Measuring Amendment Difficulty

2019 ◽  
pp. 95-138
Author(s):  
Richard Albert
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Variability ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Relative Rigidity ◽  
Fatal Flaw ◽  
Comparative Constitutional Law ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
The U.S

Which constitution is the world’s most difficult to amend? Scholars of comparative constitutional law almost uniformly have the same answer: the U.S. Constitution. It has been amended relatively few times since its creation in 1787, thousands of amendment proposals have failed, and today it seems virtually impossible to amend. Is this enough to prove that the U.S. Constitution is the hardest to amend? This chapter examines rankings of amendment difficulty that focus on the codified rules of amendment, and concludes that none of them is a reliable ordering of relative rigidity and moreover that all of them have a fatal flaw: they fail to account for nontextual sources of amendment ease or difficulty. These nontextual sources include uncodified changes to formal amendment rules, popular veneration for the constitution, temporal variability in amendment difficulty, and prevailing cultures of amendment. The chapter shows that three different cultures of amendment can either exacerbate or assuage amendment difficulty: amendment culture as an accelerator of change, as a redirector of change, and as an incapacitator of change. This chapter also illustrates how and theorizes why formal amendment rules are sometimes modified in ways that ultimately remain invisible to scholars who take a narrow text-based approach to measure amendment difficulty. The chapter concludes both that rankings of amendment difficulty are doomed to failure and that they may not be worth the effort. This chapter considers constitutions from around the globe.

Constituting Scotland

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Elliot Bulmer
Keyword(s):  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Constitutional Theory ◽  
Constitutional Design ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
National Movement ◽  
Comparative Constitutional Law ◽  
Constitutional Thought ◽  
Scottish Government ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
Constitutional Tradition

The rise of the Scottish national movement has been accompanied by the emergence of distinct constitutional ideas, claims and arguments, which may affect constitutional design in any future independent Scotland. Drawing on the fields of constitutional theory, comparative constitutional law, and Scottish studies, this book examines the historical trajectory of the constitutional question in Scotland and analyses the influences and constraints on the constitutional imagination of the Scottish national movement, in terms of both the national and international contexts. It identifies an emerging Scottish nationalist constitutional tradition that is distinct from British constitutional orthodoxies but nevertheless corresponds to broad global trends in constitutional thought and design. Much of the book is devoted to the detailed exposition and comparative analysis of the draft constitution for an independent Scotland published by the SNP in 2002. The 2014 draft interim Constitution presented by the Scottish Government is also examined, and the two texts are contrasted to show the changing nature of the SNP’s constitutional policy: from liberal-procedural constitutionalism in pursuit of a more inclusive polity, to a more populist and majoritarian constitutionalism.

The Impact of Culture on Reactions to Promise Breaches: Differences Between East and West in Behavioral Integrity Perceptions

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ray Friedman ◽  
Ying-Yi Hong ◽  
Tony Simons ◽  
Shu-Cheng (Steve) Chi ◽  
Se-Hyung (David) Oh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Work Life ◽  
Communication Style ◽  
The West ◽  
Behavioral Integrity ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
East And West ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The U.S

Behavioral integrity (BI)—a perception that a person acts in ways that are consistent with their words—has been shown to have an impact on many areas of work life. However, there have been few studies of BI in Eastern cultural contexts. Differences in communication style and the nature of hierarchical relationships suggest that spoken commitments are interpreted differently in the East and the West. We performed three scenario-based experiments that look at response to word–deed inconsistency in different cultures. The experiments show that Indians, Koreans, and Taiwanese do not as readily revise BI downward following a broken promise as do Americans (Study 1), that the U.S.–Indian difference is especially pronounced when the speaker is a boss rather than a subordinate (Study 2), and that people exposed to both cultures adjust perceptions of BI based on the cultural context of where the speaking occurs (Study 3).

The judicial review of legality

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie R. Davidson ◽  
Leora Bilsky
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
New Model ◽  
Substantive Content ◽  
Comparative Constitutional Law ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Relationship Of

In comparative constitutional law, the various models of judicial review require courts to examine either the substantive content of legislation or the procedure through which legislation was passed. This article offers a new model of judicial review – ‘the judicial review of legality’ – in which courts review instead the forms of law. The forms of law are the ways in which law communicates its norms to the persons who are meant to comply with them, and they include generality, clarity, avoidance of contradiction, and non-retroactivity. Drawing on recent writing on the jurisprudence of Lon Fuller, this article argues that Fuller’s linking of the forms of law to a relationship of reciprocity between government and governed can ground judicial review and that such review provides a missing language to address important legislative pathologies. Moreover, through an analysis of recent developments in Israel, the article demonstrates that the judicial review of legality targets some of the key legal techniques of contemporary processes of democratic erosion which other models of judicial review struggle to address, all the while re-centring judicial review on the lawyer’s craftsmanship and thus reducing problems of court legitimacy. This article therefore offers a distinctive and normatively appealing way for courts to act in troubling times.

The Case for Repealing the Second Amendment? The Historical Barriers to Constitutional Change

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 595-607
Author(s):  
David T. Konig
Keyword(s):  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Second Amendment ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Popular Constitutionalism

The controversy surrounding the Second Amendment—“the right of the people to keep and bear arms”—is, to a large extent, historical in nature, redolent of other matters in this country’s legal and constitutional past. But the historical analogies that might support the Amendment’s repeal do not permit easy conclusions. The issue demands that legal historians venture beyond familiar territory to confront unavoidable problems at the intersection of theory and practice and of constitutional law and popular constitutionalism. An interdisciplinary analysis of Lichtman’s Repeal the Second Amendment illuminates the political, legal, and constitutional dimensions—as well as the perils—of undertaking the arduous amending process permitted by Article V of the U.S. Constitution.

Religious Overclaiming and Support for Religious Aggression

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 1011-1021
Author(s):  
Daniel N. Jones ◽  
Adon L. Neria ◽  
Farzad A. Helm ◽  
Reza N. Sahlan ◽  
Jessica R. Carré
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
The Self ◽  
Border Region ◽  
Mechanical Turk ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
Religious Knowledge ◽  
Three Samples ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
The U.S

Agentic self-enhancement consists of self-protective and self-advancing tendencies that can lead to aggression, especially when challenged. Because self-enhancers often endorse aggression to defend or enhance the self-concept, religious self-enhancement should lead to endorsing aggression to defend or enhance one’s religion. We recruited three samples ( N = 969) from Mechanical Turk ( n = 409), Iran ( n = 351), and the U.S.–Mexico border region ( n = 209). We found that religious (but not secular) self-enhancement in the form of religious overclaiming predicted support for, and willingness to engage in, religious aggression. In contrast, accuracy in religious knowledge had mostly negative associations with aggression-relevant outcomes. These results emerged across two separate religions (Christianity and Islam) and across three different cultures (the United States, Iran, and the U.S.–Mexico border region). Thus, religious overclaiming is a promising new direction for studying support for religious aggression and identifying those who may become aggressive in the name of God.

scholarly journals Public Participation in African Constitutionalism

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Werner Menski
Keyword(s):  
Public Participation ◽  
Constitutional Law ◽  
Fine Tuning ◽  
Comparative Constitutional Law ◽  
Responsible Governance ◽  
Constitution Making

This review explores why public participation in constitution-making matters for cultivating responsible governance and for fine-tuning justice, focused on immensely rich African evidence within a broader comparative constitutional law context.  

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