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Elizabeth Dale
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The all-too-soon start of classes has played havoc with posting, but constitutional events in Hungary do call for at least a moment's comments. The changes, which are far reaching, include weakening the constitutional court and threats to the independence of the judiciary. For a general overview, see Kim Lane Scheppele's... Continue reading
Posted Jan 4, 2012 at Constitutional Orders
The role of the diaspora in constitutional order has been in the news recently, most immediately in stories out of Kenya, Haiti, Grenada, and Jamaica, where questions of the diaspora’s constitutional power have arisen in two distinct ways. For Jamaica, Haiti, and Kenya, the issue is whether or not members... Continue reading
Posted Dec 8, 2011 at Constitutional Orders
The recent announcement from Greece that Prime Minister Papandreou (see here and here) has proposed that the country hold a referendum on the recent deal with the EU is currently being cast as an economic story (but see here, for a report that treats it as a Greek political crisis)... Continue reading
Posted Nov 1, 2011 at Constitutional Orders
As a follow up on our earlier post mentioning Occupy Wall Street, I thought I'd consider whether OWS was a constitutional movement and then offer some additional links discussing it. On Balkinization, Jack Balkin has argued that OWS could become a constitutional movement (though he notes that in contrast to... Continue reading
Posted Oct 29, 2011 at Constitutional Orders
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In the tight frame of its first twenty years, Massachusetts Bay dramatically altered its constitutional order. Founded as a theocracy, in which magisterial authority was derived from God and magisterial power strictly limited by divine command, by the end of the 1640s the colony had become an oligarchy, led by... Continue reading
Posted Sep 16, 2011 at Elizabeth Dale
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The Rule of Justice explores a sensational homicide case that took place in Chicago in 1888. Zephyr Davis, a young African American man accused of murdering an Irish American girl who was his coworker, was pursued, captured, tried, and convicted amid public demands for swift justice and the return of... Continue reading
Posted Sep 16, 2011 at Elizabeth Dale
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This book chronicles the development of criminal law in America, from the beginning of the constitutional era (1789) through the rise of the New Deal order (1939). Elizabeth Dale discusses the changes in criminal law during that period, tracing shifts in policing, law, the courts, and punishment. She also analyzes... Continue reading
Posted Sep 16, 2011 at Elizabeth Dale
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On November 14, 1885, a cold autumn day in the City of Broad Shoulders, an enthusiastic crowd of several hundred watched as three Sicilians Giovanni Azari, Agostino Gelardi, and Ignazio Silvestri were hanged in the courtyard of the Cook County Jail. The three had only recently come to the city,... Continue reading
Posted Sep 16, 2011 at Elizabeth Dale
As a follow up to our earlier posts about Iceland's experiment with web 2.0 in constitution-making, here is an article that traces out the role of social media in the Arab Spring (specifically in Tunisia and Egypt). An here is a second article that summarizes that first one, and puts... Continue reading
Posted Sep 3, 2011 at Constitutional Orders
We’ve all heard about, and perhaps seen footage of, the crisis events that took place in London and other English cities during the second week of August. Some call these events “riots” (see, for example, here, here, and here); others call them insurgencies (see, e.g., here, and many writings in... Continue reading
Posted Sep 1, 2011 at Constitutional Orders
Things may be a little slow for the next week as we adjust to school year schedules. But it seemed appropriate to record the first anniversary, on August 27, 2011, of the Constitution of Kenya (2010). (pdf file; for a summary of the constitution, see here) That constitution replaced the... Continue reading
Posted Aug 28, 2011 at Constitutional Orders
As a follow up to the brief mention in our earlier roundup: Iceland’s proposed new constitution (to replace the 1944 Constitution of the Republic of Iceland) is scheduled to be put to a popular vote for ratification by October 1, 2011. (A link to an English language version of the... Continue reading
Posted Aug 15, 2011 at Constitutional Orders
The significance of constitutional misunderstandin... Continue reading
Posted Jul 20, 2011 at Constitutional Orders
While thinking in terms of the constitutional lifecycle is one way to organize a a typology of constitutional actions, within each stage of that lifecycle popular forces can engage in a variety of different activities. I’ve already discussed one way to organize those different activities—categorizing them as either constitutional actions... Continue reading
Posted Jun 17, 2011 at Constitutional Orders
This wraps up the first round of my occasional postings developing a constitutional typology (see here, and the various posts it links to), by looking at the roles of popular forces in bringing a constitution’s lifecycle to an end. The most obvious way that popular forces can bring about the... Continue reading
Posted Jun 15, 2011 at Constitutional Orders
As a follow up to my discussions of the difference between a constitutional act and acting constitutionally or between judicial and constitutional review (and here), I wanted to briefly explore another dynamic pairing that has implications for how we talk about the role of popular forces in constitutional orders. This... Continue reading
Posted Jun 6, 2011 at Constitutional Orders
We often use the terms judicial and constitutional review as synonyms, but it is not clear to me that it is appropriate to do so. While judicial review falls within the category of constitutional review, constitutional review need not only be the province of the courts. Theories of judicial review... Continue reading
Posted May 16, 2011 at Constitutional Orders
In my previous post on judicial and constitutional review, I ended with the observation that the history of constitutional review in the US revealed a number of efforts to site the power of review in constitutional actors other than the judiciary, and raised some more general points and issues about... Continue reading
Posted May 15, 2011 at Constitutional Orders
Thinking about how popular forces might act in a constitutional order helps connect my last couple of posts (here and here) because it is during the period of a constitutional system that people either take constitutional acts (that is, act within the scope of the constitution) or act constitutionally (that... Continue reading
Posted May 5, 2011 at Constitutional Orders
I plan to return to my typology posts shortly, but I wanted to take a minute to consider a constitutional distinction that I have been discussing with a number of people recently. The distinction is between two types of popular actions within a constitutional order. The first type, which I... Continue reading
Posted Apr 23, 2011 at Constitutional Orders
This continues the discussion of constitutional typology that I began here: Once we've established the elements of the constitutional lifecyle, the next question is what role or roles popular forces play in each stage of that lifecycle. The answer depends a bit on the stage, though as we shall see... Continue reading
Posted Apr 7, 2011 at Constitutional Orders
In my last post, I talked about the possibility of creating a typology for popular constitutional activities. I hope to sketch out the elements of one possible typology in a series of forthcoming posts. The typology I envision looks at popular constitutional forces from three different perspectives: Constitution's lifecycle Actors... Continue reading
Posted Mar 31, 2011 at Constitutional Orders
Recent events in the Middle East and Europe remind us of the role that popular forces can play in constitutional orders. Most obviously, popular forces can be agents of revolutionary change, but they can also pressure governments to undertake constitutional reforms, or to alter decisions made through normal institutions and... Continue reading
Posted Mar 27, 2011 at Constitutional Orders
Here are some more materials relating to constitituonal order: In the EU, a decision of the European Court of Human Rights declared that Italian schools can continue to have crucifixes in classrooms because they are "passive symbols," not coercive displays that advanced religion. In Egypt, a significant majority of the... Continue reading
Posted Mar 22, 2011 at Constitutional Orders
Here's a roundup of stories on issues of constitutional order in a number of countries: 1. This past week, the Guardian has had a number of articles and opeds criticizing a variety of Big Society proposals. For some, see here, here, here, and here. 2. While the revolutionary events in... Continue reading
Posted Mar 13, 2011 at Constitutional Orders