An easily accessible and comprehensive study of the International Court of Justice, this book succinctly explains all aspects of the world's most important court, including an overview of its composition and operation, jurisdiction, procedure, and the nature and impact of its judgments.
“Highly illuminating ... for anyone interested in the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the American democracy, lawyer and layperson alike." —The Los Angeles Review of Books In his major work, acclaimed historian and judicial authority Melvin Urofsky examines the great dissents throughout the Court’s long history. Constitutional dialogue is one of the ways in which we as a people reinvent and reinvigorate our democratic society. The Supreme Court has interpreted the meaning of the Constitution, acknowledged that the Court’s majority opinions have not always been right, and initiated a critical discourse about what a particular decision should mean before fashioning subsequent decisions—largely through the power of dissent. Urofsky shows how the practice grew slowly but steadily, beginning with the infamous and now overturned case of Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) during which Chief Justice Roger Taney’s opinion upheld slavery and ending with the present age of incivility, in which reasoned dialogue seems less and less possible. Dissent on the court and off, Urofsky argues in this major work, has been a crucial ingredient in keeping the Constitution alive and must continue to be so.
Brilliant. Colorful. Visionary. Tenacious. Witty. Since his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1986, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia has been described as all of these things and for good reason. He is perhaps the best-known justice on the Supreme Court today and certainly the most controversial. Yet most Americans have probably not read even one of his several hundred Supreme Court opinions. In Scalia Dissents, Kevin Ring, former counsel to the U.S. Senate's Constitution Subcommittee, lets Justice Scalia speak for himself. This volume—the first of its kind— showcases the quotable justice's take on many of today's most contentious constitutional debates. Scalia Dissentscontains over a dozen of the justice's most compelling and controversial opinions. Ring also provides helpful background on the opinions and a primer on Justice Scalia's judicial philosophy. Scalia Dissents is the perfect book for readers who love scintillating prose and penetrating insight on the most important constitutional issues of our time.
This edition differs from its predecessors in that, at the request of many French-speaking & other jurists, it is now completely bilingual, in the two official languages of the International Court of Justice under Article 39 of the Statute -English & French. As before, this compilation aims to provide the practitioner in the Court, the diplomat, the politician & the student with a handy & complete collection of documents relating to the operation of the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations. In order to increase the usefulness of this compilation, the unofficial translations of the Rules of Court of 1978 into Arabic, Chinese, Russian & Spanish -the official languages of the United Nations -have been included.
Dissent in courts has always existed. It is natural and healthy that judges disagree on legal issues of a certain importance and difficulty. The question is if it is reasonable to conceal dissent. Not every legal system allows judges to explain their disagreement to the public in a separate opinion attached to the judgment of the court. Most constitutional courts do. This book presents a comparative analysis of the practice of judicial dissent in constitutional courts from the perspective of the civil law tradition. It discusses the theoretical background, presents the history of the institution and today�s practice, thus laying down the basis for an accurate consideration of the phenomenon from a legal perspective.
Focusing on the behavioral aspects of disagreement within a panel and between the levels of the federal judicial hierarchy, the authors reveal the impact of individual attitudes or preferences on judicial decision-making, and hence on political divisions in the broader society.
This book investigates the extent to which traditional international law regulating foreign interventions in internal conflicts has been affected by the human rights paradigm. Since the adoption of the Charter of the United Nations, foreign armed interventions in internal conflicts have turned into a common practice. At first sight, it might seem that state practice has developed in a chaotic fashion, however on closer examination, specific patterns emerge. The book charts these patterns by examining the traditional doctrines of intervention and testing them against state practise. The book has two aims. Firstly, it seeks to clarify the current legal framework regulating interventions in internal conflicts. Secondly, it plots the emergence of new trends and investigates whether they are becoming part of positive international law. By taking this dual focus, it offers the first truly comprehensive examination of foreign interventions in internal conflicts.
Courts with the right to constitutional review exert considerable power in a political system. However, especially for Kelsenian constitutional courts there are hardly any large-N studies. This is mainly due to a lack of data. For the German Federal Constitutional Court, this gap has been closed by building a novel database, the development of which is depicted in this book. Employing data from this database, the occurrence of separate opinions in general and their different types in particular are analyzed. The book introduces a new, universal theory that reconciles and expands existing explanations. In a second step, the theory is applied to the German Federal Constitutional Court. It can be proven that one factor that has been neglected so far plays a decisive role: The judges' behavior depends on the profession they pursue after their time in office. Moreover, the study shows that - contrary to the common literature - it is not mainly the topic that determines a case's conflict potential but rather the number of issues a decision has to address.