Part IV Federalism, A Federalism in Canada, Ch.20 The Spending Power in Canada

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kong Hoi L
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
Federal Spending ◽  
Constitutional Interpretation ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Division Of Powers ◽  
Constitutional Legitimacy

In this chapter, I will argue that the Canadian Constitution authorizes the federal government to spend in areas of provincial jurisdiction and constrains the scope of this power. I will, moreover claim that effective enforcement of these limits requires that the judiciary recognize its institutional limits and that the political branches act with restraint. The arguments advanced will seek to occupy a middle ground, between proponents of an unlimited spending power and critics who would bind federal spending to the limits imposed by the legislative division of powers, strictly interpreted. In staking out this ground, I will undertake an approach to constitutional interpretation that closely examines the sources of constitutional law and carefully considers issues of institutional competence and constitutional legitimacy.

scholarly journals Senate Reform and the Political Safeguards of Canadian Federalism in Québec

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-28
Author(s):  
Jean-Christophe Bédard-Rubin
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
The Core ◽  
Division Of Powers ◽  
Canadian Federalism ◽  
Core Idea

Unlike in Canada, the doctrine of political safe-guards of federalism is a tantalizing presence in American constitutional law that changing tides and moods have never completely submerged. The core idea is simple: political institutions in the United States have been designed to ensure that interests of the states are represented in the federal decision-making process. Thus, the judiciary does not need to intervene to police the federal division of powers.

Part IV Federalism, B Federalism in Context, Ch.28 International Treaty-Making and Treaty Implementation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cyr Hugo ◽  
Mestral Armand de
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
International Treaty ◽  
Division Of Powers ◽  
Canadian Law ◽  
Canadian Federalism ◽  
Modus Vivendi ◽  
Tacit Consent ◽  
Treaty Implementation

This chapter discusses the difficult questions surrounding treaties in Canadian constitutional law. The first part examines treaty-making powers, in particular, the lack of explicit constitutional provisions which outline how, and who, may enter into treaties under Canadian federalism. Under the current Canadian modus vivendi the federal government is the entity which exercises foreign relations, including treaty-making. However, Canadian foreign relations are rich and complex, and all provinces engage in some way in foreign relations—with Ottawa’s explicit or tacit consent—particularly through the use of administrative agreements. The second part of this chapter examines treaty implementation in Canada, which must occur according to the usual division of powers under the Constitution Act, 1867 following the Labour Conventions Reference. Moreover, under current law there are at least 13 forms of implementation—meaning that “legislative implementation” will not always be necessary for a treaty to be considered “implemented” under Canadian law.

Comment on “Critics of the Judicial Committee: The New Orthodoxy and an Alternative Explanation”

1986 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 531-536
Author(s):  
Peter H. Russell
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Constitutional Interpretation ◽  
Privy Council ◽  
Division Of Powers

I appreciate the opportunity Professor Vaughan's article provides to clarify some of my thoughts on the Judicial Committee and constitutional interpretation.Vaughan and I are in agreement on two broad points. First, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council read a theory of classical federalism into the BNA Act. This theory of divided sovereignty was expressed most clearly by Lord Watson in the Maritime Bank case. Secondly, the BNA Act's treatment of federalism is highly centralist, both in the division of powers and in the federal government's imperial powers over provincial governments. Both these points are contained in the following passage from my introduction: “In their anxiety to preserve a division of powers appropriate for “classical federalism” and thereby resist the strongly centralizing tendencies of the constitutional text, the Judicial Committee developed an acute sensitivity to the competing claims of the provinces and the federal government.” I think Professor Vaughan would agree with that statement.

Herstellung gleichwertiger Lebensverhältnisse – ein Verfassungsgebot?

Der Staat ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 545-576
Author(s):  
Stefan Lenz
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Journal Article ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Living Conditions ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Basic Law ◽  
Gleichwertige Lebensverhältnisse ◽  
Political Demand

Die Herstellung gleichwertiger Lebensverhältnisse ist zu einer allgegenwärtigen politischen Forderung avanciert. Die Bundesregierung berief eine Kommission „Gleichwertige Lebensverhältnisse“, der Bund und einige Länder gründeten Heimatministerien. Verbreitet ist die Annahme, das Grundgesetz verpflichte den Staat auf die Herstellung gleichwertiger Lebensverhältnisse. Dieser Beitrag begibt sich auf die Suche nach einer solchen Staatszielbestimmung. Dabei wird er nicht fündig: weder in Art. 72 II GG noch im Bundesstaats- oder im Sozialstaatsprinzip noch unter angeblich mitgeregelten Verfassungsvoraussetzungen. Schließlich erhebt der Beitrag verfassungspolitische Bedenken gegen Staatszielbestimmungen im Allgemeinen und eine Staatszielbestimmung „Gleichwertige Lebensverhältnisse“ im Besonderen. Der politische Prozess kann und muss frei entscheiden, ob und wie der Staat auf die Gleichwertigkeit der Lebensverhältnisse hinarbeitet. Creating equivalent living conditions throughout Germany became an ubiquitous political demand. The Federal Government appointed a commission „Equivalent living conditions“ and as well as some Länder established a ministry of homeland. According to a widespread assumption, the Basic Law obliges the state to create equivalent living conditions. This journal article is looking for such a national objective in the Basic Law. The search fails. The alleged objective can neither be found in article 72 of the Basic Law nor in constitutional principles or among constitutional preconditions, which are supposed to be positivized. Finally, this article raises doubts against national objectives in constitutional law in general and the suggested objective „Equivalent living conditions“ in particular. The political process can and should decide freely, whether and by which means the state should work towards equivalent living conditions.

Authoritarian Rule of Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Meierhenrich
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Hybrid Regimes ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Legal Origins ◽  
Comparative Historical Analysis ◽  
Society Research

What for many years was seen as an oxymoron—the notion of an authoritarian rule of law—no longer is. Instead, the phenomenon has become a cutting edge concern in law-and-society research. In this concluding chapter, I situate Fraenkel’s theory of dictatorship in this emerging research program. In the first section, I turn the notion of an authoritarian rule of law into a social science concept. In the second section, I relate this concept to that of the dual state and both to the political science literature on so-called hybrid regimes. Drawing on this synthesis, the third section makes the concept of the dual state usable for comparative-historical analysis. Through a series of empirical vignettes, I demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Fraenkel’s institutional analysis of the Nazi state. I show why it is essential reading for anyone trying to understand the legal origins of dictatorship, then and now.

De voorlopers van het parlementologisch onderzoek in België

Res Publica ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-455
Author(s):  
Els Witte
Keyword(s):  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
Scientific Publications ◽  
Relative Lack ◽  
Methodological Foundation ◽  
Members Of Parliament ◽  
Mutual Relations

In this article we conclude, via a comparison of the 19th C. scientific publications concerning the Belgian parliament and the state of parliamentological research of the day, that Belgian writers achieved an international standard. In Belgium, as elsewhere in Europe, parliamentology was pursued from the standpoint of various complementary schools of thought. Modern political history provided very detailed information about the functioning of the parliamentary institution; constitutional law investigated the juridical aspects of it ; political science transcended these juridical boundaries and took account of the political aspects as well ; this method was also pursued in the field of political economy which, from a methodological point of view, can be regarded as the fundamental current of parliamentary sociology .It can be asserted that these writers are the founders of modern parliamentology despite the rather weak methodological foundation of their studies, the relative lack of empirical data-collection and the infiuenceof political commitment. As is still the case today, so also in the 19th C, the formal-juridical approach was dominant ; however, it was also insight-fully recognized that the most important problems of power lay in the mutual relations of the members of parliament themselves and in their relation to the majority, the opposition and the executive power. These studies furnish, therefore, very interesting lines of inquiry for the diachronic treatment of the majority of the problems of contemporary parliamentology.

The Case for Repealing the Second Amendment? The Historical Barriers to Constitutional Change

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 595-607
Author(s):  
David T. Konig
Keyword(s):  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Second Amendment ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Popular Constitutionalism

The controversy surrounding the Second Amendment—“the right of the people to keep and bear arms”—is, to a large extent, historical in nature, redolent of other matters in this country’s legal and constitutional past. But the historical analogies that might support the Amendment’s repeal do not permit easy conclusions. The issue demands that legal historians venture beyond familiar territory to confront unavoidable problems at the intersection of theory and practice and of constitutional law and popular constitutionalism. An interdisciplinary analysis of Lichtman’s Repeal the Second Amendment illuminates the political, legal, and constitutional dimensions—as well as the perils—of undertaking the arduous amending process permitted by Article V of the U.S. Constitution.

Minority Rights

2018 ◽  
pp. 165-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Kymlicka
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
International Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Level ◽  
International Political Theory ◽  
Rights Issues

It has often been noted that the political claims of minorities and indigenous peoples are marginalized within traditional state-centric international political theory; but perhaps more surprisingly, they are also marginalized within much contemporary cosmopolitan political theory. In this chapter, I will argue that neither cosmopolitanism nor statism as currently theorized is well equipped to evaluate the normative claims at stake in many minority rights issues. I begin by discussing how the “minority question” arose as an issue within international relations—that is, why minorities have been seen as a problem and a threat to international order—and how international actors have historically attempted to contain the problem, often in ways that were deeply unjust to minorities. I will then consider recent efforts to advance a pro-minority agenda at the international level, and how this agenda helps reveal some of the limits of both cosmopolitan and statist approaches to IPT.

scholarly journals Los procesos secesionistas y el derecho europeo

2016 ◽  
pp. 347
Author(s):  
Javier Tajadura Tejada
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Member State ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
The Political ◽  
European Law ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Citizenship ◽  
Regional Authorities

Este artículo analiza en primer lugar el significado de la secesión en el Derecho Internacional y en el Derecho Constitucional. Asimismo, examina cómo se aborda el fenómeno de la secesión en el Derecho comunitario europeo. Esto obliga a estudiar dos tipos de problemas: por un lado, el de la secesión de un Estado miembro respecto de la propia Unión; por otro, el de la fragmentación de un Estado miembro por la secesión de una parte de su territorio. La conclusión es que la conservación o fragmentación de un Estado miembro de la Unión Europea no es un asunto interno: la secesión de partes de un territorio afecta al sistema político europeo en su conjunto, en la medida en que es una forma de integración federal donde no caben actos unilaterales que quebranten el principio de lealtad federal de la Unión y la ciudadanía europea que ha ido conformándose en las últimas décadas.This article analyzes the meaning of secession in international and constitutional law. It also examines the phenomenon of secession in European law. This requires studying two types of problems: the secession of a member state of the European Union and the fragmentation of a Member State for the secession of part of its territory. The conclusion is that conservation or fragmentation of a Member State of the European Union is not an internal matter. In our opinión, the political and legal system of the Union can be characterized also federally, which prevents the national and regional authorities to carry out unilateral acts that go against the principle of Community federal loyalty and European citizenship.

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