Matteo Nicolini’s research while affiliated with University of Verona and other places

What is the place of local government in federal studies?’ This is the question that this chapter addresses. The fact that local government has its own place within federal arrangements is a predicament to which every federal scholar might wish to subscribe. What this ‘place’ implies, however, is an aspect that still needs to be adequately explored. Although local government has been integrated into the umbrella of federal studies in more recent years, its investigation within federal settings is still considered an anomaly in many respects. To put it differently, what this ‘collocation’ implies for federal systems is not as clear as one might expect. Consequently, this chapter explores these issues from an innovative angle with a focus on powers, territory, and money, i.e. the elements that can be ascribed to the foundations of local government in federal systems.

The manufacturing of colonial legal spatialities in the Age of Discovery has traditionally been studied by historians, human geographers, and cartographers. Seldom have legal scholars examined it. This essay aims to fill the gap in legal research and assesses processes of spatial production that took place in colonies by adopting a legal-geographical approach. Special attention is paid to how the English, and later British Empires manufactured both terrestrial and oceanic spaces. The essay maintains that, within what this article calls the ‘Anglo/British Empire’, the integrated geographies of land and sea were facilitated by some intrinsic qualities of the English common law. Its legal coding devised a holistic approach that captured the whole earth even beyond the divide between land and sea.

The essay applies the practices of spatial production to maritime cooperation taking place across (and around) the Channel. Although its geographical features make its crossing particularly difficult, this stormy stretch of water has been a place of connection, co-operation, and separation between the UK and the Continent. This makes maritime cooperation around the Channel and its coastal areas an intriguing field of research in the aftermath of Brexit. Evidently, the Channel’s collective place-consciousness will depart from that previously produced under EU maritime cooperation schemes. A renewed collective place-consciousness for the Channel is therefore needed.

This chapter considers local government within quasi-federations, which are scattered across oceans and continents and are extremely different from one another. These comprise the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Comoros, Palau, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Pakistan, Nepal, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Cameroon. To this end, it begins by considering the politico-legal, geographical, and social contexts of quasi-federations, within which local government is set. It then focuses on the constitutional recognition of local government and the distribution of powers related thereto. On this basis, it examines forms (Sect. 4), functions, and finance of local bodies. Finally, it explores the forms of cooperation between local bodies and the other tiers of government.

The chapter provides a renovated analysis of how local government is arranged within federal countries. To this end, it aims to fill the gap in current legal (and political) research, positioning local government in federal dynamics through the lenses of the comparative-law method.

The essay introduces a special issue on Brexit. Instead of merely focusing on its legal implications, this issue undertakes an examination of the UK leaving the EU from a law-and-humanities perspective. The legal analysis is therefore complemented by a broader assessment of the social and cultural features of Brexit, also extending over the complexity of the present and the incertitude posed by its future. Brexit is also a matter of reimagination; constitutional and literary issues thus coalesce towards a transdisciplinary dialogue. To this extent, the collected essays engage with Brexlit, i.e. novels and essays, political pamphlets, and other writings prompted by Brexit. The aim is to explore the doubts, fears, and threats that still haunt the UK after leaving the EU, paying particular attention to the development of new narrative strategies and forms capable of reflecting and giving expression to the new Brexit identities.

The essay addresses Brexit as a constitutional and jurisgenerative moment. It provides an alternative reading to that traditionally used to assess its impact on the Anglo-British constitution. Politics and legalism have trapped Britain in a formalistic approach without offering innovative responses to the challenges posed by Brexit, persuading the public that there are no alternatives to an out-of-Europe approach. The essay adopts a different stance, exploring Brexit with less formalism and more attentiveness to its impact on British society. It uses novels and essays, political pamphlets, and other writings prompted by Brexit to examine the conditions underlying this event. Their analysis may nurture the productive imagination needed to support Britain’s constitutional creativity during the post-Brexit scenario.