Constitutions

Este estudio documenta en forma cuantitativa las reformas constitucionales en América Latina – tanto la promulgación de nuevas constituciones como reformas parciales – desde 1978 con un énfasis especial en el periodo 1990-2012. Se analiza al mismo tiempo si ha aumentado la frecuencia de reformas en las últimas dos décadas. Y se estudia hasta que punto América Latina es diferente en lo que se refiere a la frecuencia de reformas constitucionales y la rigidez de sus constituciones en comparación con otras regiones del mundo.

In the wake of the 1992 Mabo decision, the questions of what constitutes Australia now and of who is party to its inclusive lexicon were seen as a matter of national urgency, by liberals and conservatives alike. 'Australia' is no longer 'at home' with its perceived national and constitutional origins and the nation itself has become an uncanny object of both fear and familiarity. Partly in reaction to new histories and to Mabo, new origins are being sought with the teleological aim of healing the nation.

(...) Les élections de 2015 et après en Afrique, loin des
crises, des angoisses et des frustrations, devront être
des motifs d’espoir et de fierté : Espoir pour une jeunesse
avide d’un nouveau modèle de gestion des
affaires publiques susceptibles d’ancrer les Etats
africains dans le domaine légitime des droits fondamentaux
et de l’Etat de droit ; Fierté pour des générations
d’Africains qui ont connus des régimes autoritaires.
Comme Nelson MANDELA, « cela semble
toujours impossible, jusqu’à ce qu’on le fasse ».

يطرح عنوان هذه الورقة سؤالا يبدو متناقضًا، وهو هل يمكن أن تُجهض الدساتير الثورات الديمقراطية؟ ففي الحالات الناجحة من المفترض أن يترجم الدستور مطالب الثورة وأهدافها ويغير جوهر ممارسة السلطة وينقل السلطة من يد فرد أو فئة صغيرة إلى فئات أوسع. حدث هذا الأمر، كما سنعرض لاحقا، في بعض الحالات ولم يحدث في حالات أخرى. ومن هنا تحاول هذه الورقة دراسة الحالة المصرية من هذه الزاوية تحديدا، وتطرح سؤالا محوريًا هو: هل ساهت التجربة الدستورية المصرية خلال السنوات الثلاث الماضية في تحقيق أهداف ثورة 25 يناير في إقامة دولة القانون والمؤسسات الديمقراطية أم أنها ساهمت في إجهاض الثورة؟
وتستهدف الورقة إلقاء الضوء على التجربة الدستورية المصرية بعد ثورة 25 يناير -والتي شهدت اضطرابًا دستوريًا واضحًا- وذلك من خلال دراسة وتحليل هذه الوثائق من حيث السياق العام الذي تم في إطاره وضع هذه الوثائق، وطرق وضعها، ومدى انسجام مضامين هذه الوثائق مع مطالب الثورة، ومع مبادئ الحكم الديمقراطي، والآثار التي ترتبت عليها. ويبلغ عدد هذه الوثائق أربع عشرة وثيقة دستورية، هي التعديلات الدستورية التي تمت على تسع مواد من دستور 1971، وعشرة إعلانات دستورية، ودستورين، فضلا عن بيان القوات المسلحة في 3 يوليو 2013 ذي الطبيعة الخاصة كما سنعرض لاحقا.

This chapter sketches the development of rights talk in those parts of the Western tradition inspired by the teachings of the Genevan Reformer, John Calvin (1509-1564). Building in part on classical and Christian prototypes, Calvin developed arresting new teachings on authority and liberty, duties and rights, and church and state that have had an enduring influence on Protestant lands. Calvin's original teachings were periodically challenged by major crises in the West-the French Wars of Religion, the Dutch Revolt, the English Revolution, American colonization and the American Revolution. In each such crisis moment, a major Calvinist figure emerged-Theodore Beza, Johannes Althusius, John Milton, John Winthrop, John Adams, and others-who modernized Calvin's teachings and converted them into dramatic new legal and political reforms. This rendered early modern Calvinism one of the driving engines of Western constitutionalism. A number of our bedrock Western understandings of civil and political rights, social and confessional pluralism, federalism and social contract, and more owe a great deal to Calvinist theological and political reforms. This chapter distills the author's book length treatment of the subject, The Reformation of Rights: Law, Religion, and Human Rights in Early Modern Calvinism (Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Сучасні тенденції економічного розвитку більшості країн світу актуалізують потребу в удосконаленні існуючого інструментарію забезпечення їх економічного зростання та сталого розвитку. Важливим аспектом в цьому напрямку є реалізація політики детінізації економіки. В статті проаналізовані сучасні світові тенденції функціонування тіньового сектору економіки, визначені найбільш поширені схеми тіньового виведення капіталу та підходи до їх класифікації. Проведено систематизацію існуючих методичних підходів до оцінювання рівня тінізації економіки, визначені їх переваги та недоліки. Обґрунтовано доцільність розробки уніфікованого підходу до оцінювання обсягу тіньових фінансових потоків, в основі якого лежить врахування багатоканальності схем тіньового виведення капіталу.

The article supplies, for the first time in a unitary form, the edition of the thirteenth-century legislation of the province of Sant’Antonio concerning the 80’s (1281, 1282, 1288) and the 90’s (1290, 1291, 1292, 1294, 1295, 1296). This is, together with the legislation of the province of Aquitaine, the most ancient one that reached us among the legislations of the Franciscan provinces. After an introductive paragraph about the provincial constitutions of the Franciscan Friars, the essay dwells upon the witnesses of the legislation in the province of Sant’Antonio, especially the most ancient ones, that is the manuscript 205 of the Pontificia Biblioteca Antoniana of Padua, the codex Canon. Misc. 75 of the University of Oxford (Bodleian Libraries) and the manuscript 1306 of the Biblioteca Universitaria of Padua. In the third paragraph the author analyses the issues debated by the legislation in the province of Sant’Antonio, among which are outstanding the matters concerning the convents’ economic life. In the Appendix is placed the edition of the province’s constitutions.

This paper gives a global summary of the number of constitutions and the number of articles in each constitution for many representative countries around the world. Several works have already been written
comparing different legal systems and different constitutional traditions around the world; the purpose of this paper is just to compare the numbers of constitutions and articles in the diverse regions of the world, namely: North America, Latin America, Europe, Oceania, Middle East, Asia and Africa.
Around the world, on average, Latin America has had the most onvoluted constitutional history. The Dominican Republic has had a total of 32 constitutions, the largest number of constitutions of any country, since its independence in 1844. Three other countries have also had 20 or more constitutions throughout their history, all of them in Latin America: Venezuela (26), Haiti (24) and Ecuador (20). On the other hand, there are economies and societies that do not even have codified constitutions, like the United Kingdom in Europe, Hong Kong in Asia and New Zealand in Oceania. The United States has had only one constitution, even if it has been amended several times. There is also the special case of Israel and Saudi Arabia, both in the Middle East, that do not have official
written constitutions for historical and religious reasons. Comparative constitutional numbers and history help to explain several things about the stability of political systems, but not necessarily their quality.

Dear colleagues,

The open access journal Religions (ISSN 2077-1444) is pleased to announce that we have launched a new Special Issue entitled "Law and Religion in Europe in an Age of Fear and Insecurity" I am serving as Guest Editor for this issue.

Given the depth of your expertise in this field, I would like to cordially invite you to contribute an article to the Special Issue. For more information on the issue, please visit the Special Issue website at
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/law_reli
Papers may be submitted from now until 5 December 2022 as papers will be published on an ongoing basis. Submitted papers should not be under consideration for publication elsewhere. We also encourage authors to send a short abstract or tentative title to the Editorial Office in advance ([email protected]).
In the hope that this invitation receives your favorable consideration, we look forward to our future collaboration.

Kind regards,
Guest Editor

UN Security Council Resolution 1325 of 2000 provided that peace agreements should adopt a ‘gender perspective’. This commitment has been reiterated in women, peace and security resolutions since that time. This article uses a mixed qualitative and quantitative analysis to consider when and how peace agreements have adopted a gender perspective, using a new PA-X peace agreement database to analyse over 1500 peace and transition agreements from between 1990 and 2016. It goes further to consider how inclusion of women is related to the other forms of political and group inclusion contemplated to form part of the new political settlement. The article begins by examining what might be meant by a ‘gender perspective in peace agreements’. It maps out when and how peace agreements provide for women, girls and gender, but also for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans communities, and for ‘men and boys’ and ‘family’ at different stages of a peace process. The article provides new data on the implementation of agreement commitments and specifically those issues singled out for attention by UNSC 1325. Finally, we consider the inclusion project on offer to women and its relationship to the conceptualisation of the conflict and its solution, by considering the relationship between gender, power-sharing and transitional justice. In summary, analysis of the dataset provides three main findings. First provision for women is still largely limited to once-off provisions, or issues relating to the victimhood of women, with holistic attempts to adopt a ‘gender perspective’ relatively rare. Second, the inclusion of women in peace agreement texts tends to be located in the more comprehensive stages of the agreement, with little consideration given to women and gender at either pre-negotiation stages of a peace process, or implementation stages. Third, surprisingly perhaps, political power-sharing is shown to be strongly correlated with several measures of gender inclusion rather than marking an exclusive focus on the inclusion of the groups at the heart of the conflict. In conclusion we argue that peace agreements indicate the presence of ‘principled pragmatism’ whereby elite commitments to political equality are used by a range of groups to push for a more pluralist conception of the peace settlement as also concerned with the political equality of groups beyond the conflict actors.

As an individual I have many components. I can define myself in many ways depending on the context. I am a homosapien, a monotheist, Yahya’s and Matine’s father, a husband, a Turkish author, a philosopher, a lawyer, a skeptic, a believer, a democrat, a conservative, an American, a political activist, a reformist, a chess-player, a copywriter, a poet, a handyman, a Macintosh user, a teacher, . . . and I am also a Kurd. I am not sure how being a Kurd ranks among the manifold ingredients that makes up my personality, but recently it became one of the important characteristics. Why? Because I have realized that I am denied of this identity. I have also witnessed that many others who share the same culture and heritage are oppressed and killed just because of being born in a Kurdish family.

I am a Kurd who is less articulate in his mother tongue compared to the other four languages that I have learned, namely, Turkish, Arabic, Persian and English. I am a Kurd who lost his 21 years-old brother 19 years ago in Istanbul to the racist bullets of Gray Wolves or Turkish Nationalist militants. (3) I am a Kurd who was put in the same prison, for writing on religious-political issues, with the murderers of his brother and almost lost his life to the knives and teeth of Nationalist Grey Wolves! I am a Kurd who was systematically tortured in Turkish prisons (4) because of refusing to recite the Turkish Anthem that contains lines, such as, “I have lived free since eternity; which psychopath dare to chain me.”(5) I am a Kurd who was compelled to chant “Happy is he who can call himself a Turk”(6) and declare that “A Turk is worth the entire universe”(7) throughout elementary, middle and high-school years.(8) I am a Kurd whose Kurdish father prohibited the Kurdish language at home in order to survive in a city where being Kurd was regarded as being ignorant and lower class.(9) I am a Kurd who now enjoys eating rice with fork, unlike Kurds who prefer a spoon. I am a Kurd who wrote scores of books in Turkish and English, but none in Kurdish.

Vice-presidents in Latin America have often been at the centre of political turbulence. To prevent conflicts within the executive, most Latin American countries have therefore put in place formulae to elect presidents and vice-presidents on a joint electoral ticket. Still, it is common for presidential candidates to pick running mates from other parties in order to construct alliances and appeal to a broader set of voters. But the presence of such ‘external’ vice-presidents seems to increase the risk of presidential interruption in general and impeachment processes in particular. Accordingly, we argue that the frequently overlooked institution of the vice-president deserves attention as a possible intervening variable that can contribute to the explanation for government crises and their outcomes in Latin America.

No weakening, but rather an expansion, of statehood can be observed in the contemporary world. This does not, on the other hand, imply that extensive forms of constitutional ordering do not exist outside the realm of states. Instead, the evolution of world society has been characterized by a protracted dual movement where the expansion and densification of statehood and autonomous forms of transnational ordering gradually emerged in a mutually constitutive fashion. One implication of this is that neither the concept of the state nor the concept of nonstate transnational entities is adequately capable of delineating the object of constitutional analysis. Instead, the concept of normative orders has been introduced as an overarching category capable of identifying the contexts within which constitutional ordering emerges.
Subsequently, a distinction between the internal and external dimensions of the law of normative orders has been introduced, specifying them as respectively oriented towards establishing internal condensation of a given normative order and external compatibility between different normative orders. With this background, a framework for the analysis of constitutional frameworks of normative orders is developed. The central element is a distinction among three dimensions: First, a constitution implies a coupling between a constitutional object, in the form of a hierarchical organization of a given normative order capable of reproducing an autonomous source of authority, and a concordant legal framework. Second, constitutionalization implies a coupling between an internal reconstruction of an external constitutional subject within the constitutional object, and the register of legal rights, establishing a framework for exchanges between the constitutional object and the wider world as represented by the constitutional subject. Third, constitutionalism denotes the institutionalization of a double function, in the form of a principle-based and legally fortified striving toward universal inclusion, providing a sense of direction in time through an articulated form of constitutional consciousness.
The insights developed are briefly illustrated by the case of the global Fairtrade Certification System.

This article studies the causes of the revolutions developed in some Arab countries in 2011. They are known as «the Arab Spring». It also delves in the examination of their results and, more specifically, in the role assumed by Islamic political parties and movements. It also keeps attention to the influence that they have had in the new Constitutions within a period of tense political transition

Although the city of Úbeda (Jaén, Spain) never had a duke or a count, it did have a figure of enormous political power and influence in Francisco de los Cobos y Molina (c.1477-1547). Born in Úbeda, in 1516 Cobos became secretary to the Emperor Charles V and took responsibility for the imperial finances, positions which made him into one of the most powerful people in Spain of that period despite his birth into the gentility in a small town far from court. This study aims to supplement the small amount of information around Cobos’ musical patronage in his home town through analysis of the musico-liturgical regulations and musical repertories related to the Sacra Capilla [Holy Chapel] of El Salvador, founded by Cobos as chapel-burial place.

Pour un Athénien qui a connu la guerre du Péloponnèse avec ses coups d'État oligarchiques de 411 et de 404, puis les restaurations démocratiques, il devient nécessaire de de mettre en oeuvre tous les moyens pour stabiliser la politeia, le régime politique. C'est le cas de Xénophon qui, à travers ses oeuvres, mène une réflexion sur le bon gouvernement. Cependant, plus que la nature même de la constitution, c'est la préservation d'une politeia, d'un régime politique qui semble constituer un enjeu fondamental pour lui, car même le meilleur des gouvernements peut tomber dans l'anarchie ou la tyrannie, si les gouvernants ne sont pas à la hauteur. Le seul moyen de préserver la constitution est-il alors d'espérer l'homme providentiel ? Avant d'en arriver à cette conclusion, il est peut-être possible de trouver d'autres moyens que donne Xénophon pour maintenir l'ordre politique, notamment une surveillance centralisée qui permette à tout gouvernant d'être parfaitement informé sur tout ce qui se trame dans la cité. Marie Durnerin

In recent times a growing number of Latin American rural groups have achieved extended ethno-territorial rights, and large territories have been protected by progressive constitutions. These were the outcomes of extended cycles of national and transnational contentious politics and of social movement struggle, including collective South–South cooperation. However, the continent has simultaneously experienced a resource extraction boom. Frequently the extractivism takes place in protected areas and/or Indigenous territories. Consequently economic interests collide with the protection and recognition of constitutional rights. Through a review of selected demonstrative cases across Latin America, this article analyses the (de jure) rights on paper versus the (de facto) rights in practice.

The essence of any legal research is rooted in “finding and assembling of authorities that bear on a question of law” , or, to put it simply, in analysing the question of what the law is, how it came to be and what it is ought to be. At the same time, one of the unspoken yet essential prerequisites for any legal research is choosing a side or a perspective, from which this or that finding could be argued and supported. If a legal researcher chooses to simply summarise existing positions and views on a particular “question of law”, the outcome of such research is bound to become virtually ostensible and can be at risk of not being viewed as viable.

One could argue that an oversimplified approach to any legal research would be through siding with the legal positivism followers, as it would enable the researcher to look into the legal texts without evaluating their origin and their moral background. This, in its turn, could potentially lead to the analysis of any area of law resembling a mathematical theorem with given indexes and formulas, but with little or no margin for deviation. However, when studying a somewhat broad discipline of human rights and/or constitutions, it is almost impractical to leave yourself that narrow-minded. This paper will attempt to emphasise the pivotal importance and the validity of having a natural law outlook when studying constitutional law, where “values of natural law” in relation to human rights have been expressly outspoken .

This paper briefly covers the key trends in liberal constitutionalism, including judicial review, protection of rights, and protection of constitutional norms during times of emergencies. In doing so, it underlines the controversies and dilemmas relating to each of these trends.

Th e study of children's images as delineated in constitutional documents highlights the historical transitions that have occurred within and among countries, as manifested in the Convention of the Rights of the Child. As such, content analysis was administered to examine constitutional and amendment documents of 179 nation-states listed and recognized by the United Nations Development Programme in the Human Developmental Index. Th is analysis produced quantitative and qualitative data in which it described the ranking of each country and it's postulation toward children's protection, provision and participation as outlined by CRC. Th e fi ndings provide greater understanding of the nation-state posture towards children as active rights bearers.

This paper offers a contextualized analysis of the way in which three Islamic constitutions—in Egypt (2014/2019), Tunisia (2014), and Yemen (2015)—came to a similar self-declaration of a “civil state” (dawla madaniyya), following the Arab uprisings. This self-expressive proclamation, which did not exist in their former constitutions, nor in any other constitution worldwide, is the product of the ongoing internal struggles of Muslim societies over the definition of their collectivity between conservatism and modernity, religiosity and secularism. In Egypt, the self-definition of a civil state enshrines the one-sided narrative of the June 2013 coup regime and the Armed Forces’ intrusive move into the field of state–religion relations; in Tunisia, the constitutionalization of the civil state reflects a settlement between Islamists and non-Islamists regarding the role of Islam in politics and legislation; in Yemen, it expresses an aspiration of detribalization and modernization within an Islamic model of statehood. The paper further seeks to trace the path of migration of this idea from one country to another, and the interconnectedness between the three cases, while pointing out possible implications on future constitution making in other Muslim countries.

This essay examines the development of the Western conception of political order, which has changed considerably since its medieval origins. It has undergone a process of abstraction, secularisation, positivisation, and legalisation. In particular, the contemporary conception of political order, which I term Legalised Political Constructivism, emphasises the role of law as a means to structure political and social life. This essay shows that Legalised Political Constructivism is the result of historical attempts to justify political developments or to induce change, which leaves it open to challenge on empirical grounds. It concludes that normative political thought must engage with the social sciences in order to better understand the role that positive law can (and should) play as a constructive element in society.

While politicians are engaging in the most prominent debates and decision-making, the perceptions of Ukraine’s population will be central to the success of any such political solution. What exactly are the public’s perceptions and how subject have they been to change? We address this question with data from a new survey that interviewed the same set of Ukrainian citizens three times during 2014. The chief finding is that despite the major costs of war, Ukrainians (even in the east) tend to agree strongly that Ukraine should remain undivided, with many (especially in the west) believing this is something worth fighting for. However, major divides exist on exactly what form this unity should take. Judging by public sentiment, issue-specific autonomy arrangements and some form of limited decentralization offer a much greater chance of eventually unifying the country than would sweeping reforms that invoke the term “federalism.”

A constitution forms the foundation of the virtually all governments around the world. A surprisingly large number of constitutions change each year. On average, 30 constitutions are amended and 5 are completely replaced each year. Despite this level of change, no country changes its constitution often enough for the country's officials to gain much experience as constitutional drafters. In order to address constitutional drafters need for systematic information a web portal, Constitute, has been created using semantic technologies. The portal provides search-able access to the work of the Comparative Constitutions Project. The Comparative Constitution Project has amassed on-line copies of over 700 constitutions dating from the present day back to 1789. Further, the project created an OWL onotology containing over 600 constitutional concepts, e.g. women's rights, and is well into a process to tag the text of their entire collection of constitutions. To build the Constitute portal, the Comparative Constituion database was converted to an RDF representation using R2RML mappings and Capsenta's Ultrawrap. The portal implements semantic search features such that constitution drafters may search, read and compare constitutions. Constitute is available at http://www.constituteproject.org

This chapter discusses the shari‘a as a means of societal governance with regard to the quality of life, an idea that is embedded in the word’s etymology. The foundations of the shari‘a as an ethical and intellectual construct were laid in the centuries after the Prophet Muhammad. Its orientation towards the public good allows for continual evolution to respond to the changing conditions in which Muslims find themselves. What has this meant for aspirations to a ‘good life’ in Islamic contexts. The chapter examines the relationship of the shari'a to governance, development, constitutions, and civil society.

Ponencia para el simposio "Desigualdad social en América Latina en el contexto dela globalización: del estado de la cuestión a la búsqueda de nuevos rumbos", VI Congreso del CEISAL, 30 de junio -3 de julio de 2010, Toulouse ¿Hacia una democracia más equitativa? 1 La democracia en América Latina coexiste con estructuras sociales caracterizadas por desigualdades múltiples y masivas. Tal coexistencia significa que la igualdad política formal establecida por el sistema democrático no se traduce en un ejercicio real de los derechos políticos y civiles que fuera también (al menos relativamente) equitativo. Los proyectos políticos promovidos por los gobiernos de Evo Morales (Bolivia) y Rafael Correa (Ecuador) precisamente apuntan a cambiar esta situación. Una promesa central fue la de hacer más equitativa y así real a la democracia, y el elemento crucial para cumplir con esta promesa ha sido la reforma exhaustiva de la constitución por medio de Asambleas Constituyentes. El artículo analiza las nuevas constituciones de Bolivia y Ecuador para ver en qué medida se puede encontrar en estas magnas cartas elementos que apuntan en la dirección de realizar esta promesa de hacer más equitativa a la democracia, o sea de hacer más real a la democracia en una situación de marcadas desigualdades sociales.

How does severe financial crisis affect liberal democratic constitutions? For answers to this question I look to the experiences of states in East and Southeast Asia over the last quarter century (1990-2013). Drawing on cross-regional quantitative and in-depth qualitative analysis, this study finds only limited evidence of an impact of the Asian and the global financial crises on formal constitutional change in the region compared to the effects of political variables. However, there have been informal effects on constitutions due to changes in other laws and judicial interventions that often have direct consequences for constitutional practice. But rather than highlighting the strength of constitutionalism in the region, this broader pattern, I suggest, might have more to do with the nature of recent constitutional change, the perception of the economic shock as external, and continuing legacies of executive dominance in the region.

RESUMO: Mesmo já passados mais de vinte anos da promulgação da Constituição Federal alguns pontos obscuros ainda permanecem entre os principais estudos e interpretações sobre o processo constituinte de 87/88. Enquanto que muitos trabalhos apontam para a ...

A recent movement has extended previous emphases on the rights of national citizens by asserting the global human rights of all persons. This article describes the extent to which this change is reflected in the language of national constitutions around the world. Human rights language – formerly absent from almost all constitutions – now appears in most of them. Rather than characterizing developed or democratic states, human rights language is, first, especially common in countries most susceptible to global influences. Second, human rights language is driven by the extent of the international human rights regime at the time of a constitution’s writing. Third, human rights language tends to appear in newer constitutions and in the constitutions of emergent and reorganized states. National constitutions are imprinted with global social conditions, which now stress the discourse of human rights.

Drawing on a range of theories on writing, law and violence, Constitutions makes a theoretical intervention into conventional constitutional analyses by problematising the notion of a 'written constitution' on which they are based. Its theoretical analysis is grounded in case studies of New Zealand's Treaty of Waitangi, Australia's Mabo decision, Ireland's Easter Proclamation and Britain's 'unwritten' constitution.

TEMPORALIDADES HISTÓRICAS NA POLÍTICA: A Democracia como enigma não solucionado de todas as constituições EMENTA: Partindo de uma concepção crítica da ideologia, trata-se de explicitar a democracia como enigma não solucionado de todas as constituições. O princípio da inclusão democrática tem como objetivo afirmar a pertinência da democracia em todos os contextos, mas mantendo o seu sentido aberto à recontextualização contínua. O constitucionalismo democrático. Democracia, solidariedade e justiça.

A Constitution is a collection of principles or axioms determining how society should be organised, and a description of the ordering of the axioms in terms of their importance and of their invocation. We report on an experiment aimed at discovering preferred axioms relating to the distribution of income within society.