Crown Under Law
Crown Under Law

Author: Alexander S. Rosenthal

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 9780739124147

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Crown under Law is an account of how and why the constitutional idea arose in early modern England. The book focuses on two figures: Richard Hooker and John Locke. Alexander S. Rosenthal characterizes Hooker as a transitional figure who follows the medieval natural law tradition even while laying the groundwork for Locke's political thought. The book challenges the influential interpretation of Locke by Leo Strauss (who saw Locke as a radical modernist) by illustrating the lines of continuity between Locke's argument in Two Treatises of Government and the earlier political tradition represented by Hooker. In the course of this intellectual history, Rosenthal explores the perennial themes of political philosophy: what is the origin of political authority, and what conditions render it legitimate? What is the nature of consent and representation? Who holds sovereignty within the state? What laws, if any, ought to bind the exercise of rule? By illustrating the often distinctive manner in which Hooker addresses the great questions, and how he powerfully affects later developments such as Locke's conception of the state, Rosenthal's Crown under Law establishes the important place of Richard Hooker in the history of political thought. Book jacket.

The Crown and the Courts
The Crown and the Courts

Author: David C. Flatto

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2020-11-10

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 0674249585

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A scholar of law and religion uncovers a surprising origin story behind the idea of the separation of powers. The separation of powers is a bedrock of modern constitutionalism, but striking antecedents were developed centuries earlier, by Jewish scholars and rabbis of antiquity. Attending carefully to their seminal works and the historical milieu, David Flatto shows how a foundation of democratic rule was contemplated and justified long before liberal democracy was born. During the formative Second Temple and early rabbinic eras (the fourth century BCE to the third century CE), Jewish thinkers had to confront the nature of legal authority from the standpoint of the disempowered. Jews struggled against the idea that a legal authority stemming from God could reside in the hands of an imperious ruler (even a hypothetical Judaic monarch). Instead scholars and rabbis argued that such authority lay with independent courts and the law itself. Over time, they proposed various permutations of this ideal. Many of these envisioned distinct juridical and political powers, with a supreme law demarcating the respective jurisdictions of each sphere. Flatto explores key Second Temple and rabbinic writings—the Qumran scrolls; the philosophy and history of Philo and Josephus; the Mishnah, Tosefta, Midrash, and Talmud—to uncover these transformative notions of governance. The Crown and the Courts argues that by proclaiming the supremacy of law in the absence of power, postbiblical thinkers emphasized the centrality of law in the people’s covenant with God, helping to revitalize Jewish life and establish allegiance to legal order. These scholars proved not only creative but also prescient. Their profound ideas about the autonomy of law reverberate to this day.

Constitutional and Administrative Law
Constitutional and Administrative Law

Author: Hilaire Barnett

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-08-31

Total Pages: 865

ISBN-13: 1000910652

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Hilaire Barnett’s Constitutional and Administrative Law has consistently provided students with reliable, accessible and comprehensive coverage of the Public Law syllabus. Mapped to the common course outline, the Fifteenth edition equips students with a thorough understanding of the UK constitution’s past, present and future by analysing and illustrating the political and socio-historical contexts that have shaped the major rules and principles of constitutional and administrative law, as well as ongoing constitutional reform. This edition has been fully updated throughout, including a restructure to Chapters 22 and 26, as well as additional pause and reflect sections in order to aid student understanding of this complex area of the law. The online digital content also includes updates to the Multiple Choice Questions, Instructor Test Bank and Web Links. Ideal for students studying constitutional and administrative law for the first time, this is an indispensable guide to the challenging concepts and legal rules in public law.

Aboriginal Customary Law: A Source of Common Law Title to Land
Aboriginal Customary Law: A Source of Common Law Title to Land

Author: Ulla Secher

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2014-12-01

Total Pages: 542

ISBN-13: 1782253769

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Described as 'ground-breaking' in Kent McNeil's Foreword, this book develops an alternative approach to conventional Aboriginal title doctrine. It explains that aboriginal customary law can be a source of common law title to land in former British colonies, whether they were acquired by settlement or by conquest or cession from another colonising power. The doctrine of Common Law Aboriginal Customary Title provides a coherent approach to the source, content, proof and protection of Aboriginal land rights which overcomes problems arising from the law as currently understood and leads to more just results. The doctrine's applicability in Australia, Canada and South Africa is specifically demonstrated. While the jurisprudential underpinnings for the doctrine are consistent with fundamental common law principles, the author explains that the Australian High Court's decision in Mabo provides a broader basis for the doctrine: a broader basis which is consistent with a re-evaluation of case-law from former British colonies in Africa, as well as from the United States, New Zealand and Canada. In this context, the book proffers a reconceptualisation of the Crown's title to land in former colonies and a reassessment of conventional doctrines, including the doctrine of tenure and the doctrine of continuity. 'With rare exceptions ... the existing literature does not probe as deeply or question fundamental assumptions as thoroughly as Dr Secher does in her research. She goes to the root of the conceptual problems around the legal nature of Indigenous land rights and their vulnerability to extinguishment in the former colonial empire of the Crown. This book is a formidable contribution that I expect will be influential in shifting legal thinking on Indigenous land rights in progressive new directions.' From the Foreword by Professor Kent McNeil (to read the Foreword please click on the 'sample chapter' link).