[Editor’s Note: In this installment of I•CONnect’s Book Review Series, Reijer Passchier and Alissa Verhagen review The Foundations and Traditions of Constitutional Amendment (Hart 2017), edited by Richard Albert, Xenophon Contiades and Alkmene Fotiadou] –Reijer Passchier[*] and Alissa Verhagen[**] I. The renaissance of an issue The matter of constitutional change is one of the most difficult and challenging issues

Symposium on “Constitutional Amendment and Dismemberment”
—Richard Albert, The University of Texas at Austin Earlier this week, the Yale Journal of International Law published my article on “Constitutional Amendment and Dismemberment.” The Journal also organized a symposium around the article featuring three responses by (1) Professor David Landau, Florida State University and I-CONnect founding co-editor, (2) Judge Carlos Bernal, Colombian Constitutional

Is Ecuador Heading Towards a Constitutional Crisis?
–Mauricio Guim, S.J.D. candidate and Presidential Fellow in Data Science, University of Virginia School of Law & Augusto Verduga, LL.M. candidate, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, Quito, Ecuador The Republic of Ecuador is going through one of the most interesting transitions in the world. This past summer, in a contested election that almost tore the country

Populist Constitutionalism & The Democratic Minimum Core
—Rosalind Dixon, University of New South Wales [Editor’s Note: This post is part of the joint I-CONnect/Verfassungsblog mini-symposium on populism and constitutional courts. An introduction to the symposium can be found here.] Democratic “populism” is on the rise worldwide. In the last decade, Latin America has seen a wave of populist, neo-Bolivarian political change; Hungary

Abusive Judicial Activism and Judicial Independence in Brazil
—Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasília When delivering his speech at the Brazilian Supreme Court on December 5 on “Public Ethics and Democracy,” Michael Sandel, Professor at Harvard University, could not foresee what was about to happen that very day just some floors above the conference room. Amid a rich debate on the role of

Conference Report – “Democracy, Pacificism & Constitutional Change in Japan: Amending Art. 9?,” University of New South Wales
—Rosalind Dixon, University of New South Wales, and Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasília On August 12, 2016, the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia, and the Australian Network for Japanese Law (ANJel) hosted the symposium “Democracy, Pacifism & Constitutional Change in Japan: Amending

The Chilean Constituent Process: A Long and Winding Road
—Alberto Coddou Mc Manus, Diego Portales University & University College of London Nowadays, Chile is undergoing a unique constituent process. A longstanding aim of several social movements, the idea of a new constitution now dominates the agenda, and is one of the main commitments of the current government. The commitment to replace the Constitution of

A Way Out of Hyper-Reformism? A Project of Constitutional Reorganization and Consolidation in Mexico
—Andrea Pozas-Loyo, IIJ-UNAM Mexico has one of the world’s oldest and most amended constitutions: its 99-year old constitution has been amended 642 times. De jure, Mexico’s constitution is pretty rigid: amendments require three-quarters of the present members of congress and approval of the majority of the states’ legislatures. During the hegemonic-party period, the PRI had

Conference Report–Symposium on “State Constitutional Change,” University of Arkansas School of Law
—Jonathan Marshfield, University of Arkansas School of Law On January 22, 2016, the Arkansas Law Review hosted a symposium on State Constitutional Change: Traditions, Trends, and Theory at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I convened the symposium along with Richard Albert (Boston College). The aim of the symposium was to