Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 261-272
Author(s):  
Richard Albert
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Costa Rica ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Constitutional Amendment ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Democratic Values ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Careful Thought

There are presently too few resources to guide constitutional designers in building the rules of constitutional amendment. This chapter offers a roadmap for designing constitutional amendment rules. As is true of building an edifice, constructing the rules of constitutional change requires careful thought about design and operation. This chapter explains that amendment rules are organized around four sets of fundamental choices requiring designers to set the foundations of the polity, to choose among pathways to initiate, propose and ratify an amendment, to select specifications that will put the foundations and pathways into operation, and finally to determine how and where amendments will be recorded. This chapter also explains that formal amendment as a practice reflects the democratic values of the rule of law, including predictability, transparency, and publicity. There are of course advantages to informal amendment and methods of change that violate the codified rules of change, but there are even greater democracy-enhancing virtues that are possible only with formal amendment. This chapter considers constitutions from Austria, Costa Rica, Great Britain, India, Ireland, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States.

Lawyers as Activists

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Dorf ◽  
Michael S. Chu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Court Action ◽  
The Government ◽  
Trump Administration

Lawyers played a key role in challenging the Trump administration’s Travel Ban on entry into the United States of nationals from various majority-Muslim nations. Responding to calls from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which were amplified by social media, lawyers responded to the Travel Ban’s chaotic rollout by providing assistance to foreign travelers at airports. Their efforts led to initial court victories, which in turn led the government to soften the Ban somewhat in two superseding executive actions. The lawyers’ work also contributed to the broader resistance to the Trump administration by dramatizing its bigotry, callousness, cruelty, and lawlessness. The efficacy of the lawyers’ resistance to the Travel Ban shows that, contrary to strong claims about the limits of court action, litigation can promote social change. General lessons about lawyer activism in ordinary times are difficult to draw, however, because of the extraordinary threat Trump poses to civil rights and the rule of law.

scholarly journals Obama's National Security Exceptionalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sudha N. Setty
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
National Security ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Norms ◽  
Global Community ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
War Criminals ◽  
The World ◽  
International Obligations

Published: Sudha Setty, Obama's National Security Exceptionalism, 91 CHI.-KENT L. REV. 91 (2016).This Article discusses how continued national security exceptionalism engenders a view of the United States as considering itself to be above international obligations to investigate and prosecute torturers and war criminals, and the view by the global community that the United States is willing to apply one standard for itself, and another for the rest of the world. Exceptionalism not only poses real challenges in terms of law, morality, and building useful relationships with allied nations, but acts as a step backward for the creation of enforceable international norms and standards, and in efforts to restore a balance in the rule of law when it comes to national security matters.

LEGAL JUSTICE IN PRESIDENTIAL IMPEACHMENT PRACTICE BETWEEN INDONESIA AND THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 465
Author(s):  
Hanif Fudin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
The United States ◽  
Scientific Article ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Checks And Balances ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Basic Law ◽  
Republican Government

The constitution is approved as a law capable of guaranteeing human rights and protection of the constitution and past coordination, as well as being the corpus of the administration of the rule of law entity itself. Regarding the state of Indonesia and the United States, if examined by these two countries, they have similarities in the form of republican government or presidential system of government. However, on the contrary, in the impeachment transition, the two countries appear to be dichotomous both formally and materially. Therefore, this scientific article discusses reviewing the impeachment provisions of the Presidents of the two countries who agree to develop agreements and principles in checks and balances in trying to actualize the value of the country's legal justice. Therefore, in approving the discourse of research methods, descriptive-comparative methods are used with normative-philosophical and comparative-critical discussions. On that basis, this study discusses the practice of presidential impeachment in Indonesia to consider more legal justice, because it is through a legal process involving the Constitutional Court which implements practices in the United States that only involve the Senate and the House of Representatives which incidentally is a political institution. It considers the constitution in the basic law of the country.

Nonconstitutional Amendments

2009 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Albert
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
The United States ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Constitutional Amendment ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Perspective Drawing ◽  
Peculiar Phenomenon

The constitutional text in a constitutional democracy does not necessarily constrain constitutional change. Quite the contrary, constitutional change in a constitutional democracy often occurs in ways that depart from the rigid procedures governing constitutional amendment enshrined in the text of the constitutional.In this article, I illuminate this peculiar phenomenon in comparative perspective, drawing from the constitutional traditions of Canada, Germany, India, South Africa and the United States. In addition to illuminating distinctions in the amendment practices of liberal democratic constitutional states, I deploy those contrasts as a springboard to substantive insights about fundamental principles of statehood, namely sovereignty and legitimacy.

The Psychosis of Permanent War

2014 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-51
Author(s):  
Chris Hedges
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
The Rule Of Law

In this no-holds-barred essay, former New York Times Middle East correspondent and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Chris Hedges examines how the United States’ staunch support provides Israel with impunity to visit mayhem on a population which it subjugates and holds captive. Notwithstanding occasional and momentary criticism, the official U.S. cheerleading stance is not only an embarrassing spectacle, Hedges argues, it is also a violation of international law, and an illustration of the disfiguring and poisonous effect of the psychosis of permanent war characteristic of both countries. The author goes on to conclude that the reality of its actions against the Palestinians, both current and historical, exposes the fiction that Israel stands for the rule of law and human rights, and gives the lie to the myth of the Jewish state and that of its sponsor, the United States.

Compromising Justice: Why the Bush Administration and the NGOs Are Both Wrong about the ICC

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth A. Rodman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Rome Statute ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Bush Administration ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Proceedings

The critics of the ICC in the Bush administration and its supporters within the human rights community have one thing in common: they assume that the ICC can evolve into a powerful institution independent of states, either to constrain American power or to act on a duty to prosecute to end impunity for perpetrators. Both overestimate the ability of the court to pursue a legalism divorced from power realities. The former attribute to the court powers it is unlikely to exercise, particularly if the United States remains outside the treaty. This is due, in part, to the safeguards within the Rome Statute, but more importantly, to the court's dependence on sovereign cooperation, which will lead it to place a high premium on cultivating the good will of the most powerful states. The latter overestimate the degree to which courts by themselves can deter atrocities. The ICC's effectiveness in any particular case will therefore be dependent on the political consensus of those actors capable of wielding power in that area. They also underestimate the need to compromise justice – at least, prosecutorial justice – in cases in which bargaining and compromise are the central means of facilitating transitions from armed conflict or dictatorship, and in cases in which the strength of the perpetrators and the limits of one's power would make legal proceedings either futile or counterproductive to other interests and values. Hence, decisions to prosecute must first be subjected to a test of political prudence, and then take place according to due process and the rule of law.

The United States and the Rule of Law in International Affairs

2005 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 180
Author(s):  
G. John Ikenberry ◽  
John Murphy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
The Rule Of Law
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