This book explores current human rights controversies arising in UK law, in the light of the way such matters have been dealt with in Canada. Canada's Charter of Rights predates the United Kingdom's Human Rights Act by some 20 years, and in the 40 years of the Charter's existence, Canada's Supreme Court has produced an increasingly sophisticated body of public law jurisprudence. In its judgments, it has addressed broad questions of constitutional principle relating to such matters as the meaning of proportionality, the 'horizontal' impact of human rights norms, and the proper role of judicial 'dereference' to legislative decision-making. The court has also considered, more narrowly, specific issues of political controversy such as assisted dying, voting rights for prisoners, the wearing of religious symbols, parental control of their children's upbringing, the law regulating libel actions brought by politicians, pornography and labour rights. All of these issues are discussed in the book. The contributions to this volume provide detailed analyses of such broad and narrow matters in a comparative perspective, and suggest that the United Kingdom's public law jurisprudence and scholarship might benefit substantially from a closer engagement with their Canadian counterparts.

Marking the Sesquicentennial of Confederation in Canada, this book examines the growing global influence of Canada's Constitution and Supreme Court on courts confronting issues involving human rights.

The development of an autonomous English public law has been accompanied by persistent problems - a lack of systematic principles, dissatisfaction with judicial procedures, and uncertainty about the judicial role. It has provoked an ongoing debate on the very desirability of the distinctionbetween public and private law. In this debate, a historical and comparative perspective has been lacking. A Continental Distinction in the Common Law introduces such a perspective. It compares the recent emergence of a significant English distinction with the entrenchment of the traditional Frenchdistinction. It explains how persistent problems of English public law are related to fundamental differences between the English and French legal and political traditions, differences in their conception of the state administration, their approach to law, their separation of powers, and theirjudicial procedures in public-law cases. The author argues that a satisfactory distinction between public and private law depends on a particular legal and political context, a context which was evident in late nineteenth-century France and is absent in twentieth-century England. He concludes byidentifying the far-reaching theoretical, institutional, and procedural changes required to accommodate English public law.

This landmark volume of specially commissioned, original contributions by top international scholars organizes the issues and controversies of the rich and rapidly maturing field of comparative constitutional law. Divided into sections on constitutional design and redesign, identity, structure, individual rights and state duties, courts and constitutional interpretation, this comprehensive volume covers over 100 countries as well as a range of approaches to the boundaries of constitutional law. While some chapters reference the text of legal instruments expressly labeled constitutional, others focus on the idea of entrenchment or take a more functional approach. Challenging the current boundaries of the field, the contributors offer diverse perspectives - cultural, historical and institutional - as well as suggestions for future research. A unique and enlightening volume, Comparative Constitutional Law is an essential resource for students and scholars of the subject.

The theme of this book is judicial activism in industrialized democracies, with a chapter on the changing political roles of the courts in the Soviet Union. Eleven contributors describe the extent to which the highest courts in their country of expertise have embraced the making of public policy.

This book offers a comprehensive comparative guide to constitutional amendment in Europe and North America. The contributions to the book are written by experts in comparative constitutional law and looks at a particular country providing a critical analysis of its constitutional revision principles, procedure, practice and developments. The volume includes a final chapter with a comparative analysis on constitutional amendment elaborating on and attempting to develop an explanatory theory regarding the points of convergence as well as the detected differentiations. Thus allowing the comparative elements interesting at an international level to emerge and be assessed.

Human Rights and Judicial Review: A Comparative Perspective collects, in one volume, a basic description of the most important principles and methods of analysis followed by the major Courts enforcing constitutional Bills of Rights around the world. The Courts include the Supreme Courts of Japan, India, Canada and the United States, the Constitutional Courts of Germany and Italy and the European Court of Human Rights. Each chapter is devoted to an analysis of the substantive jurisprudence developed by these Courts to determine whether a challenged law is constitutional or not, and is written by members of these Courts who have had a prior academic career. The book highlights the similarities and differences in the analytical methods used by these courts in determining whether or not someone's constitutional rights have been violated. Students and scholars of constitutional law and human rights, judges and advocates engaged in constitutional litigation will find the book a unique and valuable resource.