Liability Of The Crown In Australia New Zealand And The United Kingdom

With government now having assumed an important role in most areas of economic and social life, issues relating to potential legal liability for wrongful or negligent activity has taken on increasing importance. When things go wrong, whether it involves matters as diverse as problems with the blood supply or with unsafe drinking water, those who suffer loss inevitably look to seek whether their losses can be traced back to government or regulatory failure.

The advent of the knowledge economy and society has made it increasingly necessary for law reformers and policy makers to take account of the effects of technology upon the law and upon legal and political processes. This book explores aspects of technology's relationship with law and government, and in particular the effects changing technology has had on constitutional structures and upon business. Part I examines the legal normative influence of constitutional structures and political theories. It focuses on the interrelationship between laws and legal procedure with technology and the effect technology can have on the legal environment. Part II discusses the relationship between government and technology both at the national and international level. The author argues that technology must be contextualized within a constitution and draws on historical and contemporary examples to illustrate how technology has both shaped civilizations and been the product of its political and constitutional environment.

This book examines the influence of constitutional legal paradigms upon the political stability and viability of states. It contributes to the literature in the field by focussing on how constitutional flexibility may have led to the rise of 'successful' states and to the decline of 'unsuccessful' states, by promoting stability. Divided into two parts, the book considers theories of the rise and fall of civilizations and individual states, explains the concept of hard and soft constitutions and applies this concept to different types of state models. A series of international case studies in the second part of the book identifies the key dynamics in legal, political and economic history and includes the UK, US, New Zealand and Eastern Europe.

"The Max Planck Handbooks in European Public Law series describes and analyses the public law of the European legal space, an area that encompasses not only the law of the European Union but also the European Convention on Human Rights and, importantly, the domestic public laws of European states. Recognizing that the ongoing vertical and horizontal processes of European integration make legal comparison the task of our time for both scholars and practitioners, it aims to foster the development of a specifically European legal pluralism and to contribute to the legitimacy and efficiency of European public law. The first volume of the series begins this enterprise with an appraisal of the evolution of the state and its administration, with cross-cutting contributions and also specific country reports. While the former include, among others, treatises on historical antecedents of the concept of European public law, the development of the administrative state as such, the relationship between constitutional and administrative law, and legal conceptions of statehood, the latter focus on states and legal orders as diverse as, e.g., Spain and Hungary or Great Britain and Greece. With this, the book provides access to the systematic foundations, pivotal historic moments, and legal thought of states bound together not only by a common history but also by deep and entrenched normative ties; for the quality of the ius publicum europaeum can be no better than the common understanding European scholars and practitioners have of the law of other states. An understanding thus improved will enable them to operate with the shared skills, knowledge, and values that can bring to fruition the different processes of European integration"--Provided by the publisher.

This book examines the royal prerogative in terms of its theory, history and application today. The work explores the development of the royal prerogative through the evolution of imperial government, and more recent structural changes in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the Commonwealth. While examining specific prerogative powers, the development of justiciability of the prerogative, and the exercise of the prerogative, it lays bare the heart of constitutionality in the Westminster system of government. There is said to be a black hole of unaccountable authority at the heart of the constitution and it is this which this book examines. The focus is upon the constitutional development of the United Kingdom and the old dominions of Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This approach is comparative and historical, using specific case studies of such events as the dissolution of Parliament and the appointment and dismissal of Prime Ministers. The book will be of interest to academics and researchers working in the areas of Constitutional Law and Politics.

"An account of the life and times of ... Sir John Salmond ... [a] study of the career and work of this influential legal philosopher and man of state traces the development of Salmond's principal ideas about law and their application to social and political problems of New Zealand in the first quarter of the twentieth century ... [his] judicial record is analysed and some leading cases discussed in detail"--Jacket.