The Promises and Perils of Subjecthood and Jurisdiction

Author(s):  
Hannah Weiss Muller

Chapter 5 moves to the Indian Ocean and centers on the vibrant trading community of Calcutta. The East India Company’s assumption of the diwani for Bengal in 1765 and its accelerating territorial expansion in the Indian subcontinent provoked concerns about subject status and jurisdiction over those residing in Company territories. These concerns were never fully resolved by the 1773 Regulating Act and were intimately connected to struggles over authority between the British government and the East India Company. This chapter identifies the range of individuals actually subject to the Supreme Court of Judicature, founded in 1774, at the same time as it focuses on the political and jurisdictional repercussions of subject status. It underlines why the judiciary became a central site for negotiations over subjecthood and how subject status became a malleable tool in the hands of judges.

Author(s):  
Nathan Marvin ◽  
Blake Smith

France was a latecomer to the Indian Ocean among European powers. After some tentative and short-lived initiatives by private merchants, the first French East India Company was founded in 1664 by a French monarchy eager to catch up with England and the Netherlands, which had founded companies of their own at the beginning of the 17th century. Competing with the English and Dutch to replace the Portuguese as the preeminent European power in the Indian Ocean, France gradually established a network of colonial holdings that included the island colonies of the Mascarenes in the southwestern Indian Ocean (Réunion and Mauritius) as well as a network of trading posts along the shores of the Indian subcontinent. Plans to expand this colonial empire to Madagascar, however, met with repeated failure. Established as a regional power by the middle of the 18th century, France would be reduced by the century’s end to the role of a spectator of Britain’s rising hegemony. Nevertheless, France held on to some of its Indian Ocean territories, including Réunion and Pondicherry in South Asia. These outposts of French imperialism would inspire nostalgia, regret, and new colonial ambitions among metropolitan observers, and they would become sites of cultural hybridity and exchange. Indeed, while France’s empire in the Indian Ocean is often overshadowed by the emergence of British dominance in the 19th century, or by the intensity of French investment in the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean was a key area of French military, diplomatic, economic, and cultural interest in the 17th and 18th centuries, and beyond.


1913 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. McIlwain

At the meeting of the Political Science Association last year, in the general discussion, on the subject of the recall, I was surprised and I must admit, a little shocked to hear our recall of judges compared to the English removal of judges on address of the houses of parliament.If we must compare unlike things, rather than place the recall beside the theory or the practice of the joint address, I should even prefer to compare it to a bill of attainder.In history, theory and practice the recall as we have it and the English removal by joint address have hardly anything in common, save the same general object.Though I may not (as I do not) believe in the recall of judges, this paper concerns itself not at all with that opinion, but only with the history and nature of the tenure of English judges, particularly as affected by the possibility of removal on address. I believe a study of that history will show that any attempt to force the address into a close resemblance to the recall, whether for the purpose of furthering or of discrediting the latter, is utterly misleading.In the history of the tenure of English judges the act of 12 and 13 William III, subsequently known as the Act of Settlement, is the greatest landmark. The history of the tenure naturally divides into two parts at the year 1711. In dealing with both parts, for the sake of brevity, I shall confine myself strictly to the judges who compose what since 1873 has been known as the supreme court of judicature.


1999 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Gavison

A discussion of the role of courts in Israel today demands some introductory remarks. The Supreme Court and the President of the Supreme Court enjoy great acclaim and respect within Israel and abroad, but have recently come under attack from a variety of sources. These attacks are often confused, and many of them are clearly motivated by narrow partisan interests and an inherent objection to the rule of law and judicial review. But these motives do not necessarily weaken the dangers which the attacks pose to the legitimacy of the courts in general, and the Supreme Court in particular, in Israel's public life. The fact that in some sectors extremely harsh criticism of the court is seen to be an electoral boost, testifies to the serious and dangerous nature of the threat. This situation creates a dilemma for those who want a strong and independent judiciary, believing it is essential for freedom and democracy, but who also believe that, during the last two decades, the courts have transgressed limits they should respect. The dilemma becomes especially acute when the political echo sounds out in one's criticism, and when one is part of the group that believes that the legal and the judicial systems have made some contribution to the prevalence of these hyperbolic and dangerous attacks, as I am.


Author(s):  
Justin Crowe

This concluding chapter synthesizes the book's main findings about the architectonic politics of judicial institution building and contextualizes them within contemporary debates. It also reflects upon the lessons of the more than 200-year historical lineage of the institutional judiciary for our understanding of judicial power in America. More specifically, it considers the place of the federal judiciary in America's past and future in empirical and normative terms, respectively. It argues that both political rhetoric and academic exegesis about the Supreme Court embody a fundamentally incorrect presumption about the judiciary being external to politics, and that such presumption leads to a series of misconceptions about the relationship between judicial power and democratic politics. The chapter offers a conception that not only locates the judicial branch squarely within the political arena but also places substantially greater emphasis on its cooperation rather than conflict with other actors and institutions in that arena.


2002 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Kaplan

Current discussions on the political developments in Turkey frequently frame the struggles between the military and religious parties as a war between secularism and Islam and draw out incommensurable differences between the two sides. Indeed, the military establishment, which casts itself as the guardian of the secular republic, succeeded in 1997 in having the Supreme Court ban the Welfare Party, the first openly religious party ever to form a government in the Turkish Republic. The generals justified this seemingly undemocratic move by claiming that that this party was trying to reinstate the sacred shari[ayin]a law.


Author(s):  
David Polizzi

The phenomenology of solitary and supermax confinement reflects what Giorgio Agamben has defined as the state of exception. The state of exception is defined as the blurring of the legal and political order, which constructs a zone of indifference for those forced to endure this situation. This notion of the state of exception can be applied to the zone of indifference created by the Supreme Court, which seems unwilling to outlaw this harmful practice relative to 8th Amendment protections prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment and the political order which is all too inclined to continue use strategy. One of the central aspects of this “ecology of harm”, is the way in which the very structures of this type of confinement, helps to invite and legitimize abusive attitudes and behaviors in penitentiary staff.


Author(s):  
Lee HP

This chapter explores the constitutional and political dimensions of the crisis that rocked the Malaysian judiciary in 1988. For the first time in Malaysian legal history, the highest judicial officer in the land was suspended and, after an inquiry to determine whether he should be removed for alleged misbehaviour, was subsequently removed. Following this unprecedented development, two other senior judges of the Supreme Court were also removed from office after an inquiry by a second tribunal. The political dimension cannot be divorced from the constitutional dimension because the legal and constitutional manoeuvrings were consonant with political skirmishes that involved, at one stage, the political survival of Prime Minister Mahathir.


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