This book arises out of a colloquium held at the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario in October 2006. The idea was to bring together leading constitutional theorists and legal philosophers to discuss and debate issues of mutual interest – issues that transcend the doctrinal, country-specific interests that often dominate discussion of constitutional judicial review.

The result is a book of essays that addresses the key questions in constitutional rights theory today, not only in jurisdictions such as the United States and Canada, where judicial review and the power of the courts to strike down legislation are well established, but also in the UK and New Zealand, where rights protection comes in ordinary statute form and judges are denied the power to strike down legislation, and in Australia, which has no bill of rights at the federal level.

I am grateful to Craig Brown, who was Acting Dean at Western Law, and Associate Dean Tim Edgar, without whose enthusiastic support the colloquium could not have taken place.