Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Peter Cane is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Law at the Australian National University College of Law, and before that a Professor of Law at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.This book challenges the near-universal acceptance of a US-style, Western constitutional paradigm as the best basis for comparative constitutional studies.
It does so on three main grounds: anachronism, ‘othering’ and cultural specificity. Main pillars of ‘convergent constitutional theory’ are rooted in the revolutionary, late-eighteenth century – a lost world; constitutional arrangements that deviate from the paradigm are often branded as ‘outliers’ or even as not constitutional at all; and the foundations of the paradigm in liberal democracy give no space for other forms of constitutionalism. Whatever the attractions of convergent theory as a normative ideal of good government, for the purposes of understanding, analysing and explaining constitutional systems it is far from ideal.
This book discusses and questions: convergent theory’s weddedness to writing as the technology of constitution-making; its image of a constitution as fundamental law; its idea that a constitution expresses the ‘sovereignty of the people’; its use of tripartite separation of powers as the basic principle of institutional design; its relative neglect of administrative law; its association of ‘rights’ with judicially enforceable bills of rights; and its obsession with a vaguely specified concept of ‘democracy’.
It makes suggestions for alternative, preferable methods of understanding, analysing and explaining constitutions, and governmental and constitutional systems.
Foreword, Charles Barzun (University of Virginia School of Law, USA), Maartje de Visser (Singapore Management University), and Matthias Klatt (University of Graz, Austria)
1. Introduction
2. Constitutional Writing
3. Constitutional Fundamentalism
4. Popular Sovereignty
5. Institutional Structure: Separation of Powers
6. Constitutional Law and Administrative Law
7. Rights
8. Democracy
9. Conclusion
Thought-provoking works of scholarship addressing diverse aspects of constitutional theory in a concise and crystalline manner.
Authors writing for this series cover a wide range of perspectives, methods, and regions, to enhance our understanding of constitutions as central institutions of modern public life. Taken together, the books in this series aim to challenge established wisdom and advance original ideas.
This series is a natural home for books interrogating the concepts and structures of constitutions on the national, the supranational and the international level. Its guiding philosophy is that the task of constitutional theory is not only to delineate the basic structures of government and to protect human rights, but also more broadly to offer methods for grappling with the social, political, and economic problems societies face today.
The series is open to theoretical, normative, analytical, empirical and comparative approaches, stemming from legal studies as well as from political philosophy and political science. In its ambition to become a global forum for debate about constitutional theory, the series editors welcome submissions for monographs as well as edited volumes from all parts of the world.
If you are interested in submitting a proposal to this series please contact Kate Whetter (katew@hartpub.co.uk) for more details.
Series Advisory Board:
Virgílio Afonso da Silva, University of São Paulo, Brazil
Trevor Allan, University of Cambridge, UK
Cora Chan, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Rosalind Dixon, University of New South Wales, Australia
Rainer Forst, Goethe Universistät, Germany
Gabor Halmai, European University Institute, Italy
Tarunabh Khaitan, University of Oxford, UK
Vanessa MacDonnell, University of Ottawa, Canada
Yaniv Roznai, Harry Radzyner Law School, Israel
Fred Schauer, University of Virginia, USA
Mila Versteeg, University of Virgina, USA