Language practice and comprehension check

TASK I Look up the meanings of “ government ”

· The government is but an agency of the state, distinguished as it must be in accurate thought from its scheme and the machinery of government.

· The system of poliсy in a state; that form of fundamental rules and principles by which a nation or state is governed, or by which individual members of a body politic are to regulate their social actions.

· The sovereign or supreme power in a state or nation;

· The machinery by which the sovereign power in a state expresses its will and exercises its functions.

· The framework of political institutions, departments and offices, by means of which the executive, judicial, legislative and administrative business of the state is carried on.

· The whole class or body of officeholders or functionaries considered in the aggregate, upon whom devolves the executive, judicial, legislative, and administrative business of the state.

· The regulation, restraint, supervision, or control which is exercised upon the individual members of an organized jural society by those invested with authority.

· The act of exercising supreme political power or control. (BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY)

b) Determine its meaning in the following word combinations:

a) forms of government, e) local government

b) system of government, f) republican government,

c) federal government, g) the sitting government,

d) the government of the day

TASK II Find the following adjectives in the text: smaller, inferior, lower, the latter;

b) Add nouns to them; provide the words with the opposite meanings; make up sentences with them to compare the UK and US constitutions.

TASK III a). Add a) federal and/or b) unitary to the following nouns as they appear in the text:

1) system; 2) state; 3) regime; 4) government; 5) constitution; 6) legislature; 7) UK; 8)citizenship; 9) level.

b) Use federal or unitary in the following sentences, translate the sentences:

1) Freedom of choice also means the parents' opportunity to select a school for their child in a …, integrated school system that is devoid of de jure segregation.

2) … tax is a tax of income earned locally by a business that transacts business through an affiliated company outside the state or the country.

3) … business is a business that has subsidiaries in other states or countries and that calculates its state income tax by determining what portion of a subsidiary's income is attributable to activities within the state, and paying taxes on that percentage.

4) The tax, it was found, did not impair … uniformity nor prevent the … Government from speaking with one voice in international trade.

5) The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution provides: if a state measure conflicts with a … requirement, the state provision must give way. The basic question involved in these cases, however, is never one of interpretation of the … Constitution but inevitably one of comparing two statutes.’’

6) Until roughly the New Deal, the Supreme Court applied a doctrine of ‘‘dual federalism,’’ under which the … Government and the States were separate sovereigns, each preeminent in its own fields but lacking authority in the other’s.

7) ‘‘The relative importance to the State of its own law is not material when there is a conflict with a valid … law, for the Framers of our Constitution provided that the … law must prevail.’’

8) In the … court system there were … courts having jurisdiction in both law and equity, but distinct law and equity procedures, including the use or nonuse of the jury.

9) Crampton v. Ohio raised the question whether due process was violated when both the issue of guilt or innocence and the issue of whether to impose the death penalty were determined in a … proceeding.

10) School boards then operating state-compelled dual systems were nevertheless clearly charged with the affirmative duty to take whatever steps might be necessary to convert to a … system in which racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch.’’

11) Because each system was a dual one in 1954, it was subject to an ‘‘affirmative duty to take whatever steps might be necessary to convert to a … system in which racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch.’’

12) A state …-tax scheme that used a worldwide-combined reporting formula was upheld as applied to the taxing of the income of a domestic-based corporate group with extensive foreign operations.

13) Iowa imposed an income tax on a … business operating throughout the United States and in several foreign countries. It included in the tax base of corporations the dividends the companies received from subsidiaries operating in foreign countries, but it allowed exclusions from the base of dividends received from domestic subsidiaries.

TASK IV Find in the text and translate the sentences with the following word combinations:

To divide power between, to devolve power to, to take the power back, to leave the residual power with, to leave the federal level as the residuary power, to have greater voting power, the actual disposition of power, to limit the powers of Parliament, the overriding power of the central government, to enjoy devolved powers, tax-raising power, to obtain power.

TASK V a) Study the meaning of residual/residuary power (prove that residuary is an unnecessary variant in the text).

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. (10^th Amend., US Const.)

b) Translate the following sentences:

1) There will be virtually no centripetal forces vis-`a-vis Northern Ireland to pull it in a centralising direction. A unionist stance on the region, which did have a significant residual presence in the Conservative party in the not too distant past, in figures like Airey Neave and Ian Gow, has not had a purchase at Westminster for many years – as evidenced by the sea of empty green benches in the Commons during Northern Ireland debates.

2) The Bosnia-Hercegovina constitution, contained in a Dayton annex, divided the country into two entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Hercegovina populated mainly by Muslims and Croats – in which power was further devolved into ten cantons – and Republika Srpska. It named ‘Bosniacs’ (implicitly Muslims), Croats and Serbs as ‘constituent peoples’, along with – though clearly residually – ‘others’ and ‘citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina’.

3) House of Lords reform will focus attention on any statutory appointments body, as even a fully elected House would likely involve some residual appointment aspects.

4) ‘‘Were it once established that the powers of war and treaty are in their nature executive; that so far as they are not by strict construction transferred to the legislature, they actually belong to the executive; that of course all powers not less executive in their nature than those powers, if not granted to the legislature, may be claimed by the executive; if granted, are to be taken strictly, with a residuary right in the executive; or... perhaps claimed as a concurrent right by the executive; and no citizen could any longer guess at the character of the government under which he lives; the most penetrating jurist would be unable to scan the extent of constructive prerogative.’’

5) The Court relied on the ‘‘structural Constitution’’ to demonstrate that the Constitution of 1787 had not taken from the States ‘‘a residuary and inviolable sovereignty,’’ that it had, in fact and theory, retained a system of ‘‘dual sovereignty’’ reflected in many things but most notably in the constitutional conferral ‘‘upon Congress of not all governmental powers, but only discrete, enumerated ones,’’ which was expressed in the Tenth Amendment.

6) Justice Scalia suggested that there should be a ‘‘sliding scale’’ taking into account the definition of obscenity: ‘‘[t]he more narrow the understanding of what is ‘obscene,’ and hence the more pornographic what is embraced within the residual category of ‘indecency,’ the more reasonable it becomes to insist upon greater assurance of insulation from minors.’’

7) Upon her death, dispute arose as to whether the property passed pursuant to the terms of the power of appointment or in accordance with the residuary clause of the will.

TASK VI a)Add nouns to the following adjectives from the text, translate them: communitarian, powerful, delicate, diverse, efficient, distinctive, overriding, common, ethnic, supreme, precise, dominant, flexible, subordinate, particular, regional

b) What other nouns can be used with them? Give your examples.

TASK VII Translate the following sentences, pay special attention to the adjectives used:

1. Thus, a delicate balance must be struck.

2. It cannot be seriously suggested that federalism is the best way of achieving efficient government but efficiency cannot be the overriding purpose of a liberal society.

3. In the European Union the more powerful states have greater voting power in relation to certain issues.

4. Thus the real balance between centre and state may not be apparent from reading the constitution.

5. Within the UK certain powers have very recently and in varying degrees been devolved to elected assemblies in Scotland and Wales but without in any way limiting the powers of Parliament.

6. He also thought that federalism tends to conservatism, creates divided loyalties and that it elevates legalism to a primary value, making the courts the pivot on which the constitution turns and perhaps threatening their independence.

7. Apart from Northern Ireland, regional issues were not high on the agenda of the main parties, which suggested that there was little public desire for federalism.

8. Drawing primarily upon the insights of Aristotle and Hegel, some political philosophers disputed John Rawls' assumption that the principal task of government is to secure and distribute fairly the liberties and economic resources individuals need to lead freely chosen lives; the critics of liberal theory never did identify themselves with the communitarian movement (the communitarian label was pinned on them by others, usually critics), much less offer a grand communitarian theory as a systematic alternative to liberalism.

9. Although spread very unevenly, the ethnic minority population constitutes 8 per cent of the total and is itself composed of very different elements.

10. As McEwen points out, the welfare state was a common British enterprise that helped cement loyalty to the Union at a popular level.

11. The social class and ethnic composition of the United Kingdom is vastly different from 1952 when Elizabeth II succeeded.

12. Asians have ‘ little doubt that a society with communitarian values where the interests of society take precedence over that of the individual suits them better than the individualism of America’.

13. The growing power of the judiciary is a result of the HRA and the new Supreme Court, and the continuing effects of the EU.

14. As the example of Quebec illustrates, the issues of symbolic politics and recognition as a distinctive nationality have long been at the fore of Canadian constitutional politics, the more so if other issues move off the agenda.

15. Ethnic and religious tensions are threatening to eat into the fragile political consensus that underpinned the UK’s policy of multiculturalism for much of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

16. Gordon Brown qualified national distinctiveness by a vision of Britishness as ‘a community of citizens with common needs, mutual interests, shared objectives, related goals and most of all linked destinies’.

17. The new Supreme Court carries on much as the old Appellate Committee of the House of Lords.

18. As Thorne explains, statutory provisions were 'merely suggestions of policy to be treated with an easy unconcern as to their precise content'; judges freely extended and restricted statutes as a routine part of their duty to administer justice between litigants.

19. Parliamentary sovereignty is the dominant principle.

20. Parliament under a coalition government could be as subordinate as under single-party majority government, or even more so if the government includes the Liberal Democrats, and neuters their opposition in the Lords.

21. A London super-regional growth strategy will continue to be driven by very significant, discretionary public investments in infrastructure, megaprojects (principally the Olympic Games) and new house-building, in particular.

22. According to royalist theorists, The King's authority was admittedly subordinate to divine law, but no human agency was authorized to enforce that law against him.

23. Deciding whether a matter has in any measure been committed by the Constitution to another branch of government, or whether the action of that branch exceeds whatever authority has been committed, is itself a delicate exercise in constitutional interpretation, and is a responsibility of this Court as ultimate interpreter of the Constitution.’’

24. The Liberal Democrats have introduced stricter pre-screening of members to try and ensure reliable attendance and voting – as a result of the delicately balanced arithmetic in the Lords, and the newly enhanced opportunities there for changing policy.

25. In fact, London is the most abnormal – hugely wealthier, more educated, more employed in the private sector, but also more ethnically diverse and more unemployed.

26. The term media oversimplifies a very diverse, and highly competitive, group of newspapers and broadcasters.

TASK VIII Analyse Dicey’s views on federalism. Agree or disagree with them.

TASK IX Comment on the following QUOTATIONS:

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Lord Acton (1834-1902)

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