Category: Tom Ginsburg
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Abortion foes battle Kenya draft
If the Kenyan Constitution fails in a referendum a little over a month from now, it may be largely the result of foreign groups lobbying against it. Three U.S. Congressmen are now calling for an investigation into US support for the Kenyan constitution, arguing that funds spent on civic education for the proposed draft violate…
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Wiki-constitutionalism?
The New Republic has just posted a nice essay by Daniel Lansberg-Rodriguez about what he calls wiki-constitutionalism in Latin America: the tendency of constitutions in the region to be changed as easily as wikipedia pages. Lansberg-Rodriguez points out the costs of rewriting, and argues persuasively that institutional stability will require overcoming wiki-constitutionalism.
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US Supreme Court debate to heat up again
With the decision in Graham v. Florida, we are likely to see a renewal of the debate over whether and how to use foreign caselaw in interpreting the U.S. Constitution. As in his earlier decision in Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.
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Constitutions and budgeting: why don’t we observe more pre-commitment?
A popular academic theory of constitutions holds that constitutions serve to commit the polity across time. Knowing that we are likely to try to impose majority will on minorities in the future, we tie our collective hands to limit the damage that can be done to individual and community rights.
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Kenya’s draft moves on…
Kenya’s draft Constitution moves today to the office of Attorney General Amos Wako, who has four weeks to prepare the text for public referendum. The current text is the same as that forwarded by the Committee of Experts to the Parliament in late February—Parliament debated but failed to pass some 100 proposals for amendment.
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Constitutional amendment proposals in Turkey
Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)has submitted a new version of their proposed Constitutional amendments to the Grand National Assembly. The draft differs only slightly in substance from the previous version that the party submitted. One of the new additions is a proposal to alter Article 157 of the Constitution to provide judicial immunity…
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Kenya parliament passes draft…
… without amendments. we are not certain whether this means there were no amendments from the version proposed by the Committee of Experts in late February, or the version proposed by the Parliamentary Select Committee. stay tuned for more information… -TG
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Kenya process keeps chugging along
The Kenyan drafting process continues to move forward, with the debate in parliament due to wrap up this week. The MPs, having received the latest draft from the Committee of Experts and the Parliamentary Select Commission, have apparently made some changes toward consolidation of local government, a major issue in the drafting debates.
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Kenya process: the next hurdle
Readers of this blog know that we have been following the Kenya constitution-making process with a close eye. This coming week, debate is to begin in the parliament over the revised draft produced by the Committee of Experts. That draft has been considered by the Parliamentary Select Committee for the past couple weeks.
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Weiler on the UK Supreme Court
The first issue of the Jewish Review of Books has just published an excellent critique by Joseph Weiler of the UK Supreme Court’s decision in the Jewish Free School Case (see our earlier posts here and here). The case held that the admissions criteria of the Jewish state-supported school, denying admission to a child whose…