Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, same-sex couples had become visible as partners and parents, as well as integral members of straight families. This chapter demonstrates how these previous victories on behalf of the queer family made marriage equality possible. When the movement for marriage equality began, advocates emphasized that allowing same-sex couples to marry was a matter of ensuring justice and equality. However, that argument failed to persuade decisionmakers, who instituted same-sex marriage bans around the country. Advocates were only able to gain legal ground when they began emphasizing how discrimination harmed longstanding, devoted same-sex couples, the children they raised, and the straight parents who loved them. They were able to stake these claims because gay- and lesbian-headed households already existed, thanks to years of family-centered strategies. Although marriage equality is the queer rights movement’s best-known success, it came as a postscript to decades of family-centered strategies.

Most US lawsuits involving Chinese companies are initiated by or against their customers, employees, or business counterparts. However, on occasion, Chinese investors may go to court against a US government entity to resolve a dispute. As US–China relations continue to deteriorate, Chinese companies are increasingly caught in the crossfire of the geopolitical rivalry. Being suspected as agents for the Chinese state, China-headquartered multinational companies, especially those with ties to the Chinese government, have expressed growing frustration over what they perceive as unfair treatment by the US government. This chapter examines the legal reactions of Chinese companies to perceived official bias in the United States in the context of intensifying geopolitical tensions.

A sustained period of Conservative government would normally be expected to usher in constitutional stability. But the reverse was largely true for the period 2010-24. During these years constitutional controversies were rarely far from the news, partly thanks to deliberately planned changes, but mostly due to radically shifting conventions and political behaviour. Across the time period, the direction of change was also very far from consistent. The initial coalition years were marked primarily by pressures towards greater constitutional pluralism, though Liberal Democrat reform ambitions were often held back by Cameron’s Conservatives. Later, any prospect of calm under single-party government was soon punctured by the pressures of Brexit. This eventually brought into question almost every aspect of the UK’s constitutional arrangements, and inflicted painful splits within the Conservative Party over questions of governance. In particular, Boris Johnson’s populist approach was characterised by wholesale disregard for constitutional norms, and highlighted vulnerabilities in the UK’s key democratic arrangements which few would previously have anticipated. If one commonality can be discerned across this fourteen-year period of constitutional extremes, it is the largely unconservative nature of policy.

This chapter brings readers’ attention to the fact that throughout United States history, government has been an active and necessary part of building the country. In the colonial period, for example, laws regulating taverns and other businesses proliferated. After the Founding, under the leadership of Alexander Hamilton and the federalists, the central government was seen as the necessary force needed to support an economy that then enabled the country to participate on the world economic stage. The anti-federalists, led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, aceded to the need for the government to support the economy in the ways proposed by the Federalists.

Nearly three decades since democracy, equitable land reform and redistributive justice continue to elude most South Africans – especially rural women. This chapter argues that traditional leaders’ disproportionate powers account for this failure in ‘traditional areas’. Substantial data and research evidence address (1) how land is a primary site of contestation over traditional leaders’ powers and (un)accountability; (2) how traditional leaders use powers and unaccountability afforded by the apartheid government to stand in the way of democratic governance and economic progress; (3) the citizenship implications of rural people’s subjection to leadership without consultation or choice, and dispossession of ‘informal’, ‘communal’ land rights without consultation or consent, and (4) the direct tie between the impoverished systems of rural democracy and the continued and deepening impoverishment of the people (mostly women) who live in these areas. Analysis of the Itereleng Bakgatla and Ingonyama Trust cases shows how the opportunities and objectives that the Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act 31 of 1996 (IPILRA) presents for inclusive land reform remain unrealised.

The Introduction presents the main questions and aims of the book. I argue that Roman thinkers used the metaphor of the body politic to articulate competing visions of the res publica between the Catilinarian Conspiracy and Year of the Four Emperors. I frame my discussion in relation to the Cambridge School of intellectual history, which has catalyzed the revival of interest in classical republicanism. In contrast to its focus on questions of liberty and popular sovereignty, my book turns towards problems of statesmanship and constitutional transformation. It asks how a foundational metaphor of civic organization evolved in response to the establishment of autocracy. It foregrounds the importance of metaphor as an avenue of political thought.

Chapter 3 reveals how violent individuals and a violent state are structured in the Constitution. Here, violent, White self-determination (the right of White individuals to overthrow government) and liberalism (the systemic differences central to a liberal state) mix with republicanism (a decentralization of authority that privileges violent acts of citizens, a group most often defined as propertied, White men). In Article IV, Section 4, the Second Amendment, and the Fifth Amendment, this chapter reveals the key formulations and tensions of American violence.

Roman concepts and institutions have been formative for Western political forms and the Romans’ thinking about power has had a deeper influence on Western traditions of political thought than is recognized in political theory. Recent developments have sparked the interest of political theorists in genres and artefacts that convey thinking about politics through means besides distinct argumentation. At the same time, the political turn in the study of Latin literature has opened the field to theoretical questions beyond the range of usual literary training. This chapter surveys issues, such as freedom, institutions, and foundation, which are central to Roman political thought, and maps a variety of methods for approaching how the Romans thought about politics. These include: close reading, rhetorical analysis, conceptual history, comparison with other media and cultural artefacts, and metaphorology. Illustrative interpretations span art and inscriptions, poetry and prose, with excurses on the reception and transformation of Roman political thinking in Augustine and Machiavelli. A sample reading of the death of Turnus in the Aeneid argues for a broad intellectual toolkit.

This chapter examines section 117 of the Australian Constitution, which prohibits States from discriminating against residents in other States. Section 117 is a peculiar provision. It is not a limitation on power that invalidates offending laws: it confers an immunity on some individuals (namely, those who are Australians resident in a State, but not those who are non-Australians resident in a State or anyone resident in a territory or overseas) from offending laws. The basic methodology for determining whether section 117 applies involves a comparison of the position of the plaintiff in two scenarios. The first scenario is the actual situation of a plaintiff. The second scenario is the hypothetical situation of the plaintiff being a resident in the State alleged to have discriminated against the plaintiff. If the treatment of the plaintiff in both scenarios by the State would be the same, then there is no discrimination and section 117 does not apply. If the treatment of the plaintiff in both scenarios would be different, then there is discrimination on the ground of State residency and section 117 renders the plaintiff immune from the offending law.

This chapter examines the external affairs power. Section 51(xxix) of the Australian Constitution grants the Commonwealth Parliament power to make laws with respect to ‘external affairs’. The external affairs power has three key components and is both a subject-matter and purpose power. The external affairs power empowers the Commonwealth to make laws with respect to the subject-matters of: (1) international relations; and (2) matters geographically external to Australia. The external affairs power also empowers the Commonwealth to make laws for the purpose of: (3) implementing Australia’s international legal obligations. The power has enabled the Commonwealth to regulate matters as diverse as aviation safety standards, racial discrimination and terrorist activity.

This chapter presents an introduction to Australian constitutional law. This chapter begins by examining the various forms a Constitution can take and the purposes a Constitution may serve. This chapter also examines the process by which Australia achieved constitutional independence from the United Kingdom. This chapter considers the more conceptual questions of why the Australian Constitution was binding in 1901 and why the Australian Constitution is binding today. This chapter also considers a number of key principles underlying the Australian Constitution: the rule of law, federalism, responsible government, and parliamentary supremacy. This chapter concludes with a consideration of the place of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australian constitutionalism.

This chapter examines an implied restriction on power: the implied freedom of political communication. The Australian Constitution establishes a system of representative and responsible government. The High Court has explained that because freedom of political communication is necessary for such a system to function it follows that laws that impermissibly burden communication about political matters must be invalid. The High Court has developed a three-stage framework of analysis for assessing the validity of laws challenged for breach of the implied freedom. That framework requires examining whether the law has the effect of burdening political communication, whether the purpose of the law is legitimate, and whether the operation of the law is proportionate. The High Court has been clear that the implied freedom is a restriction on power, rather than an individual right, and that it protects only communication about governmental and political matters rather than freedom of speech more broadly.

This chapter examines the scope of the Commonwealth’s power to impose taxation.The tax power enables the Commonwealth to raise revenue, as well as to indirectly regulate behaviour by using taxes to encourage or discourage behaviour. In general terms, a tax is a compulsory exaction of money for public purposes enforceable by law and which is not a fine or pecuniary penalty, a fee for service or a fee for a licence. The Constitution imposes special rules about the procedure for enacting federal tax laws, which are not justiciable, and special rules about the content of federal tax laws, which are justiciable. The Constitution also makes the power to impose duties of customs and excise an exclusively federal power, thereby limiting the power of the States to impose taxes on goods.