Mexico: The regulation of lobbying in the legislative branch

One of the great paradoxes of the modern world is that India, the land that produced such major world religions as Buddhism Jainism is now torn apart by caste and communal violence. Pakistan and Sri Lanka, like India, face severe ethnic problems. Law and order are to be emphasized. Caste and community must be protected by the executive branch of the Indian Government. This bas been laid down in the rules framed by the legislative branch. When this is not done there is a breakdown. No one is safe and no group is secure. In India today this is clearly the case. This book by M. J. Akbar is a collection of 15 journalistic pieces, written for Akbar's newspaper and magazine, The Telegraph and Sunday over the last decade. Because it is journalism, the important "burning" issues are covered such as the Moradabad massacre in 1980, the slaughter of the Uttar Pradesh Harijans in 1981 and the ongoing Babri Masjid controversey. It is journalism, but the writing is of high quality and evocative: "It is early morning and a mist lies on the river, making the pre-dawn haze more blurred. A part of the Howrah Bridge looms through the gauze, like a picture deliberately created by a photographer in search of art. The fires are out." (p. 170) Akbar's material is hard, brittle, compelling stuff. He writes with the passion of the committed and his commitments are to secularism, to humanity, to the truth, as he sees it, on the ground. Here, a brief account of Dr. Akbar's cultural background seems appropriate: He was born in 1951 and has become the English-speaking voice of post-Midnight's Children of India. The significance of post 1947 independence as a dividing line is generally not fully appreciated. Missing is the literary, sentimental romanticism of the earlier Indian generation of writers. Don Moraes and Ved Mehta already appear as dated figures of the past. Their India is another country. In Akbar's background there is no punting on English rivers, laboring at Oxford intonations, getting drunk after the Oxford-Cambridge boat race nor leisurely reading of the English romantic poets on the banks of the Cam. Akbar lives in the urban nightmare of Calcutta and in his nostrils is the smell of burning flesh and rotting corpses. Missing, though he is aware of the loss, is the romantic vision of Nehru and the religious idealism of Gandhi. Akbar is an Indian writing with a white-hot pen for Indians of today's India ...

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National Legislatures

10.1093/oso/9780190697570.003.0013 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Kevin L. Cope ◽

Hooman Movassagh

Keyword(s):

International Law ◽

Common Law ◽

Court Decisions ◽

Domestic Court ◽

Comparative Analyses ◽

Judicial Decisions ◽

National Courts ◽

Legislative Branch ◽

National Legislatures

One critique of some common-law comparative legal academies is their intensively “court-centric” focus, which, some believe, “marginalize[s]” the role of the legislative branch. The same may be said of the extant comparative international law literature: most of it concerns the interpretive approaches of national courts. In fact, one of the field’s seminal pieces characterizes comparative international law as involving “comparative analyses of various domestic court decisions.” Not surprisingly, then, nearly all of this volume’s contributions deal mostly or exclusively with courts and judicial decisions. We agree that courts can play a large part in diversifying how international law works across different systems, but we contend that the foundation of the comparative international law project lies elsewhere. We argue that among the most important and underappreciated interpretative acts—and therefore, those currently most needing study—are the international law interpretations of national legislatures.

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Parliamentarism and the Legislative Branch

10.1093/oso/9780198732174.003.0007 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

András Sajó ◽

Renáta Uitz

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Political Parties ◽

Legislative Branch ◽

Effective Decision ◽

The Law ◽

Internal Operations ◽

Effective Decision Making ◽

The Relationship ◽

Law Making

This chapter examines the relationship between parliamentarism and the legislative branch. It explores the evolution of the legislative branch, leading to disillusionment with the rationalized law-making factory, a venture run by political parties beyond the reach of constitutional rules. The rise of democratically bred party rule is positioned between the forces favouring free debate versus effective decision-making in the legislature. The chapter analyses the institutional make-up and internal operations of the legislature, the role of the opposition in the legislative assembly, and explores the benefits of bicameralism for boosting the powers of the legislative branch. Finally, it looks at the law-making process and its outsourcing via delegating legislative powers to the executive.

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Russia’s Non-Transformative Constitutional Founding

European Constitutional Law Review ◽

10.1017/s1574019619000403 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 15 (4) ◽

pp. 644-667

Author(s):

William Partlett ◽

Mikhail Krasnov

Keyword(s):

The Other ◽

Actual Process ◽

Transformative Potential ◽

Legislative Branch

The founding of Russia’s 1993 Constitution undermined its transformative potential – The use of pre-existing Soviet legality during Russia’s 1993 founding period encouraged President Yeltsin to push through a constitution that would ensure presidential dominance over the legislative branch – This presidential centralism has hindered the realisation of the transformative potential of the other parts of the constitution – Any future turn to transformative constitutionalism in Russia will require weakening the power of the Russian presidency – Transformative constitutionalism depends as much on the actual process of constitutional foundation as the text of the constitution

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De-Russification of Government as a Factor in the Disintegration of the USSR

Russian History ◽

10.30965/18763316-12340017 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 47 (4) ◽

pp. 362-398

Author(s):

Boris Mironov

Keyword(s):

Law Enforcement ◽

Soviet Union ◽

National Policy ◽

Power Structures ◽

Administrative Positions ◽

Political Inequality ◽

Government Administration ◽

The Soviet Union ◽

Democratic Principle ◽

Legislative Branch

Abstract In the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1990, the political inequality of the nationalities’ representation in institutions of governance was overcome, non-Russians’ participation in the power structures increased, and Russians’ role in administration correspondingly decreased. The increased non-Russian percentage in governance was mainly due to the introduction of the democratic principle in government formation, according to which ethnicities should participate in proportion to their number. By 1990 in the USSR overall, Russians had a slight majority in all power structures, corresponding roughly to their higher share in the country’s population. In the union republics, however, the situation was different. Only in the RSFSR did all peoples, Russian and non-Russian, participate in government administration in proportion to their numbers, following the democratic norm. Elsewhere, Russians were underrepresented and therefore discriminated against in all organs of power, including the legislative branch. Representatives of non-Russian titular nationalities, who on average filled two-thirds of all administrative positions, predominated in disproportion to their numbers. Given these representatives’ skill majority in legislative bodies, republican constitutions permitted them to adopt any laws and resolutions they desired, including laws on secession from the USSR; and the executive and judicial authorities, together with law enforcement, would undoubtedly support them. Thus, the structural prerequisites for disintegration were established. Thereafter, the fate of the Soviet Union depended on republican elites and the geopolitical environment, because of the Center’s purposeful national policy, aimed toward increasing non-Russian representation among administrative cadres and the accelerated modernization and developmental equalization of the republics.

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The Constitutional Crisis

Lions and Lambs ◽

10.12987/yale/9780300219050.003.0002 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Noah Benezra Strote

Keyword(s):

Labor Unions ◽

Common Ground ◽

The Political ◽

Constitutional Democracy ◽

Moral Principles ◽

Legislative Branch ◽

Parliamentary Supremacy ◽

Constitutional System ◽

The Stability ◽

The Great War

This chapter explores both sides of the country's deep-seated class conflict, which revealed itself in a public debate about constitutional democracy between the highest levels of the judiciary and the leaders of Germany's powerful labor unions. Legal theorists often emphasize the importance of reaching consensus on moral principles for the stability of a constitutional system. In Germany, that consensus did not exist. The political representatives whom Germans elected after the Great War to draft a constitution could agree that the new German state should be a republic as opposed to a monarchy. However, they could not find common ground regarding as foundational a question as the authority of the three branches of government and their proper relationship to one another. Most important, minds diverged on whether the state should embrace parliamentary supremacy: the idea that the legislative branch, not the judicial or executive, should enjoy final authority in national decision making.

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America's Israel

10.5810/kentucky/9780813179476.001.0001 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Kenneth Kolander

Keyword(s):

Middle East ◽

East Asia ◽

Strategic Alliance ◽

Central Place ◽

Military Aid ◽

Legislative Branch ◽

The U.S ◽

Israeli Occupation

The U.S.-Israel relationship that most people recognize today, which includes enormous amounts of U.S. military aid to Israel, a powerful strategic alliance, and an American willingness to acquiesce to Israeli occupation of certain Arab territories taken in 1967, came into existence between 1967 and 1975. The U.S. Congress played a key role in shaping American-Israeli relations during this period (as it does today) and, therefore, occupies a central place in this book. No book-length treatment of U.S.-Israel relations focuses primarily on the role of Congress. The imbalance in the scholarly perspective has created a misleading narrative that treats the legislative branch as being incidental to foreign policymaking. But in the years between the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and the 1975 Sinai II agreement, an activist Congress, empowered by the quagmire in East Asia and popular distrust of the presidency, and increasingly influenced by the Israel lobby, played a central role in reworking U.S.-Israel relations, and U.S. relations with the Middle East more generally.

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