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A funny thing about the U.S. Constitution is that it's written down. Words might seem like an obvious feature of any constitution, but they're notably missing from much of the constitution of Great Britain, the country from which the United States seceded. Historians have often assumed that the quirky American practice of putting constitutions into single documents has its origins in the corporate charters of the seventeenth-century trading companies that founded more than half of the thirteen original states. But, as historian Mary Sarah Bilder has written, it is surprisingly difficult to explain the change from corporate charter to modern constitution with precision and persuasive power. This Article attempts to do just that, telling the story of a series of lawsuits that forced the Massachusetts Bay Company to treat its charter's terms as Gospel. Relying on original research of thousands of primary sources from the United States and the United Kingdom spanning from 1607 through 1793, this Article presents an account of how a corporate charter evolved into a "Charter Constitution" in America while the British Constitution remained intangible. This Article demonstrates that written words became a defining feature of American constitutionalism a century before the American Revolution, and that this distinction between the American and British understandings of constitutions contributed to American independence. The historical origins of American constitutionalism can also supply more depth to modern interpretive debates over whether text alone can provide meaningful limits on government power without reference to external traditions, modes of enforcement, or evolving practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the evolution of political constitutionalism in three waves. Topics covered include the functionalist wave of political constitutionalism that was articulated by British jurist John Griffith in his 1978 Chorley Lecture on the political constitution, the normative wave which emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the reflexive wave which is characterised by an internal reflection which addresses the political constitution on its own terms.

From the late 18th through the early 19th centuries, Spain progressed towards a reformist constitutionalism whose goals were to establish both rules for good governance and a new relation between the civil and ecclesiastical/religious spheres. This tendency was consolidated in the period of French intervention in the peninsula, under both the government of José I and that of his anti-French rivals in Cadiz. This reformism arrived in Mexico through Vice-regal participation in Cadiz constitutionalism and the Congress of Chilpancingo/ Constitution of Apatzingán in 1813-1814, and acquired much greater strength from the Constitution of 1824 until 1834. In the period 1814-1820, under a restored absolutist government, an important reaction arose against this reformist legacy. However, the restoration of the Constitution of Cadiz in 1820 and Mexican independence in 1821 altered that tendency. This study takes its case analysis to the Bajío and surrounding areas, highlighting the area's important participation in this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the Memorial drafted and forwarded to the "Cortes" of Lisbon in 1821 by Manoel Luís da Veiga - publicist and owner of a rope factory in Pernambuco - we discuss constitutional arrangements and forms of Government in Brazil on the eve of its Independence. Constitutionalism was at the center of political discussions at that time, and within the plural and changing forms of Portuguese Empire governments it opened a wide field of experimentation. We also discuss multiple spaces in which this debate has turned into an intense game of political forces. Finally, we provide a transcription of Veiga's Memorial, something not done until now. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the developmental causes and consequences of the shift from a parliamentary to a semi-presidential system in Sri Lanka in 1978, examining its provenance, rationale and unfolding trajectory. Drawing on a wide range of sources, it sets out an argument that the executive presidency was born out of an elite impulse to create a more stable, centralised political structure to resist the welfarist electoral pressures that had taken hold in the post-independence period, and to pursue a market-driven model of economic growth. This strategy succeeded in its early years, 1978–93, when presidents retained legislative control, maintained a strong personal commitment to market reforms and cultivated alternative sources of legitimacy. In the absence of these factors, the presidency slipped into crisis from 1994–2004 as resistance to elite-led projects of state reform mounted and as the president lost control of the legislature. Between 2005–14, the presidency regained its power, but at the cost of abandoning its original rationale and function as a means to recalibrate the elite–mass power relationship to facilitate elite-led reform agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

En este artículo se intenta hacer comprensible la tesis de que los magistrados de la Corte Constitucional al articular en sus interpretaciones aspectos formales y materiales facilitaron la consagración y renovación del sentido de la línea jurisprudencial sobre el control de constitucionalidad de los actos reformatorios de la Norma Superior. En primer lugar se presentan algunos de los principios inseparables del proceso de formación del Estado constitucional colombiano que incidieron en la construcción de la línea jurisprudencial. En segundo lugar se analiza el modo como al articularse los aspectos formales con la noción de vicios de competencia y el uso de la metodología del test de sustitución de la Constitución se actualizó el sentido de tal línea jurisprudencial. Finalmente, se concluye que en Colombia hay un descentramiento del formalismo como único criterio correcto para llevar a cabo el control de constitucionalidad a las reformas de la Carta Magna de 1991. Giro que ennobleció un carácter dialógico al dárseles juego tanto a aspectos formales como materiales. El análisis de la información recogida mediante la reseña crítica, se realizó utilizando herramientas del enfoque metodológico hermenéutico en consonancia con la jurisprudencia de la Corte Constitucional colombiana relacionada con las reformas constitucionales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Estudios de Derecho is the property of Estudios de Derecho and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

It is in this era where so-called new constitutionalism emerges with a specific order to guarantee fundamental rights and limit the exercise of powers by the effect to materialize the first, and separation, but harmonic functionality among the latter. So, is the Constitutional Court, the closure member of this court, boasting supreme power by the value of the regulatory policy letter in the Colombian state, labeled by the same text as the supreme law, which is supposed to ensures the preservation and integrity of the Constitution of Colombia 1991, and is in this sense that through the various failures, product of the deliberations of this court has determined the character of fundamental rights, according to different criteria for the same. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Estudios de Derecho is the property of Estudios de Derecho and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article discusses the history and development of constitutionalism in the Spanish colonies in the Americas beginning in 1811. The author comments on the drafting of the Constitución de Cádiz (Cádiz Constitution) in 1812 and describes the political environment in Venezuela and Nueva Granada at the time, including their respective constitutions.

This article suggests an interpretation of the Brazilian republican State and nation building as a process affected by two orders of fictions. The first and fundamental one was formulated, among several Brazilian intellectuals, by Francisco José de Oliveira Vianna in the beginning of the twentieth century. It was based on the assumption that Brazilian social and political history has been marked, since colonial times, by “insolidarism" and by a lack of social and civic bonds among the population. The second order of fictions is a corollary of the first: the lack of social bonds has been compensated for by the presence and the force of public law and constitution making. The article analyzes two crucial moments of (re) invention of the Brazilian Republic – 1932 and 1988 – marked by a clear predominance of constitution and law making. As a result, Brazilian political experience is presented as an everlasting attempt to build a civic and political community against the facts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Constitution of the Argentine Nation, drafted in 1853, is one of the most stable and longest-lived in the world (following the constitutions of the U.S., Belgium and Norway), undergone little change since the first constitutional reform of 1860. Later amendments have also been adopted in 1866, 1898, 1957 and 1994. The Constitution of 1853 remained at least nominally in force under the military regimes that seized power in the course of the 20th century, withstood all political and economic crises that took place in Argentina during the 19th and 20th century. In this respect, we could state that the creators of the Argentine Constitution succeeded in finding flexible instruments of legal regulation of the state governing and the possibilities for liberal legal interpretation of the Constitution; it may be thanks to this reason that the Constitution was safeguarded from failure during the periods of dictatorship and at the same time adapted for the then political situation. It is on the grounds of the democratic provisions laid down in the Constitution that the military government was legitimized by introducing the "de facto doctrine" in the Argentine law. The purpose of this article is to analyze some historical aspects of the Argentine constitutional law, also the doctrinal basis of the Argentine Constitution, the constitutional guarantees of the fundamental human rights, the form of government provided by the Constitution, the formation and the division of competence between the state institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]