Expounding the Constitution: Essays in Constitutional Theory

by Edited by Grant Huscroft

• ISBN13: 9780521887410
• ISBN10: 0521887410
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-04-21
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

What does it mean to interpret the constitution? Does constitutional interpretation involve moral reasoning, or is legal reasoning something different? What does it mean to say that a limit on a right is justified? How does judicial review fit into a democratic constitutional order? Are attempts to limit its scope incoherent? How should a jurist with misgivings about the legitimacy of judicial review approach the task of judicial review? Is there a principled basis for judicial deference? Do constitutional rights depend on the protection of a written constitution, or is there a common law constitution that is enforceable by the courts? How are constitutional rights and unwritten constitutional principles to be reconciled? In this book, these and other questions are debated by some of the world's leading constitutional theorists and legal philosophers. Their essays are essential reading for anyone concerned with constitutional rights and legal theory.

Author Biography

Grant Huscroft is Professor and Associate Dean at the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario in London. He has written extensively about constitutional rights and judicial review and his work has been published internationally. He is co-author of the leading treatise The New Zealand Bill of Rights and has co-edited four collections of essays.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Contributors	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Morality and the Enterprise of Interpretation
What Does Constitutional Interpretation Interpret?	p. 21
Do Judges Reason Morally?	p. 38
Constitutional Morality and Bills of Rights	p. 65
Justification and Rights Limitations	p. 93
Judicial Review, Legitimacy, and Justification
Constitutions, Judicial Review, Moral Rights, and Democracy: Disentangling the Issues	p. 119
The Incoherence of Constitutional Positivism	p. 138
The Travails of Justice Waldron	p. 161
Deference or Defiance? The Limits of the Judicial Role in Constitutional Adjudication	p. 184
Written And Unwritten Constitutional Principles
Constitutional Justice and the Concept of Law	p. 219
Written Constitutions and Unwritten Constitutionalism	p. 245
Unwritten Constitutional Principles	p. 277
Index	p. 313
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.