Présentation de l'éditeur

That the president uniquely represents the national interest is a political truism, yet this idea has been transformational, shaping the efforts of Congress to remake the presidency and testing the adaptability of American constitutional government.

The emergence of the modern presidency in the first half of the twentieth century transformed the American government. But surprisingly, presidents were not the primary driving force of this change—Congress was. Through a series of statutes, lawmakers endorsed presidential leadership in the legislative process and augmented the chief executive’s organizational capacities.
 
But why did Congress grant presidents this power? In Power Shifts, John A. Dearborn shows that legislators acted on the idea that the president was the best representative of the national interest. Congress subordinated its own claims to stand as the nation’s primary representative institution and designed reforms that assumed the president was the superior steward of all the people. In the process, Congress recast the nation’s chief executive as its chief representative. 

As Dearborn demonstrates, the full extent to which Congress’s reforms rested on the idea of presidential representation was revealed when that notion’s validity was thrown into doubt. In the 1970s, Congress sought to restore its place in a rebalanced system, but legislators also found that their earlier success at institutional reinvention constrained their efforts to reclaim authority. Chronicling the evolving relationship between the presidency and Congress across a range of policy areas, Power Shifts exposes a fundamental dilemma in an otherwise proud tradition of constitutional adaptation.

Présentation de l'éditeur

From the Cloister to the State examines the French order of Fontevraud, one of the largest monastic networks under female leadership in medieval and early modern Europe.

Founded in 1100 and comprised of both monks and nuns, the order had grown to consist of at least seventy-eight priories by the late Middle Ages. Endowed with vast territorial possessions throughout western France, Fontevraud became one of the most powerful religious institutions in the country. However, unaware of its institutional might and economic wealth, scholars have tended to focus on Fontevraud’s seemingly unusual gender hierarchy, while bypassing inquiries on practices of abbatial authority in Fontevraud and beyond. This book reveals medieval Fontevraud as an aristocratic cloister where noble women governed. It also discusses the value of Fontevraud’s extensive network for the geopolitical ambitions of the dukes of Brittany, the counts of Bourbon-Vendôme, and, during the Wars of Religion, the kings of France. In addition to Fontevraud’s political role during the Wars of Religion, the book also examines the order’s reforms implemented by Marie de Bretagne and her successors Renée and Louise de Bourbon-Vendôme. These Bourbon abbesses centralized the order’s administration, cut the ties between priories and local aristocratic families, and successfully established the Bourbon-Vendômes as the only patrons of the vast and wealthy network.

This book is essential reading for scholars and students of medieval and early modern history, as well as those interested in political history and the history of religion.

Annalena Müller holds a Master's degree from the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and a PhD from Yale University. She works at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, where she is the recipient of a Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione Grant.

Sommaire

Introduction

Part I: Re-shaping the Myth

1. 1642 or: The Making of Abbatial Absolutism

2. Robert of Arbrissel Revisited

3. Establishing Fontevraud, c. 1001-1149

Part II: Fontevraud and the Making of Bourbon France

4. From a Monastic Network in Decline to a Geopolitical Asset, c. 1150-1457

5. Religious Geopolitics and Geopolitical Religion - Fontevraud in a Changing World

Part III: Forming and Re-Forming Fontevraud

6. Revising the Rule and Early Reform (1457-1491)

7. Re-Forming Fontevraud (1503-1534)

8. Re-Building Fontevraud

Conclusion

Présentation de l'éditeur

El problema de los así llamados "conflictos entre derechos fundamentales", desde un punto de vista general, enfrenta a dos posiciones en principio incompatibles entre sí: el conflictivismo y el anticonflictivismo. La primera posición defiende la existencia de "verdaderos" ("genuinos") conflictos entre derechos fundamentales; la segunda, su ausencia. El problema, sin embargo, no se agota en la contraposición de estas dos tesis. En este trabajo se identifican y se estudian al menos seis debates que, aunque eventualmente relacionados, tienen entre sí algún grado de independencia. A la presentación y discusión de estas teorías están destinados los primeros capítulos de este libro. Hacia el final, en cambio, se analiza el problema teniendo en cuenta distintos puntos de vista: los sujetos intervinientes, los objetos del conflicto, y, por otro lado, un enfoque intrasistemático y otro extrasistemático. En general, se tratan algunas preguntas persistentes: ¿Se puede decir que se dan conflictos entre derechos fundamentales? Si es así, ¿en qué sentido? ¿Qué tipos de conflictos se pueden identificar? ¿Cómo es posible argumentar que, más allá de las apariencias, no se dan conflictos entre derechos?

Sommaire

INTRODUCCIÓN
CAPÍTULO I. CONFLICTIVISMO Y ANTICONFLICTIVISMO EN TORNO A LOS DERECHOS FUNDAMENTALES
CAPÍTULO II. TEORÍAS DE LOS LÍMITES DE LOS DERECHOS
CAPÍTULO III. TEORÍAS DEL CONTENIDO ESENCIAL
CAPÍTULO IV. ESPECIFICACIONISMO E INFRACCIONISMO
CAPÍTULO V. MONISMO Y PLURALISMO DE LOS VALORES
CAPÍTULO VI. COHERENTISMO Y NO-COHERENTISMO
CAPÍTULO VII. TEORÍAS DE LA JERARQUÍA Y EL PESO
CAPÍTULO VIII. COINCIDENCIAS, COMPATIBILIDADES E INCOMPATIBILIDADES
CAPÍTULO IX. CRÍTICAS A LAS DIFERENTES POSICIONES
CAPÍTULO X. ¿QUÉ DERECHOS? ¿QUÉ CONFLICTOS?
CAPÍTULO XI. DINAMISMO DE LOS CONFLICTOS ENTRE DERECHOS
A MODO DE CONCLUSIÓN: UNA ROSA ES UNA ROSA

Présentation de l'éditeur

How was power justified in late medieval Europe? What justifications did people find convincing, and why? Based around the two key intellectual movements of the fifteenth century, conciliarism in the church and humanism, this study explores the justifications for the distribution of power and authority in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Europe. By examining the arguments that convinced people in this period, Joseph Canning demonstrates that it was almost universally assumed that power had to be justified but that there were fundamentally different kinds of justification employed. Against the background of juristic thought, Canning presents a new interpretative approach to the justifications of power through the lenses of conciliarism, humanism and law, throwing fresh light on our understanding of both conciliarists' ideas and the contribution of Italian Renaissance humanists.

Joseph Canning is Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he is the author of The Political Thought of Baldus de Ubaldis (1987), A History of Medieval Political Thought, c.300-c.1450 (1996) and Ideas of Power in the Late Middle Ages, 1296-1417 (2011).

Sommaire

Introduction
1. Conciliarism and Changes of Mind
2. Conciliarism and Papalism
3. Italian Humanism
4. The Law
Conclusion