Constitutions: Writing Nations, Reading Difference

Pryor, Judith

ISBN 10: 041543193X / ISBN 13: 9780415431934

Published by Birkbeck Law Press, 2008

About this Item

This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside.This book has soft covers. In fair condition, suitable as a study copy. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item,450grams, ISBN:9780415431934.

Seller Inventory # 9797014

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Constitutions: Writing Nations, Reading Difference
• Publisher: Birkbeck Law Press
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 041543193X
• ISBN 13: 9780415431934
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Fair
• Weight: 450 grams
• Seller catalogs:
  • Legal

About this title

Synopsis

Bringing a postcolonial perspective to UK constitutional debates and including a detailed and comparative engagement with the constitutions of Britain’s ex-colonies, this book is an original reflection upon the relationship between the written and the unwritten constitution.

Can a nation have an unwritten constitution? While written constitutions both found and define modern nations, Britain is commonly regarded as one of the very few exceptions to this rule. Drawing on a range of theories concerning writing, law and violence (from Robert Cover to Jacques Derrida), Constitutions makes a theoretical intervention into conventional constitutional analyses by problematizing the notion of a ‘written constitution’ on which they are based.

Situated within the frame of the former British empire, this book deconstructs the conventional opposition between the ‘margins’ and the ‘centre’, as well as between the ‘written’ and ‘unwritten’, by paying very close, detailed attention to the constitutional texts under consideration. Pryor argues that Britain’s ‘unwritten’ constitution and ‘immemorial’ common law only take on meaning in a relation of difference with the written constitutions of its former colonies. These texts, in turn, draw on this pre-literate origin in order to legitimize themselves. The ‘unwritten’ constitution of Britain can therefore be located and dislocated in postcolonial written constitutions.

Constitutions is an excellent addition to the bookshelves of all students of the philosophy of law, political theory, constitutional and administrative law and jurisprudence.

About the Author

Judith Pryor is an historian at the Waitangi Tribunal, New Zealand