Date of Award
5-17-2009
Document Type
Thesis
Abstract
"The comparative study of federal systems has most often focused on the view of federation 'from the top down.' This is particularly true of the study of constitutionalism in federations, in which federal constitutions have received significantly more attention than sub-national constitutions. An emerging concept in the understanding of federal systems from the sub-national perspective is the idea of constitutional space, which is defined as 'the range of discretion available to the component units in a federal system in designing their constitutional arrangements.' Some scholars have suggested that the full utilization of constitutional space can effectively increase the autonomy of sub-national units within a federation. This thesis explores the potential for increased sub-national autonomy through the utilization of constitutional space in a comparative analysis of state and provincial actions in the United States and Canada with regard to same-sex marriage and resource management, and concludes that due to the influence of additional factors in the federal relationship, the utilization of constitutional space by itself is insufficient to increase sub-national autonomy"--Leaf iii
Recommended Citation
Oppe, Mark E., "The utilization of constitutional space to maximize sub-national autonomy in federations" (2009). Arctic and Northern Studies. 87.
https://ualaska.researchcommons.org/uaf_grad_arctic_northern/87
Handle
http://hdl.handle.net/11122/12807