What does Israel's definition as a 'Jewish and democratic' state mean? How does it affect constitutional law and the people living in Israel? This book provides a unique and detailed examination of the consequences of the 'Jewish and democratic' definition. It seeks to explore how the definition affects the internal ordering of the state, the operation of the law, and the ways it is used to justify, protect, and regenerate certain features of Israeli constitutional law. This book offers a novel perspective on the Jewish and democratic definition rooted in constitutional theory and informed by...

Implied constitutional principles form part of the landscape of the development of fundamental rights in common law jurisdictions, affecting issues ranging from the remuneration of judges to the appropriation of property by the state. Principled Reasoning in Human Rights Adjudication offers a thematic analysis of the use of the implied constitutional principles of the rule of law and separation of powers in human rights cases. The book examines the functions played by those principles in rights adjudication in Australia, Canada, the Commonwealth Caribbean, and the United Kingdom. It argues...

It is commonly asserted that bills of rights have had a 'righting' effect on the principles of judicial review of administrative action and been a key driver of the modern expansion in judicial oversight of the executive arm of government. A number of commentators have pointed to Australian administrative law as evidence for this 'righting' hypothesis. They have suggested that the fact that Australia is an outlier amongst common law jurisdictions, in having neither a statutory nor a constitutional framework to expressly protect human rights, explaining why Australia alone continues to take an...

Comparative constitutional amendment is the study of how constitutions change through formal and informal means, including alteration, revision, evolution, interpretation, replacement, and revolution. The field invites scholars to draw insights about constitutional change across borders and cultures, to uncover the motivations behind constitutional change, to theorize best practices, and to identify the theoretical underpinnings of constitutional change. This volume is designed to guide the emergence of comparative constitutional amendment as a distinct field of study in public law. Much of...

The idea of the book is to present the Nordic constitutional systems in a comparative context which reveals similarities and differences. The Nordic countries include Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Albeit the seemingly widespread interest in the Nordic Constitutional systems from the outside world, very little literature on the constitutional systems of these states exist in English. At the same time, the Nordic constitutional systems are generally viewed as similar from the outside because of the closeness of their culture and languages, interwoven history etc. to an extent...

In the last fifteen years, constitutional issues regarding the rights of gays, lesbians, and same-sex couples have emerged on a global scale. The pace of recognition of their fundamental rights, both at judicial and legislative level, has dramatically increased across different jurisdictions, reflecting a growing consensus toward sexual orientation equality. This book considers a wide-range of decisions by constitutional and international courts, from the decriminalization of sexual acts to the recognition of same-sex marriage and parental rights for homosexual couples. It discusses analogies...

The surge of interest in the foundations of public law has yet to extend to federalism. Despite the fact that a significant part of the world's population lives under some sort of federal arrangement, the concepts of federalism and federation remain under-theorized. Federalist theorists have, for the most part, defined their object by opposition to the unitary state. As a result, they have not developed public law theories that capture the specificity of this type of polity. Bringing together contributions from leading public law theorists and intellectual historians, this volume explores the...

In many countries today there is a growing and genuinely-held concern that the institutional arrangements for the protection of human rights suffer from a 'democratic deficit'. Yet at the same time there appears to be a new consensus that human rights require legal protection and that all branches of the state have a shared responsibility for upholding and realising those legally protected rights. This volume of essays tries to understand this paradox by considering how parliaments have sought to discharge their responsibility to protect human rights. Contributors seek to take stock of the...

Now available in paperback The world appears to be globalising economically, technologically, and, to a halting extent, politically. This process of globalisation raises the possibility of an international legal framework, a possibility which has gained pressing relevance in the wake of the recent global economic crisis. But for any international legal framework to exist, normative agreement between countries with very different political, economic, cultural, and legal traditions becomes necessary. This work explores the possibility of such a normative agreement through the prism of national...