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Since the United States adopted a written constitution as a consequence of the War of Independence, it is fair to say that most Western democracies with written constitutions have taken some guidance from that founding document. Inevitably, a key provision for any written constitution is ‘how can it be amended’. Even where there is an unwritten constitution (as for the United Kingdom, Aotearoa/New Zealand and Israel), the ‘rules’ established by convention or custom or some other means cannot be immutable: the passage of time or changing ideas require some means of altering or updating the rules. Changing a constitution is a matter of law, yet one inescapably imbued with politics. This article explores the way constitutional change has come, and how the rules have worked, in Australia (the 1951 referendum to ban the Australian Communist Party – unsuccessful, and the 1967 referendum to recognise rights of Indigenous Australians – successful) and the United States (the Equal Rights Amendment – situation ongoing), with a foray into the referendum process in United Kingdom (the 2017 ‘Brexit’ vote). It explores, too, the ‘change’ to a constitution where there is no change to the words of the document, but a change in interpretation – this in the context of Canada in 1929. There, consistent with judgments in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, the Canadian Supreme Court interpreted ‘person’ as appearing in the North America Act as not including women, denying women any entitlement to be appointed to the Canadian Senate. As related here, women were finally acknowledged as ‘persons’ when the Privy Council pronounced this to be so, an unanticipated outcome from a judicial body considered by both Canada and Australia to be so hidebound as not to be ‘right’ as the final court of appeal for Britain’s former colonies.

Texas state Rep. Rafael Anchías (D-Dallas) questioned Rep. Briscoe Cain (R-Deer Park) in the state House of Representatives on May 7 on the history of language used in a bill on voting regulations.

Mariupol residents began voting in a Kremlin-orchestrated referendum on becoming part of Russia on Sept. 23.

Il Sole 24 ore, 9 giugno 1996. Flamigni definì la legge inapplicabile auspicandone una completa abrogazione anche attraverso il referendum. Flamigni dichiarò di essere pronto ad autodenunciarsi per il mancato rispetto di alcuni dei divieti, come il divieto di produrre più di tre embrioni, il divieto di congelarli, di fare indagini genetiche pre-impianto, di accettare donazioni di gameti e anche di rifiutare l’embrione nel proprio grembo una volta prodotto, smontati in buona parte poi dalle sentenze dei giudici. Il 12 e 13 giugno 2005, la legge fu oggetto del referendum popolare sull’abrogazione di buona parte dei divieti che andavano contro il diritto alla salute. All’indomani del referendum in articolo pubblicato sull’Unità e intitolato “Le ragioni di una sconfitta”, Flamigni scriveva: «La scienza è un grande investimento sociale, forse il più importante di tutti. Così, lascia libera la scienza di esplorare l’ignoto, perché un occhio che scruta non può fare male a nessuno, chiede invece di poter esercitare un controllo sulle cose che la tecnica produce, perché una mano che fruga può far male, e come».

Britain's Labour Party has announced it will support a second referendum on Britain leaving the EU. What might be on the ballot?

In their 200 years as independent nations, both Chile and Argentina fought wars against all their neighbors, except each other. However, on the Christmas of 1978, controversy over the limits of the Beagle Channel almost made them face one other on the battlefield. It was thanks to the timely mediation of Pope John Paul II and Argentina’s later return to democracy that the conflict was pacifically resolved, through an agreement overwhelmingly supported by the Argentinian people, who expressed their approval in the 1984 referendum. The present article aims to analyze the meanings surrounding the agreement and the referendum, expressed in the Rio Negro, the most influential journal of the Argentinian northern Patagonia. In order to achieve it, theoretical tools of discourse analysis are used to study the news, editorials and opinion columns published in the sections in which the newspaper dealt with international, national and regional information. The article shows that in the journal, the positive discourses about the agreement predominated over the negative ones. The former were presented as a manifestation of the new democratic climate experienced by the Argentinian society.