The Collapse Of Constitutional Remedies

Author : Aziz Z. Huq
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197556833
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies written by Aziz Z. Huq and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-05 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of how and why the Constitution's plan for independent courts has failed to protect individuals' constitutional rights, while advancing regressive and reactionary barriers to progressive regulation. Just recently, the Supreme Court rejected an argument by plaintiffs that police officers should no longer be protected by the doctrine of "qualified immunity" when they shoot or brutalize an innocent civilian. "Qualified immunity" is but one of several judicial inventions that shields state violence and thwarts the vindication of our rights. But aren't courts supposed to be protectors of individual rights? As Aziz Huq shows in The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies, history reveals a much more tangled relationship between the Constitution's system of independent courts and the protection of constitutional rights. While doctrines such as "qualified immunity" may seem abstract, their real-world harms are anything but. A highway patrol officer stops a person's car in violation of the Fourth Amendment, violently yanked the person out and threw him to the ground, causing brain damage. A municipal agency fires a person for testifying in a legal proceeding involving her boss's family-and then laughed in her face when she demanded her job back. In all these cases, state defendants walked away with the most minor of penalties (if any at all). Ultimately, we may have rights when challenging the state, but no remedies. In fact, federal courts have long been fickle and unreliable guardians of individual rights. To be sure, through the mid-twentieth century, the courts positioned themselves as the ultimate protector of citizens suffering the state's infringement of their rights. But they have more recently abandoned, and even aggressively repudiated, a role as the protector of individual rights in the face of abuses by the state. Ironically, this collapse highlights the position that the Framers took when setting up federal courts in the first place. A powerful historical account of the how the expansion of the immunity principle generated yawning gap between rights and remedies in contemporary America, The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies will reshape our understanding of why it has become so difficult to effectively challenge crimes committed by the state.

Author : Aziz Z. Huq
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197556817
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies written by Aziz Z. Huq and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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"--

Author : Jamal Greene
Publisher : Houghton Mifflin
ISBN 13 : 1328518116
Total Pages : 341 pages
Book Rating : 4.18/5 ( download)

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Download or read book How Rights Went Wrong written by Jamal Greene and published by Houghton Mifflin. This book was released on 2021 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eminent constitutional scholar reveals how our approach to rights is dividing America, and shows how we can build a better system of justice.

Author : William J. Stuntz
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674051750
Total Pages : 425 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Collapse of American Criminal Justice written by William J. Stuntz and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rule of law has vanished in America’s criminal justice system. Prosecutors decide whom to punish; most accused never face a jury; policing is inconsistent; plea bargaining is rampant; and draconian sentencing fills prisons with mostly minority defendants. A leading criminal law scholar looks to history for the roots of these problems—and solutions.

Author : Rohit De
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691210381
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.84/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A People's Constitution written by Rohit De and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has long been contended that the Indian Constitution of 1950, a document in English created by elite consensus, has had little influence on India’s greater population. Drawing upon the previously unexplored records of the Supreme Court of India, A People’s Constitution upends this narrative and shows how the Constitution actually transformed the daily lives of citizens in profound and lasting ways. This remarkable legal process was led by individuals on the margins of society, and Rohit De looks at how drinkers, smugglers, petty vendors, butchers, and prostitutes—all despised minorities—shaped the constitutional culture. The Constitution came alive in the popular imagination so much that ordinary people attributed meaning to its existence, took recourse to it, and argued with it. Focusing on the use of constitutional remedies by citizens against new state regulations seeking to reshape the society and economy, De illustrates how laws and policies were frequently undone or renegotiated from below using the state’s own procedures. De examines four important cases that set legal precedents: a Parsi journalist’s contestation of new alcohol prohibition laws, Marwari petty traders’ challenge to the system of commodity control, Muslim butchers’ petition against cow protection laws, and sex workers’ battle to protect their right to practice prostitution. Exploring how the Indian Constitution of 1950 enfranchised the largest population in the world, A People’s Constitution considers the ways that ordinary citizens produced, through litigation, alternative ethical models of citizenship.

Author : Wojciech Sadurski
Publisher : Oxford Comparative Constitutio
ISBN 13 : 0198840500
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Poland's Constitutional Breakdown written by Wojciech Sadurski and published by Oxford Comparative Constitutio. This book was released on 2019-05-16 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 2015, Poland's populist Law and Justice Party (PiS) has been dismantling the major checks and balances of the Polish state and subordinating the courts, the civil service, and the media to the will of the executive. Political rights have been radically restricted, and the Party has captured the entire state apparatus. The speed and depth of these antidemocratic movements took many observers by surprise: until now, Poland was widely regarded as an example of a successful transitional democracy. Poland's anti-constitutional breakdown poses three questions that this book sets out to answer: What, exactly, has happened since 2015? Why did it happen? And what are the prospects for a return to liberal democracy? These answers are formulated against a backdrop of current worldwide trends towards populism, authoritarianism, and what is sometimes called 'illiberal democracy'. As this book argues, the Polish variant of 'illiberal democracy' is an oxymoron. By undermining the separation of powers, the PiS concentrates all power in its own hands, rendering any democratic accountability illusory. There is, however, no inevitability in these anti-democratic trends: this book considers a number of possible remedies and sources of hope, including intervention by the European Union.

Author : Robert R. Owens
Publisher : Xulon Press
ISBN 13 : 1612150942
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Constitution Failed written by Robert R. Owens and published by Xulon Press. This book was released on with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can you say, "The Constitution failed?" Don't you mean, "We failed the Constitution?" Or is that a distinction without a difference? Since the declared and understood purpose to the writing and ratification of the Constitution was to create and sustain a limited government and since We the People now face an unlimited government Dr. Owens maintains we face the painful reality, "The Constitution failed." As a member of the Richmond Tea Party and a contributing author to the websites of numerous Tea Parties across the fruited plane Dr. Robert Owens, the author of the History of the Future builds upon Dispatches from that History to show not only that the Constitution has failed but that in many ways that failure was foretold before it was ever ratified by the arguments of the Anti-Federalists. He then goes on to offer recommendations for how We the People can organize and advocate for a solution which will preserve liberty in the land of the free and the home of the brave."

Author : Gordon G. Chang
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1588360210
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Coming Collapse of China written by Gordon G. Chang and published by Random House. This book was released on 2001-09-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China is hot. The world sees a glorious future for this sleeping giant, three times larger than the United States, predicting it will blossom into the world's biggest economy by 2010. According to Chang, however, a Chinese-American lawyer and China specialist, the People's Republic is a paper dragon. Peer beneath the veneer of modernization since Mao's death, and the symptoms of decay are everywhere: Deflation grips the economy, state-owned enterprises are failing, banks are hopelessly insolvent, foreign investment continues to decline, and Communist party corruption eats away at the fabric of society. Beijing's cautious reforms have left the country stuck midway between communism and capitalism, Chang writes. With its impending World Trade Organization membership, for the first time China will be forced to open itself to foreign competition, which will shake the country to its foundations. Economic failure will be followed by government collapse. Covering subjects from party politics to the Falun Gong to the government's insupportable position on Taiwan, Chang presents a thorough and very chilling overview of China's present and not-so-distant future.

Author : Tom Ginsburg
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022656438X
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.88/5 ( download)

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Download or read book How to Save a Constitutional Democracy written by Tom Ginsburg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-10-05 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Adrian Vermeule
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509548882
Total Pages : 171 pages
Book Rating : 4.80/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Common Good Constitutionalism written by Adrian Vermeule and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The way that Americans understand their Constitution and wider legal tradition has been dominated in recent decades by two exhausted approaches: the originalism of conservatives and the “living constitutionalism” of progressives. Is it time to look for an alternative? Adrian Vermeule argues that the alternative has been there, buried in the American legal tradition, all along. He shows that US law was, from the founding, subsumed within the broad framework of the classical legal tradition, which conceives law as “a reasoned ordering to the common good.” In this view, law’s purpose is to promote the goods a flourishing political community requires: justice, peace, prosperity, and morality. He shows how this legacy has been lost, despite still being implicit within American public law, and convincingly argues for its recovery in the form of “common good constitutionalism.” This erudite and brilliantly original book is a vital intervention in America’s most significant contemporary legal debate while also being an enduring account of the true nature of law that will resonate for decades with scholars and students.