This article reviews Ran Hirschl’s City, State, a study of ‘the great constitutional silence concerning one of the most significant phenomena of our time: urban agglomeration and the rise of megacities’ and which maintains that the solution to contemporary urban problems crucially depends on a ‘constitutional emancipation’ of the city. The article argues that Hirschl is unable to deliver on his major claim. Launching his thesis on a skewed account of the development of the political role of the city, a one-sided presentation of the constitutional order of the modern state, and a failure to appreciate the impact of urbanization on the city’s standing as a unit of government, Hirschl ignores the work of public lawyers on the challenges of metropolitan government and argues, unconvincingly, that these challenges can be resolved once we turn to the abstractions of constitutional theory.

中文翻译：

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宪法想象中的城市

本文回顾了 Ran Hirschl 的《城市，州》，这是一项关于“关于我们这个时代最重要的现象之一的巨大宪法沉默：城市群和特大城市的崛起”的研究，并认为解决当代城市问题的关键取决于城市的“宪法解放”。文章认为，赫希无法兑现他的主要主张。他的论文是关于对城市政治角色发展的歪曲描述，对现代国家宪法秩序的片面介绍，以及未能认识到城市化对城市作为一个政府单位的地位的影响, Hirschl 忽略了公共律师在都市政府挑战方面的工作，并令人信服地辩称，