This chapter explores the idea of opposition. One may make known one’s opposition to specific measures and one may make known one’s opposition to those who hold the office of government. While opposition to those who rule may flourish only in constitutional arrangements that contemplate changes in government, the freedom to make known opposition to measures may obtain and flourish even absent such arrangements. These two different modalities of opposition – to measures and to governments – draw on a reciprocal understanding that those who oppose and those who rule are both committed to the public good. Depending on the design of its system of government, a constitution may enable or empower opposition, with the parliamentary form of government differing in important respects from the presidential. Some constitutional arrangements and proposals award to opposition members in legislatures and elsewhere some degree of authority in exercising the office of government. Whatever the merits of such coalition or consensus arrangements and proposals, they change the function of opposition, for when those who oppose begin to govern, a version of the question quis custodiet ipsos custodes (who guards the guardians) arises: who stands in opposition to the opposition?

This chapter explores the nature of the legislature and its relationship to constitutional government, focusing in particular on the importance of legislative agency and the dynamics that frame its exercise. The chapter begins by reflecting on the objects of legislative action, arguing that authorising a legislative assembly to legislate changes who legislates but not what it is to legislate. The object of legislative deliberation and action should be the common good and securing this end requires agency. The assembly faces many challenges in exercising agency, which it is structured to overcome, partly by way of its relationship to government, a relationship that goes well beyond acts of legislation. The relationship between legislature and government shapes the character of a constitutional order and bears on the relationship between legislature and the people. The legislature’s duty is to represent the people, which makes self-government possible. The legislature should deliberate and act for the people and be accountable to the people, with legislative deliberation taking its place in a wider public conversation. The legislature’s capacity for agency informs how legislative acts should be understood to change the law and helps explain the moral importance of legislative freedom and the limits on that freedom.

This chapter sets forth how government agencies are using artificial intelligence to automate their delivery of legal guidance to the public. The chapter first explores how many federal agencies have a duty not only to enforce the law but also to serve the public, including by explaining the law and helping the public understand how it applies. Agencies must contend with expectations that they will provide customer service experiences akin to those provided by the private sector. At the same time, government agencies lack sufficient resources. The complexity of statutes and regulations significantly compounds this challenge for agencies. As this chapter illustrates, the federal government has begun using virtual assistants, chatbots, and related technology to respond to tens of millions of inquiries from the public about the application of the law.

This chapter illuminates some of the hidden costs of the federal agencies’ use of automated legal guidance to explain the law to the public. It highlights the following features of these tools: they make statements that deviate from the formal law; they fail to provide notice to users about the accuracy and legal value of their statements; and they induce reliance in ways that impose inequitable burdens among different user populations. The chapter also considers how policymakers should weigh these costs against the benefits of automated legal guidance when contemplating whether to adopt, or increase, agencies’ use of these tools.

This chapter explores how automated legal guidance helps both federal agencies and members of the public. It outlines several specific benefits, including administrative efficiency, communication of complex law in plain language, transparency regarding agency interpretations of the law, internal and external consistency regarding agency communications, and public engagement with the law.

This chapter describes interviews the authors conducted with federal agency officials about their use of automated legal guidance. This chapter offers insights gained from these interviews, including regarding the different models that agencies use to develop such guidance, their views on the usability of such guidance, the ways that agencies evaluate the guidance, and agencies’ views on successes and challenges that such guidance faces.

This chapter examines the foundations and evolution of papal legation in the Middle Ages. It frames the development of this ecclesiastical office in the context of burgeoning papal authority and its reception in Christian lands. And it posits the growth of legation as a natural and effective response to the Roman Curia’s administrative, bureaucratic, and legal needs.

How was the British imperial state transformed from an ancien régime in 1819 to a liberal one that depended upon a new science of government?

This contribution surveys the essays in political economy that Hume began to publish in 1752, with particular attention to his thinking about money. The essays are presented as, in part, extensions of the natural history of property and government that Hume began to sketch in A Treatise of Human Nature. But they were also carefully calibrated interventions in the political discourse of trade and finance prominent in British politics since the seventeenth century. Hume’s political economy can be situated in a range of British and European intellectual and political contexts. This chapter pays particular attention to his recurrent engagement with John Locke’s extensive writings on money, trade and taxation, which served Hume as a foil in developing his own positions. There is, it will be suggested, a deep connection between Hume’s celebrated critique of Locke’s account of the original contract and his rejection of Locke’s search for an invariable monetary standard.

The danger to democratic norms aside, this chapter demonstrates that state government is also a needless source of additional regulation, additional taxation, and inefficient duplication of functions – in short, a waste of taxpayer money and a pointless burden on the citizenry. Yet, many of the specific functions currently performed by state governments are essential. The abolition of state government would therefore require the redistribution of those necessary functions between the national government and the local governments. This chapter demonstrates that such a redistribution would be administratively workable. To show this, it formulates general criteria for deciding which functions should go where and offers illustrations of how those criteria might be applied to specific functions in practice.

This introductory chapter articulates the main thesis and summarizes the arguments that support it. It lays out the reasons that the thesis is important, describes what the book adds to the existing literature, explains some critical terms and concepts, and adds necessary disclaimers.

This chapter is a largely non-technical overview of economic and political aspects of wind energy policy. The cost of wind energy is assessed in terms of Levelised Cost of Energy (LCoE) with equations given in full and simplified form. Using a large database historic installed costs for UK wind both on- and offshore are given, from the earliest projects to the present day. The observed trends are discussed. Operational and balancing costs are outlined, the latter reflecting the intermittency of wind power. LCoE estimates are made for a range of installed costs and output capacity factors at typical discount rates, and compared with current generation prices. The chapter considers the economics of onsite generation with the example of a private business using wind energy to offset demand; the energy displacement and export statistics are extrapolated to compare with a national scenario for 100% renewable electricity generation. The topic of ownership is introduced and examined in the context of the UK’s first community-owned windfarm. The chapter concludes with a brief review of UK renewable energy policy, which originated with legislation to protect the nuclear power industry.

This chapter charts the nature of political power from the earliest Merovingian kings to the unification of the kingdoms under Chlothar II in 613. The period witnessed conquest and civil war, as competition for power between kings, queens, and their families transformed late Roman political structures into more fluid and responsive modes of government. It covers the key reigns of Childeric I and Clovis for establishing the power of the Merovingian dynasty through a mixture of war, legend-building, and performance. It also examines how competition between kings in subsequent generations affected how the family was defined, especially under the influence of queens Brunhild and Fredegund.

The British State intervened in the Port of London in 1800. It did so again a hundred years later by appointing a Royal Commission, which provided the basis for eventual reform in 1908. The immediate reason for the Royal Commission was a dock proposal to abolish free entry to docks by river. But the wider context was long-standing, loudly voiced, shipping company grievances about river governance, licensing of lighterage and compulsory pilotage. The Commission’s conclusion that London should have a port authority was generally accepted. However, issues of constitution and compensation bedevilled the Conservative attempt to legislate. In the event, it was a Liberal government, with all-party support, which established the Port of London Authority, effectively nationalising London’s port. In an ironic coda, the port unions soon discovered their new public employer to be a more formidable opponent than their dock company predecessors had ever been.

London’s seasonal foreign trade reflected its access to northern and continental Europe and the City’s association with the East and West Indies, but coal and other coastal trades dominated daily port activity. London was a tidal river port centred below London Bridge, with waterfront industry spread more widely. Organisationally, it was complex, with many different interests. As foreign trade increased, legal restrictions on landing places for foreign produce were blamed by merchants for congestion. A campaign by mercantile interests for the introduction of docks followed. The author examines the motives here. For leading West India merchants, specialised dock facilities would enable them to control and discipline a directly employed labour force, reducing theft. The eventual outcome, the construction of docks by joint-stock companies, owed much to State support. Its involvement went beyond the introduction of docks. For the government, this was an element of a warehousing scheme designed to develop London as an entrepôt. General port efficiency would be promoted by appointing the Corporation of London as harbour authority.