Category: Tom Ginsburg
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Kenya process continues
The constitution-making process in Kenya continues apace. The Committee of Experts has now submitted a revised harmonized draft to the parliament, which will then submit the document to a referendum. The revised draft retains the semi-presidential structure of the first draft, which has a directly-elected president and a prime minister.
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Japanese “constitutional” change
The Democratic Party of Japan continues its efforts to transform Japanese political practice toward greater congruence with formal demands of the Constitution. Secretary-General Ichiro Ozawa is plotting strategy for a major reform bill, described here, that would reduce the power of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau to appear in the Diet.
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Honduras vote coming in…
and it looks like the conservatives have won. The crisis, however, is likely not over, with most South American nations continuing to assert that the election results are not to be recognized. From the beginning, the Honduras affair has defied conventional political analysis.
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Ethics for constitutional advisors?
This mornings NY Times reports that Peter Galbraith, advisor to the Kurdish government, was negotiating oil deals on his own behalf while helping to influence Iraq’s constitution-making process. The scale of Galbraith’s prospective gains, upwards of $100 million, are shocking. It is not clear that he had a conflict of interest with regard to Kurdish…
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Honduras crisis comes to a close
Honduras’ political crisis is coming to an end. Five months after being forced out of the country by the military, Manuel Zelaya will apparently be allowed to resume his term of office. The country’s election scheduled for later this month, in which Zelaya is not a candidate, will proceed as planned.
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Kuwait Constitutional Court Supports Female MPs
Kuwait’s Constitutional Court ruled Wednesday that two female MPs who refuse to wear the hijab would indeed be allowed to sit in the country’s parliament. The two women were among four elected this past May, the first women to serve in that capacity.
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Courts in authoritarian regimes
Some readers may know that I have an occasional interest in the role of courts in authoritarian regimes. There is a wonderful quote in today’s NYTimes from Iranian “opposition” leader Mehdi Karroubi, who has been threatened with trial at a special court for clergy.
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Constitutional democracy as a national security strategy
Longtime China observer Jerry Cohen recently posted a critique of Taiwan’s government after its prime minister reacted against foreign critics. See here . One theme of Jerry’s comments is that Taiwan, as an island whose defense rests on explicit and implicit guarantees from the United States, is now of strategic value not because of its…
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State constitutions database
We sometimes call attention to important resources for constitutional research. One is the database at the University of Maryland on state constitutional design, available here. There is increasing attention devoted to state constitutions, which provide interesting though imperfect analogues to national constitutions.
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North Korea’s Cryptic Reforms
The South Korean press has just published text from amendments to the North Korean Constitution adopted this April. The Constitution apparently promotes Kim Jong-Il from Dear Leader to Supreme Leader; it also beefs up the role of the National Defence Commission, chaired by Kim.