Tag: Constitutional Convention
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The First Week of the Chilean Constitutional Convention
—Lucas MacClure, Boston College The Chilean Constitutional Convention has begun the work that will lead, one hopes, to the replacement of Pinochet’s 1980 constitution. In this piece, I summarize the Convention’s first week and highlight themes we comparativists often discuss under the banner of the optimal design of constituent assemblies.[1]
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Brazil’s Constitutional Dilemma in Comparative Perspective: Do Chile and Spain Cast Light on the Bolsonaro Crisis?
Introductory Note: This is an expanded version of an essay originally published in Portuguese by the Correio Braziliense on Monday, July 13, 2020. Here is an English translation. The present essay provides a comparative perspective on Brazil’s current crisis, and provides a global audience with a more detailed account of its constitutional development over the past forty years.
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Why has the Constitution of the Philippines Endured for 31 Years Without Amendment?
–Michael Henry Yusingco, Ateneo Policy Center President Rodrigo Duterte assumed office in July 2016 with the commitment to shepherd the transition of the Philippines to a federal form of government, an undertaking that requires a revision of the country’s constitution. Notably, the current Philippine constitution has stood for three decades without any amendment.
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Who is Afraid of the Constitutional Convention? The Rejection of Constitutional Change in the State of New York
–Eleonora Bottini, Sorbonne Law School, Visiting Professor at Columbia Law School “God forbid we should ever be twenty years without […] a rebellion”. –-Thomas Jefferson By voting massively “no” to Constitutional Proposal n. 1 on November 7th 2017, the people of the State of New York have rejected the opportunity to rethink and rewrite their constitution.
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Considering the First Phase of Ireland’s Citizen Assembly
—Eoin Carolan, University College Dublin Last weekend, Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly issued its recommendations on the first of the topics which the Houses of the Oireachtas (Irish parliament) asked it to consider: the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. This amendment, which was approved in a referendum in 1983, inserted a new Article 40.
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Virtual Bookshelf: A Constitutional Convention in the United States? A Review of “In Conventional Wisdom: The Alternate Article V Mechanism for Proposing Amendments to the U.S. Constitution” by John Vile
—Richard Albert, Boston College Law School The New York Times recently published an article speculating on the possibility of an imminent constitutional convention in the United States. The piece identified a balanced-budget amendment proposal as the catalyst for the convention: So far, 28 states have adopted resolutions calling for a convention on a balanced-budget amendment, including 10 in the past three years, and two, Oklahoma and West Virginia, this spring.
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Entrenching and Undercutting
—Adam Perry, Associate Professor and Tutor in Law, University of Oxford Nick Barber has an article titled ‘Why Entrench?’ coming out in the International Journal of Constitutional Law (available on SSRN). Among other things, the article is about the kinds of entrenchment there are, the reasons there are for entrenchment, and how the two match up.
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Video Interview: Developments in Irish Constitutional Law Featuring Eoin Carolan
—Richard Albert, Boston College Law School In the first installment of our new video interview series at I-CONnect, Eoin Carolan discusses developments in Irish constitutional law. The interview touches on recent referenda in Ireland, the relative ease of formal amendment under the Irish Constitution, the continuing debate on abortion, and the country’s experiment with a Constitutional Convention.
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Leaving Westminster: Constitutional Supremacy in an Independent Scotland
–Stephen Tierney, Professor of Constitutional Theory, University of Edinburgh and Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law; ESRC Senior Research Fellow, Future of the UK and Scotland programme On 16 June the Scottish Government unveiled its Scottish Independence Bill in an address by Nicola Sturgeon, Deputy First Minister of Scotland, to the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law.
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The Scottish Constitution After Independence
—Stephen Tierney, Edinburgh School of Law [Cross-posted from UK Con Law Blog] According to the Scottish Government White Paper issued this week, Scotland’s Future, an independent Scotland will have a new written constitution (this repeats the commitment contained in the Scottish Government’s earlier White Paper of March).