutional change in America. Although the Constitution is globally recognized as a written text, it consists also of unwritten rules and principles that are just as important, such as precedents, customs, traditions, norms, presuppositions, and more. These, too, have been amended, but how does that process work? In this book, leading scholars of law, history, philosophy, and political science consider the many theoretical, conceptual, and practical dimensions of what it means to amend America's 'unwritten Constitution': how to change the rules, who may legitimately do it, why leaders may find it politically expedient to enact written instead of unwritten amendments, and whether anything is lost by changing the constitution without a codified constitutional amendment.

This book examines the largely neglected but crucial role of transnational actors in democratic constitution-making. The writing or rewriting of constitutions is usually a key moment in democratic transitions. But how exactly does this take place? Most contemporary comparative constitutional literature draws on the concept of constituent power – the power of the people – to address this moment. But what this overlooks, this book argues, is the important role of external, transnational actors who tend to play a crucial role in the process. Drawing on sociolegal methodologies but informed by new legal realism, this book develops a new theoretical framework for examining the involvement of such actors in constitution-making. Empirically grounded, the book uncovers a more comprehensive picture of how constitution-making unfolds on the ground. Illuminating the power dynamics at play during the legal process, it reveals not only the wide range of external actors involved but also the continuity between decolonisation and post-Cold War constitution-making. This book, the first to provide an in-depth examination of external actor involvement in constitution-making, will appeal to scholars of constitutional law, sociolegal studies, law and development, and transitional justice.

Since the beginning of the Meiji period when Japan evolved into a modern and powerful nation-state, ideas of empire and constitution imbued Japanese rule and progress. In Empire and Constitution in Modern Japan, Junji Banno expertly analyses how these conflicting concepts operated together in Japan from 1868 until 1937. By 'empire', Banno means the Japanese impetus to create its own empire; by 'constitution', he identifies Japanese efforts to create a constitutional government. In this book, Banno discusses the complicated relationship between these two concepts, ranging from incompatibility in some periods to symbiosis in others. Furthermore, understanding the complex and competing nature of these ideals, he persuasively reasons, is key to our understanding of why Japan and China went to war in 1937, leading to Pearl Harbor just four years later. Translated by eminent scholar Arthur Stockwin, Banno's highly accessible account of the dynamics of pre-war Japanese political history provides an engaging survey of imperialism and constitutionalism in modern Japan. It will be of vital importance to all scholars of modern Japanese history.