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Questions the omission of law and legal perspectives in political science and advocates its relevance and overlap in two country examples: the USA and the UK. Legal politics, the role of the judiciary, public law and administration, and the constitutional politics of America are provided as examples, intended to generate future relationships in the areas of law and political science.

Questions the extent to which post‐communist Russia has indeed become a democracy. It examines the problems of Russian democracy in different areas such as elections, separation of powers, judicial system, freedom of press, respect for human rights, and development of civil society. It concludes that Russia has not been well served by efforts to transplant the American‐style democracy without taking into account local circumstances and conditions.

This chapter examines how Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile fared with truth and justice policies after the transition from authoritarian rule, looking at the issue from an institutional and political angle, and at the social politics of memory. Efforts to deal with the past and their significance in the overall politics of transition to democracy are shaped by country-specific historical conditions and developments: the nature and legacies of repression and authoritarian rule; and the nature of the transition process and the various political, institutional and legal factors conditioning the post-transitional period, among which are the nature of repression, the presence and strength of a human rights movement, inherited legal or constitutional limitations, relations between political parties and Human Rights Organizations (HROs), the degree of executive or party commitment to policies of truth and justice, the unity of democratic parties, the ability of the military to mobilise against any policies of accountability as well as their relations with the democratic executive, the attitude of the judiciary to past violations, the presence of a strong legislative right, and the degree to which repression penetrated the social fabric. The way in which the first democratically elected authorities deal with the past, together with the relative strength of the human rights movement in the post-transitional period, sets the agenda for the subsequent evolution of the issue; more specifically, the past remains a source of open conflict if there are loopholes in official policies that preclude full closure or amnesty, and if transnational groups or regional and international human rights bodies challenge national policies favouring impunity. The past also remains a source of conflict if there are strong HROs that continue to contest official decisions on how to deal with the past, and have allies in the formal political arena or the courts. Official policies to deal with the past are not of themselves directly relevant to the process of democratisation, and what is more, during the first transitional period, truth and justice policies are unrelated to (or may even place obstacles in the way of) wider institutional reform; the reverse is also true, but whatever the case, the past becomes part of the dynamic of democratic politics. Indeed, although the continued pursuit of truth and justice and its links to wider reforms may be difficult to establish across the board, the politics of memory more widely conceived are important for a process of democratization in all four countries examined here, as it is about how a society interprets and appropriates its past, in an attempt to mould its future, and as such it is an integral part of any political process, including progress towards deeper democracy.

This chapter addresses three issues. The first is whether the arguments for ensuring equal or proportionate representation by gender and ethnicity in legislative assemblies should also apply to social class. The second is whether focusing on the institutions of representative democracy blocks more ambitious proposals for extending democratic participation, for example, those put forward in arguments for associational or associative democracy. The third is whether the case for an equal representation of women and proportionate representation of ethnic minority groups should also apply to appointed bodies like quangos or the judiciary. The chapter concludes that the case for a politics of presence is strongest when allied to some of these larger ambitions.

In mid‐July, the revision committee turned its attention to the draft's language on the structure of government in Japan's new parliamentary system: the make‐up and powers of the Diet, the “highest organ of state power” (including the House of Representatives and House of Councillors), the executive (cabinet) and the judiciary; and explicit restrictions on the exercise of governmental power by the emperor. Ch. 15 traces the brilliant performance of Kanamori as interpreter and expositor of constitutional language.

I reject the claim that bills of social rights are undemocratic and therefore unacceptable. I argue that they are indeed undemocratic in some cases, but that this is not a good reason for rejecting them. In the course of defending this claim, I distinguish between democratic rights, namely, those rights the respect of which is necessary for a regime to count and function as a democracy, and undemocratic rights, namely, those rights the respect of which is not necessary for a regime to count and function as a democracy. I also look at different ways in which the judiciary could protect constitutional social rights; I claim that the constitutional court should tell the government when it has breached a right and should set a deadline for the provision of remedies, but should not tell the government which remedies to provide, and how it should provide them. I thus delineate the scope for democratic decision‐making when constitutional social rights are at issue.

I consider the claim that social rights cannot be constitutionalized and protected by the judiciary, because the latter is unable to adjudicate rights which, by nature, are vague and cannot constitute a solid basis for assessing governmental policy‐making. I reject this practical objection to constitutional social rights whilst taking on board some of its insights, by looking at the ways in which social rights are given specific content by institutions such as the ILO and the UN, and at the way constitutional social rights are dealt with by some domestic constitutional courts.

In Slovenia the power of the state is divided along classical lines into a legislature, an executive and a judiciary: legislative power is exercised by the parliament, comprising a National Assembly, which is the general representative house, and a National Council, which is a body representing various interests and has very limited powers; executive power is divided between the president and the government; judicial power is exercised by the ordinary courts and the Constitutional Court, which rules on the conformity of legal enactments with the constitution and the law and decides constitutional complaints and certain other matters. It is generally accepted that Slovenia has a parliamentary system in which the focus of political decision–making lies with the parliament and the government. As in most other Central and East European countries in transition, in Slovenia the formal powers of parliament remain very strong, but, unlike the pure parliamentarism that certain countries opted for, the Slovene arrangements belong more to a group that could be characterized as parliamentarism with a directly (popularly) elected (or semi‐presidential) president. The role of the president is relatively small, and is to act as the head of state, whose function or powers are mainly of a representative, initiative, and protocol nature. After an introduction discussing whether Slovenia has a parliamentary or semi‐presidential system, this chapter focuses on the actual nature and features of the position and role of the president in the context of the constitutional and political system of the Republic of Slovenia, in six further sections: National Independence and Establishment of the First President of the Republic, Parliament and Government; Historical Factors and the Events Surrounding the Formation of the Regime; The Constitutional Powers of the President, Prime Minister, and Parliament; The Nature of the Parliamentary Majority and the Relationship Between the President and the Majority; and Conclusion.

Responds to critical claims that constitutionalising the right to an adequate environment would not be prudent due to difficulties making it justiciable and difficulties that could make success on the merits unlikely in cases appealing to it. Shows these difficulties are not insurmountable and do not arise from the inherent nature of rights or of environmental problems. What surmounting them does involve, though, is ensuring that courts have the requisite institutional and constitutional competence, which critics consider to be, respectively, unfeasible and undesirable. It is shown that there is no serious obstacle to the development of the requisite institutional competence, which, if necessary, can be achieved through the establishment of specialist environmental courts. As for questions of courts’ legitimate constitutional competence, these arise not only for environmental rights, but for fundamental rights more generally. Also points out that litigation is not the only, or most significant, purpose in constitutionalising the right.

Constitutionalising a right makes it immune to the possibility of (routine) democratic revision. So, constitutional rights that set certain substantive values beyond the reach of routine political revision have the effect of pre-empting decisions that might otherwise be arrived at through democratic procedures. To the extent that environmental rights can be taken to embody substantive value commitments, they would appear to be vulnerable to the criticism that the constitutional entrenchment of them is undemocratic. Certain procedural rights, however, are necessary for the very functioning of democracy as such. Can procedural environmental rights be justified on this ground? And what about the substantive right to an adequate environment? Argues that both kinds of environmental rights, in common with some existing and far less controversial rights, can in fact be justified on the very grounds that democracy itself is justified.

This chapter examines the reorganization of the federal judiciary from the beginning of Thomas Jefferson's second term as president in 1805 until just prior to the Compromise of 1850. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the government faced a new set of challenges, many of which were the result of the vast territorial expansion. Territorial expansion and the politics of statehood admission intertwined with judicial reform attempts focused primarily on arranging states in circuits and ensuring regional geographic representation on the Supreme Court. The chapter considers the four stages in which the history of judicial institution building unfolded in the eras of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy: the Judiciary Act of 1807, the stalemate over the National Republicans' attempts to extend the circuit system to the West in the mid-1820s, the Whigs' failed consolidation plan of 1835, and the triumph of reform in the Judiciary Act of 1837.

Justices have considerable latitude to pursue either their personal preferences or their personal visions of the law. The danger is that the Court gets so far out of line from the rest of the political system that we see fundamental institutional showdowns that threaten the independence of the judiciary, such as the Court-packing controversy in the 1930s. If the elected branches influence justices, however, they can keep the Court in check, thereby attenuating such risks. This chapter tests whether the Court systematically yields to the elected branches. In particular, it examines whether individual justices vote differently when the constraints imposed by the executive and legislative branches are likely to be at their strongest. It focuses on the two versions in the literature: one in which the Court is constrained only on statutory cases and the other in which the constraint extends to all cases, including constitutional cases.

This chapter examines how Deuteronomy offers an egalitarian political prescription for the shape of Israelite society and its leadership regime. The program is egalitarian in that it attenuates, in the first place, the institutional power of the monarchy as construed in the ancient Near East in the following realms: the military, the cult, the judiciary, the economy, and the harem. It further establishes a set of checks and balances that curb the power of the various seats of authority: the king, the priesthood, the judiciary and the prophet. Moreover, Deuteronomy's egalitarian program for the regime is reflected in its rejection of the institutions and language of tribal patriarchy so evidenced in the other pentateuchal texts, in favor of collective, national identity. Whereas earlier studies that examined Deuteronomy's plan for the regime have focused on chapters 16–18, this study maintains that one must read all of Deuteronomy as an integrated whole in order to perceive the full intricacy of its blueprint for a society in the land. Particular attention is paid to the role played in this regard by the so‐called narrative frames of the book—chapters 1–4, and chapters 27–30. While previous studies have noted that Deuteronomy seems to adopt a form of checks and balances, this study locates the statement it makes in this regard within the history of political thought on the subject. Scanning theories from Roman jurists through Montesquieu, this study concludes that the kernel of a theory of checks and balances that one may adduce from a reading of Deuteronomy is suggestive of formulations that we do not encounter again until the writings of the American Founding Fathers.