Public Law And Politics

In a critical engagement with the function of public law and with constitutionalism in its political dimensions, this volume brings together the reflections of three leading constitutionalists: Martin Loughlin, James Tully and Frank Michelman. Comprising three critical commentaries on each, it addresses the multiple ways in which public law is implicated in the logic of rule. This operates on the one hand in maintaining and underwriting relative patterns of power and weakness through political structures and processes. On the other hand, public law is considered to contain the potential to redress these patterns through the use of constitutional authority, social and economic as well as civil and political rights, redistribution of political power, the expansion of territorial governance, and moves to supra-state levels of authority. The book reproduces, in a succinct and organized way, the insights into both the limitations and the potentialities of public law within its political setting.

The study of public law in the United Kingdom has been hampered for many years by an inadequate appreciation among scholars and students of the importance of understanding the different political theories which underpin different models of public law. This short and highly readable work offers students a straightforward introduction to the relationship between public law and political theory and helps them to comprehend the rich literature on both subjects.

Foundations of Public Law offers an account of the formation of the discipline of public law with a view to identifying its essential character, explaining its particular modes of operation, and specifying its unique task. Building on the framework first outlined in The Idea of Public Law (OUP, 2003), the book conceives public law broadly as a type of law that comes into existence as a consequence of the secularization, rationalization and positivization of the medieval idea of fundamental law. Formed as a result of the changes that give birth to the modern state, public law establishes the authority and legitimacy of modern governmental ordering. Public law today is a universal phenomenon, but its origins are European. Part I of the book examines the conditions of its formation, showing how much the concept borrowed from the refined debates of medieval jurists. Part II then examines the nature of public law. Drawing on a line of juristic inquiry that developed from the late sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries-extending from Bodin, Althusius, Lipsius, Grotius, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke and Pufendorf to the later works of Montesquieu, Rousseau, Kant, Fichte, Smith and Hegel-it presents an account of public law as a special type of political reason. The remaining three Parts unpack the core elements of this concept: state, constitution, and government. By taking this broad approach to the subject, Professor Loughlin shows how, rather than being viewed as a limitation on power, law is better conceived as a means by which public power is generated. And by explaining the way that these core elements of state, constitution, and government were shaped respectively by the technological, bourgeois, and disciplinary revolutions of the sixteenth century through to the nineteenth century, he reveals a concept of public law of considerable ambiguity, complexity and resilience.

Debates about emergency powers traditionally focus on whether law can or should constrain officials in emergencies. Emergencies in Public Law moves beyond this narrow lens, focusing instead on how law structures the response to emergencies and what kind of legal and political dynamics this relation gives rise to. Drawing on empirical studies from a variety of emergencies, institutional actors, and jurisdictional scales (terrorist threats, natural disasters, economic crises, and more), this book provides a framework for understanding emergencies as long-term processes rather than ad hoc events, and as opportunities for legal and institutional productivity rather than occasions for the suspension of law and the centralization of response powers. The analysis offered here will be of interest to academics and students of legal, political, and constitutional theory, as well as to public lawyers and social scientists.

The study of law and politics is one of the foundation stones of the discipline of political science, and it has been one of the most productive areas of cross-fertilization between the various subfields of political science and between political science and other cognate disciplines. This Handbook provides a comprehensive survey of the field of law and politics in all its diversity, ranging from such traditional subjects as theories of jurisprudence, constitutionalism, judicial politics and law-and-society to such re-emerging subjects as comparative judicial politics, international law, and democratization. The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics gathers together leading scholars in the field to assess key literatures shaping the discipline today and to help set the direction of research in the decade ahead.

The book outlines the historical development of Public Law and the state from ancient times to the modern day, offering an account of relevant events in parallel with a general historical background, establishing and explaining the relationships between political, religious, and economic events.

Institutions & Public Law: Comparative Approaches is a set of essays on the politics of law and courts by leading public law scholars in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. The essays share the view that understanding courts requires attention to the political dynamics that shape judicial design and authority, as well as the position of courts within the broader political system. This volume is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate courses in judicial politics.