Constitutionalism and Secession

Should Progressive Constitutionalism Embrace Popular Constitutionalism?

There are two conceptions of progressive constitutionalism explored in this Symposium. The first is of progressive constitutionalism as, first and foremost, a programmatic agenda, focused on how progressives’ “distinctive constitutional vision may best be transmuted into claims of constitutional law.”1 To the extent that this constitutional vision entails only a set of policy preferences (e.g.,...

Theories of Secession

All theories of the right to secede either understand the right as a remedial right only or also recognize a primary right to secede. By a right in this context is meant a general, not a special, right (one generated through promising, contract, or some special relationship). Remedial Right Only Theories assert that a group has a general right to secede if and only if it has suffered certain in...

Political constitutionalism

For ‘legal constitutionalists’, written constitutions, constitutive of the legal and political system, superior to other legislation, entrenched against change, and enumerating justiciable rights, guarantee equal respect and concern for all citizens. Judicial review is thus an essential support of democracy. In this book, Richard Bellamy offers a robust argument against this view of constitutio...

Secession of the Center

In world politics the most important events are often rare events. Secession is a rare and important event. Secession of the center; when the dominant region of a country abandons its peripheries, is even rarer. But as the transformation of the Soviet Union into Russia and a collection of independent states demonstrates, it is an important kind of development. In this paper we illustrate the am...

New Governance , Law and Constitutionalism