Nationally recognized experts analyze how states deal with major constitutional issues.

Professor Robert Hazell will discuss his report on the Conservative plans for constitutional reform, which will be published in February. Their agenda is greater than is generally supposed. The highlights of the Conservative plans include repealling the Human Rights Act and replacing it with a British bill of rights; to reduce the size of the House of Commons by 10 per cent; and to pass legislation requiring a national referendum for future EU Treaties backed up by a Sovereignty Bill to ensure that utimate authority stays at Westminster.

The text also covers longer-term measures and objectives under consideration, such as: proportional representation; modernization of the monarchy; English regional assemblies; accountability in national security; reform of the judiciary and legal system; a home-grown Bill of Rights; and extending democracy within the institutions of the European Union.

Nationally recognized experts analyze how states deal with major constitutional issues.

Nationally recognized experts analyze how states deal with major constitutional issues.

The first systematic analysis of the obstacles to state constitutional reform.

The second edition of Constitutional Reform examines central government, Parliament, and the judiciary in Britain and proposes an agenda for reform. The stress remains on suggestions which might stand a fair chance of being implemented. Topics covered include the limitations on the scope forconstitutional reform; new methodology for constitutional change; parliamentary democracy and voting reform; the second chamber; the reduction of ministerial power; the transfer of certain royal powers to Parliament; and the reform of the judiciary.Also including a new chapter on the Labour Government's plans for the British constitution, this book provides the reader with comprehensive coverage of constitutional change in Britain at the new millennium.

For years the public has become increasingly disillusioned and cynical about its governmental institutions. In the face of alarming problems-most notably the $400 billion budget deficit-the government seems deadlocked, reduced to partisan posturing and bickering, with the president and Congress blaming each other for failure. And neither party can be held accountable. The public tendency is to blame individual leaders- or politicians as a class-but an insistent and growing number of experienced statesmen and political scientists believe that much of the difficulty can be traced to the governmental structure itself, designed in the eighteenth century and essentially unchanged since then. Is that inherited constitutional system adequate to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, or has the time come for fundamental change? Should we adopt an electoral system that encourages unified control of the presidency, the Senate and the House? Lengthen terms of office? Limit congressional terms? Abolish or modify the electoral college? Introduce a mechanism for calling special elections? Permit legislators to hold executive offices? Redistribute the balance of powers within the governmental system? In this revised edition of his highly acclaimed 1986 volume, James Sundquist reviews the origins and rationale of the constitutional structure and the current debate about whether reform is needed, then raises practical questions about what changes might work best if a consensus should emerge that the national government is too prone to stalemate to meet its responsibilities. Analyzing the main proposals advanced to adapt the Constitution to current conditions, he attempts to separate the workable ideas from the unworkable, the effective from the ineffective, the possibly feasible from the wholly infeasible, and finally arrives at a set of recommendations of his own.