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  3. Cambridge Studies in Constitutional Law

The aim of this series is to produce leading monographs in constitutional law. All areas of constitutional law and public law fall within the ambit of the series, including human rights and civil liberties law, administrative law, as well as constitutional theory and the history of constitutional law. A wide variety of scholarly approaches is encouraged, with the governing criterion being simply that the work is of interest to an international audience. Thus, works concerned with only one jurisdiction will be included in the series as appropriate, while, at the same time, the series will include works which are explicitly comparative or theoretical, or both. The series editors likewise welcome proposals that work at the intersection of constitutional and international law, or that seek to bridge the gaps between civil law systems, the US, and the common law jurisdictions of the Commonwealth.

  • General Editors: David Dyzenhaus, University of Toronto, Thomas Poole, London School of Economics and Political Science

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41 results in Cambridge Studies in Constitutional Law

Page 1 of 3

Constitutionalizing the Private Sphere
  • A Comparative Inquiry
  • Christina R. Bambrick
  • Published online:
    23 January 2025
    Print publication:
    06 February 2025
  • Do private actors have constitutional duties? While traditionally only government actors are responsible for upholding constitutional rights, courts and constitution-makers increasingly do assign constitutional duties to private actors as well. Therefore, a landlord may have constitutional duties to their tenants, and a sports club may even have duties to its fans. This book argues that this phenomenon of applying rights 'horizontally' can be understood through the lens of republican political theory. Themes echoing such concepts as the common good and civic duty from republican thought recur in discourses surrounding horizontal application. Bambrick traces republican themes in debates from the United States, India, Germany, South Africa, and the European Union. While these contexts have vastly different histories and aspirations, constitutional actors in each place have considered the horizontal application of rights and, in doing so, have made republican arguments.

Beyond Expropriation Without Compensation
  • Law, Land Reform and Redistributive Justice in South Africa
  • Edited by Olaf Zenker, Cherryl Walker, Zsa-Zsa Boggenpoel
  • Published online:
    28 March 2024
    Print publication:
    04 April 2024
  • Speeding up land reform through a constitutional amendment that would explicitly permit the expropriation of land without compensation has dominated legal and political-policy debates in South Africa in recent years. Taking this politically and emotionally charged issue as its starting point, this volume offers both expert commentary on this issue from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and also fresh ideas on how to advance the redistributive transformation that South Africa so urgently needs. It brings critically important debates around transformative property law, the need for diversified land justice and the possibilities of alternative forms of redistribution into productive conversation with each other. While grounded in the complex realities of South Africa's past and present, the volume speaks to concerns that resonate in many contexts in the Global South and beyond. It will appeal to scholars, students, policymakers and general readers concerned with both the theory and practice of redistributive justice. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Trust, Courts and Social Rights
  • A Trust-Based Framework for Social Rights Enforcement
  • David Vitale
  • Published online:
    08 February 2024
    Print publication:
    15 February 2024
  • Trust, Courts and Social Rights proposes an innovative legal framework for judicially enforcing social rights that is rooted in public trust in government or 'political trust'. Interdisciplinary in nature, the book draws on theoretical and empirical scholarship on the concept of trust across disciplines, including philosophy, sociology, psychology and political theory. It integrates that scholarship with the relevant public law literature on social rights, fiduciary political theory and judicial review. In doing so, the book uses trust as an analytical lens for social rights law – importing ideas from the scholarship on trust into the social rights literature – and develops a normative argument that contributes to the controversial debate on how courts should enforce social rights. Also global in focus, the book uses cases from courts in Africa, Europe, Latin America and North America to illustrate how the trust-based framework operates in practice.

The Collaborative Constitution
  • Aileen Kavanagh
  • Published online:
    12 October 2023
    Print publication:
    26 October 2023
  • In this book, Aileen Kavanagh offers a fresh account of how we should protect rights in a democracy. Departing from leading theoretical accounts which present the courts and legislature as rivals for constitutional supremacy, Kavanagh argues that protecting rights is a collaborative enterprise between all three branches of government - the Executive, the legislature, and the courts. On a collaborative vision of constitutionalism, protecting rights is neither the solitary task of a Herculean super-judge, nor the dignified pronouncements of an enlightened legislature. Instead, it is a complex, dynamic, and collaborative endeavour, where each branch has a distinct but complementary role to play, whilst engaging with each other in a spirit of comity and mutual respect. Connecting constitutional theory with the practice of protecting rights in a democracy, this book offers an innovative understanding of the separation of powers, grounded in the values and virtues of constitutional collaboration.

Global Gender Constitutionalism and Women's Citizenship
  • A Struggle for Transformative Inclusion
  • Ruth Rubio-Marin
  • Published online:
    29 September 2022
    Print publication:
    06 October 2022
  • Constitutions around the world have overwhelmingly been the creation of men, but this book asks how far constitutions have affirmed the equal citizenship status of women or failed to do so. Using a wealth of examples from around the world, Ruth Rubio-Marín considers constitutionalism from its inception to the present day and places current debates in their vital historical context. Rubio-Marín adopts an inclusive concept of gender and sexuality, and discusses the constitutional gender order as it has been shaped by debates such those around same-sex marriage and the rights of trans persons. Covering a wide range of themes, from reproductive rights to political gender quotas and violence against women, this book offers a comprehensive feminist account of constitutional law. Truly international in scope and ambitious in subject matter, this is an invaluable resource for students and scholars working on gender within multiple disciplines.

Non-Statutory Executive Powers and Judicial Review
  • Jason Grant Allen
  • Published online:
    18 August 2022
    Print publication:
    25 August 2022
  • That non-statutory executive powers are subject to judicial review is beyond doubt. But current judicial practice challenges prevailing theories of judicial review and raises a host of questions about the nature of official power and action. This is particularly the case for official powers not associated with the Royal Prerogative, which have been argued to comprise a “third source” of governmental authority. Looking at non-statutory powers directly, rather than incidentally, stirs up the intense but ultimately inconclusive debate about the conceptual basis of judicial review in English law. This provocative book argues that modern judges and scholars have neglected the very concepts necessary to understand the supervisory jurisdiction and that the law has become more complex than it needs to be. If we start from the concept of office and official action, rather than grand ideas about parliamentary sovereignty and the courts, the central questions answer themselves.

The Law As a Conversation among Equals
  • Roberto Gargarella
  • Published online:
    25 April 2022
    Print publication:
    21 April 2022
  • In a time of disenchantment with democracy, massive social protests and the 'erosion' of the system of checks and balances, this book proposes to reflect upon the main problems of our constitutional democracies from a particular regulative ideal: that of the conversation among equals. It examines the structural character of the current democratic crisis, and the way in which, from its origins, constitutions were built around a 'discomfort with democracy'. In this sense, the book critically explores the creation of different restraints upon majority rule and collective debate: constitutional rights that are presented as limits to (and not, fundamentally, as a product of) democratic debate; an elitist system of judicial review; a checks and balances scheme that discourages, rather than promotes, dialogue between the different branches of power; etc. Finally, the book proposes a dignified constitutional democracy aimed at enabling fraternal conversation within the framework of a community of equals.

Micronations and the Search for Sovereignty
  • Harry Hobbs, George Williams
  • Published online:
    23 December 2021
    Print publication:
    06 January 2022
  • Political disagreement is a fact of life. It can prompt people to stand for public office and agitate for political change. Others take a different route; they start their own nation. Micronations and the Search for Sovereignty is the first comprehensive examination of the phenomenon of people purporting to secede and create their own country. It analyses why micronations are not states for the purposes of international law, considers the factors that motivate individuals to separate and found their own nation, examines the legal justifications that they offer and explores the responses of recognised sovereign states. In doing so, this book develops a rich body of material through which to reflect on conventional understandings of statehood, sovereignty and legitimate authority. Authored in a lively and accessible style, Micronations and the Search for Sovereignty will be valuable reading for scholars and general audiences.

Courting Constitutionalism
  • The Politics of Public Law and Judicial Review in Pakistan
  • Moeen Cheema, David Dyzenhaus, Thomas Poole
  • Published online:
    16 December 2021
    Print publication:
    16 December 2021
  • Over the last decade, the Supreme Court of Pakistan has emerged as a powerful and overtly political institution. While the strong form of judicial review adopted by the Supreme Court has fostered the perception of a sudden and ahistorical judicialisation of politics, the judiciary's prominent role in adjudicating issues of governance and statecraft was long in the making. This book presents a deeply contextualised account of law in Pakistan and situates the judicial review jurisprudence of the superior courts in the context of historical developments in constitutional politics, evolution of state structures and broader social transformations. This book highlights that the bedrock of judicial review has remained in administrative law; it is through the consistent development of the 'Writ jurisdiction' and the judicial review of administrative action that Pakistan's superior courts have progressively carved an expansive institutional role and aggrandised themselves to the status of the regulator of the state.

Fundamental Rights and the Legal Obligations of Business
  • David Bilchitz
  • Published online:
    29 October 2021
    Print publication:
    11 November 2021
  • Corporations can significantly affect the fundamental rights of individuals. This book investigates how to determine the substantive content of their obligations that emanate from these rights. In doing so, it addresses important conceptual issues surrounding fundamental rights. From an investigation of existing legal models, a clear structural similarity surfaces in how courts make decisions about corporate obligations. The book seeks to systematise, justify and develop this emergent 'multi-factoral approach' through examining key factors for determining the substantive content of corporate obligations. The book defends the use of the proportionality test for ascertaining corporations' negative obligations and outlines a novel seven-step test for determining their positive obligations. The book finally proposes legal and institutional reforms - on both the national and international levels - designed to enhance the quality of decision-making surrounding corporate obligations, and embed fundamental rights within the corporate structure and the minds of key decision-makers.

Ruling by Cheating
  • Governance in Illiberal Democracy
  • András Sajó
  • Published online:
    07 August 2021
    Print publication:
    12 August 2021
  • There is widespread agreement that democracy today faces unprecedented challenges. Populism has pushed governments in new and surprising constitutional directions. Analysing the constitutional system of illiberal democracies (from Venezuela to Poland) and illiberal phenomena in 'mature democracies' that are justified in the name of 'the will of the people', this book explains that this drift to mild despotism is not authoritarianism, but an abuse of constitutionalism. Illiberal governments claim that they are as democratic and constitutional as any other. They also claim that they are more popular and therefore more genuine because their rule is based on conservative, plebeian and 'patriotic' constitutional and rule of law values rather than the values liberals espouse. However, this book shows that these claims are deeply deceptive - an abuse of constitutionalism and the rule of law, not a different conception of these ideas.

Local Meanings of Proportionality
  • Afroditi Marketou
  • Published online:
    08 July 2021
    Print publication:
    22 July 2021
  • This book offers one of the rare empirical studies on the different meanings of proportionality as part of a global constitutional discourse. It develops and applies a theoretically informed comparative methodology for the study of differences in the use of legal transfers. Beyond the transplant versus culture controversy, it enriches our understanding of the relationship between law and its social context. Beyond the common law and civil law cleavage, it provides an in-depth comparison of French, English and Greek judicial review, rendering some core features of these systems accessible to non-initiated readers. The last part of the book provides insights as to the different visions of Europe underlying different phases of European integration and thus enriches our understanding of the process of integration through law.

Property Rights and Social Justice
  • Progressive Property in Action
  • Rachael Walsh
  • Published online:
    28 May 2021
    Print publication:
    10 June 2021
  • Property Rights and Social Justice analyses 'progressive property' in action by examining the role of constitutional property rights guarantees in mediating private ownership and social justice. It combines insights from property theory with enlightening doctrinal analysis of the interaction between property rights and social justice in the constitutional and broader legal context. It does so through the prism of the Irish Constitution's property guarantees, which uniquely in the English-speaking, common law world both protect property rights and requires their regulation by the State to secure social justice. Through this analysis, the book grounds key debates in contemporary property theory in fresh, illuminating doctrinal examples, and enhances global debates about the constitutional protection of property rights. It argues that primacy is perhaps inevitably afforded to political determinations about the appropriate mediation of property rights and social justice, meaning that the political impact of constitutionalisation needs to be disentangled from its strict legal effects.

Carl Schmitt's Early Legal-Theoretical Writings
  • Statute and Judgment and the Value of the State and the Significance of the Individual
  • Edited and translated by Lars Vinx, Samuel Garrett Zeitlin
  • Published online:
    17 April 2021
    Print publication:
    06 May 2021
  • Many of Carl Schmitt's major works have by now been translated, with two notable exceptions: Schmitt's two early monographs Statute and Judgment (first published in 1912) and The Value of the State and the Significance of the Individual (first published in 1914). In these two works Schmitt presents a theory of adjudication as well as an account of the state's role in the realization of the rule of law, which together form the theoretical basis on which Schmitt later developed his political and constitutional theory. This new book makes these two key texts available in English translation for the first time, together with an introduction that relates the texts to their historical context, to Schmitt's other works, and to contemporary discussions in legal and constitutional theory.

Remedies for Human Rights Violations
  • A Two-Track Approach to Supra-national and National Law
  • Kent Roach
  • Published online:
    29 March 2021
    Print publication:
    08 April 2021
  • An innovative book that provides fresh insights into the neglected field of remedies in both international and domestic human rights law. Providing an overarching two-track theory, it combines remedies to compensate and prevent irreparable harm to litigants with a more dialogic approach to systemic remedies. It breaks new ground by demonstrating how proportionality principles can improve remedial decision-making and avoid reliance on either strong discretion or inflexible rules. It draws on the latest jurisprudence from the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights and domestic courts in Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Hong Kong, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. Separate chapters are devoted to interim remedies, remedies for laws that violate human rights, damages, remedies in the criminal process, declarations and injunctions in institutional cases, remedies for violations of social and economic rights and remedies for violations of Indigenous rights.

A.V. Dicey and the Common Law Constitutional Tradition
  • A Legal Turn of Mind
  • Mark D. Walters
  • Published online:
    14 January 2021
    Print publication:
    12 November 2020
  • In the common law world, Albert Venn Dicey (1835–1922) is known as the high priest of orthodox constitutional theory, as an ideological and nationalistic positivist. In his analytical coldness, his celebration of sovereign power, and his incessant drive to organize and codify legal rules separate from moral values or political realities, Dicey is an uncanny figure. This book challenges this received view of Dicey. Through a re-examination of his life and his 1885 book Law of the Constitution, the high priest Dicey is defrocked and a more human Dicey steps forward to offer alternative ways of reading his canonical text, who struggled to appreciate law as a form of reasoned discourse that integrates values of legality and authority through methods of ordinary legal interpretation. The result is a unique common law constitutional discourse through which assertions of sovereign power are conditioned by moral aspirations associated with the rule of law.

Administrative Competence
  • Reimagining Administrative Law
  • Elizabeth Fisher, Sidney A. Shapiro
  • Published online:
    02 October 2020
    Print publication:
    15 October 2020
  • This book, by two of the world's leading administrative law scholars, reimagines administrative law as the law of public administration by making its competence the focus of administrative law. Grounded in extensive interdisciplinary, historical, and doctrinal analysis, Fisher and Shapiro show why understanding both the capacity and authority of expert public administration is crucial to ensure the legitimacy and accountability of the administrative state. To address the current precarious state of administrative law, they support a new study of the administrative process by an Attorney Generals Committee on Administrative Procedure leading to a revised Administrative Procedure Act (APA). This book is a must-read for anyone interested in administrative law and its reform.

Europe's Second Constitution
  • Crisis, Courts and Community
  • Markus W. Gehring
  • Published online:
    21 September 2020
    Print publication:
    24 September 2020
  • The process of European constitutionalisation is met with extensive scepticism in current national legal and political spheres and in broader circles of public opinion across Europe. By shedding light on these concerns, this book reveals a widespread misunderstanding of constitutional federalism, which permeates the Member State courts, popular media, and many academic communities. A failure to address confusion over this fundamental concept is leading us towards impoverished development of the EU's 'Second Constitution', and even ensuring that the role of both domestic and international European courts in enriching the constitutionalisation process is overlooked and undervalued. In a bid to avoid such consequences, this book explores how federalism and further constitutionalisation - rightly understood in a dialogue of the European courts - may actually change this process and allow a clearer advance toward Europe's Second Constitution for, but also with, the people of Europe.

Legal Sabotage
  • Ernst Fraenkel in Hitler's Germany
  • Douglas G. Morris
  • Published online:
    17 August 2020
    Print publication:
    27 August 2020
  • The Jewish leftist lawyer Ernst Fraenkel was one of twentieth-century Germany's great intellectuals. During the Weimar Republic he was a shrewd constitutional theorist for the Social Democrats and in post-World War II Germany a respected political scientist who worked to secure West Germany's new democracy. This book homes in on the most dramatic years of Fraenkel's life, when he worked within Nazi Germany actively resisting the regime, both publicly and secretly. As a lawyer, he represented political defendants in court. As a dissident, he worked in the underground. As an intellectual, he wrote his most famous work, The Dual State – a classic account of Nazi law and politics. This first detailed account of Fraenkel's career in Nazi Germany opens up a new view on anti-Nazi resistance – its nature, possibilities, and limits. With grit, daring and imagination, Fraenkel fought for freedom against an increasingly repressive regime.

Proportionality in Action
  • Comparative and Empirical Perspectives on the Judicial Practice
  • Edited by Mordechai Kremnitzer, Talya Steiner, Andrej Lang
  • Published online:
    14 April 2020
    Print publication:
    30 April 2020
  • Proportionality in Action presents an empirical and comparative exploration of the proportionality doctrine, based on detailed accounts of the application of the framework by apex courts in six jurisdictions: Germany, Canada, South Africa, Israel, Poland and India. The analysis of each country is written and contextualized by a constitutional scholar from the relevant jurisdiction. Each country analysis draws upon a large sample of case law and employs a mixed methodological approach: an expansive coding scheme allows for quantitative analysis providing comparable and quantifiable measurements, which is enriched by qualitative analysis that engages with the substance of the decisions and captures nuance, contextualizing the data and providing it with meaning. The book concludes with a comparative chapter that synthesizes some of the most interesting findings. Focusing on deviations of the practice of proportionality from theory, the authors conclude their argument in support of an integrated approach to the application of proportionality.

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