—Dian A H Shah, National University Singapore Faculty of Law [Editor’s note: This is one of our biweekly I-CONnect columns. Columns, while scholarly in accordance with the tone of the blog and about the same length as a normal blog post, are a bit more “op-ed” in nature than standard posts. For more information about

“Constitutional Dismemberment” and Political Crisis in Brazil: Populism in Sight?
—Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasília Jon Elster once wrote that “… the task of constitution-making generally emerges in conditions that are likely to work against good constitution-making.”[1] Passion – as he puts it – prevails over reason in such turbulent circumstances. When it comes to other forms of substantial constitutional change, such as what

Checking Institutions and the Institutional Control of Politics
—David Landau, Florida State University College of Law This week, the Colombian National Procuraduria [a sort of National Attorney General or Inspector General] removed the leftist, democratically-elected mayor of Bogota, Gustavo Petro, from office and banned him from participation in politics for 15 years. The move is a fascinating look into the strength of Colombia’s