Federalism and Legal Unification

How and to what degree do federations produce uniform law within their system? This comparative empirical study addresses these questions comprehensively for the first time. Originally produced under the auspices of the International Academy of Comparative Law, this volume examines legal unification in twenty federations around the world.

Each of the successive chapters presents the forces of unification through the lens of a particular federal system. A comparative overview chapter provides a detailed analysis of the overall results with compelling visual illustrations of legal unification along different dimensions (e. g. by area of law; by federation; by civil vs common law system). The overview chapter summarizes and analyzes the means and methods of legal unification and the degree of legal unification of each system, and explains the driving forces of legal unity and diversity in federations more generally.

The volume presents surprising findings that should make scholars rethink their abandonment of the civil law vs. common law distinction in comparative law.

This book is a milestone in the study of federalism. It is a rare and welcome melding of comparative law and comparative politics using both original data and qualitative analysis. Wide-ranging, probing, and definitive, this book is an invaluable resource for students of law, politics, and multi-level governance.

Gary Marks, Burton Craige Professor, UNC-Chapel Hill, and Chair in Multilevel Governance, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Contents. - Preface. - Part One. - Federalism and Legal Unification: Comparing Methods, Results, and Explanations Across Twenty Systems; Daniel Halberstam and Mathias Reimann. - Part Two National Reports. - The Argentine Federal Legislative System; Alfredo Vítolo. - The Australian Federation: A Story Of The Centralization Of Power; Cheryl Saunders and Michelle Foster. - Federalism and Legal Unification in Austria; Bernhard KOCH and Anna Gamper. - Belgium: A Broken Marriage? ; Alain-Laurent Verbeke. - Federalism and Legal Unification in Brazil; Jacob Dolinger and Luis Roberto Barroso. - Unification Of Laws In Federal Systems: The Canadian Model; Aline Grenon. - The European Union: A Federation in All But Name; Jan Wouters, Hanne Cuyckens and Thomas Ramopoulos. - Unification of Laws in the Federal System of Germany; Jürgen Adam and Christoph Möllers. - India: From Political Federalism and Fiscal Centralization to Greater Subnational Autonomy; Sunita Parikh. - Emergence of the Italian Unitary Constitutional System, Modified by Supranational Norms and Italian Regionalism; Louis Del Duca and Patrick Del Duca. - Federalism and Legal Unification in Malaysia; Ang Hean Leng and Amanda Whiting. - Federalism and Legal Unification in Mexico; Oscar Quintana, Nadja Dorothea Ruiz Euler and Ricardo Carrasco Varona. - How Federal is the Russian Federation? ; Jeffrey Kahn, Alexei Trochev and Nikolay Balayan. - Federalism and Legal Unification in South Africa; Karthy Govender. - The Trend Towards Homogenization in the Spanish `State of Autonomies ; Aida Torres Pérez. - Federalism and Legal Unification in Switzerland; Eleanor Cashin Ritaine and Anne-SOPHIE Papeil. - The United Kingdom: Devolution and Legal Unification; Stathis Banakas. - United States Federalism: Harmony Without Unity; James Maxeiner. - Venezuela: The End of Federalism? ; Allan R. Brewer-Carías and JanKleinheisterkamp. - Contributors. - Index.