Fundamental reform of State Constitutions is needed now more than ever. Indeed, the process is under way in all States and Territories. Across Australia there is a growing belief that public institutions must be made more relevant to the needs of an increasingly restless electorate.

Essential Readings in Canadian Constitutional Politics introduces students, scholars, and practitioners to classic authors and writings on the principles of the Canadian Constitution as well as to select contemporary material. To complement rather than duplicate the state of the field, it deals with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and with Canadian mega-constitutional politics in passing only, focusing instead on institutions, federalism, intergovernmental relations, bilingualism and binationalism, the judiciary, minority rights, and constitutional renewal. Many of the selections reverberate well beyond Canada's borders, making this volume an unrivalled resource for anyone interested in constitutional governance and democratic politics in diverse societies.

This book describes the constitutions of six major federations and how they have been interpreted by their highest courts, compares the interpretive methods and underlying principles that have guided the courts, and explores the reasons for major differences between these methods and principles. Among the interpretive methods discussed are textualism, purposivism, structuralism and originalism. Each of the six federations is the subject of a separate chapter written by a leading authority in the field: Jeffrey Goldsworthy (Australia), Peter Hogg (Canada), Donald Kommers (Germany), S.P. Sathe (India), Heinz Klug (South Africa), and Mark Tushnet (United States). Each chapter describes not only the interpretive methodology currently used by the courts, but the evolution of that methodology since the constitution was first enacted. The book also includes a concluding chapter which compares these methodologies, and attempts to explain variations by reference to different social, historical, institutional and political circumstances.

This book presents a defence of the value of equality within law which is neither purely formal nor an entirely speculative theory of justice. It does this by combining a theoretical with a doctrinal project. At the theoretical level, it argues that there is a distinct and meaningful conception of equality before the law which can be separated from concerns of distributive justice. It therefore rejects the claim that legal equality is merely formal. Rather, it is grounded in the equal moral status of all legal subjects. The demand that individuals be treated in accordance with the principle of equality before the law, then, requires that they not be treated in ways that would deny their equal moral standing. This principle of moral equality is the fundamental normative basis of the rule of law. This general claim is applied, in the second half of the book, to antidiscrimination law. It is argued here that the wrong of wrongful discrimination consists in implicit or explicit denial of the equal moral status of legal subjects. This is also a core wrong that the common law seeks to remedy via judicial review and is thus intimately tied to legality itself. In the final chapter, these two strands are brought together to defend the idea that law is a public asset which must be directed towards advancing the best interests of those it governs. This kind of equality principle, one which sets the outermost limits of the use of public power, must look beyond individual rights claims. It manifests a fundamental commitment to substantive equality – manifest in a commitment to collective flourishing – without tying it to group-based distributive concerns which arise from distinct social and historical contexts and require the exercise of political authority to choose among a range of plausible options for their resolution.

In The Sovereignty of Law, Trevor Allan presents an accessible introduction to his influential common law constitutional theory - an account of the unwritten constitution as a complex articulation of legal and moral principles. The British constitution is conceived as a coherent set of fundamental principles of the rule of law, legislative supremacy, and separation of powers. These principles combine to provide an overarching unity of legality, legitimacy, and democracy, reconciling political authority with individual freedom. Drawing on the work of Lon Fuller and Ronald Dworkin, Allan emphasizes the normative character of legal interpretation - understanding the implications of statute and precedent by reference to moral ideals of legality and liberty. Allan denies that constitutional law can be reduced to empirical facts about legislative or judicial conduct or opinion. There is no 'rule of recognition' from the lawyer's interpretative viewpoint - only a moral theory of the nature and limits of political authority, which lawyers must construct in order to make sense of legal and constitutional practice. A genuine republicanism, protecting individual independence, requires the safeguards afforded by judicial review, which must ensure that governmental action is consistent with the rule of law; and the rule of law encompasses not merely the formal equality of all before the law, as enacted or declared, but a more fundamental idea of equal citizenship. Allan's interpretative approach is applied to a wide range of contemporary issues of public law; his response to critics and commentators seeks to deepen the argument by exploring the theoretical grounds of these current debates and controversies.

Insiders and Outsiders celebrates the work of Alan Cairns, one of the most influential Canadian social scientists of the contemporary period. Few scholars have helped shape so many key debates in such a wide range of topics in Canadian politics, from the electoral system and federalism, to constitutional and Charter politics, to questions of Aboriginal citizenship. This volume contains engaging and critical analyses of Cairns' contributions by a diverse group of scholars--political scientists, legal scholars, historians, and policymakers, many of them leaders in their own fields. It includes assessments of his role as a public intellectual, his interpretation of Canada's electoral system, his views on federalism and on Canadian unity, his approach to Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal relations, and his writings on citizenship and diversity. The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of Canadian politics, history, and society, especially those examining issues such as the Charter of Rights, Aboriginal politics, federalism, multiculturalism, political institutions, and political change. It should also be of interest to a larger public that follows the Canadian political scene, and that shares Cairns' concerns with broad questions of citizenship, diversity, and national unity.

He then argues that Trudeau's 1982 Charter quietly undermined the monarchic character of the constitution by introducing republican principles of government. The result has been old institutional structures at odds with the republican ambitions, leaving Canada clinging to the wreckage of the old aristocratic order while attempting to provide a new order founded on republican equality. Vaughan shows how, at the time of Confederation, Edward Freeman, a Cambridge historian who convinced John A. Macdonald to experiment with what no one had ever heard of before, a "monarchic federation," and Jean-Louis DeLolme, a popular French authority on the English constitution, helped forge a new federal constitution with a strong central government and a chief executive armed with the powers necessary to govern. Vaughan examines how these principles were undermined by the judicial activism of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which paved the way for the significant expansion of judicial power under the Charter since 1982.

A study of the impact of federalism on Canadian environmental policy, tracing the evolution of the role of the federal government in environmental policy and in federal-provincial relations concerning the environment from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. Reveals that lack of public attention to the environment and strong opposition from potentially regulated interests has resulted in the federal government leaving environmental protection to the provinces. For those in environmental studies, planning, and political science. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR