Human Rights And Constituent Power

Engaging the current political and jurisprudential thought on constituent power with a radical political re-thinking of human rights, Ilan Rua Wall develops the idea that human rights must be considered as a non-metaphysical process of 'right-ing'.

With the emergence of modern human rights in the Universal Declaration, what remained of a radical political potential of the discourse withdrew: statism and individualism became its authorised foundations and the possibilities of other human rights traditions were denied. The strife that once lay at the heart of human rights was forgotten in an increasing juridification. This book seeks to recover the radical political pole of human rights. It looks to the debates surrounding constituent power – the ‘power of the people’ – in order to understand different possibilities for the discourse. Using continental political philosophy and critical legal theory, Human Rights and Constituent Power presents a very different conception of human rights, more at home on the riotous streets than in courtrooms and parliaments.

With a strong focus on constitutional law, this book examines the legal as well as the political power of 'the people' in constitutional democracies. Bringing together an international range of contributors from the USA, Latin America, the UK and continental Europe, it explores the complex relationship between constitutional democracy and 'the people' from the angles of constitutional law, legal theory, political theory, and history. Contributors explore this relationship through the lens of radical democracy, engaging with the work of key figures such as Hannah Arendt, Carl Schmitt, Claude Lefort, and Jacques Ranciere.

Constituent power of the people is a core concept of modern politics but what does this concept actually mean? This book addresses this question, sketching how constituent power of the people has been conceived since the early modern revolutions.

This book examines the relationship between constituent power and the law, and the place of the former in constitutional history, drawing from constitutional theory beyond the Anglo-American sphere, with new material made available for the first time to English readers.

This book challenges traditional theories of constitution-making to advance an alternative view of constitutions as being founded on power which rests on violence. The work argues that rather than the idea of a constitution being the result of political participation and deliberation, all power instead is based on violence. Hence the creation of a constitution is actually an act of coercion, where, through violence, one social group is able to impose itself over others. The book advocates that the presence of violence be used as an assessment of whether genuine constitutional transformation has taken place, and that the legitimacy of a constitutional order should be dependent upon the absence of killing. The book will be essential reading for academics and researchers working in the areas of constitutional law and politics, legal and political theory, and constitutional history.

Conceptualising the new phenomenon of constitutional crowdsourcing, this incisive book examines democratic legitimacy, participation, and decision-making in constitutions and constitutionalism. It analyses how the wider population can be given a voice in constitution-making and in constitutional interpretation and control, thus promoting the exercise of original and derived constituent power.

"This book addresses the issue of public demonstrations, looking at the experiences of established democracies (EU member states and USA) and countries in transition. The approach of the book is to cover the problem not as a strictly legal one, but to combine the constitutional and human rights aspects with the historical, political and philosophical dimensions. The recent history of mass protests in democracies and semi-democracies raises a number of concerns. Some of these concerns are related to the proper balance between the right to demonstrate and its impacts on third parties." --Book Jacket.