Book contents
- Bentham on Democracy, Courts, and Codification
- Bentham on Democracy, Courts, and Codification
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Democracy
- Part II Law and the Courts
- Part III Codification
- 12 Ending at the Beginning
- 13 Bentham’s Constitutional Code and His Pannomion
- 14 Bentham’s Cosmopolitan Constitutionalism
- Bibliography
- Index
14 - Bentham’s Cosmopolitan Constitutionalism
from Part III - Codification
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 August 2022
- Bentham on Democracy, Courts, and Codification
- Bentham on Democracy, Courts, and Codification
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Democracy
- Part II Law and the Courts
- Part III Codification
- 12 Ending at the Beginning
- 13 Bentham’s Constitutional Code and His Pannomion
- 14 Bentham’s Cosmopolitan Constitutionalism
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Throughout his long career, Jeremy Bentham wrote on law and politics both domestic and international. His first co-publication was a pamphlet on the American Revolution, and throughout his later writings, the emancipation of nations from the Ottoman, Spanish, and Portuguese Empires was a main concern.1 In all periods of his work, Bentham commented on questions of foreign policy, on border-crossing political economy, on the atrocities committed in war and colonial settlement, and on international law as part of an all-comprehensive legal code. But although his writings are routinely celebrated, following John Stuart Mill, for ‘their cosmopolitan character’,2 there exists no consensus on what exactly his contribution to the cosmopolitan canon is. This may be the reason why, in marked contrast to the popularity of Immanuel Kant’s writings on the same topic, which continue to inform and shape today’s approaches in political theory,3 there exist few systematic attempts to link Bentham’s imputed cosmopolitan attitude to contemporary debates. This is a serious lacuna in the literature, given that Bentham’s legal and political thought, and especially his global political thought, have attracted genuine and detailed interest in recent decades.
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- Bentham on Democracy, Courts, and Codification , pp. 337 - 363Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022