From Popular Sovereignty To The Sovereignty Of Law

Analyzing the "democratic" features and institutions of the Athenian democracy in the fifth century B.C., Martin Ostwald traces their development from Solon's judicial reforms to the flowering of popular sovereignty, when the people assumed the right both to enact all legislation and to hold magistrates accountable for implementing what had been enacted.

This collection focuses on the particular nexus of popular sovereignty and constitutional change, and the implications of the recent surge in populism for systems where constitutional change is directly decided upon by the people via referendum. It examines different conceptions of sovereignty as expressed in constitutional theory and case law, including an in-depth exploration of the manner in which the concept of popular sovereignty finds expression both in constitutional provisions on referendums and in court decisions concerning referendum processes. While comparative references are made to a number of jurisdictions, the primary focus of the collection is on the experience in Ireland, which has had a lengthy experience of referendums on constitutional change and of legal, political and cultural practices that have emerged in association with these referendums. At a time when populist pressures on constitutional change are to the fore in many countries, this detailed examination of where the Irish experience sits in a comparative context has an important contribution to make to debates in law and political science.

The first collaborative volume to explore popular sovereignty, a pivotal concept in the history of political thought.

A path-breaking critical analysis of the meaning and interpretation of the German constitution in the Weimar years (1919-1933).

This book is an inquiry into the history of the idea of popular sovereignty as it has been shaped by the struggles between rulers and ruled. It builds on the notion that a thorough analysis of how the idea of popular sovereignty emerges from, and interacts with, a political history of contention within changing polities can help us to draw similarities and differences with our own age. Providing a historical perspective to the present day, Nootens pays strong attention to the role of democratization processes and to the relationship between meanings conveyed by the idea of popular sovereignty, political contention, and changing representations of the governing relationship. The latter has been undergoing significant transformations in the last decades, and these transformations impact significantly upon people’s rights, interests, wealth, and capacity to decide for themselves. In order to understand popular sovereignty in an era of globalization, this book argues that focus should be put on current struggles between rulers and ruled, as well as on current transformations of the relationship between public and private spheres. Understanding the claims involved in current processes of contention over decision-making processes is key to understanding popular sovereignty in an era of globalization. Making an important contribution to debates on sovereignty, Popular Sovereignty in the West will be of interest to students and scholars of modern political theory, sovereignty, and democratization studies.

Popular sovereignty - the doctrine that the public powers of state originate in a concessive grant of power from "the people" - is the cardinal doctrine of modern constitutional theory, placing full constitutional authority in the people at large, rather than in the hands of judges, kings, or a political elite. This book explores the intellectual origins of this influential doctrine and investigates its chief source in late medieval and early modern thought - the legal science of Roman law. Long regarded the principal source for modern legal reasoning, Roman law had a profound impact on the major architects of popular sovereignty such as François Hotman, Jean Bodin, and Hugo Grotius. Adopting the juridical language of obligations, property, and personality as well as the classical model of the Roman constitution, these jurists crafted a uniform theory that located the right of sovereignty in the people at large as the legal owners of state authority. In recovering the origins of popular sovereignty, the book demonstrates the importance of the Roman law as a chief source of modern constitutional thought.

Sovereignty, originally the figure of 'sovereign', then the state, today meets new challenges of globalization and privatization of power.

This book argues that the introduction of popular sovereignty as the basis for government in France facilitated a dramatic transformation in international law in the eighteenth century.