Product Description: This volume was the first to attempt the systematic analysis of the structure and function of the courts as a major method of conflict resolution in society. Seventeen years after it was first published by Rand McNally in 1970, it remains the only such study.

A brief overview explaining how the Supreme Court is the ultimate interpreter of our Constitution

A history of the Supreme Court and the power of the judicial branch of the United States government

A brief overview explaining how the Supreme Court is the ultimate interpreter of our Constitution

This collection of essays by leading scholars of constitutional law looks at a critical component of constitutional democracy--judicial independence--from an international comparative perspective. Peter H. Russell's introduction outlines a general theory of judicial independence, while the contributors analyze a variety of regimes from the United States and Latin America to Russia and Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the United Kingdom, Australia, Israel, Japan, and South Africa. Russell's conclusion compares these various regimes in light of his own analytical framework. (view table of contents)

Product Description: This book argues that three elements affect the political significance of judicial decisions. First is the status of judges (the way they are recruited and the guarantees they enjoy) and the way judges define their role in the judicial and political process...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Offers a history of the Supreme Court and the power of the judicial branch of the United States government.

Describes the origins of the judicial branch, the powers and daily responsibilities of Supreme Court justices, historic Supreme Court decisions, and how the judicial branch has shaped the country.

The global expansion in judicial power has led to a growing interest in the way judges are chosen. Reform of the judicial selection process is on the political agenda in many countries but the nature of that process differs according to the type of process used - whether a career judiciary, an elected judiciary (direct and indirect), appointment by the executive, or a hybrid system.The main aim of this volume is to analyse common issues arising from increasing judicial power in the context of different political and legal systems, including those in North America, Africa, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The contributors seek to assess the strengths and weaknesses of structural and procedural reforms being proposed or implemented. Particularly important issues include the growing pressure to rethink the balance between judicial independence and accountability and the growing recognition of the importance of selecting judiciaries with a greater diversity in composition. Edited by Kate Malleson and Peter H. Russell, the volume marks the first time an analysis of judicial selection in such a wide range of different systems has been undertaken. It will interest anyone concerned with the global shift of political power toward the judiciary. Contributors:Jim AllenSufian Hemed BukururaLeny De GrootFrancois du BoisAntoine GaraponMahmoud HamadElizabeth HandsleyColin HawesChristine LandfriedRuth MackenzieKate MallesonDerek MatyszakvTed MortonDavid O'BrienAlan PatersonMarie ProvinePeter H. RussellEli SalzbergerPhillipe SandsMichael TolleyAlexei TrochevMary Volcansek

Product Description: Discover how the highest court shapes our country. Learn all about the judicial branch and the different levels of courts. Find out what types of cases are heard in the Supreme Court, how Supreme Court judges are chosen, and the role of the judicial branch in our government.

Human rights have traditionally been understood as protecting individual freedom against intrusion by the State. In this book, Sandra Fredman argues that this understanding requires radical revision. Human rights are based on a far richer view of freedom, which goes beyond being let alone, and instead pays attention to individuals' ability to exercise their rights.This view fundamentally shifts the focus of human rights. As well as restraining the State, human rights require the State to act positively to remove barriers and facilitate the exercise of freedom. This in turn breaks down traditional distinctions between civil and political rights and socio-economic rights. Instead, all rights give rise to a range of duties, both negative and positive. However, because positive duties have for so long been regarded as a question of policy or aspiration, little sustained attention has been given to their role in actualising human rights. Drawing on comparative experience from India, South Africa, the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Union, Canada and the UK, this book aims to create a theoretical and applied framework for understanding positive human rights duties.Part I elaborates the values of freedom, equality, and solidarity underpinning a positive approach to human rights duties, and argues that the dichotomy between democracy and human rights is misplaced. Instead, positive human rights duties should strengthen rather than substitute for democracy, particularly in the face of globalization and privatization. Part II considers justiciability, fashioning a democratic role for the courts based on their potential to stimulate deliberative democracy in the wider environment. Part III applies this framework to key positive duties, particularly substantive equality and positive duties to provide, traditionally associated with the Welfare State or socioeconomic rights.

Product Description: Since our nation's birth, the Supreme Court has been the highest court in the United States. But until 1935, it didn't have a building of its own. Join a lawyer named Marta in The U.S. Supreme Court as she follows the court's long journey to its final home in Washington, D.C.

You Can Make Global Human Rights a Reality 2048 is the story of the most important international social movement in the 21st century: the drafting and implementation of an International Bill of Rights that will be enforceable in the courts of every country on Earth. Written documents have always played a key part in the evolution of human rights—the Code of Hammurabi, the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence. In 1948 the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but its provisions are not enforceable so its promise remains unfulfilled. It’s time to take the next step. 2048 shows how we can create an agreement that will truly guarantee global human rights and the rule of law and have it in place by the 100th anniversary of the Universal Declaration—a visionary, audacious, but eminently achievable goal. J. Kirk Boyd outlines the freedoms this new document would protect and describes successful international agreements already in place that can serve as models. But the 2048 Project needs you. “What you do with what you read,” Boyd writes, “is as important as what this book says.” He explains how people in all countries can help shape the document through the 2048 Project website (www.2048.berkeley.edu)—hosted by the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law—and offers practical advice for reaching out and building support step by step so that the International Bill of Rights will become the foundation of an irresistible grassroots movement.

This book – which is the result of several years of research, discussion, writing and re-writing – consists of three parts and eight chapters. The rst part is given by the two rst chapters introducing the issue of validity and facticity in law. The second part (Chapters 3, 4 and 5) is the core of this study and tries to present a theory based on a speci c view about language and social practice. The third part deal with the issue of value judgments and views about morality and consists of Chapters 6 and 7. Chapter 8 should nally serve as epilogue. In the rst chapter a discussion is started about the relationship between law and power, seen as a presupposition for an assessment of the nature of law. As a matter of fact, as has been remarked, “general theories of law struggle to do justice to the 1 multiple dualities of the law”. Indeed, law has a “dual nature”: it is a fact, but it also a norm, a sort of ideal entity. Law is sanction, but it is also discourse. It is effectivity, or facticity, but it is also a vehicle of principles among which the central one is justice. But this duality is not only a phenomenological, or a matter of justi cation and implementation as two separate moments.

In the early twenty-first century, courts have become versatile actors in the governance of many constitutional democracies, and judges play a variety of roles in politics and policy making. Assembling papers penned by an array of academic specialists on high courts around the world, and presented during a year-long Andrew W. Mellon Foundation John E. Sawyer Seminar at the University of California, Berkeley, this volume maps the roles in governance that courts are undertaking and the ways in which they have come to matter in the political life of their nations. It offers empirically rich accounts of dramatic judicial actions in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, exploring the political conditions and judicial strategies that have fostered those assertions of power, and evaluating when and how courts' performance of new roles has been politically consequential. By focusing on the content and consequences of judicial power, the book advances a new agenda for the comparative study of courts.