This chapter situates the Declaration of Independence in relation to another founding document of the United States, the federal Constitution. It assesses the Declaration’s role in debates over the Constitution, first during the latter’s framing in 1787, then in the struggle for ratification, and then later as political actors sought to interpret each document in light of the other. From the outset, debate over the Constitution highlighted the Declaration’s multivalence as well as its rhetorical power. Both defenders and opponents of the Constitution have sought to show how their cause best aligned with the ideals and aspirations expressed in the Declaration. Anti-federalists and their successors constructed a powerful narrative which juxtaposed the Declaration’s call to liberty with the Constitution’s blueprint for authority. Yet there was from the beginning an equally strong tradition that saw the Constitution as a consummation of the Declaration’s promise. Either way, this chapter argues, the Declaration continues to help shape the meaning of the Constitution – and to have its own meaning remolded in turn.

The majoritarian critique of judicial review asserts that democracies should assign the power to resolve questions regarding the nature and extent of individual rights to the majority and their representatives. The literature addressing these issues, however, suffers from a consistent failure to examine carefully basic questions about the nature of democracy. The western democratic tradition works from the foundational intuition that legitimate power derives from the consent of the governed. That intuition justifies majority rule as an important element of social choice, but it also requires the entrenchment of rights protections as an element of any acceptable set of political institutions. If entrenched rights are to provide effective protections to liberty interests, they must be enforced by an institution that is not subject to majority control. Democratic institutions must therefore include an institution independent of majority control whose purpose is to enforce rights protections against the majority. While this argument does not establish that the judiciary is the only institution appropriate for this role, it does demonstrate the essential role played in democratic institutions by a rights-enforcing institution that is independent of majority control.

This chapter provides an introduction to the core concepts of US law, for those with an HCI background but not a legal background. The chapter covers the history of U.S. law, the basic constructs of the U.S. legal system, the core sources of legal rules: constitutions, statutues, regulations, and case law, differences between civil and criminal law, the differences between law and policy at the federal versus state level, searching for and using legal resources, and how to apply basic legal principles to HCI research.

This chapter examines the growing prevalence and impact of sanctions designations on individuals, companies, and nations globally. It highlights the severe economic and personal consequences of such designations, which can lead to bankruptcy and business dissolution, often resulting in long-lasting and potentially irreparable damage. Further, the chapter critiques the process of sanctions designation as fundamentally at odds with core principles of the rule of law, particularly those central to Western legal traditions. These principles include the government’s duty to clearly articulate legal prohibitions, the necessity of providing specific accusations and supporting evidence to those penalized, the right to contest such evidence, and the availability of a meaningful appeals process. By analyzing these discrepancies, this chapter calls for a reevaluation of the sanctions framework to align it more closely with established legal norms and protections.

Chapter 8: In constitutional terms the emperor operated under the law and Tiberius noted the importance of the law in imperial actions, though it came to be accepted that emperors were also free from the constraint of the laws. The emperor, receiving his power by statute, could himself make law or change administrative procedures, which he did by edict or letter or suggestion or speech in the senate or by instructions to governors. The emperor was deeply involved in the process of the law by holding judicial hearings, dealing with appeals from Roman citizens on a capital charge, and responding to individual petitions from all over the empire on a wide range of issues both personal and legal; it was part of the emperor’s role to be accessible.

This chapter develops a theory of singular compositional explanation. The core idea is that a singular compositional explanation is a representation of an ontological dependence relation between entities mentioned in a representation of an explanans and entities mentioned in a representation of an explanandum. The account is realist in the sense that it postulates a real relation among entities in the world that would have been rejected by logical empiricists. Explanations are singular in the sense that the explanandum entity is a single spatiotemporal particular and the explanans entities are individual spatiotemporal particulars. The explanations are compositional in the sense that the explanandum entity is an individual, an individual property instance, or an individual activity instance that is explained by sets of lower level individuals, lower level property instances, or lower level activity instances.

Modelling the liability of social platforms has become a pressing issue, along with emerging efforts to institutionalise the accountability of digital collective actors, including human-algorithmic associations. However, to make social platforms liable, it is necessary to resolve the problem of the accountability of private actors for human rights violations traditionally immune to human rights challenges because social platforms are owned by private actors, who also manufacture their contents and coordinate and control them. Different strategies are employed or offered to remedy the situation. Considering that human rights violations in the digital sphere are of ‘constitutional quality’, this chapter identifies the horizontal application of constitutional rights as a possible response to human rights challenges raised by the actions of social platforms. This step does not require the recognition of new rights but the recognition of new duty holders, such as social platforms, in relation to existing rights. The examples from Germany, Canada, and the European Union illustrate its promising potential to remedy online human rights abuses.

After a successful fundraising campaign, the Church of Christ missionaries arrived in Italy in early 1949. They acquired a villa in Frascati, in the Castelli Romani area southeast of Rome, where they established a school and an orphanage and launched an ambitious missionary effort. Their activities quickly alarmed the local Catholic clergy and Vatican hierarchies, who viewed the mission as part of a broader Protestant strategy to undermine the Catholic Church’s near monopoly on religion in Italy. The Vatican promptly urged the Italian government to take action, relying on Fascist-era laws to curb the missionaries' activities. The Italian Ministry of the Interior, led by the conservative Christian Democrat Mario Scelba, targeted the Texas evangelicals for overstaying their short-term tourist visas and for opening a school without the requisite authorizations. Efforts to spread their message in various towns of the Castelli Romani were met with significant resistance, including violent attacks by locals. As tensions escalated, the missionaries grew increasingly frustrated with what they perceived as the indifference of US diplomats stationed in Rome. They began lobbying their congressional representatives in Washington, and soon members of Congress took up their cause, pressuring the State Department to intervene.

After his visa extension was denied, the mission’s leader, Cline Paden, made unsuccessful attempts to return to Italy. He moved to Denmark for a few years before eventually settling back in Texas, where he established a missionary school in Abilene – the Sunset International Bible Institute (SIBI) – and became a prominent figure in the Churches of Christ. Meanwhile, the Italian mission continued its precarious existence, never achieving the status of a major religious player as it had hoped and attracting only a few hundred members. One of the defining features of its story was the stark contrast between the mission’s limited success and the disproportionate political and diplomatic attention its activities garnered. Yet, thanks to their “Americanness” and the ability to leverage the United States’ unique power and influence over its junior Italian ally, the Texans played a significant role in advancing religious pluralism and freedom in Italy – a fact acknowledged even by other long-established Protestant churches such as the Waldensians that had little or no political or theological sympathy for the Church of Christ.

The signing of the instrument popularly known as the ‘Anglo Irish Treaty’ in December 1921 paved the way for the creation of the Irish Free State in December 1922. The draft constitution of the Irish Free State, created in Dublin in early 1922, was taken to London for a confidential preview in May of that year. The British government insisted that the draft constitution had effectively ignored the provisions of the 1921 Treaty and demanded major revisions. For a brief period, the collapse of the entire settlement agreed in 1921 appeared to be a real possibility. This disaster was only averted when both sides agreed to redraft substantial portions of the draft constitution in early June 1922. This chapter examines the negotiating strategies developed in Dublin and London before and during the radical redrafting of the future constitution of the Irish Free State.

Despite a recent law recognizing and protecting the rights of Indigenous Peoples, the post-independence laws of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have dispossessed, and continue to dispossess, Indigenous Peoples of their customary land rights. Collective and customary property rights are enshrined in the DRC Constitution; however, in practice there is little to no recognition or protection. This is because land statutes work in cross-cutting ways to deny Indigenous Peoples the formal legal title to their traditional lands, and without title they are vulnerable to dispossession by development or conservation. In the absence of a land tenure system establishing clear collective ownership rights, “community forests” represent an alternative strategy or pathway for Indigenous Peoples to secure their customary rights over their forests and their lands (the local communities’ forest concessions, CFCLs). Despite some successful cases of securing land tenure through the CFCLs, inaccessible legal requirements and difficult procedures make these a problematic pathway for land justice. This chapter sets out recommendations for strengthening land tenure and CFCLs.

Land and forests are integral to India’s Adivasi (Indigenous) Peoples. Lands provide sustenance and livelihoods, are a symbol of social status and dignity, and are central to the Adivasi “philosophy of life.” This chapter analyzes the various nuances of Adivasi land rights in India. It discusses the Adivasi land tenure systems, legal measures for protecting and allocating land, land holding patterns, the nature and scale of Adivasi land dispossession, and the strategies that the Adivasis have adopted to advance and safeguard their land rights. It is argued that, despite constitutional and statutory provisions and various policy measures to protect, promote, and secure Adivasi land rights, they increasingly experience land dispossession in different forms – reflecting an “implementation gap” in practice. This chapter concludes with recommendations for safeguarding Adivasi land rights, such as collaboration between Adivasi movements and civil society organizations, consistent governance measures for different land rights regimes (such as Sixth Schedule in Fifth Schedule Areas), and independent monitoring agencies to maintain accountability on land rights duties.

In Malaysia, three ethnic groups identify as “Indigenous Peoples”: the heterogeneous Peninsular Malaysia Orang Asli, natives of Sabah, and natives of Sarawak. Malaysia’s hybrid legal system confers differing constitutional, statutory, and common law rights and privileges to Indigenous Peoples, which present distinct yet shared experiences of their land rights. These Indigenous groups were granted differing levels of constitutional privileges during Malaysia’s constitutional formation, which resulted in divergent written laws for the protection and recognition of their customary lands and resources. These differing laws and histories have functioned to dispossess these communities of their traditional lands, territories, and resources in their own ways. The strategy of litigation has afforded Indigenous communities some recourse for gaps in the written law but common law development of such rights and the court process have equally proven to be a barrier in some cases. Although international commitments to the sustainable management of resources have increased possibilities for the inclusion of Indigenous communities in matters concerning their lands and resources, constitutionally-entrenched legal privileges have yet to translate to the effective protection and recognition of traditional Indigenous lands and resources in Malaysia.

Americans understood the importance of establishing judicial authority over maritime war from the moment they began resisting British hegemony in the 1770s. The states’ unwillingness to prevent American seafarers from violating the rights of foreigners during the American Revolution provoked diplomatic controversies that undermined the drive for independence. After the war, supporters and skeptics of the new Constitution fiercely debated its creation of a federal judiciary. Anti-Federalist critics feared the centralizing and despotic tendencies of life-tenured judges who would be “subject to no control.” But even the “most bigotted idolizers of state authority,” Alexander Hamilton famously wrote in The Federalist, agreed that the federal courts should have exclusive authority over maritime cases. If Americans truly wanted a government that could fulfill the nation’s international obligations and maintain harmony with other sovereigns, they needed a judiciary with the power to resolve disputes arising at sea.

The history of how the federal judiciary shaped American sovereignty has long been hidden, obscured by two often-told stories about the courts and the nation. One tells us that judges historically have ceded authority to the president in foreign affairs, and therefore have had little influence on the United States’ international relations. The other asserts that the Marshall Court’s constitutional rulings laid the foundation for federal sovereignty under the Constitution. Both of these accounts have elements of truth, but only because of developments a century later. The claim that Marshall’s constitutional decisions shaped the nation projects backward into the past an importance those rulings did not have when they were made. And the notion that the courts have historically had little to do with foreign affairs ignores that early judges were central participants in a cooperative effort among the three branches of government to secure the United States’ place in the world. It is that legacy of judicial nation-building, rather than the stories we have inherited, that can help us think about the courts’ role today.