New India, Hindutva Constitutionalism, and Muslim Political Attitudes

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...

Two internal critiques of political constitutionalism

New Governance , Law and Constitutionalism

Constitutionalism and Political Science: Imaginative Scholarship, Unimaginative Teaching

In 1983 Martin Shapiro worried that the “new jurisprudence of values” being promoted by the new generation of public law scholars in political science would “serve as a cover for slipping back into playing ‘little law professor’ for undergraduates.” Proponents of the “jurisprudence of values” in political science, who engaged in constitutional theorizing about individual rights and the structur...

Institutional Inertia: Political Legitimacy in Muslim Iberia

The ultimate success of the reconquista (the reconquering of Muslim lands in the Iberian Peninsula from 718-1492) and the ensuing consolidation of Spain beneath the joint rule of Ferdinand and Isabel helped define the course of western civilization. This paper uses the unique institutional organization of Muslim rulers in Iberia to explain the fall of Muslim power in the Peninsula. Through vast...