Justifications for campaign finance regulations in the United States have traditionally taken one of two approaches. The first and most common has been to allege that unrestricted campaign contributions and expenditures lend themselves to corruption, or to the appearance of corruption. The second, used far less often than the first, has argued that unchecked spending on an election compromises the principle of political equality--the idea that each individual should have equal say in the democratic process. This paper defends political equality as a value worth preserving, demonstrates that our current campaign finance system is dangerous to political equality, proposes some solutions to that problem, and evaluate the constitutionality of those solutions.

This thesis begins with a historical analysis of the legal precedent which has granted the federal government exceptional power over immigration legislation, and demonstrates how that authority has expanded in the last half-century. It then proposes an alternative scheme which would embrace immigration federalism and allow states a larger, but still closely regulated, role in legislation over aliens.

This dissertation argues that the idea of constitutional rights transformed Canadian constitutional law well before the entrenchment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Specifically, it locates the origins of Canada’s twentieth-century rights revolution in the constitutional thinking of scholars, lawyers, judges, and politicians at mid-century (1930-1960). Drawing on archival documents, personal papers, government reports, parliamentary debates, case law, and legal scholarship, this work traces the constitutional thought and culture that first propelled human rights and fundamental freedoms to the forefront of the Canadian legal imagination. As a work of legal history, it also seeks to revive the dormant spirit of constitutional history that once pervaded the discipline of Canadian constitutional law. The Introduction situates the chapters that follow within the emerging Canadian historiography of rights. Chapter Two traces the origins of Frank Scott’s advocacy for constitutional rights to the newer constitutional law, an approach to constitutional scholarship sparked by the social and political upheavals of the Depression, and the influence of Roscoe Pound’s sociological jurisprudence. Chapter Three explores the varied dimensions of the Second World War’s influence on the nascent idea of Canadian constitutional rights. In particular, the rapid rise of the wartime administrative state produced a rights discourse that tended to reflect the interests of property while ignoring the civil liberties of unpopular minorities. Chapter Four examines the rise of a politics and scholarship of rights in the years immediately following the war. In response to international rights ideals and continuing domestic rights controversies, scholars and lawyers sought to produce a theory of Canadian constitutional law that could accommodate the addition of judicially-enforced individual rights. If not entirely successful, their efforts nonetheless further reoriented the fundamental tenets of Canadian constitutional law. Chapter Five reveals the influence of Canada’s emerging constitutional culture of rights on the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Canada, particularly Justice Ivan Rand and his conception of an implied bill of rights. Together, these chapters demonstrate the confluence of ideology, circumstance, and personality – the constitutional history – that altered the future of Canadian constitutional law.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--John Hopkins University, 1913. / Vita. Published also as Johns Hopkins university studies in historical and political science, ser. XXXVII, no. 4. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctoral)--Hochschule St. Gallen für Wirtschafts-, Rechts- und Sozialwissenschaften, 2004.

Thesis (D. Jur.)--York University, 1999. / "Graduate Programme in Law." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 381-400). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ43416.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oklahoma, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references.

Originally published as the author's dissertation (doctoral)--Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. i-vii [second set of roman numerals]) and index.

Thesis (D. Jur.)--York University, 2001. Graduate Programme in Law. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 351-367). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ67941.

published_or_final_version / English / Master / Master of Philosophy