The Collaborative Constitution

Constitutional scholars have long debated whether courts or legislatures should have the last word on rights. In this book, Aileen Kavanagh offers a new collaborative vision of how to protect rights in a democracy. Rejecting the false dichotomy between courts and legislatures, Kavanagh argues that protecting rights is a collaborative enterprise where all three branches of government play distinct but complementary roles, whilst working together in a spirit of comity, civility, and mutual respect. Connecting constitutional theory to the practice of protecting rights in a working democracy, this book offers an innovative understanding of the separation of powers, grounded in the values and virtues of collaborative constitutionalism.

About the speaker

Aileen Kavanagh is Professor of Constitutional Governance, Trinity College Dublin and Director of TriCON – the Trinity Centre for Constitutional Governance. Formerly Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Oxford, Kavanagh has written widely on comparative constitutional law, human rights, and constitutional theory.

Host or Publisher Edinburgh Law School, University of Edinburgh