Aztec rulers, Mexica and others, used their authority to develop, expand, and defend the Excan tlatoloyan and other confederations in or near the Basin of Mexico. That region contained about sixty political units, each called an altepetl. The largest, most militarily and economically powerful was Tenochtitlan, the Mexica capital city. The most common translations, city-state or kingdom, capture something essential. They had urban cores, and they were each ruled by supreme rulers, the tlatoani. As important as the altepetl was, localities that constituted them, known as tlaxilacalli or calpolli, smaller units that in many ways constituted communities unto themselves, were also important. Violence was a key part of Aztec political culture and state and confederation building in the late Postclassic period. War practices relied upon structure and discipline, weaponry, the pursuit of captives, and the vanquishing of enemies who produced material wealth in the form of everyday and luxury items paid as tribute to the imperial powers. Whether through elite marriages or wars, inter-altepetl relations took place within a context in which the Excan tlatoloyan sought aggressively to enlarge its domain of control by becoming an expansive confederation that can be considered a hegemonic empire.

The concept of federalism, and examples of federalism, are considered. Although, over 100 years ago, British Imperial federalists argued the empire must ‘federate or disintegrate’, the imperial federation movement did not succeed. Nor did its close relation, the ‘Home Rule All Round’ movement. Instead, the UK has become a devolved State, which transfers power from the centre without relinquishing sovereignty. The main obstacles to federalism in the UK appear to be the ‘England problem’ and parliamentary sovereignty. It has long been recognized that the disproportionate size of one federal unit can destabilize federalism by affecting the capacity of other territorial units to influence central government. However, the main obstacle lies with an insistence on preserving absolute parliamentary sovereignty in the UK. Dicey insisted that ‘limited sovereignty’ was a ‘contradiction in terms’ and that federalism was ‘absolutely foreign to the historical and, so to speak, instinctive policy of English constitutionalists.’ But this chapter argues there is no reason why sovereignty must be understood only as unlimited and indivisible. The obstacle is a lack of political will and not legal impossibility.

In recent decades international and regional human rights norms have been increasingly applied to constitutional provisions, revealing significant tensions between primary political arrangements, such as power-sharing institutions, and human rights norms. This book argues that these tensions, generally framed as a peace versus justice dilemma, are built on an individualistic conception of justice that fails to account for the meaning and requirements of justice in deeply divided places, which are characterized by ethnically based political exclusion and inequalities.

By introducing the concept of collective equality as a new theoretical basis for the law of peace, this book proposes a new approach for dealing with the tensions between peace-related arrangements and human rights. Through principled, pragmatic, and legal reasoning, the book develops a new paradigm that captures more accurately what democracy and human rights mean and require in the context of ethno-national conflicts, and provides potent guidance for advancing justice and peace in such places.

The aim of this chapter is to describe, and offer a critical assessment of, confederal approaches to resolving the conflict in Israel-Palestine. We review why prospects for the conventional two-state solution have declined and what other models have been advanced as alternatives. After placing confederation in historical and theoretical context, we then describe a range of confederal proposals for Israel-Palestine. We conclude by exploring process and institutional design considerations presented by confederation as a framework for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

After millennia of cooling, the Last Glacial Maximum reached an extreme. Every species adjusted, even in the tropics. Humans responded with new social organization: communities pooled resources to face issues of leadership, forming confederations that pooled resources. After the coldest moment – 21,500 years ago – migrants moved to newly fertile lands as temperature rose almost ceaselessly for millennia. Intensive food gathering was accompanied by productive institutions: architecture for permanent homes, textiles, ceramics, and workshops for visual representation. Eurasiatic-speakers moved westward across Siberia; others moved both north and south in eastern Asia and between Africa and western Asia. New details on American settlement now reveal two groups of Asian voyagers who followed the “kelp highway” just offshore. The main group formed settlements along the Pacific littoral, expanding inland from points as far as southern Chile by 19,000 years ago. By the end of the Pleistocene, the achievements of early humanity included occupying most of Earth, supplementing foraging with production, exquisite visual representations, and dependable adaptability.

The story of the fusion of law and equity often centres on the story of New York state, whence the Field Code went forth, or of England. This chapter shows the more varied experiences of fusion in colonial British North America, and the degree of experimentation pursued by colonial governments that differentiated the local arrangements – and means of administering equity – from the arrangements at ‘home’ in England, or those in New York state. Initially, equity was often administered only by the governor or colonial council – or by a court of concurrent legal and equitable jurisdiction. Specialist Courts of Chancery came later, and were criticised as the confederation movement grew. Later, the legal colonialism set in which saw the ways of administering equity in England mimicked in the colonies. Even then, local variation survived as in relation to the treatment of mortgages.