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Print Price: $95.50

Format:
Hardback
320 pp.
140 mm x 216 mm

ISBN-13:
9780199498024

Publication date:
February 2020

Imprint: OUP India

Constitution-Making under UN Auspices

Fostering Dependency in Sovereign Lands

Vijayashri Sripati

This book raises very interesting and important questions about the legitimacy of the contemporary use of United Nations Constitutional Assistance (UNCA) (1989-2018) which birthed in 1949, as trusteeship and was, for this reason, rejected in 1960. Conceptual confusions have turned scholars' and policymakers' attention away from the Western liberal constitution that UNCA internationalizes. The Constitution's salience makes UNCA the most significant post-1989 development - one that promotes the "rule of law," provides the basis for UN/ international territorial administration, and shapes all other developments. During colonialism, foreign states and international organizations starting from the League of Nations, followed by the United Nations, internationalized the Constitution in response to the colonies' supposed incapacities, and ostensibly to promote free markets, rule of law, good governance and civilized standards concerning women, with a view to "civilize" them, and thereby morph them into sovereign states. Post 1960, UNCA has worked essentially to secure debt-relief for poor debtor sovereign states. But it does so, ostensibly to promote the same ends with a view to "modernize" them, thus "strengthening" their supposedly weakened sovereignty, which means, sovereign states experience political domination and control just as they did when they were colonies. This book concludes that UNCA which continues as trusteeship, makes a new addition to the "standards of civilization": transparent, inclusive and participatory constitution-making. UNCA violates developing states' right to self-determination. This book provides a new constitutional dimension of trusteeship, one that creates and perpetuates global inequality.

Readership : Students, researchers, scholars, and policymakers in the fields of international law, international political economy, international relations, constitutional law, international constitutional law, development studies, global governance, peace building, state-building, transitional governance, and judicial reform and rule of law sector.

List of Tables and Figures
List of Abbreviations
Foreword by Soli J. Sorabjee
Preface
Acknowledgements
Part I
1. United Nations Constitutional Assistance: A Significant but Uncharted Field
2. The Good Constitution's Internationalized Making Sired Foreign Territorial Administration: The Historical Context
3. Internationalizing the Good Constitution: To Settle Disputes and Civilize
4. The Good Constitution's Internationalized Making: Rise, Rejection, and Revival
Part II
5. United Nations Constitutional Assistance (UNCA)'s Rise: Post-1989
6. United Nations Constitutional Assistance [UNCA]: An 'institution'
7. How Does the UN Justify Offering Constitutional Assistance? A 'Purposive Analysis'
8. United Nations Constitutional Assistance (UNCA): A Mechanism to Implement International Law and Policy
9. UNCA Continues Its Civilizing Role
10. United Nations Constitutional Assistance (UNCA): Legitimation in the Post-colonial Era
Select Bibliography
Index
About the Author

There are no Instructor/Student Resources available at this time.

Vijayashri Sriapti is Visiting Scholar, University of Toledo, Ohio, USA. She previously taught at the University of Toronto, Canada.

Making Sense - Margot Northey

Special Features

Covers constitutional assistance offered by the United Nation's predecessor: the League of Nations and its Permanent Mandates Commission; and rids the international law discourse of long-standing conceptual confusions.
Provides a lucid explanation of how and why the Western liberal constitution rooted in the rule of law provides the basis for territorial administration.
First contemporary book to offer the increasingly important constitutional dimension of international law topics such as rule of law, trusteeship, peacebuilding, state-building, law and development, and international territorial administration.
Initiates a conversation long-overdue between policymakers and scholars, and between constitutional law scholars and their counterparts in international law and political economy.
The only book to offer a comprehensive inventory of United Nations Constitutional Assistance (UNCA) projects from 1949-2018, and UNCA-ITA projects (both plenary ITA and partial ITA).
Covers the United Nations Development Programme's role in promoting constitutional assistance.
Examines the Security Council's role in promoting the Western liberal constitution, from its UNCA mandates to its actual offer of constitutional assistance.
Discusses UNCA projects offered in the post-conflict and development assistance contexts.