Aziz Z. Huq

Politicians, judges, and citizens commonly use the phrase "rule of law" to describe some good that flows from a legal system. But what precisely is that good? Even in Aristotle's time, there was no agreement on either its nature, and on whether it counted as an unqualified good. Even now, a core rule-of-law aspiration is that law can constrain how power is flexed. But how or when? Disagreement persists as to whether the rule of law is a matter of how law is used or why it is deployed. In consequence, the World Bank, the leaders of Singapore's one-party state, and the Communist Party in China can all offer their own spins on the concept.

By charting these disagreements and showing the overlap and the conflicts between different understandings of the concept, Aziz Z. Huq shows how the rule of law can still be used as an important tool for framing and evaluating the goals and functions of a legal system. He traces the idea's historical origins from ancient Greece to the constitutional theorist Albert Venn Dicey to the economist and political philosopher Friedrich Hayek. And he explores how that value is coming under pressure from terrorist threats, macroeconomic crisis, pandemics, autocratic populism, and climate change.

The Rule of Law: A Very Short Introduction 

Tom Ginsburg

Democracies are in danger. Around the world, a rising wave of populist leaders threatens to erode the core structures of democratic self rule. In the United States, the election of Donald Trump marked a decisive turning point for many. What kind of president calls the news media the "enemy of the American people," or sees a moral equivalence between violent neo-Nazi protesters in paramilitary formation and residents of a college town defending the racial and ethnic diversity of their homes? Yet, whatever our concerns about the current president, we can be assured that the Constitution offers safeguards to protect against lasting damage--or can we? How to Save a Constitutional Democracy mounts an urgent argument that we can no longer afford to be complacent. Drawing on a rich array of other countries' experiences with democratic backsliding, Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Z. Huq show how constitutional rules can either hinder or hasten the decline of democratic institutions. The checks and balances of the federal government, a robust civil society and media, and individual rights--such as those enshrined in the First Amendment--do not necessarily succeed as bulwarks against democratic decline. Rather, Ginsburg and Huq contend, the sobering reality for the United States is that, to a much greater extent than is commonly realized, the Constitution's design makes democratic erosion more, not less, likely. Its structural rigidity has had the unforeseen consequence of empowering the Supreme Court to fill in some details--often with doctrines that ultimately facilitate rather than inhibit the infringement of rights. Even the bright spots in the Constitution--the First Amendment, for example--may have perverse consequences in the hands of a deft communicator, who can degrade the public sphere by wielding hateful language that would be banned in many other democracies. But we--and the rest of the world--can do better. The authors conclude by laying out practical steps for how laws and constitutional design can play a more positive role in managing the risk of democratic decline.

How to Save a Constitutional Democracy

Kristen Boon

Douglas Lovelace

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., offers the full text of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which was entered into force on March 5, 1970. Signers of this treaty have agreed to give up their nuclear weapons. In 1995 the signers agreed upon an indefinite extension of the treaty. The five declared nuclear weapons states are the United States, Great Britain, China, France, and Russia.

Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty

Asks how the 'parchment' promises of a written constitution are translated into political practice, working through the many problems of constitutional implementation after adoption.

Implementing New Constitutions

From Parchment to Practice

"This book describes and explains the failure of the federal courts of the United States to act and to provide remedies to individuals whose constitutional rights have been violated by illegal state coercion and violence. This remedial vacuum must be understood in light of the original design and historical development of the federal courts. At its conception, the federal judiciary was assumed to be independent thanks to an apolitical appointment process, a limited supply of adequately trained lawyers (which would prevent cherry-picking), and the constraining effect of laws and constitutional provision. Each of these checks quickly failed. As a result, the early federal judicial system was highly dependent on Congress. Not until the last quarter of the nineteenth century did a robust federal judiciary start to emerge, and not until the first quarter of the twentieth century did it take anything like its present form. The book then charts how the pressure from Congress and the White House has continued to shape courts behaviour-first eliciting a mid-twentieth-century explosion in individual remedies, and then driving a five-decade long collapse. Judges themselves have not avidly resisted this decline, in part because of ideological reasons and in part out of institutional worries about a ballooning docket. Today, as a result of these trends, the courts are stingy with individual remedies, but aggressively enforce the so-called "structural" constitution of the separation of powers and federalism. This cocktail has highly regressive effects, and is in urgent need of reform"--

The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies

Martha C. Nussbaum

Zoya Hasan

Vidhu Verma

All known societies exclude and stigmatize one or more minority groups, frequently employing a rhetoric of disgust to justify this stigmatization. In this volume, interdisciplinary scholars from India and the United States present a detailed and theoretically pluralistic study of the varieties of stigma that pervade contemporary social and political life. These include prejudice along the axes of caste, race, gender identity, age, sexual orientation, disability,religion, ethnicity, and economic class. Looking forward the authors present legal and policy-based remedies aimed at eliminating pervasive stigma in all of its diverse forms.

Prejudice, Discrimination and Policy in India and the US

The Empire of Disgust

Ocean

Terrorism: Commentary on Security Documents is a series that provides primary source documents and expert commentary on the worldwide counter-terrorism effort. Among the documents collected are transcripts of Congressional testimony, reports by such federal government bodies as the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and case law covering issues related to terrorism. Most volumes carry a single theme, and inside each volume the documents appear within topic-based categories. The series also includes a subject index and other indices that guide the user through this complex area of the law. Volume 124, U.S. Approaches to Global Security Challenges, analyzes U.S. strategy toward security threats across the globe and identifies the beginnings of a shift away from a reliance on military power to the application of various types of civilian power which utilize a multinational approach. The documents introduced by Douglas Lovelace include U.S. perspectives on the international security situation generally as well as reports on more specific topics, such as the security situation in Afghanistan, terrorism in East Africa, the evolving role of NATO, and cooperation between the U.S. and other governments (such as the EU and China) in the fight against terrorism.

Aziz Z. Huq

Books

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