Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
133,316
result(s) for
"Constitutional amendment"
Sort by:
Madison's music : on reading the First Amendment
\"Are you sitting down? It turns out that everything you learned about the First Amendment is wrong. For too long, we've been treating small, isolated snippets of the text as infallible gospel without looking at the masterpiece of the whole. Legal luminary Burt Neuborne argues that the structure of the First Amendment as well as of the entire Bill of Rights was more intentional than most people realize, beginning with the internal freedom of conscience and working outward to freedom of expression and finally freedom of public association. This design, Neuborne argues, was not to protect discrete individual rights--such as the rights of corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections--but to guarantee that the process of democracy continues without disenfranchisement, oppression, or injustice. Neuborne, who was the legal director of the ACLU and has argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court, invites us to hear the \"music\" within the form and content of Madison's carefully formulated text. When we hear Madison's music, a democratic ideal flowers in front of us, and we can see that the First Amendment gives us the tools to fight for campaign finance reform, the right to vote, equal rights in the military, the right to be full citizens, and the right to prevent corporations from riding roughshod over the weakest among us. Neuborne gives us an eloquent lesson in democracy that informs and inspires.\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Constitutional Rigidity Matters: A Veto Players Approach
Constitutional amendment rules have traditionally been considered the most important part of a constitution. Nevertheless, recent empirical analyses argue that constitutional amendment rules do not matter at all. This dispute is due to the misuse of independent and dependent variables and inappropriate methodology. Using the Veto Players approach to measure constitutional rigidity, this article proposes a new index covering ninety-four democratic countries. It starts by explaining the underlying logic of the veto players approach and describing the specific derivation of the rules for the construction of the rigidity index, which aggregates all institutional provisions in a logically consistent way. It then explains why the lack of constitutional rigidity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for significant constitutional amendments in democratic countries. Finally, the author creates a new dataset on the significance of constitutional amendments and estimates the appropriate (heteroskedastic) model, which corroborates the theoretical expectations and demonstrates that more significant amendments lead to a better fit.
Journal Article
How America got its guns : a history of the gun violence crisis
\"In the United States more than thirty thousand deaths each year can be attributed to firearms. This book on the history of guns in America examines the Second Amendment and the laws and court cases it has spawned. The author's thorough and objective account shows the complexities of the issue, which are so often reduced to bumper-sticker slogans, and suggests ways in which gun violence in this country can be reduced. Briggs profiles not only protagonists in the national gun debate but also ordinary people, showing the ways guns have become part of the lives of many Americans. Among them are gays and lesbians, women, competitive trapshooters, people in the gun-rights and gun-control trenches, the NRA's first female president, and the most successful gunsmith in American history. Balanced and painstakingly unbiased, Briggs's account provides the background needed to follow gun politics in America and to understand the gun culture in which we are likely to live for the foreseeable future.\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Engineering Constitutional Change
This volume provides a holistic presentation of the reality of constitutional change in 18 countries (the 15 old EU member states, Canada, Switzerland and the USA). The essays offer analysis on formal and informal constitutional amendment bringing forth the overall picture of the parallel paths constitutional change follows, in correlation to what the constitution means and how constitutional law works. To capture the patterns of constitutional change, multi-faceted parameters are explored such as the interrelations between form of government, party system, and constitutional amendment; the interplay between constitutional change and the system of constitutionality review; the role of the people, civil society, and experts in constitutional change; and the influence of international and European law and jurisprudence on constitutional reform and evolution. In the extensive final, comparative chapter, key features of each country's amendment procedures are epitomized and the mechanisms of constitutional change are explained on the basis of introducing five distinct models of constitutional change. The concept of constitutional rigidity is re-approached and broken down to a set of factual and institutional rigidities. The classification of countries within models, in accordance with the way in which operative amending mechanisms connect, leads to a succinct portrayal of different modes of constitutional change engineering.
This book will prove to be an invaluable tool for approaching constitutional revision either for theoretical or for practical purposes and will be of particular interest to students and scholars of constitutional, comparative and public law.
eBook
The (AB)uses of the constitutional amendment power in Nicaragua: 1987-2024
The topic of constitutional amendments in Nicaragua has not been widely studied beyond its borders. Since its promulgation in 1987, the Nicaraguan Constitution has been amended approximately sixteen times, modifying over 95 articles. Some of these changes were minimal, while others led to revolutionary alterations that disrupted essential elements such as the form and system of government and fundamental rights. To understand the dynamics of the constitutional amendments carried out between 1987 and the first quarter of 2024, this essay examines the content of those amendments and analyzes the constitutional amendment procedure established by the Nicaraguan Constitution. This procedure, combined with the country’s political situation, the absence of explicit unamendable clauses, and a virtually non-existent judicial review of constitutional amendments, makes it relatively easy to carry out all kinds of changes, with equal potential for both use and abuse of the constitutional amendment power.
El tema de las reformas constitucionales en Nicaragua no ha sido muy estudiado más allá de sus propias fronteras. Desde su promulgación en 1987, la Constitución nicaragüense ha sido reformada alrededor de dieciséis veces. En dichas ocasiones, se modificaron más de 95 artículos. Algunos de estos cambios fueron mínimos, pero otros llevaron a cabo alteraciones revolucionarias que trastocaron elementos esenciales como la forma y sistema de gobierno y los derechos fundamentales. Para comprender la dinámica de las reformas constitucionales llevadas a cabo entre 1987 y el primer trimestre de 2024, se hace un recorrido por el contenido de aquellas y se analiza el procedimiento de reforma constitucional diseñado por la Constitución nicaragüense, que, aunado a la situación política de aquel país, a la ausencia de cláusulas pétreas expresas y a un ––prácticamente–– inexistente control judicial de las reformas constitucionales, vuelve relativamente fácil la realización de toda clase de cambios, usando y abusando por igual del poder de reforma constitucional.
Journal Article
Limits and methodological criteria for the substitution of the Constitution doctrine in Colombia
This article will analyze the interpretation limits and methodologies used by the Constitutional Court when reviewing constitutional reforms. In Judgment C-551 of 2003, it was established that although the 1991 Colombian Constitution does not contain any eternity clauses, the consubstantial elements of the Constitution and those elements of the constitutional block that identify it cannot be changed through constitutional reform. In this case, the power of reform would become constituent power, subverting its powers and giving rise to a procedural defect. In this context, we will examine whether these methodologies are useful in limiting the broad degree of discretion the Court has in determining when a reform supersedes the Constitution
En el artículo se analizarán los limites interpretativos y las metodologías que ha dispuesto la Corte Constitucional cuando hace la revisión de las reformas constitucionales. En la Sentencia C-551 de 2003, se dispuso que a pesar de que la Constitución colombiana de 1991 no contiene cláusulas pétreas, no se pueden cambiar o derogar a través de la reforma constitucional los elementos consustanciales de la Constitución y aquellos elementos del bloque de constitucionalidad que la identifican. En este caso el poder de reforma se convertiría en poder constituyente, subvertiría sus competencias y daría lugar a un vicio de forma. En este orden de ideas, se verificará si dichas metodologías son útiles para limitar el amplio grado de discrecionalidad que tiene la Corte en determinar cuándo una reforma sustituye la Constitución.
Journal Article
Benin: A Strong Court Falling Victim to Its Achilles’ Heel
This contribution examines the evolution of the Constitutional Court of Benin (CCB) as a critical guardian of constitutionalism, political stability, and human rights in the context of Benin’s democratic transition following the 1990 Constitution. Next to actively defending the constitutional order and being resilient against executive overreach, the CCB also expanded its authority by amending the constitution to address anticipated threats to democratic principles. However, vulnerabilities in its institutional design, particularly concerning the appointment procedure and terms of office, rendered it susceptible to political manipulation. These design flaws were compounded by public mistrust of constitutional reforms, thwarting efforts to rectify these shortcomings. 25 years after its inauguration, the CCB was co-opted by political elites, culminating in its diminished efficacy. Despite this decline, the CCB’s early legacy and its partial safeguards offer valuable lessons for constitutional resistance and resilience.
Journal Article
Constitutional Chess? Strategic Considerations in the Sri Lankan Supreme Court’s Constitutional Amendment Jurisprudence
Sri Lanka’s supreme court has approved five constitutional amendments over the last two decades. This constitutional back and forth, marked by contradictory projects espoused in the amendments yielded charges of the court’s failure to resist executive power. The eighteenth and twentieth amendments were projects of abusive constitutionalism and de-democratisation, and the court’s review of these amendments was characterized by capitulation in the former, and qualified resistance in the latter. This paper locates the Sri Lankan experience within comparative scholarship on strategic judicial empowerment. It then canvasses the outcomes in these cases, and advances three considerations that may explain the court’s response in these amendments – public legitimacy of the amendment, the court’s interest, and political cost. These considerations are demonstrated through the court’s reasoning and conclusions on key provisions in these determinations. A combination of these considerations lends greater coherence to what is otherwise a confusing body of jurisprudence.
Journal Article
Restoring Indonesia’s (Un)Constitutional Constitution: Soepomo’s Authoritarian Constitution
The recent years saw the rise in discourse to undo the liberal-democratic amendments introduced between 1999 and 2002 and restore the Indonesian 1945 Constitution to its original 1945 version. Some Indonesian public figures believe that these amendments are not legitimate, because they are deemed to have eliminated the basic values of the original 1945 Constitution which was built on the “integralist” concept as propounded by its main architect Soepomo. According to the integralist conception, the state should be seen as a family in which the government played a role as a wise father who can bring its people to the right choice. This article seeks to prove that these amendments are legitimate although they constitute a “dismemberment” of the original 1945 Constitution. This is because the original 1945 Constitution was formed only by a handful of elites in an institution established by the Japanese occupying power in early 1945. By contrast, the Majelis Permusyawaratan Rakyat (People’s Consultative Assembly) who was in charge of the four amendments to the 1945 Constitution had a greater democratic legitimacy compared to the drafters of the original Constitution given that they were elected through the 1999 elections. Furthermore, the original 1945 Constitution was never intended to operate beyond the Indonesian revolutionary period, which ended in 1949. It was expected that the document be significantly changed or even replaced by the People’s Consultative Assembly through the amendment process.
Journal Article