Constitutional Amendments: Making, Breaking, and Changing Constitutions is both a roadmap for navigating the intellectual universe of constitutional amendments and a blueprint for building and improving the rules of constitutional change. Drawing from dozens of constitutions in every region of the world, this book blends theory with practice to answer two all-important questions: what is an amendment and how should constitutional designers structure the procedures of constitutiona...

Some constitutional amendments are not really amendments. They are transformative constitutional reforms that reject the essential characteristics of the constitution and destroy its foundations. These constitutional dismemberments demolish the basic structure of the constitution while at the same time building a new foundation rooted in principles contrary to the old. Latin America has been particularly susceptible to constitutional dismemberments. This book draws from law, history, and p...

The Delaware River has been home to steamboats and canoes, swimmers and fishermen, and shipyards and factories for generations. Recreation and industry have long coexisted along its changing banks. Along the Delaware River presents the Delaware River corridor-from Hancock, New York, in the Catskill Mountains, to the mouth of the Delaware Bay-at the beginning of the twentieth century. Postcards, many nearly a hundred years old, are used to show a river system that both resembles and differs...

This uplifting story about one man's gift to the desert and the gift he receives in return has a powerful environmental lesson. Plus, this is the fixed format version, which will look almost identical to the print version. Additionally for devices that support audio, this ebook includes a read-along setting.

I****n this eye-opening study of the world's constitutions, scholars explain the creation, operation, revision, and replacement of multi-textual constitutions – a ubiquitous but woefully understudied constitutional form that is ever-present in many countries of the world but as-yet underappreciated in constitutional studies.Constitutions are commonly said to be either 'written' or 'unwritten.' This distinction has ...

This innovative book blends constitutional theory with real-life political practice to explore the impact of codifying constitutional amendments on the operation of the constitution in relation to democracy, the rule of law, and the separation of powers.It draws from comparative, historical, political and theoretical perspectives to answer questions all constitutional designers should ask themselves:- Should the constitution append amendments sequentially to the end of the t...

This book, the result of a major international conference held at Yale Law School, contains contributions from leading scholars in public law who engage critically with Bruce Ackerman's path-breaking book, Revolutionary Constitutions: Charismatic Leadership and the Rule of Law. The book also features a rebuttal chapter by Ackerman in which he responds directly to the contributors' essays.Some advance Ackerman's theory, others attack it, and still others refine it – but all...

The possibility of democracy-enhancing uses and anti-democratic abuses of referendums reveals a paradox: mechanisms of democracy can be exploited to do violence to the basic principles of democracy. The Limits and Legitimacy of Referendums seeks to identify standards we might use to assess the democratic legitimacy of a referendum when we cannot rely on the norms of traditional liberal democracy. This innovative book explores how referendums manage the tension between liberalism a...

This book examines the problem of constitutional change in times of crisis. Divided into five main parts, it both explores and interrogates how public law manages change in periods of extraordinary pressure on the constitution. In Part I, “Emergency, Exception and Normalcy,” the contributors discuss the practices and methods that could be used to help legitimize the use of emergency powers without compromising the constitutional principles that were created during a period of normalcy. In ...

This book offers a concise introduction to fatigue crack growth, based on practical examples. It discusses the essential concepts of fracture mechanics, fatigue crack growth under constant and variable amplitude loading and the determination of the fracture-mechanical material parameters. The book also introduces the analytical and numerical simulation of fatigue crack growth as well as crack initiation. It concludes with a detailed description of several practical case studies and some ex...

No province in Canada has codified a written constitution, and whether Quebec should be the first remains a controversial question. A Written Constitution for Quebec? enters into the debate, drawing a roadmap through the legal, political, and constitutional terrain of the issue.Leading scholars each take their own position in the debate, examining the issue from various sides and exploring the forms and limits of a codified Quebec constitution by asking whether Quebec shou...

This book examines the subject of constitutional unamendability from comparative, doctrinal, empirical, historical, political and theoretical perspectives. It explores and evaluates the legitimacy of unamendability in the various forms that exist in constitutional democracies.Modern constitutionalism has given rise to a paradox: can a constitutional amendment be unconstitutional? Today it is normatively contested but descriptively undeniable that a constitutional amendment—one that...