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The Crown stands at the heart of the New Zealand, British, Australian and Canadian constitutions as the ultimate source of legal authority and embodiment of state power. A familiar icon of the Westminster model of government, it is also an enigma. Even constitutional experts struggle to define its attributes and boundaries: who or what is the Crown and how is it embodied? Is it the Queen, the state, the government, a corporation sole or aggregate, a relic of feudal England, a metaphor, or a mask for the operation of executive power? How are its powers exercised? How have the Crowns of different Commonwealth countries developed? The Shapeshifting Crown combines legal and anthropological perspectives to provide novel insights into the Crown's changing nature and its multiple, ambiguous and contradictory meanings. It sheds new light onto the development of the state in postcolonial societies and constitutional monarchy as a cultural system.
The Crown is the bedrock of Westminster-style democracies, yet its meanings, powers and effects are opaque and little understood.
This book examines New Zealand's constitution, through the lens of constitutional realism. It looks at the practices, habits, conventions and norms of constitutional life. It focuses on the structures, processes and culture that govern the exercise of public power – a perspective that is necessary to explore and account for a lived, rather than textual, constitution. New Zealand's constitution is unique. One of three remaining unwritten democratic constitutions in the world, it is characterised by a charming set of anachronistic contrasts. “Unwritten”, but much found in various written sources. Built on a network of Westminster constitutional conventions but generously tailored to local conditions. Proudly independent, yet perhaps a purer Westminster model than its British parent. Flexible and vulnerable, while oddly enduring. It looks to the centralised authority that comes with a strong executive, strict parliamentary sovereignty, and a unitary state. However, its populace insists on egalitarian values and representative democracy, with elections fiercely conducted nowadays under a system of proportional representation. The interests of indigenous Maori are protected largely through democratic majority rule. A reputation for upholding the rule of law, yet few institutional safeguards to ensure compliance.
As the Queen marks seventy years on the throne, this engaging work examines Canada’s constitutional monarchy. As Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her Platinum Jubilee in 2022 and nears the conclusion of her reign, much discussion and debate has taken place about the monarchy in Canada. A Resilient Crown examines a broad range of issues related to Canada’s constitutional monarchy, its present state, and its future. Topics include Crown-Indigenous relations; the foundational place of the Crown in Canada’s system of government; the viceregal offices and the role of the administrator; the Crown and francophone Canada; the prime ministers and the Queen; royal tours; and Queen Elizabeth herself. Drawing from academics, serving and retired public servants, and well-known commentators, this book brings together a rich collection of essays that delve into the Crown in Canada today.
This book addresses the history, current development and future of indigenous self-governance in five settler- colonial nations: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States.
The Crown in Canada has had a profound influence in shaping a country and a constitution that embraces the promotion of political moderation, societal accommodation, adaptable constitutional structures, and pluralistic governing practices. While none of these features themselves originated through legislative or constitutional action, David E. Smith, Christopher McCreery, and Jonathan Shanks propose that all reflect the presence and actions of the Crown. Examining how a constitutional monarchy functions, Canada’s Deep Crown discusses how the legal and institutional abstractions of the Crown vary depending on the circumstances and the context in which it is found. The Crown presents differently depending on who is observing it, who is representing it, and what role it is performing. With a focus on the changes that have taken place over the last fifty years, this book addresses the role of the Crown in dispersing power throughout Canada’s system of government, the function the sovereign, governor general, and lieutenant governors play, and how the demise of the Crown and transition to a new sovereign is likely to unfold.
Twelve authorities on the constitutional monarchy in Canada discuss how this historic institution, inherited from the United Kingdom and shared with fourteen other countries, will change after the long reign of Queen Elizabeth II comes to a close.
Much of the discussion of social transformation and resistance in socio-legal studies centres around the question of whether and how the law can be used to achieve practical change. However, the editors of this volume argue that it will never be possible to enact change through the law because it is inseparable from violence, be it metaphysical, social, or political. They posit that a “just world,” free from oppressive power relations, requires us to imagine communities where the state and its law cease to exist. Contributors address the underexplored questions of what alternatives to law could look like: how communities could organize their everyday lives, and how they could address social and interpersonal conflicts outside of an apparatus of violence. These essays contribute to the ongoing interrogation of settler colonialism, racism, and structural violence in Canada by demonstrating how to expose the violence the law produces, how to deconstruct law’s power, and, finally, how to identify modes of resistance that have transformative potential.
In recent decades, the global wealth of the rich has soared to leave huge chasms of wealth inequality. This book argues that we cannot talk about inequalities in Britain today without talking about the monarchy. Running the Family Firm explores the postwar British monarchy in order to understand its economic, political, social and cultural functions. Although the monarchy is usually positioned as a backward-looking, archaic institution and an irrelevant anachronism to corporate forms of wealth and power, the relationship between monarchy and capitalism is as old as capitalism itself. This book frames the monarchy as the gold standard corporation: The Firm. Using a set of case studies – the Queen, Prince Charles, Prince Harry, Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle – it contends that The Firm’s power is disguised through careful stage management of media representations of the royal family. In so doing, it extends conventional understandings of what monarchy is and why it matters.
​This book considers how legal history has shaped and continues to shape our shared present. Each chapter draws a clear and significant connection to a meaningful feature of our lives today. Focusing primarily on England and Australia, contributions show the diversity of approaches to legal history’s relevance to the present. Some contributors have a tight focus on legal decisions of particular importance. Others take much bigger picture overview of major changes that take centuries to register and where impact is still felt. The contributors are a mix of legal historians, practising lawyers, members of the judiciary, and legal academics, and develop analysis from a range of sources from statutes and legal treatises to television programs. Major legal personalities from Edward Marshall Hall to Sir Dudley Ryder are considered, as are landmarks in law from the Magna Carta to the Mabo Decision.