ITL, chapter 8

1) Constitution: a central written document where constitutional rules have been laid down.

2) Case law: when courts lay down rules with a constitutional focus.

3) Customs: 

4) Entrenchment: a meant to make change in the constitution harder to accomplish than changes in ordinary law.

1) State power established

2) State power constrained

3) State power democratized 

A state is an organization that is able to control a certain territory and the people living in it.

Both in the sense of defending it against the outside world and in the sense of exercising powers and maintaining law and order inside its own border.

Internal and external sovereignty.

It is exercising powers and maintaining law and order inside its own border.

the mutual relation between states.

A sovereign state is independent of other states and other states are normally not authorised to interfere into internal affairs of a sovereign state.

When people share common characteristics and have a (long) common history, it gives them a feeling of a shared past and an identity. Such a group of people is called a nation.

When a state is inhabited by such a nation, it is called state-nation.

Where such unifying factors do not exist spontaneously, states can make an effort to create more unity.

1) Globalization: As people and economies become interconnected, decisions taken in one state can have an impact on the people in another state.

2) Food Safety: 

3) Crisis: a crisis on one state have an immediate impact upon other states.

4) Environment: they are cross-border problems.

5) Human Rights: universal value irrespective of the preferences of individual states.

6) Voluntarism: No state is forced to accept what it did not voluntarily agree to.

7) Treaties: 

8) Power differences

1) Territorial division of state power

2) Functional division of state power

3) Independent courts

4) Parliaments and governments

5) Checks and balances

6) The Rule of Law

7) Fundamental Rights

8) Judicial Review

1) Unitary sates

2) Federations : federal and regional level

3) Confederations

The Trias Politica, by Montesquieu

The legislative, the executive and the judiciary

1) Elected judges

2) Appointed for life or for a long period without the possibility of a second term.

3) Impartiality : Objective and Subjective

1) Parliamentary systems : The head of the executive comes into office as long as he is supported by parliament.

2) Presidential systems : The head of the executive is elected independently from parliament,

3) Semi Presidential systems: a directly elected head of state and a prime minister who is accountable to parliament share executive power.

The idea to partly assigns functions to institutions jointly. To allow the powers to interfere between them, keeping each other's in check.

The state rules through the law and the state itself is ruled by the law.

To curb the state power and to protect the individuals against it.

1) Magna Carta: a document in which King John of England accepted limitations to his arbitrary power.

2) Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens : the revolutionary French declaration

3) Bill of Rights

The rights are formulated in a manner so that it is up to the authorities, and often a judge, to determine what is allowed and what is not in real-life circumstances.

A mean by which judges have the power to check whether a law is in compliance with the constitution.

1) Checks and balances

2) Will of the people

3) Protection of minorities

The constitution is a norm that all judges must uphold whenever they are asked to apply a law whose validity they doubt.

Ordinary judges must referee questions regarding the constitutionality of laws to a constitutional court.

1) Concrete view, which arises from actual adversarial court proceedings between parties.

2) Abstract view, when officeholders claim that a law is unconstitutional even though it is not being applied to a concrete case.

it is a system of government from which the power comes from the people.

-Direct democracy is when the members of a band could easily assemble around a table to discuss public affairs. The effec is immediate.

The constituents who make up the society decide by themselves for themselves.

-Indirect democracy or Representative democracy, is when the public power is exerciced by a ruler or a group of rulers who have been elected or appointed by the population ruled.

1) Mandatory Referendum : for certain kind of decision, the states must approved by referendum.

2) Optional referendum : for certain type of decision, a referendum can be but does not have to be called.

3) Binding referendum : the outcome is binding, a rejected proposal cannot enter into force, it has to be approved.

4) Consultative referendum : the outcome indicates the preferences of the population, for a kind of advice to the government.

The approval or continued effect of a certain decision is left to popular vote.

1) Majoritary system : the translation of votes into seats in a representative assembly.

- Majoritarian system : a candidate is elected if he received a defined majority of vote.

-Plurality system : the candidate with most vote is elected

-Absolute Majority System : a candidate will need more than half of the vote

2) Proportional Representation : the share of seats in the assembly is proportional to the share of votes