Author: Tom Ginsburg
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Call for Papers from African Network of Constitutional Lawyers
The African Network of Constitutional Lawyers has issued a call for papers for its annual conference, to be held in Rabat, Morocco 2 – 5 February 2011. The theme this year is “The Internationalization of Constitutional Law” From the call: “Constitutional law has always been subject to multiple foreign and international influences but the process…
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Book review of Making Our Democracy Work
Our colleague David Fontana of George Washington University has a book review of Justice Stephen Breyer’s new book here. An excerpt: “It is hard to understand Breyer’s approach to the Constitution without first considering the alternative that he is responding to, conventionally called originalism.
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General elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina reveal ethnic frustrations
The latest general elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina, held on 3 October 2010, exemplify just how troubling the ethno-democratic Constitution of the country is. This is particularly visible in the election of the members of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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Feeble Democracy in Ukraine
A classic episode of the American television comedy Seinfeld finds two of the characters, Kramer and Newman, on a subway car playing the board game RISK. Kramer taunts his opponent for his losing position to which the latter responds “I’m not beaten yet.
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Georgia’s constitutional amendments move forward
Georgia’s parliament votes today on the second reading of proposed constitutional amendments that will reduce presidential powers and increase the power of the prime minister as well as those of the parliament. The president, however, will remain directly elected, and will have some role in oversight.
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Turkey’s New Majoritarian Difficulty
On September 12, 1980, the Turkish Armed Forces took control of the Turkish government in a bloody coup d’état. Exactly thirty years from that date, on September 12, 2010, Turkish voters approved by 58% of the vote a package of twenty-six amendments to the 1982 Constitution, which was ratified following the coup.
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New USIP volume on constitution-making
Those interested in constitutional design should take a look at the new volume from the US Institue of Peace, Framing the State in Times of Transition: Case Studies in Constitution Making. The volume features 19 case studies of constitution-making, including well-known cases like Afghanistan and Iraq, and more obscure cases ranging from Albania to Zimbabwe.
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Turkey’s reforms
I’d be very interested to learn more from any readers in Turkey about the passage of the constitutional amendments in yesterday’s referendum. My thumbnail view is that Turkey was ahead of the game in 1982 when it adopted a “post-political” constitution, in which democratic institutions were constrained by a series of guardian institutions, including the…
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Moldova fails to fix political system
It appears that Sunday’s referendum in Moldova failed to generate enough voter interest to fix the country’s political impasse. Europe’s smallest country has been unable to elect a president for a year, and now faces parliamentary dissolution and new elections. The story begins in 2000, when the 1994 Constitution was amended to replace the directly…