Présentation de l'éditeur

This book provides insight into modern collective judicial decision-making. Courts all over the world sit in panels of several judges, yet the processes by which these judges produce the courts’ decisions differ markedly. Judges from some of the world’s most notable judicial bodies, in both the civilian and the common law tradition and from supra-/international courts, share their experiences and reflect on the challenges to which their collective endeavour gives rise. They address matters such as the question of panel constitution, the operation of rapporteur systems, pre- and post-hearing conferences, the hearing procedure itself, the nature of the interaction between the judicial panel and parties’ advocates, the extent to which a unitary judgment of the court or at least a single majority judgment is required or deemed desirable, and how it is ultimately arrived at through different voting mechanisms. The judicial views are supplemented by a number of academic commentaries. Collective Judging in Comparative Perspective serves as an inspiration for future court design.

Wolfgang Ernst is Regius Professor of Civil Law, University of Oxford, and Fellow of All Souls College.

Birke Häcker is the Professor of Comparative Law, University of Oxford, and Fellow of Brasenose College.

Présentation de l'éditeur

Voltaire, Rousseau, Catherine II, Frédéric II, Robespierre, Mirabeau, La Fayette, Franklin, Jefferson, ou encore Goethe et Nietzsche. Quel est donc le point commun entre ces illustres personnages ? Au moins un : chacun s’est intéressé ou a vibré pour la philosophie de la Révolution corse (1729-1769). Rien de surprenant donc à ce que Chateaubriand écrive que cette même révolution fut « l’école primaire des révolutions » futures. Dans cet essai historique, à l’approche philosophique et politique, des personnages, guerriers et politiques, surgissent. Ce sont les inventeurs d’une « res publica » qui a fasciné : droit des peuples à disposer d’eux mêmes, séparation des pouvoirs, souveraineté nationale. Avec Théodore, roi constitutionnel, Paoli, démocrate et patriote, et Napoléon, empereur de la République française, culmine l’idée d’un pouvoir fondé sur la loi et le principe d’un partage de la souveraineté avec un peuple en armes et libre. Voilà des destins dignes des « Vies parallèles » de Plutarque.

Antoine-Baptiste Filippi est étudiant en droit à l’Université Panthéon- Sorbonne (Paris I) et chercheur associé au Labiana (CNRS-LISA ; CNRS-ISTA), Laboratoire d’histoire grecque et de philologie du politique.

Présentation de l'éditeur

With every presidential election, Americans puzzle over the peculiar mechanism of the Electoral College. The author of the Pulitzer finalist The Right to Vote explains the enduring problem of this controversial institution.

Every four years, millions of Americans wonder why they choose their presidents through the Electoral College, an arcane institution that permits the loser of the popular vote to become president and narrows campaigns to swing states. Most Americans have long preferred a national popular vote, and Congress has attempted on many occasions to alter or scuttle the Electoral College. Several of these efforts—one as recently as 1970—came very close to winning approval. Yet this controversial system remains.

Alexander Keyssar explains its persistence. After tracing the Electoral College’s tangled origins at the Constitutional Convention, he explores the efforts from 1800 to 2020 to abolish or significantly reform it, showing why each has failed. Reasons include the complexity of the electoral system’s design, the tendency of political parties to elevate partisan advantage above democratic values, the difficulty of passing constitutional amendments, and, importantly, the South’s prolonged backing of the Electoral College, grounded in its desire to preserve white supremacy in the region. The commonly voiced explanation that small states have blocked reform for fear of losing influence proves to have been true only occasionally.

Keyssar examines why reform of the Electoral College has received so little attention from Congress for the last forty years, and considers alternatives to congressional action such as the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and state efforts to eliminate winner-take-all. In analyzing the reasons for past failures while showing how close the nation has come to abolishing the institution, Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? offers encouragement to those hoping to produce change in the twenty-first century.

Alexander Keyssar is the author of numerous books including The Right to Vote, which was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and won the Beveridge Award from the American Historical Association. He is Matthew W. Stirling, Jr., Professor of History and Social Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Sommaire

Introduction

• I. Origins
  
  • 1. From the Constitution to the Twelfth Amendment
• II. The Long Struggle to Abolish Winner-Take-All
  
  • 2. Electoral Reform in the Era of Good Feelings
  • 3. Three Uneasy Pieces, 1870–1960
• III. A National Popular Vote
  
  • 4 “A Population Anomalous” and a National Popular Vote, 1800–1960
  • 5. An Idea Whose Time Has Come
  • 6. Last Call for the Twentieth Century
• IV. Partisan Stalemate and Electoral Misfires
  
  • 7. Pessimism and Innovation, 1980–2020

Conclusion

Appendix A. Public Opinion Polls

Appendix B. Constitutional Provisions for Presidential Elections

Appendix C. The Evolution of the Term Electoral College

Présentation de l'éditeur

Frank Schorkopf succinctly describes the lead-up to European integration and paves the way to a better knowledge and understanding of its ideational, political, and legal contexts. This substantially revised third edition has also been extended to include current aspects of the integration process.

Frank Schorkopf Geboren 1970; Studium der Rechtswissenschaft in Hamburg und London; 1999 Promotion; 2007 Habilitation; Inhaber des Lehrstuhls für Öffentliches Recht und Europarecht der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen und ordentliches Mitglied der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen.