Category: hp
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Government Formation and Iraq’s Constitution
If reports of a breakthrough in formation of a new Iraqi government are to believed (a questionable proposition), it is worth noting two ways Iraq’s Constitution has been implicated in the unmitigated disaster that has been the failure to form a government almost seven months after Iraq’s parliamentary elections.
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Kenyan Constitution and Chicago Troika
Here is a great nugget from a recent edition of news at the University of Chicago. It includes some insights into what valuable work is being carried out by other members of this blog. It starts with some biographical material on Tom: “Ginsburg first developed an interest in constitutions through his work at the Asia…
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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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Sri Lanka and Executive Self Dealing
The Sri Lankan parliament voted on Wednesday to approve the 18th amendment to their constitution, which strikes down the 2-term limit on presidential re-election. We’ve all seen this movie before. Critics responded by characterizing the amendment as a step towards authoritarianism, since its beneficiary is the sitting president, Mahinda Rajapakse.
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The Evolution and Ideology of Global Constitutionalism
Mila Versteeg and I have just posted to SSRN a paper entitled “The Evolution and Ideology of Global Constitutionalism” that may be of interest to readers of this blog. In this paper, we analyze an original data set that spans the rights-related content of all national constitutions over the last six decades.
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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…
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Freedom of Expression Endangered in South Africa
The post-Apartheid South African press and media have traditionally been vigorous. They have frequently criticized the government as well as opposition groups. The press and media there can sometimes be a bit sensationalistic (hardly unique to South Africa of course). But it’s fair to say that the country’s press freedom has been good overall.
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Iraqi constitutional failure and external enforcement?
A couple years ago, my co-authors and I published an examination of constitutions drafted under foreign Occupation. We wanted to ask whether constitutions drafted under such circumstances differ in quality and endurance from other constitutions (the answers were generally not). But we also identified a theoretical problem with such constitutions.