| book details |

The Politics of Constitutional Reform in North America: Coping with New Challenges

Edited by Rainer-Olaf Schultze

| on special |

normal price: R 2 114.95

Price: R 1 903.95

| add to trolley |

| book description |

In October 1999, some fifteen academic experts and government practitioÂ ners from Germany and North America gathered for two days at the Uni verÂ sity of Augsburg to discuss the topic of ""Constitutional Reform and ConstiÂ tutional Jurisprudence in Canada and the United States."" The present volume documents the results of that conference, a collaborative effort of the DeÂ partment of Political Science, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and the Institute for Canadian Studies, University of Augsburg. In organizing this workshop, we were guided by two basic sets of ideas and assumptions: First, all ""established"" democracies are regularly confronÂ ted with the need to adjust their constitutional order to changes in their enviÂ ronment lest democratic stability be transformed into rigidity; in many wesÂ tern nations, including Canada and the United States, developments such as the crisis of the Keynesian welfare-state or the emergence of increasingly heterogeneous, postmodern societies have ushered in an era of heightened, yet not always successful constitutional reform activity. Secondly, however, there is no unique path towards, or model of, an ""optimal"" constitutional order, however defined; rather, constitutional reform processes, their underÂ Iying normative principles and their outcomes are strongly path and contextÂ dependent. Therefore, the participants of the workshop and authors of this volume were asked to examine the specific preconditions, context, nature and impact of recent constitutional reform processes in the Uni ted States and Canada.