Doctrine Of Sovereignty Research Articles

Islamism and Nationalism as Sister Ideologies: Reflections on the Politicization of Islam in a Longue Durée Perspective

Islamism and nationalism are usually regarded as opposites. The main purpose of this article is to question that notion. Instead of conceptualizing these two clusters of ideologies as standing in contradiction to each other, it may be worthwhile to look for affinities between them. That argument is based on an analysis of the doctrine of sovereignty as it underlies modern nationalism (congruence between the state and nation) and how this idiom shows signs of similarities to the theory of the classical caliphate (congruence between the ruler and ummah). When modern nationalism enters the political scene of the Muslim Middle East, Islamic heritage will constitute an important element of the way the nation, in relation to the state, will come to be articulated. The article starts by discussing developments in three countries where the relationship between Islamism and nationalism has been sufficiently evident (Egypt, Iran, and Turkey), and concludes with a discussion of the need for a theory of modernity, especially when tracing the historical roots of modern ideologies such as nationalism and Islamism.

ADMINISTRATIVE LAW FOR “LIVING PEOPLE”

Public power has exercised Sir David Williams throughout his distinguished career. He has emphasised his writing that administrative law, by which such power is controlled, is subject perpetual motion, constantly changing emphasis, content, and approach.1 In this, he echoes Bagehot's view of the English constitution.2 And indeed the control of public power through judicial review lies at the heart of the area of law we call constitutional. Felix Frankfurter thought that in administrative law we are dealing pre-eminently with law the making; with fluid tendencies and tentative traditions.3 Recent constitutional shifts have illustrated the point. They have shaken the fig leaves. Of the frenzy of academic repositioning that has followed, Sir David has simply said it was inevitable that as a by-product of the new constitutional developments, the literature on judicial restraint and judicial activism will grow haze of genuine anxiety.4 As to how judges might meet such anxieties controversial cases, his earlier advice presumably still applies. It depends each case, he says, on sense and good timing.5 Good luck, Judge! Mine is jurisdiction where similar constitutional shifts have occurred. In New Zealand, we too have no single written constitutional instrument. Indeed, it is widespread misconception that we have no constitutional law or that if we do it begins and ends with the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. Our Constitution Act does not purport to be constitutive. Enacted 1986 to repeal the Imperial Statute of 1852 which had originally conferred representative government, it simply recognises that the Parliament consists of the Sovereign right of New Zealand and the House of Representatives. The Parliament continues to have full power to make laws.6 There is separate

The International Criminal Court Goes to Bat on African Terrain: A Snapshot of Jurisdictional Hurdles Posed by the Situations in Sudan & Uganda

Since the negotiation and subsequent establishment of the mechanism of complementarity as being at the heart of the International Criminal Court’s delicate balancing of the concept of an international criminal law regime and the doctrine of sovereignty, the mechanism has been seen as having the ability to be a double edged sword. In the context of this commentary the look is at the potential of the doctrine as a likely vehicle to push states to retain control over prosecuting nationals charged with violating international humanitarian law while on occasion using the shield of sovereignty in matters pertaining to amnesties/pardons. In light of current situations under the ICC’s prosecutorial ‘radar’ and the focus of its activity, this commentary visits fleetingly the jurisdictional issues that are muddying the clean run of the ICC’s processes and procedures.

Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto (review)

Reviewed by: Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto John W. Friesen Taiaiake Alfred. Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto. 2nd ed. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2009. 208 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $19.95 sc. Clearly a prophet for our time, Taiaiake Alfred competently tackles a variety of very complex issues related to Aboriginal self-determination in Canada. He is admirably equipped to take up this challenge, having grown up amidst the political struggles of the Kahnawake Mohawk, and armed with a Ph.D. in comparative and political thought from Cornell University. Alfred’s primary objective is to clarify what Aboriginal self-determination means and how it can become a reality. In doing so he takes both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal leaders to task for shortsightedness, unfairness, and misrepresentation. The book includes three sections—peace, power, and righteousness—all of which have to be read if Alfred’s intent is to be appreciated. Peace is apparently unattainable for First Nations in a society that fosters materialism, consumerism, and corporate globalization, all of which stand diametrically opposed to traditional [End Page 251]Indigenous values (25, 40). As the process of decolonization finally gets underway, Native communities often find themselves represented by leaders who have moved away from the principles embedded in traditional First Nations cultures, accommodated Western cultural values, and endorsed the larger political and economic system (28). They, like government bureaucrats, seem to have forgotten that, at the time of European contact, Native American societies had already achieved true civilization and functioned democratically. Alfred does not romanticize the past, but observes that it is time for First Nations to stop “rejoicing in our survival,” recognize their past pain and sorrows, and take up the challenge of fulfilling their responsibilities to their ancestors. Power is defined and analyzed in the second section. Alfred analyzes the phrases—abuse of power and re-empowerment—in delineating violations in power brokering by leaders in both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities. He contends that some Native power wielders have become disconnected from their communities by emulating the philosophy and tactics of dominant government structures and operations. Thankfully, some traditionalists, recognizing the risk of intellectual co-optation, have adopted a more Indigenous stance and focused on actualizing their own powers and ignoring opposing external powers (72). Formalizing a traditional perspective could keep Indigenous peoples from pursuing sovereignty in the format practiced in Canada and the United States. By becoming Westernized, current Aboriginal leaders may legitimize dominant societal hierarchical structures that allow leaders to rule their own people in despotic fashion. By contrast, “Native leaders have the responsibility to expose the truth and debunk the imperial pretence that supports the doctrine of state sovereignty and white society’s dominion over indigenous nations and their lands” (83). On a positive note, Alfred notes that Indigenous leaders around the world have experienced a measure of success in undermining the intellectual credibility of state sovereignty as the only legitimate form of Aboriginal self-government. Alfred elucidates a series of formalized steps used by state agents to co-opt Aboriginal leaders (99), a paradigm by which Native leaders can achieve balance in their political lives (103), a list of characteristics indicative of a healthy traditional Aboriginal outlook (106), and four Machiavellian principles to avoid in forging honest forms of leadership (113). Righteousness is sometimes understood in terms of acting kindly, honestly, and fairly towards other human beings. For Native people, the challenge of meeting the terms of this definition are particularly complex. Aboriginals find themselves caught between attempting to meet the needs of their communities and restoring them to health, and, at the same time, trying to satisfy the demands and expectations of mainstream society. This is not always easy when leaders are insensitive or out-of-touch [End Page 252]with their constituents. “Unfortunately, many Native politicians share a political vision that mirrors the worst tendencies of mainstream society” (139). Alfred documents the experience of the Sechelt First Nation in which members of the local community found it necessary to reject an Agreement-in-Principle signed by their leadership with government officials. Subsequent elections and confrontations brought negotiations between the Sechelt Band and the government to a halt. But...

The Constitution as Higher Law

The doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty appears to rule out any comparison between the Westminster Parliament and the United States Congress or the German Bundestag, whose powers are carefully circumscribed by their respective constitutions. Nevertheless, the nature of the British constitutional order is remarkably similar to that of the written constitution. This is because the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, contrary to Dicey's view, does not consist in a single dominant idea but in a number of related and mutually supporting principles. The way in which these principles interact is parallel to the interaction of the main clauses of the United States Constitution or the German Basic Law. In the United Kingdom, as elsewhere, the proper subject matter of constitutional law is the higher law that makes possible the operation of legislative, executive and judicial institutions under a public order of rules.

The Doctrine of Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources in International Law and its Practice in Developing Countries: The Case of a Mining Sector in Tanzania

The Doctrine of Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources in International Law and its Practice in Developing Countries: The Case of a Mining Sector in Tanzania

Private Law Models for Public Law Concepts: The Roman Law Theory of Dominium in the Monarchomach Doctrine of Popular Sovereignty

AbstractThe essay traces the juridical origins of the modern doctrine of popular sovereignty as developed by the monarchomach jurists of the late sixteenth century. Particularly, the use of doctrines from the Roman law of property explains the sovereign right of the people to resist and reconstitute the commonwealth. Reviving the civilian concept of dominium during the French Wars of Religion and dynastic royal politics, these radical jurists articulated the claim that the people, not kings, have property rights over the commonwealth. By conceptualizing the people corporately as property-owners in this way, they were able to draw on legal arguments from Roman law to justify popular resistance as an assertion of a corporate property right. In doing so, the monarchomachs expressed an elaborate theory of state and sovereignty within the grammar of the Roman private law.

Modern Social Imaginaries by Charles Taylor The Modern Self in the Labyrinth: Politics and the Entrapment Imagination by Eyal Chowers (review)

[MW5 8.1 (2008) 111-127] ISSN 1470-8078 Book Reviews Charles Taylor, Modem Social Imaginaries (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004), 215pp. ISBN 0-82233-255-8. £14.50. Eyal Chowers, The Modem Self in the Labyrinth: Politics and the Entrapment Imagina tion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 250pp. ISBN 0-67401-330-1.£32.50. Max Weber famously talked about the difficulties of maintaining an autonomous existence under the bureaucratized conditions of modern life, and challenged those who would wish to be seen as having a vocation (Beruf) to meet the demands of the day. In his own search for the 'sources' of the modern self, Charles Taylor has endeavoured to outline his own vision of what selfhood entails in the modern era, and where it has come from. Both Weber and Taylor too are incredibly interested in the place of religion in modern life, but whereas Weber's account of religion was always primarily historical and tied to questions of the uniqueness of occidental development, Taylor brings to his own writings a deeply suggestive Catholicism, which he uses to counter the claims of an apparently atomistic contemporary liberal ism. In his recent book on modern social imaginaries, Taylor attempts to provide a brief genealogy of something like the myths we have come to live by, and the events which he thinks might well come to dominate our sense of community at particular moments; the case of the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales is one of the examples that comes out here. But there is a wider historical vision, as one would both hope and expect, from Taylor's investigation. The book opens with a discussion of the 'modern moral order' as seen through Grotius and Locke—and although the two are not quite conflated, they do run together. Natural rights discourses are given key analytical purchase for their impact on our understanding modernity itself, and Taylor focuses on Locke especially as a figure that tied consent to property, religion and money, arguing that 'the require ment of original consent, via the halfway house of Locke's consent to taxation, becomes the fully-fledged doctrine of popular sovereignty under which we now live' (p. 5). Today, this has grown in 'extension' and 'intensity' (p. 5). From an initial use in discussions of governmental legitimacy, to a reformulation of God's providence and cosmological order—the idea of secularization, which he does seem to take over somewhat from Weber's schema—Taylor thinks these basic ideas have become more than an intellectual theory, and transformed into a social imaginary. The natural law 'hermeneutic of legitimation' (p. 7) highlights the fact that the modern moral order as social imaginary travels on another axis, from the herme neutic to the prescriptive, and on this journey becomes associated with various ideas about the relationship between law and history (e.g., the ancient Constitution© Max Weber Studies 2008, Global Policy Institute, London Metropolitan University, 31 Jewry Street, London, EC3N 2EY. 112 Max Weber Studies in English discourse), the importance of hierarchy (ranging from Platonic theories of the Forms to theories of correspondence and complementarity (the King's two bodies for example) (pp. 9ff., also p. 16). Such ideas contain 'ontic' components— they are ideas that make claims about their realizability. But, .. .the modern idealization of order departs radically from this. It is not just that there is no place for a Platonic-type Form at work: connected to this, whatever distribution of functions a society might develop is deemed contingent; its justification is instrumental and it cannot itself define the good. The basic normative principle is, indeed, that the members of society serve each other's needs, help each other. In this way, they complement each other. But the particular functional differ entiation they need to take on to do this most effectively is endowed with no essential worth. It is adventitious and potentially changeable. Mutual respect and interest make up the new normative order, and it is judged, as is the organization of society, along instrumental grounds (p. 13). This is a secular modification of Locke's account of divine order and providence, tied to the proper use of...

Should Britain Have a Written Constitution?

The question ‐ ought Britain to have a written, more properly, a codified constitution ‐ is perhaps wrongly put. The real question ought to be ‐ why should Britain not have such a constitution… She is, after all, one of just three democracies without one.There are two reasons why Britain has lacked a constitution. The first is that, historically, Britain never had a constitutional moment; the second is the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. Today, however, Britain finds herself engaged in the process of gradually converting an uncodified constitution into a codified one. There is undoubtedly a case in principle for enacting a constitution, but perhaps it ought to wait until the process is completed.There is, moreover, a tension between two types of codified constitution ‐ a lawyer's constitution which would be long and highly detailed, and a people's constitution which would be short, but, inevitably, broadly‐worded, and therefore open to interpretation by the courts.

The third era of human rights: global accountability

This article argues that the trend in the current protection of human rights may be seen as a revival of an old idea: governments are accountable for their actions. The protection of human rights has gone through three eras. In the first era, the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages claimed to rule from a divine mandate. This principle of natural law was a unifying factor in western Europe because it created a standard system of morality. The second era, beginning in the seventeenth century with the doctrine of state sovereignty, rejected that natural law. Rulers wanted to run their own territories and not be subject to foreign influence. Laws were created by the ‘national sovereign’ (king, queen, president, parliament, congress and so on). This legal doctrine survived for about three centuries, but the excesses of leaders such as Hitler in the middle of last century forced a re-think. Although the term ‘natural law’ is not used, there has been a revival of its essential meaning: that governments have to be answerable to a higher authority for their behaviour.

Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law. By Antony Anghie. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. 378. $110.00 cloth.

Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law. By Antony Anghie. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. 378. f 110.00 cloth. Reviewed by Leslye Obiora, University of Arizona Anghie posits imperial interests as the crucible for the improvisation of the norms, structures, and processes that constitute the international rule of law. Identifying the seminal works of Francisco de Vitoria as a watershed that engendered juridical techniques and institutions manifestly appropriated as license to live by plunder, he copiously depicts the chameleonic persistence of Vitorian epochs belied by rituals of innovation in the international legal framework. Exploring the politics that inform the complex of rules refereeing what entities are sovereign and ascribing relevant powers (p. 16), Anghie analyzes the doctrine of sovereignty not merely as a fetish albeit impotent to fetter imperialism, but precisely as a simple expedient contrived to entrench colonial exploitations. Addressing the intimate connection between the doctrine and the question of culture, the author critiques the construction of sovereignty as the intrinsic preserve of a racialized elite simultaneously vested with the prerogative to arbitrate the ripeness (or lack thereof) of competing entities for induction. In a similar vein, Anghie invokes an array of vivid arguments to demonstrate the contemporary significance of the self-sustaining exclusions that inaugurated the jurisprudential resources of international law as a strategy of European imperialism. Illuminating the ideological and material constraints that predetermine dominations and the dependencies that thwart the substantive self-determination of third world states, he illustrates the incoherence of the axiom of sovereign equality and its corollaries as models of universal applicability. Underscoring a constellation of fictions that reinforce the disparate integration of the third world into the global order, the author chronicles a genius of creativity that legitimizes and perpetuates imperialism as a pervasive constant. Dissecting iterations of the colonial encounter as fossils with discernible imprints of historical shifts in the global political economy that incubate perenniai inequities, Anghie draws on the Mandate System to exemplify the genesis of egregious extremities that precipitated the Rwandan carnage (p. 191). The instructiveness of Anghie's insight into the profound influence of the global political economy on localized violence falters in light of the explanatory force he imputes to ethnicity and racial determinism in lieu of rigorous attention to the objective conditions underlying conflict over resources (p. 206). The work would have been further enriched had the author turned his piercing gaze to explore, animate, and engage the third world's agency in its own predicament. An undertone of the work suggests an unquestioning embrace of the passivity of the third world that is rather curious. …

Dual Nationality in International Law

The presentation begins with introductory remarks centred principally on the topicality of the legal status of dual nationals. Whereas earlier the doctrine of State sovereignty required that an individual have only one nationality, the status of dual nationality is now increasingly accepted, though not created, by States. The development of human rights law is of importance insofar as statelessness is now considered to be a greater evil. It then continues with some basic principles in international law, the first being that it is for each State to decide who are its nationals. This leads to a discussion of some landmarks in the development of the international law of nationality: the Tunis and Morocco Nationality Decrees before the PCIJ in 1923; the League of Nations codifying Convention on Certain Questions Relating to the Conflict of nationality Laws, 1930; and the Nottebohm case before the ICJ, 1953, in particular. Te greatest contribution to the topic has come from the Iran-United States C...

Taking the Strasbourg Jurisprudence into Account: Developing a ‘Municipal Law of Human Rights’ under the Human Rights Act

Questions surrounding the legitimate extent of the judicial role have long been the source of controversy. Concerns that unelected and unrepresentative judges are ‘legislating’ rather than interpreting the law or are interfering in matters of ‘democratically endorsed’ government policy, have often been, and will continue to be, raised by academics and politicians alike. The question is one of separation of power— of the appropriate constitutional role and division of functions between the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the United Kingdom Government. This debate has been given a new dimension by the Human Rights Act 1998 (hereafter HRA), most obviously through the courts' exercise of their power under section 3(1) of that Act—the duty to interpret primary and secondary legislation to be, as far as possible, compatible with ‘the Convention rights’. Indeed much has been made of the unique method by which the HRA reconciles the interpretative obligation under section 3(1) with the sovereignty of Parliament by way of the ‘declaration of incompatibility’ under section 4. The doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty imposes limits on the scope of section 3(1); in spite of its ‘broad and malleable’ language, which might permit ‘an interpretation which linguistically may appear strained’, it does not sanction courts to act as legislators. As Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead noted in Re S; Re W, attributing to a statutory provision ‘a meaning which departs substantially from a fundamental feature of an Act of Parliament is likely to have crossed the boundary between interpretation and amendment’. That case has been seen by some as a retreat from what has been termed the ‘far-fetched’ interpretation of section 3(1) adopted by the House of Lords in the earlier decision of R v A. Nicol, for one, has argued that Re S; Re W and Anderson taken together, clearly reject ‘the notion that “interpretations” could conflict with clear statutory words' — as R v A had arguably suggested — thereby endorsing parliamentary sovereignty, above the Convention, ‘as the country's supreme constitutional doctrine’. For it to retain its legitimacy therefore, the judicial act under section 3(1) needs to remain an exercise of ‘interpretation’: to attribute a meaning to a legislative provision ‘quite different from that which Parliament intended … would go well beyond any interpretative process sanctioned by section 3 of the 1998 Act’. It would ‘not be judicial interpretation but judicial vandalism’.

Reading Shakespeare's Cupid

Reading Shakespeare's Cupid Alan Lewis The figure of Cupid flits through Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream (hereafter abbreviated as Dream), a mythological agent of desire whose varied portraiture contributes to the staging of the subversion of the subject through his desire. Supplementing his Christian theological counterparts, Cupid figures in an authorial meditation on the nature of the lover's desire and its relations to cultural ideals of Love and masculinity. The exploration that follows tracks how Shakespeare uses a Renaissance mythography of Cupid and Christian theology, together with a rich literary tradition of representing the subject and the doctrine of sacral sovereignty, to advance proto-psychoanalytic allegories of the advent of desire and the subject's displacements of lack. In both dramas, Cupid is described at an originary scene of desire, as the cause of desire and sometimes as the phantom object of desire, an allegory of desire that anticipates the Lacanian subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire.1 Practitioners of the new historicism have eschewed the use of psychoanalytic theory to study early modern texts as employing a putatively ahistorical notion of the subject. This article takes up Stephen Greenblatt's challenge that "psychoanalysis can redeem its belatedness only when it historicizes its own procedures,"2 showing how early modern theology, political theory, Petrarchan poetics, and gender ideology all inform Shakespeare's representations of the subject, powerful representations that in turn inform the modern discipline of psychoanalysis. While the tailpiece of this article reads an overlooked letter in the history of Freudian theory for a passing debt to Dream, psychoanalytic inquiry into eros in the Renaissance can begin to historicize its procedures by investigating how early modern texts position God as Other, as the traditional guarantor of identity and the self's coherence. This article approaches Shakespeare's mapping of the subject's relations to the politico-theological Other in God and sacral sovereignty onto his relations to alterity in an allegory of desire and Love. That is, the article assumes that the politico-theological is a crucial interpretative field for Shakespeare's representations of the literary subject in the travails of his passion. Attending to Shakespeare's staging of desire and gender, one can track his grafting of the repeated arc [End Page 177] of a (failed) imaginary union with God or the sovereign (i.e., as another theological Other), onto the performance of a vexed masculinity in phantasy's staging of desire. While the loving covenant with God appears as the model for the subject's symbolic castration by a phantastic double to the subject and God, Cupid,3 the textual exegesis that follows unpacks how the specular castration of separation (and its memory) is also troped as sodomic in an allegory of desire. Shakespeare's negotiation for social recognition as a dramatist certainly depended on a complex balance of self-effacing engagement with contemporary political and religious issues, but more crucially, his success as a playwright would depend on the staging of desire and phantasmatic gender.4 In tandem with its critical contribution to a literary history of subjectivity, this article extends recent work on the performative nature of gender on the early modern stage, demonstrating how masculinity is implicated in a proto-psychoanalytic account of the subject's often obscene (as phantasied on the stage of the unconscious) or offstage relations to the Other and the advent of an eros whose attachment to castration threatens to undo proper masculinity. The article's tailpiece shows how Freudian theory is beset by—and capitalizes on for its authority—the same "problem" of the male subject's submission to the Other, the fundamental castration of the subject. The topic of Shakespeare's staging of homoerotic desire and its relation to an unstable masculinity has been the occasion of much recent critical attention. Many studies investigate the cross-dressing of boy actors and theatrical transvestism against the backdrop of the antitheatricalist discourse. Although transvestism on the stage is not my approach to the playwright's representation...

The Right to Choose

Pursuant to the Doctrine of Consumer Sovereignty, we believe that tobacco companies should be compelled to disclose their ingredients so that the public health community can make more informed recommendations in order to protect consumer autonomy and sovereignty. However, a recent decision by the First Circuit precludes such a disclosure since it would be unduly burdensome to the industry, while granting only minimal gains to the public. We argue that many of the Court’s key claims rest on a misunderstanding of the science and chemistry of tobacco products. In our view, a mandatory disclosure of ingredients would more effectively protect the public interest, whilst posing minimal burdens on the tobacco industry.

V.A.T., Taxation and Prostitution: Feminist Perspectives on Polok

Debates concerning the taxation of prostitution have occurred in taxation law and in feminist literature. This article will integrate the case of Polok v. C.E.C. [2002] E.W.H.C, 156; [2002] S.T.C. 361, within the feminist legal canon. The case is discussed in the context of the argument of the European doctrine of fiscal neutrality, which dictates that, regardless of legality as amongst member states, if an activity is levied to V.A.T. in one member state, V.A.T. should be levied on it in all member states. The doctrine of sovereignty accepts the possibility that the integrity of the V.A.T. system may be compromised by the levying of tax on illegal activities, in terms of the cooperation between tax and other aspects of the U.K.’s legal system. European law, feminist law, commodification and the marketplace are all considered within the context of these principles. The article also considers the place of Polok within standard feminist texts on prostitution. Different paradigms of prostitution define different aspects of prostitution as ‘problems’, and the article considers the implications within a feminist reconstruction of Polok of this. The article suggests that the challenge for a feminist analysis of Polok is to remain within the realm of European tax and competition law, and to render the perspective of the employees of the Polok taxpayers part of the substance of the deliberations of the case.

Scotland and parliamentary sovereignty

The authority of the classic Diceyan approach to parliamentary sovereignty has, as is well known, been called into question as a result of the UK's membership of the EU and human rights legislation. However, this paper focuses on the implications of Scottish devolution for the orthodox doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. The constitution, and the legislative supremacy of Westminster within it, remains a controversial political issue in Scotland. Accordingly, rather than hypothesising inductively from constitutional doctrine, consideration is given to the nature of the interaction between the socio-political forces which underlie Scottish devolution and the concept of parliamentary sovereignty. It is contended that the foundations of the Scottish political order have shifted in a way which is already presenting significant challenges. Moreover, looking to the future, the pressure on the orthodox Diceyan approach is likely to intensify over time. In this context, it is questionable whether constitutional conventions of the sort which are already evolving or the possible development by the courts of more formal constitutional norms will, in the long term, be able to reconcile parliamentary sovereignty with Scottish political reality. Indeed, it is argued that — from a Scottish perspective at least — the viability of classic, Diceyan parliamentary sovereignty as a meaningful constitutional doctrine will be called into question in the years to come.

Toward an effective international legal order: from coexistence to concert?

In forbidding the use of force except in self‐defence against armed attack or when authorised by the Security Council, the UN Charter appears to be the culminating development of a system of international order based on the doctrine of state sovereignty. The cumulative result of international‐law‐related acts, omissions and declarations of the Bush administration since its inception can be construed as a fundamental challenge to the sovereign state system. The administration's stated security strategy is one possible response to undoubtedly grave challenges to national and human security. In fact, only an institutionalised partnership between the US and regional powers such as China, India, Brazil and Germany can hope to address those challenges successfully, in part because only it would have the requisite legitimacy. That partnership or concert could be organised within the UN framework, albeit intensifying its hierarchical elements.

Jonathan Edwards: A Life (review)

Jonathan Edwards: A Life. By George M. Marsden. (New Haven: Yale University Press. 2003. Pp. 640. $35.00.) Since the initiation of the Yale University letterpress edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards nearly fifty years ago, twentieth- and (now) twenty-first century scholars and devotees of the Northampton, Massachusetts, sage have sought a biographical complement to the definitive Yale edition of Edwards' written corpus, a biography that would incorporate the latest scholarship and provide a critical assessment of the life and thought of North America's most eminent divine. At last, the wait is over. The celebrated author of Fundamentalism and American Culture, the McAnaney Professor of History in the University of Notre Dame, George Marsden, delivers a singular masterpiece that will disappoint neither Edwards commentators nor enthusiasts. Jonathan Edwards: A Life already stands as the benchmark by which all biographical works on Edwards (1703-1758) are to be measured.Though older biographies of Edwards continue to circulate (including Ola E. Winslow's 1940 Pulitzer Prize winning account), and lain Murray's fairly recent Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography (1988) still enjoys a wide readership, Marsden's book is to be preferred on account of three distinguishing factors: newly available resources, nonaligned (though sympathetic) composition, and a reliable contextualization of Edwards the man, the thinker, the cultural force. In addition to providing a more complete and holistic understanding of Edwards' thought, influence, and personal struggles, another value of Marsden's biography is its contribution to correcting the hagiographical bias and defective caricaturing of Edwards, which at times has been endemic to Edwardsean scholarship and literature. Marsden's key to understanding the nuances of Edwards' theological enterprise, ministerial vision, and relational idiosyncrasies, pivots on a threefold thesis: (1) that the socio-political context of eighteenth-century Colonial America-a societal context that functioned under the dictates of a monarchy and structured hierarchies of personal relationships-sets the parameters for Edwards' world and life view; (2) that Edwards' dramatic and affectional conversion outside of the rubrics of the established Puritan, preparationist step-model for conversion, resulted in an unrelenting doctrine of divine sovereignty; and (3) that his seminal participation in the 1734/35-1740/42 awakenings and revivals formed and informed his perspective on history (and eschatology). The dynamic of vertically controlled relationships is particularly insightful and significant, for it places Jonathan Edwards under the regulating influences of his father, the Reverend Timothy Edwards, and maternal grandfather, Solomon Stoddard (venerated as the Congregational Pope of the Connecticut Valley), and, on a larger scale, Calvinistic confessions and, supremely, God. …

ST. GERMAN ON REASON AND PARLIAMENTARY SOVEREIGNTY

In the late-nineteenth century, Dicey defined with clarity the modern doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, identifying both its positive aspect, that Parliament is legally empowered to make any law, and its negative aspect, that no court, institution or person is legally empowered to set Acts of Parliament aside. The historical genesis of this modern understanding of parliamentary sovereignty was, and continues to be, controversial. In his recent study of parliamentary sovereignty, Jeffrey Goldsworthy suggests that the sixteenth-century lawyer Christopher St. German, author of Doctor and Student as well as a series of publications relating to the Henrician Reformation, was likely “the first English writer to propound a comprehensive theory of parliamentary sovereignty”— a controversial claim given St. German's insistence that any “statute” made against the law of nature or reason is “voyd”.4 However, Goldsworthy appears to be supported by an impressive list of historians.