A False Tree of Liberty

A False Tree of Liberty
Author: Susan Marks
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2019-11-21
Genre: Capitalism
ISBN: 0199675457

This book is concerned with the history of the idea of human rights. It offers a fresh approach that puts aside familiar questions such as 'Where do human rights come from?' and 'When did human rights begin?' for the sake of looking into connections between debates about the rights of man and developments within the history of capitalism. The focus is on England, where, at the end of the eighteenth century, a heated controversy over the rights of man coincided with the final enclosure of common lands and the momentous changes associated with early industrialisation. Tracking back still further to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writing about dispossession, resistance and rights, the book reveals a forgotten tradition of thought about central issues in human rights, with profound implications for their prospects in the world today.

A False Tree of Liberty

A False Tree of Liberty
Author: Susan Marks
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2019-12-05
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0191663549

This book is concerned with the history of the idea of human rights. It offers a fresh approach that puts aside familiar questions such as 'Where do human rights come from?' and 'When did human rights begin?' for the sake of looking into connections between debates about the rights of man and developments within the history of capitalism. The focus is on England, where, at the end of the eighteenth century, a heated controversy over the rights of man coincided with the final enclosure of common lands and the momentous changes associated with early industrialisation. Tracking back still further to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writing about dispossession, resistance and rights, the book reveals a forgotten tradition of thought about central issues in human rights, with profound implications for their prospects in the world today.

The Riddle of All Constitutions

The Riddle of All Constitutions
Author: Susan Marks
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2003
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780199264131

The promotion of democracy is today a familiar feature of foreign policy, and an accepted part of the activities of international organizations. Should international law join in this move to promote democratic political arrangements? If so, on what basis, and with which of the many competingconceptions of democracy? Drawing on an eclectic range of source material, the author examines current debates about the emergence of an international legal 'norm of democratic governance', and considers how proposals for such a norm might be rearticulated to meet some of the concerns to which theygive rise. She also uses these debates to illustrate some more general points about approaches to the study of international law. In doing so, she seeks to defend an approach to international legal scholarship that takes its cue from the tradition of ideology critique.

No Treason (Volume 1)

No Treason (Volume 1)
Author: Lysander Spooner
Publisher: Read Books Ltd
Total Pages: 70
Release: 2013-03-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1447488903

Originally published in 1870, this essay by the American anarchist and political philosopher Lysander Spooner is here reproduced. Described by Murray Rothbard as "the greatest case for anarchist political philosophy ever written", Spooner's lengthy essay is still referenced by anarchists and philosophers today. In it, he argues that the American Civil War violated the US Constitution, thus rendering it null and void. An indispensable read for political historians both amateur and professional alike. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

The Law of Humanity Project

The Law of Humanity Project
Author: Ukri Soirila
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2021-07-15
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1509938931

This book provides the first comprehensive introduction to the role of humanity in international law, offering a fresh perspective to a discussions with global implications. The 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century witnessed the sporadic emergence of a new vision of global law. Although the vision has taken many different forms, all instances of it have been uniform in the attempt of radically altering how we understand international law by seeking to posit the human as the primary subject of the international legal order and humanity as its main source of legitimacy. Together, this book calls these instances “the law of humanity project”. In so doing, it also paints a picture of and critically assesses a particular moment in the history of international law – a moment which may have already come to a sudden end as a consequence of the current populist backlash in world politics, but during which it seemed inevitable that the law of humanity vision would come to play an increasingly important role in world affairs.

Horizontal Rights

Horizontal Rights
Author: Gautam Bhatia
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2023-08-24
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1509967621

This book provides a new conceptual model for considering constitutional rights from a comparative perspective. A prestigious club bars women from standing for executive positions. A homeowner refuses to rent their house to a person on grounds of their race. Each of these real-life cases involves the exercise of private power, which deprives individuals of their rights. Can these individuals invoke the Constitution in response? Horizontal Rights: An Institutional Approach brings a fresh perspective to these age-old, yet fraught issues. This book argues that constitutional scholarship and doctrine, across jurisdictions, has proceeded from an inarticulate premise called 'default verticality.' This is based on a set of underlying philosophical assumptions, which presumes that constitutional rights are presumptively applicable against the State, and need special justification to be applied against private parties. Departing from default verticality and its assumptions, this book argues that constitutional rights should apply horizontally between private parties where the existence of an economic, social, or cultural institution creates a difference in power between the parties, and allows one to violate the rights of the other. The institutional approach aims to be both theoretically convincing, as well as a providing a workable model for constitutional adjudication. It applies both to classic issues such as restrictive covenants, as well as cutting-edge contemporary legal problems around the regulation of platform work and the distribution of property upon divorce. This promises to be an exciting new contribution to the global conversation around constitutional rights and private power.

The Political Thought of Thomas Spence

The Political Thought of Thomas Spence
Author: Matilde Cazzola
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2021-11-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000480844

The book is an intellectual analysis of the political ideas of English radical thinker Thomas Spence (1750–1814), who was renowned for his "Plan", a proposal for the abolition of private landownership and the replacement of state institutions with a decentralized parochial organization. This system would be realized by means of the revolution of the "swinish multitude", the poor labouring class despised by Edmund Burke and adopted by Spence as his privileged political interlocutor. While he has long been considered an eccentric and anachronistic figure, the book sets out to demonstrate that Spence was a deeply original, thoroughly modern thinker, who translated his themes into a popular language addressing the multitude and publicized his Plan through chapbooks, tokens, and songs. The book is therefore a history of Spence's political thought "from below", designed to decode the subtle complexity of his Plan. It also shows that the Plan featured an excoriating critique of colonialism and slavery as well as a project of global emancipation. By virtue of its transnational scope, the Plan made landfall in the British West Indies a few years after Spence's death. Indeed, Spencean ideas were intellectually implicated in the largest slave revolt in the history of Barbados.