Author: Tom Ginsburg
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Joel Colón-Riós, Weak Constitutionalism: Democratic legitimacy and the question of constituent power (London: Routledge, 2012)
–Reviewed by Zoran Oklopcic, Assistant Professor, Carleton University With the demise of communism in the late 1980s, liberal-democratic constitutionalism emerged as an almost pleonastic set of ideas about how to structure the political life of a territorial polity. Present-day challenges to the idea of constitutionalism cluster around its suitability to be translated into different political…
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A Reply to Professor Zoran Oklopcic
—Joel Colón-Ríos, Senior Lecturer, Victoria University of Wellington I am deeply grateful for Zoran Oklopcic’s thoughtful and challenging review of Weak Constitutionalism. In this short note, my objective will be to respond to what I think are Oklopcic’s three main critiques about the argument presented in the book, namely: (1) that the desirability of weak…
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Why Japan should amend its war-renouncing Article 9
[By Craig Martin, reprinted from the Japan Times, Aug. 4, 2012] The pressure is mounting to either amend Article 9, the war-renouncing provision of Japan’s Constitution, or to increasingly disregard it and so make it irrelevant. In April the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) published its proposal for amending the Constitution, and the dangers it posed…
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The Telenovela’s Next Chapter: A Crucial Juncture in the Philippines
Judicial politics in Manila have been likened to a telenovela for its interesting cast of characters, intricate plot lines, and seemingly never ending drama. This past few weeks have been especially contentious, as the country seeks to move on from the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona in May.
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Somalia Constitution Approved
In the face of an attempted suicide bombing, 645 members of a constituent assembly overwhelmingly approved a new Constitution in Mogadishu. The constitution had been urged by members of the international community as an essential step in re-establishing Somalia as a genuine functioning state after decades of civil war.
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The Ethiopian Constitution: More Honored in the Breach than the Observance
[Editors Note: This is the second in a series of blog posts from the African Network of Constitutional Lawyers] More than halfway through the second decade since its adoption, it has become clear that the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Ethiopia is more honored in the breach than the observance.
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Romania in Hungary’s Footsteps: Different Victor, Same Strategy
[cross-posted with thanks from verfassungsblog.de] On January 1, 2012 with an amended Constitution in place, Hungary, the once-praised EU accession candidate, proved that rule of law and consolidated judicial institutions are not at all irreversible. A new shift of power brought to Budapest the necessary political power that allowed Viktor Orbán and the FIDESZ government…
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Arato: Egypt Again
“Judge Helped Egypt’s Military to Cement Power” NY Times, July 3, by David Kirkpatrick is a very important report. While it has been possible to follow the scenario in Egypt in the available literature (especially an essay by Tamir Moustafa and in reports by the Crisis Group), this is the first time that an important…
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Tanzania’s Constitutional Review: A New Era for the Union?
Tanzania seems poised to transform its democracy into a constitutional democracy of the 21st Century. The issue of constitutional review has occupied political discourse in Tanzania since the 1990s and incumbent President Jakaya Kikwete made a firm commitment to bring to fruition the issue of constitutional review when he was re-elected in 2010.
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Dangerous Proposals for Amending Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan
[Initially published in The Japan Times, June 6, 2012 and reproduced with permission] The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) published its new draft constitutional amendment proposal in late April. The draft reflects a number of significant changes above and beyond those advanced in the proposal unveiled by the LDP in 2005.