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Le Code Napoleón Régit-il Toujours l’Amérique Latine d’Outre-Tombe?

Matthew C. Mirow

A l'occasion de réunions internationales, il est commun de voir des juristes de pays différents échanger des plaisanteries douteuses sur leurs systemes juridiques et la pratique judiciaire. Lorsqu'ils se trouvent aux Etats-Unis, les juristes d' Amérique Latine se plaisent à informer leurs interlocuteurs que leur systéme est toujours basé sur la codification napoléonienne. Une telle remarque ne fera pas le méme effet sur un juriste des Etats-Unis que sur un juriste européen. Elle masque à peine l'affirmation d'une égalité historique et culturelle, voire d'un sentiment de supériorité a l'égard de la tradition juridique anglo-américaine fondée sur la common law. Evidemment, la référence au Code civil de 1804 est un raccourci simplificateur à l'extrême, mais qui fait encore toujours recette. Les comparatistes et les historiens du droit ont leur part de responsabilité dans cette perception des droits latino-américains. Aux EtatsUnis, les juristes seront d'autant plus facilement enclins à accepter une telle caractérisation du fait que les introductions élémentaires assimilées dés le début de leurs études contribuent à la perpétuer. D'ailleurs, toujours aux Etats-Unis, de nombreux juristes seraient également disposés a adopter la même caractérisation à l'égard du droit en vigueur en Louisiane. A l'instar des grands ouvrages de référence européens de droit comparé, la littérature juridique d' Amérique Latine reprend elle aussi cette description. Cette caractérisation a sans doute l'avantage de faciliter une catégorisation sommaire, mais a aussi l'inconvénient de représenter une vue largement inexacte : affirmer que le Code Napoléon constitue le noyau du droit en Amérique Latine est tout aussi trompeur que d'affirmer que le droit des Etats-Unis serait fonde sur les Commentaires de Blackstone, ou le droit italien sur le Digeste de Justinien. Mais sans doute ces affirmations contiennent-elles une part de vérité, et c'est pourquoi la présente contribution s'attachera à explorer la signification historique et contemporaine du Code de 1804 en Amérique Latine, plus particuliérement dans les pays hispanophones.
Constructing Human Rights In The Americas : Institutional Development And Practice In The New World

John F. Stack, Jr.

A number of recent, important contributions to the literature of supranational judicial institution building consider how courts have developed the capabilities to enforce decisions limiting the sovereignty of nation-states in the twenty-first century. Mary Volcansek, for example, argues for the momentum, if not inevitability, of certain dispute resolution mechanisms in trading blocs when economic conditions are both "stable and durable.” The success of economic integration in Western Europe and the proliferation of regional trading pacts including both the North Atlantic Free Trade Association (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) auger well for even greater strides toward judicial institution building as cross-border transactions ratchet upward "in number and intensity, to establish comprehensive rules and ... mechanism [ s] to enforce them.”

This chapter provides an alternative perspective to that of the Europe case where transnational courts have attained some considerable measures of supranational authority, especially in the areas of rulemaking and compliance. In the New World, the developing human rights regime is removed from the conspicuous achievements of supranational law, policymaking, and economics that characterize the European context. Yet an examination of the Inter-American system reveals how both the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have made important strides forward even in light of the strong emphasis on state sovereignty. The evolution of a human rights regime in the Americas illustrates the power that transnational forces have exerted in creating institutions and practices that challenge unfettered state abuses of human rights during the past thirty years.
Courts Crossing Borders

John F. Stack, Jr. and Mary L. Volcansek

Europeans have suspected for some time that subtle inroads into national prerogatives are consequences of transnational organizations and their courts.The successive treaties and the economic, legal, and political frameworks that have given rise to the European Union (EU) over the past fifty years have conceived an approach to state building that has incorporated the eighteenth century nation-state into a supranational structure that has stimulated economic growth. In so doing, the power of courts above the level of states has been dramatically intensified as the various iterations of the European Union have sought to expand economic opportunities and integrate aspects of political processes. Courts have played a seminal role in blurring lines of sovereignty among states in order to implement the economic and policy objectives of Europe's collective interests. The European Court of Justice of the EU has elevated the treaties to the stature of a constitution, facilitated free movement of workers and capital among member states, and annulled national barriers to the free movement of goods and services.

Americans have, however, been smugly less concerned about potential incursions into their national sovereignty, by courts or any other transnational bodies. Yet, as the New York Times noted, a phenomenon similar to what has happened in Europe is occurring on this side of the Atlantic. "NAFTA's Powerful Little Secret" detailed the ways in which obscure tribunals, impaneled to enforce the rules of the North American Free Trade Agreement, are overriding national laws. More recently, and more powerfully, Chief Justice Margaret Marshall of the Massachusetts high court was "surprised,” according to an article in the New York Times, to discover that a case her court had decided and that the U.S. Supreme Court had declined to hear was under review by a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) court. Less than two weeks after reporting about the Massachusetts case, the New York Times noted that a dispute settlement panel of the World Trade Organization (WTO) had ruled against the U.S. practice of subsidizing cotton producers, a ruling that, if upheld by the higher WTO judicial body, would likely end or seriously change the current model of cotton production in the United States.
Judicialization And Sovereignty

John F. Stack, Jr. and Mary L. Volcansek

“Courts crossing borders" was chosen as a title to convey the convergence of two realities in international politics. The first is that the traditional meanings of national sovereignty and, indeed, possibly the nation-state itself, are undergoing a radical metamorphosis. Simultaneously, the international political sphere is becoming progressively "judicialized.” By judicialization, we refer to a process explained by Torbjorn Vallinder as the "infusion of judicial decision-making and of court-like procedures into political arenas where they did not previously reside.” In some instances this process extends beyond formal courtroom proceedings and judicial deliberation and has come to dominate "nonjudicial negotiating or decision-making arenas by quasi-judicial (legalistic) procedures." This book addresses that phenomenon at the transnational level, where courts or court-like bodies have encroached not only on what has typically been seen as the political sphere, but also on traditional notions of the nation-state and national sovereignty.

The judicialization of international politics has resulted from the creation of a growing number of transnational organizations whose aims are to promote economic or political integration or to protect human rights. These organizations have challenged notions of exclusive sovereignty "as control over population within a well-defined territory" because of concerns over "the implications on state action or inaction" on a range of issues. The state, as a result, no longer is the primary actor in international relations, and "transnational, as opposed to interstate, relations have increased in importance." The list of transnational organizations is long, and many of them have a tribunal of some sort embedded within them. These include the European Union, with its Court of Justice (ECJ), and the European Council, with its European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). There is also the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for the Organization of American States (OAS), and even the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) provides for bi-national panels. There are courts for the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Asian Free Trade Area (AFTA), and the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR), as well as courts created to address a specific international issue, such as the International War Crimes Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Perhaps the most ambitious is the newly created International Criminal Court that named its 18 judges early in 2003. Whereas each of these courts possesses the capability to judicialize international relations and to erode national sovereignty, assertions of "universal jurisdiction" for human rights violations represent the most extreme threat. Universal jurisdiction possesses the potential to transcend or even obliterate protections traditionally afforded by national sovereignty for those accused of crimes against humanity.
Regulation of Bank Financial Service Activities : Cases and Materials, 2nd ed.

Lissa L. Broome and Jerry W. Markham

Provides a comprehensive overview of nearly every aspect of banking regulation from its history, to federal and state regulation, to international regulatory issues. Contains individual chapters on the securities, derivatives and insurance activities of banks and their "functional" regulation by non-banking regulators under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA). Also reviews thrift regulation and its evolution under FIRREA and FDICIA, and contains a chapter on bank commercial lending activity.
Latin American Law : a History of Private Law and Institutions in Spanish America

M. C. Mirow

Private law touches every aspect of people's daily lives—landholding, inheritance, private property, marriage and family relations, contracts, employment, and business dealings—and the court records and legal documents produced under private law are a rich source of information for anyone researching social, political, economic, or environmental history. But to utilize these records fully, researchers need a fundamental understanding of how private law and legal institutions functioned in the place and time period under study. This book offers the first comprehensive introduction in either English or Spanish to private law in Spanish Latin America from the colonial period to the present. M. C. Mirow organizes the book into three substantial sections that describe private law and legal institutions in the colonial period, the independence era and nineteenth century, and the twentieth century. Each section begins with an introduction to the nature and function of private law during the period and discusses such topics as legal education and lawyers, legal sources, courts, land, inheritance, commercial law, family law, and personal status. Each section also presents themes of special interest during its respective time period, including slavery, Indian status, codification, land reform, and development and globalization.
Constitutional Analysis in a Nutshell

Thomas E. Baker and Jerre S. Williams

This authoritative text provides a framework for understanding individual liberty and governmental power and the institutional role played by the U.S. Supreme Court. Coverage includes judicial review, commerce clause and state powers, federalism, separation of powers, congressional and executive powers, and individual civil rights and civil liberties. Includes diagrams that aid understanding of the fundamentals of our system of government.
¿Hacia Dónde Va Latinoamérica? Una Crítica al Enfoque Sociojurídico Sobre América Latina

Jorge L. Esquirol

Derecho y sociedad en América Latina: propuesta para la consolidación de los estudios jurídicos críticos. ¿Una sociología jurídica latinoamericana o un programa de investigación en sociología jurídica para América Latina? Enseñanza jurídica y dogmática en el campo jurídico latinoamericano: apuntes acerca de un debate necesario. ¿Hacia dónde va Latinoamérica?: una crítica al enfoque socio-jurídico sobre América Latina. Propuestas para una ciencia social del derecho. Pluralismo jurídico y derecho alternativo en Brasil.
Corporations and Other Business Enterprises : Cases and Materials

Thomas Lee Hazen and Jerry W. Markham

Corporations and Other Business Enterprises: Cases and Materials focuses on the law of corporations, with ample coverage of unincorporated forms of doing business as well as basic agency principles. (This is the ABRIDEGED edition of the casebook). The casebook is designed for use in a variety of corporations and business organizations courses. The unabridged edition contains material that makes it suitable for use in advanced courses as well. Corporations courses vary from school to school and the book is organized in such a way to make it easy for instructors to "pick and choose" topics to be covered. There is ample material on unincorporated forms of doing business, considerable coverage of federal securities law issues traditionally taught in basic corporations classes, and specialized treatment of closely held corporations. Coverage also includes the role of corporate lawyers, comprehensive treatment of mergers and acquisitions, and an introduction to corporate finance. The casebook includes numerous references to the Model Business Corporation Act and the Delaware corporate law.
Mergers, Acquisitions and Other Business Combinations : Cases and Materials

Thomas Lee Hazen and Jerry W. Markham

This law school casebook focuses on the corporate and securities laws relating to corporate combinations. Coverage also extends to tax, antitrust, and financial issues. Cases and other materials are followed by informative notes and questions. It is organized to make it easy for you to omit or rearrange material to adapt the book to your particular teaching approach. Designed for use in either as a stand-alone text or as the basic source material for projects, problems, or writing assignments to supplement the traditional case method. The book is suitable for use for either a two or three credit hour course.
Congress : How Silent A Partner?

John F. Stack, Jr. and Colton C. Campbell

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of Cold War anticommunism, U.S. foreign policy now confronts a number of uncertainties in the world at large and in the halls and committee rooms of Congress. The harsh realities of twenty-first-century world politics intruded on American consciousness on September 11, 2001, with the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The vulnerability of the United States to terrorism opens a new chapter in American foreign policy. Terrorism is not a new phenomenon confronting democratic societies, but the explicitly transnational character of terrorism raises new challenges to the conduct of U.S. foreign policy and the workings of our governing institutions. For many Americans, foreign policy begins at the water's edge. September 11, 2001 forever changes America's perceptions that foreign affairs is a somewhat distant, even abstract, endeavor.

For nearly the past sixty years, presidential dominance was axiomatic in the design and execution of American foreign relations. Congress was cognizant of such unfettered presidential dominance in light of its obligation to control the purse strings and to provide advice and consent. However, increasing legislative concern with the excesses of an imperial presidency, particularly notable during the Johnson and Nixon administrations, culminated in the passage of the War Powers Act (1974) that sought to constrain presidential initiatives in the area of undeclared wars. Congressional action has attempted to chip away at presidential dominance in U.S. foreign affairs. The era of undisputed presidential leadership has evolved into a more complex and fragmented process in which both Congress and the judiciary have weighed into the foreign policy making process. Increasing levels of transnational relations, and unprecedented levels of interdependence, as expressed in reliance on multinational institutions, such as NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, increase Congress's ability to participate in foreign policy at the expense of the presidency.

Lawmakers' preoccupation with domestic affairs, especially constituency concerns and business, has traditionally been the cause for episodic, at times highly selective, congressional intervention in foreign policy, often precipitated by some crisis abroad or by a widely publicized foreign policy debacle. Subsequently, Congress's attention span in foreign affairs was often brief, lacking an overall strategy, and mirroring the decentralized role contemplated by James Madison. With the emergence of the United States as the only full-service superpower, however, new challenges confront the conduct of foreign relations at both institutional and constitutional levels. Legislators increasingly challenge presidential proposals in every area of foreign policy. According to Lee Hamilton, former chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, members of Congress "speak out frequently in a cacophony of conflicting voices."

In this chapter we explore the changing parameters of congressional action in foreign policy. The Constitution implicitly requires both competition and cooperation between the legislative and executive branches in this area. Historical patterns and individual attitudes have deviated between conflict and compromise. Congress and the presidency at times work as tandem institutions that need each other's support and active acquiescence to succeed. At other times they compete fiercely, such as when legislators see the executive as contemptuous and arbitrary, if Congress perceives American sovereignty threatened, or when executive officials view Congress as inefficient and intrusive. While the dominant reality is that the president has emerged as the ultimate decider, especially during armed conflict, lawmakers are finding new and creative ways to contribute to, and influence, foreign policy. The classic congressional method for exercising foreign policy prerogatives through legislation is being supplemented by an array of alternative techniques, such as Senate confirmation of ambassadorial nominees, treaty ratification, and the mobilization of ethnic interest groups in pursuit of parochial objectives. At various points, the Supreme Court has affirmed Congress's part in foreign policy making. And, greater congressional activism over the past decade is due to an increase in the number of actors attempting to influence American foreign policy, among them the rise of ethnic lobbies.
A Financial History of the United States, 3 volume set, 2nd Edition

Jerry W. Markham

The first comprehensive financial history of the United States in more than thirty years. Accessible to undergraduate level readers, it focuses on the growth and expansion of banking, securities, and insurance from the colonial period right up to the incredible growth of the stock market during the 1990s and the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. The author traces the origins of American finance to the older societies of Europe and Northern Africa, and shows how English merchants transferred their financial systems to America. He explains how financial matters dominated the founding and development of the colonies, and how financial concerns incited the Revolution. And he shows how the Civil War began the transformation of America from a small economy largely dependent on foreign capital into a complex capitalist society. From the Civil War, the nation's financial history breaks down into periods of frenzied speculation, quiet growth, periodic panics, and furious periods of expansion, right up through the incredible growth of the stock market during the 1990s.
Broker-Dealer Operations and Regulation Under Securities and Commodities Laws

Jerry W. Markham

The two-volume Broker-Dealer Operations Under Securities and Commodities Law is a guide to broker-dealer back-office operational issues and supervisory responsibilities. Issues covered include: • Sales practices, including suitability and churning • Market abuses and best execution requirements • Broker-dealer registration requirements • Employees' sexual harassment and discrimination claims • Regulatory structure imposed by federal regulators upon broker-dealers • Retention requirements via books, record keeping, and financial reporting requirements • Arbitration of broker-dealer disputes
Introduction

John F. Stack Jr. and Colton C. Campbell

When average Americans think of rights, they generally conceive of written guarantees, like the Bill of Rights, which provide a framework for the defense and protection of individuals. But America has changed since the Constitution was written--technologically in terms of cars, telephones, and e-mail, and socially in terms of changing marriage patterns, urban violence, and gender equality. A panoply of rights never envisioned by our Founding Fathers has thus emerged. Reflecting the dynamism of America, provisions of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights have been interpreted and reinterpreted over time to protect a variety of rights not explicitly stated within these documents. As the U.S. Congress enters its third century, rights issues present complex problems for Congress and its members. Congress and the Politics of Emerging Rights explores the various dimensions of emerging rights from congressional and judicial perspectives, illustrating both personal and institutional challenges, especially under conditions of divided government and increased levels of partisanship.
The Emerging Rights Of States: Revitalized Federalism

John F. Stack, Jr. and Colton C. Campbell

Conflict between the enumerated powers of Congress and the reserved powers of the states began early and continued long. The Constitution gives to the legislative branch primacy over broad areas, including taxation and the regulation of interstate and foreign commerce, plus all powers "necessary and proper" for putting its specified authority into effect. But such qualified authority is occasionally clouded by the first ten amendments, which limit the role of the central government. Ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, the Tenth Amendment declares that all powers not delegated by the Constitution to the federal government nor denied to the states are reserved to the states respectively or the people. Adding cushion is the Eleventh Amendment that grants states freedom from being unwillingly hauled into federal court by citizens having nonconstitutional complaints.

In this chapter we examine how the new judicial activism of the Supreme Court underscores the fluidity of states' rights (i.e., the prerogative power of a state to exercise its inherent authority as opposed to rights of the federal government), or "state rights," the prevalent usage proceeding the Civil War, in the congressional arena. For much of our nation's history states' rights were either the claimants of the party out of power (Current 1995) or almost exclusively equated with resistance to increasing civil rights protection, opposition to social legislation on a national level, and conservative economic benefits (Drake and Nelson 1999). Contemporary federal-state relations, however, are emerging in different ways. Central to the revitalized rights of states is the Supreme Court's new activism, which is defining new, unexpected rights for states (Stack and Campbell 2001). In a series of landmark decisions, reinvigorating the Tenth Amendment and substantially defining the Eleventh Amendment, a bare majority of justices are redefining traditional federal-state relations, moving toward a dual federalist approach long abandoned since the late 1930s. The Supreme Court is also redefining long-established rights created under the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause. This trend reflects historical periods when beliefs developed that states would better solve pressing matters as well as protect more effectively the rights of individuals.
Federal Court Practice and Procedure: A Third Branch Bibliography

Thomas E. Baker

This bibliography serves as a guide for anyone researchingany matter of federal court practice and procedure. Offers a compilation of texts that deal with the various aspects of the federal courts and federal court procedures.
Regulation of Bank Financial Service Activities: Cases and Materials, 1st ed.

Lissa L. Broome and Jerry W. Markham

Provides a comprehensive overview of nearly every aspect of banking regulation from its history, to federal and state regulation, to international regulatory issues. Contains individual chapters on the securities, derivatives and insurance activities of banks and their "functional" regulation by non-banking regulators under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA). Also reviews thrift regulation and its evolution under FIRREA and FDICIA, and contains a chapter on bank commercial lending activity.
René David: At the Head of the Legal Family

Jorge L. Esquirol

This book, designed with courses in comparative law as well as scholarly projects in mind, brings a new generation of comparativists together to reflect on the character of their discipline. It aims to incite curiosity and debate about contemporary issues within comparative law by bringing the discipline into conversation with debates in anthropology, literary and cultural studies, and critical theory. The book addresses questions such as what is the disciplinary identity of comparative law; how should we understand its relationship to colonialism, modernism, the Cold War, and other wider events that have shaped its history; what is its relationship to other projects of comparison in the arts, social sciences and humanities; and how has comparative law contributed at different times and in different parts of the world to projects of legal reform. Each of the essays frames its intervention around a close reading of the life and work of one formative character in the history of the discipline. Taken as a whole, the book offers a fresh and sophisticated picture of the discipline and its future.
How Milton Works. The Belknap

Stanley Fish

How Milton works “from the inside out” is the foremost concern of Fish’s book, which explores the radical effect of Milton’s theological convictions on his poetry and prose. For Milton the value of a poem or of any other production derives from the inner worth of its author and not from any external measure of excellence or heroism. Milton’s aesthetic, says Fish, is an “aesthetic of testimony”: every action, whether verbal or physical, is or should be the action of holding fast to a single saving commitment against the allure of plot, narrative, representation, signs, drama—anything that might be construed as an illegitimate supplement to divine truth. Much of the energy of Milton’s writing, according to Fish, comes from the effort to maintain his faith against these temptations, temptations which in any other aesthetic would be seen as the very essence of poetic value. Encountering the great poet on his own terms, engaging his equally distinguished admirers and detractors, this book moves a 300-year debate about the significance of Milton’s verse to a new level.
Commodities Regulation: Fraud, Manipulation & Other Claims

Jerry W. Markham

Protect your clients and yourself from investment fraud claims. Learn how to draft documents and safeguard client confidentiality. In-depth coverage addresses specific types of fraud and manipulation and includes guidance for avoiding potential commodity problems.
Kennewick Man, Identity, and the Failure of Forensic History

Matthew C. Mirow

This work examines the failure of forensic history to define identity in the context of the Kennewick Man case and NAGPRA.
Diverging Perspectives On Lawmaking: The Delicate Balance Between Congress And The Court

John F. Stack, Jr. and Colton C. Campbell

The formal institutional ties between Congress and the Supreme Court are complex and interdependent. Congress seeks a judicial system that faithfully construes the laws of the legislative branch and efficiently discharges them, whereas the judiciary seeks an environment respectful of its independence (Katzmann 1997). In the end, the relationship between Congress and the Court is critical to the legitimacy and administration of justice.

Congressional-judicial relations are neither static nor unidimensional. History, circumstance, political struggles, and the articulation of issues by Congress and the Court drive the delicate balance among lawmaking functions. For too long, the Supreme Court has been studied as an isolated entity, void of politics, that reaches judgments by some unseen and unknowable logic (Brigham 1987). Likewise, Congress is commonly approached as a singularly political enterprise with little regard for its nuanced lawmaking and lawgiving functions. This is ironic, since as early as 1789, Congress defined the scope and jurisdiction of the federal court system as established under article III of the Constitution. Such legislative precedent helped lay the foundation for a sometime stormy relationship between Congress and the Court.

Our intent is to highlight some of the missing elements involved in congressional- judicial relations. While the Constitution establishes three branches of government, each with distinctively shared functions, no one branch acts alone. As the chapters that follow illustrate, the overlap between Congress and the Court is dynamic, far-reaching, and ongoing. It is a struggle for institutional balance that frequently shifts with the politics of the moment-politics that are themselves reflections of the search for institutional equilibrium.
The Least Dangerous Branch? The Supreme Court'S New Judicial Activism

John F. Stack, Jr. and Colton C. Campbell

Viewed from the perspective of the new century, federal-state relations are emerging in new and, perhaps, unexpected ways. Central to the revitalized power of states is the Supreme Court's new activism. Such judicial activism is not new; it is inherent in the nature of judicial decision making. Chief Justice John Marshall, with scant authority (reliance on Blackstone's treatise on the Law of England), with a deliberate omission of the second sentence within article III, section 2, paragraph 2 of the U.S. Constitution ("With such exceptions and such regulations as the Congress shall make"), and with exhortation to construe a positive grant of power as negative of any additional powers (the negative implications doctrine), invalidated section E of the Judiciary Act of 1789, establishing the Court's right to overturn an act of Congress deemed inconsistent with the Constitution. Marbury v. Madison (1803), therefore, declares that it is emphatically the province of the judicial department to say what the law is under a Constitution that is acknowledged in Article VI to be the supreme law of the land.
Quebec Secession In Comparative Perspective

John F. Stack, Jr. and David Carment

As this chapter is being written, it is not possible to envision that an end to Canada's great political drama is in sight. The costs of ongoing political ambiguity and uncertainty appear to be continuing controversy and debate in two critical areas. The first rests on the extent to which Canadians are willing to accept Quebec as a unique political entity in its midst. The second is the corresponding demise of Canada's overarching federal principles-Canada's statehood (Stairs and Doran this volume). Regardless of how Canada's future is played out, it is a critical time to assess the broader, overlooked significance of Quebec secession: the question of international relations in a post-Cold War international system. Central to such an assessment is the extent to which Canada's situation represents a unique case or a prototype for the likely breakup of the essential units of world politics-nation -states.
The International Politics Of Quebec Secession

John F. Stack, Jr.; David Carment; and Frank Harvey

This book is as much about the changing structure of world politics as it is about the likely breakup of Canada. Indeed, prospects for state making and state breaking in Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia will likely become one of the "hottest" growth areas in the study of world politics in the next several decades. Contrast such a perspective with the disquietude that the prospects of Canadian state breaking raise at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. For students of world politics, the emergence of a sovereign, independent Quebec may very well have a surrealistic quality about it because Canada has been so much a part of our understanding of what a stable, affluent, advanced industrial society, with long-standing democratic traditions, is all about. That Canada is also a multi ethnic society with a defined ethnonational homeland seems irrelevant. The importance of the national state and expected satisfaction with one of the world's best standards of living appears to make Canada a secure and dependable country. The prospect of state breaking is unthinkable.