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The article focuses on the reconstruction of the United States after the Revolutionary War, specifically the roles of statehood and citizenship during the 1780s. The author discusses the book "The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787," by Gordon Wood, examines the role of women and Black people in public life, and explores the creation of the constitution.

Copyright of Historia Constitucional is the property of Revista Historia Constitucional 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.)

Copyright of Historia Constitucional is the property of Revista Historia Constitucional 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.)

Copyright of Revista de Historia del Derecho is the property of Instituto de Investigaciones de Historia del 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.)

The celebrated United States Constitution does not derive its legitimacy from morality. Its legitimacy is rooted in an amoral code structured around the peculiar value of outcome-neutrality. By design, the Constitution does not evaluate whether a lawful choice is morally right or wrong; it evaluates only whether the choice satisfies the procedures the Constitution requires for it to have been made. What matters, then, is not the content of the choice. It is the very act of choosing. These fiercely democratic foundations serve as both the font of the Constitution's popular legitimacy and more ominously the greatest threat to the liberal democratic principles that define the Constitution in its common perception at home and abroad. In this Article, I show that the amorality of the Constitution permeates every part of the country's constitutional amendment apparatus. I draw from text, theory, and history to reveal an important if shocking truth about the Constitution: no principle is inviolable, no right is absolute, and no rule is unamendable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Ethiopia, a nation with almost a century old constitutional traditions, has very limited democratic culture. In its long history, the country was governed by four written constitutions, namely the 1931, 1955, 1987 and 1995 Constitutions. The first three Constitutions were ratified under the aegis of monarchy and dictatorship and were therefore undemocratic. The 1995 Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia is the best. However, Ethiopia does not qualify as yet a fully constitutional and democratic state. This article reflects on the constitutional experiences and the quest for constitutionalism in Ethiopia, from its constitutional traditions to its contemporary constitutional experiences. It focuses on the 1995 Constitution and critically examines its weaknesses which mainly relate to ethnic federalism, the right to self-determination or secession, and the land rights. Finally, it draws lessons from the past and the present and considers the prospects for constitutionalism and democracy in Ethiopia. [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.

On 20 June 1792 popular militants from the Paris Sections marched in arms to the Legislative Assembly where they demanded that the deputies constrain or remove the king. The crowds then invaded the Tuileries palace to intimidate Louis XVI directly. While forced to don the red cap of the Sans-Culottes, the king made no concessions to the demonstrators. Historians of the French Revolution have interpreted this episode as a step toward the insurrection of 10 August 1792 which overthrew the monarchy. While acknowledging that the journée of 20 June provoked protests throughout France, both Marxists and revisionists have construed these as expressions of royalism and minimized their importance. Yet the provincial reactions provide evidence of a more subtle division in the country as the revolution shifted to a more radical phase. This article examines the petitions and addresses that were sent from the departments to the Legislative Assembly to protest the events of 20 June 1792 in Paris. While these texts denounced the outrages committed against the king, they went beyond manifestations of loyalty to express commitment to the ideal of constitutionalism. Some addresses reflected local conflict between administrators and popular revolutionaries. Not all protests against the events in Paris were sent by wealthy bourgeoisie, however, and the petitions provide evidence of a political and ideological division beyond class conflict. The provincial reactions to 20 June 1792 suggest that many in France still hoped to defend the liberal revolution with its promise of individual liberty, property rights, and the rule of law, and to identify national sovereignty with the decisions of an elected legislature under a constitution rather than direct manifestations of popular will, on the eve of a second revolution, which would sweep away the Constitution of 1791. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new Latin American constitutionalism (NLC) is the term that has been coined to refer to certain constitutional processes and constitutional reforms that have taken place relatively recently in Latin America. Constitutional theorists have not been very optimistic regarding the scope and nature of this new constitutionalism. I thoroughly agree with this critical skepticism as well as with the idea that this new phenomenon does not substantively change the organic element of the different constitutions in the region. However, I argue that it is a mistake to focus analysis on this characteristic. My intention is to show that the NLC should be evaluated in the context of its relationship with contemporary neo-constitutional theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work entitled The Age of Rights, by Norberto Bobbio, is one of the main sources that affirm a first moment of protection in the historical of the constitutionalism that, in the line of the thought of Karel Vasak, determined the emergence of denominated civil and political rights as prerogatives of first generation or size. However, from the point of view of International Treaties and Conventions, the first protections did not occur with civil and political rights as proposed by Vasak and Bobbio, but rather by the social rights protected by the ILO (International Labor Organization) Convention 1919. Thus, deviations from the thinking of generations and dimensions of rights to the detriment of the first formalizations in International Treaties and Conventions end up punctuating problems that affirm that the emergence of human rights does not depend on the moment in which they were legally protected. The work concludes that the emergence of rights consists of a multifactorial process, reducing the positivist criterion that attentive to the historical moment of legal protection of rights as only one of several factors that must influence the emergence of these rights. In short, rights arise from innumerable factors, including anthropological, historical, sociological, technological, and other factors; Placing the moment of legal protection and formalization of rights, not as a determining factor, but as one of the several influences to be considered in the process of emergence and determination of fundamental prerogatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One may isolate recurring conceptual nodules in the work of some political historians so as to configure a model for conservative thinking. The notion of 'genealogy ' exposes the relational nature of political conservatism, and emphasizes both its agonistic character and institutional anchorage. One may then hypothesize a 'conservative moment' which would correspond to an institutional refashioning. Such an hypothesis dilutes the protagonism of individual subjects and questions the constituent power of a conservative corpus of ideas, except for the one discernible in constitutional affairs. Instead of importing those ideas into a coup d'etat, a genealogical approach reverses the argument and suggests that the dictatorship illuminates the past, bestowing a unifying articulation and meaning to authors who, in spite of their affinities, exhibit significant differences. This genealogical approach also sidelines notions like 'corpus of ideas' or 'models of thought' that pertain to the philosophy of mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The public/private distinction came to be in the 16th and 17th centuries as a form of a limitation of political power and structuring of social interactions - it is a product of its own time and in Western thought it is seen as a given. Does it still hold? In the first part of the paper I intend to offer a reconstruction of the public/private distinction, which I will then criticize by means of constructivist epistemology, i. e. the statement that knowledge is created by a cognizing subject and transmitted along to others. In the last part I then offer an alternative reconstruction, which in light of phenomena like globalization and technological advancement, centers on the mobility of subjects and resources. With the use of cognitive science, I will demonstrate that the distinction between private and public that is put at the center of Western thinking is but a construction, the meaning of which is created (and negotiated) in a given society. The reader will be persuaded that even if this alternative framework is not a suitable substitute for the public/private distinction, a serious discussion of the latter's shortcomings must take place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the constitutional development of China. Topics discussed include historical analysis of constitutional framework in the light of Communist Party of China and its paramount leaders; public perception of the law; and basic rights and obligations under constitutional revolution of China.

This article examines indultos after the Golpe de Melo of 1854. While the government hoped that these acts of clemency would erase all traces of the rebellion, a flood of appeals for indultos ensured that the post-war reckoning went on longer than the war itself. Drawing on archival and published material documenting this phenomenon, the article documents post-war politics in New Granada. The tension between popular ideals concerning pardonable behavior and the dispassionate constitutionalism promoted by the government documents the limits of the early republican project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of functions of parliament and the conditions as well as the sphere of legislation in the contemporary history of our country, has always been correlated with the general topic of religion and its sphere on the one hand, and with the issues relevant to public law and political science on the other. Regarding the deep influence of the Muslim clergymen in the theoretical and practical development of the society, Study of the issue from this perspective is of high singinficance. Among the wide range of the contemporary scholars, the socio-political performance and jurisprudential views of the Late Akhund Khurasani in the constitutional era hold a particular position. Study of the issues relevant to parliament and conditions of legislation in his view can lead to the development of legal as well as political concepts in the theoretical framework of the Islamic system. The Present article focuses on this issue.

Although Roger Scruton insists on the incompatibility of his conservatism and the fundamental liberal principles of individualism and consent, his political thought has much in common with classical liberal constitutionalism. This essay explores these relationships while arguing that particularly Locke's constitutionalism is more compatible with Scruton's ideas than he allows. Specifically, Scruton argues that authority necessarily precedes any individual claims, but Locke's civil society, in fact, subordinates individual rights to political authority and common goods. Similarly, Scruton's insists that the state is an end rather than a means, but his own account of the conditionality of allegiance approaches Locke's understanding of legitimacy in the practice of civic association. This narrowing of the differences suggests that a conservative teaching could begin with an education in liberal constitutionalism rightly understood. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

Roberto Gargarella surveys the landscape of Latin American Constitutionalism from 1810 to 2010, with particular emphasis on efforts in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries to enhance protections of multiculturalism and human rights. Gargarella begins by surveying the “founding period” of Latin American constitutionalism, a period marked by compromise between liberals and conservatives. He proceeds to discuss the increasing incorporation of social rights—primarily economic and labor rights — during the early twentieth century. Gargarella then discusses a final wave of reforms, which introduced increasing human rights protections in the latter half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. Gargarella concludes that the latest wave of reforms did not go far enough in advancing human rights because the reforms failed to reach what Gargarella calls the “engine room of the constitution.” The engine room consists of the power-granting provisions of constitution that determine the relative authority of governmental actors. Gargarella contends that the enshrinement of several additional rights in Latin American constitutions is undermined by a failure to reorganize power structures so as to ensure that these new rights will be enforced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the views of the author to a speech by Professor Jonathan Israel on the history and culture of religious tolerance in the Netherlands during the Dutch Republic in the 16th and 17th centuries. Topics covered include the peculiarities of Dutch state development and constitutionalism, the decline of the Republic at the end of the 18th century, and the rise of religious freedom. The emergence of religious tolerance in the U.S., France and Great Britain is mentioned.

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 attempts to examine the prevailing scholarly view on the Young Ottoman and the Young Turk movements, which postulates that the concept of constitutionalism was solely and directly based on the western model, imported by the constitutionalist movements to the Ottoman Empire. As a child of the ‘modernization theory’, this approach mostly concentrates on European impact in an isolated manner, thus overlooking not only the manifold sources of the Ottoman constitutionalism, but also the means of legitimation that the Young Ottomans and the Young Turks cultivated. In view of this, I seek to shed light on the historical context of the Ottoman constitutionalism, by pointing out how the Young Ottomans and the Young Turks perceived the power struggles in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and built continuity between themselves and the political position that aimed to restrict the royal prerogative before the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Historia Contemporanea is the property of Historia Contemporania 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.)

Afghanistan is largely known as a tribal peasant society, where the dominant organised socio-political forces are the tribes and the religious establishment, and where democratic and secular movements have been generally absent from the political scene. It is the tribal chiefs and the religious establishment that represent and mobilise people. However, liberal and constitutionalist movements in the country have had a relatively rich background since the early twentieth century. While the first constitutionalist political party emerged in the early 1900s, the first liberal party, Watan (or Homeland), emerged in the late 1940s in the aftermath of World War II, when the government allowed some changes in the method of ruling. The party became the most vocal and influential in political circles at the time. This article examines how a liberal-nationalist political party emerged and operated even though the ruling class had little desire for fundamental changes such as the separation of powers, freedom of expression or rule of law. It explores the features of the party, including its platform, goals, social and ethno-religious make-up and the method of struggle chosen to achieve its objectives, which also enabled it to take a leading role in the political process in the early 1950s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

Copyright of Revista de Derecho UNED is the property of Editorial UNED 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.)

Copyright of Revista de Derecho UNED is the property of Editorial UNED 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.)

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.)

The article presents a report from an October 8, 2014 conference in Munich, Germany on the history of the concession of European elections. Topics of presentations delivered included the concession of Polish elections of the 16th century, the political history of capitulations in Venice, Italy, and the relationship between capitulations in Imperial Germany with that country's constitutionalism.

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]

Icaria is one of those rare moments in social history when the Utopian dream has been tested in political and social practice. Based on legal settlements, the Icarian experience at Nauvoo ofers a unique opportunity to check the relationship among law, utopia, and dystopia. The essay scrutinizes the key features of the Icaria's constitution and analyzes the problems related to the enforcement of a Utopian constitution in a real social and political context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Romanian Journal of Comparative Law / Revista Romana de Drept Comparat is the property of Universul Juridic Publishing House 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.)

The article presents a political history of the Islamic countries that emerged from the Ottoman and Russian Empires in the aftermath of World War I. The author highlights Muslim attitudes toward republicanism, parliamentary government, and constitutionalism. Examples discussed in detail include the brief independence of majority-Muslim areas of the former Russian Empire in Central Asia and their reintegration into the Soviet Union, the Kemalist revolution in Turkey between 1918 and 1923, and the short-lived Socialist revolution in the province of Gilan, Iran, led by Iranian military officer Mirza Kuchak Khan from 1920-1921.

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.)

The city of York, England’s self-titled ‘second city’ in the late middle ages, was the site of persistent political conflict from the last quarter of the fifteenth century. The Flemish city of Bruges experienced a series of revolts in the same period. This article compares the patterns of popular politics in the two cities. Although dissimilar in governmental context, population size and commercial significance, their constitutional arrangements were much more comparable. The urban commons, organised and mobilised by the crafts, were at the centre of the major disturbances in each city. They had a distinctive reading of the urban constitution, which was nurtured in a guild environment among craftsmen and citizens. In York and Bruges, the crafts engaged in similar forms of collective action (petitioning, collective assembly and the occupation of public space), and revolt was the consequence of a pattern of corporate politics. The shared forms, goals and mentalities of popular protest in York and Bruges can provide an explanation of revolt which might apply not only to towns across late medieval Europe in which the political representation of the crafts was common but also, more generally, to those urban centres where a corporatist ethos flourished. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The constitutional principles of public administration are still tied to the hermeneutical reception of legal positivism performed by Administrative Law. It is important to look at the historicity of the views of law themselves and the way the principles have been understood over time, from natural law to legal positivism. The constitutional principles of public administration are still influenced by this positivistic stance, as they are understood as having a content revealed by a jurisdiction of dogmatic rationality and are applied in a deductive manner, in order to reveal the essence of the positive system. The New Critique of Law provides this critical look at the understanding of the meaning of the principles as a way of introducing the practical world of law in juridical decisions, going beyond the metaphysics of content and discretion. These principles are authentic hermeneutic standards responsible for institutionalizing morals in Administrative Law, ascribing authentic meaning to legal rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last 15 years several important sources have been published allowing the appraisal of the role of ulema during the Iranian constitutional movement (1906–11) and thus opening new lines of research. The 2006–7 edition compiled by Muhsin Kadivar from several unknown documents written by Akhund Muhammad Kazim Khurasani (d. 1330/1911) make it possible to measure his importance and his impact on the evolution of the events as well as his ideological influence. The usuli rationalist jurist Akhund Khurasani was considered at the beginning of the constitutional movement as one of the principal mujtahidandmarja’-i taqlid of the Shiite world, and was possibly the best-known. After introducing the life and work of Akhund Khurasani and the theoretical principles (nazari) that he uses to define the constitutional movement, the main topics that arise in the study of this literature are identified. Particular attention is paid to his position as a rallying point and legitimizing force, his enthusiasm for an ambitious progressive policy, his intricate relations with western powers and his links with the Qajar. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses the role of Great Britain in the Mediterranean Region during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The author comments on Great Britain's use of propaganda, newspapers, and other printed materials in order to spread cultural ideas related to constitutionalism. She considers the historical context of the time period, including the Anti-Jacobin War as well as the war between Great Britain and the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte of France. The concept of psychological warfare is analyzed and the role of public opinion in shaping government policies is also examined.

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 article claims that we should not just look towards a utopian future in fulfilling a claim about realization of a cosmopolitan, non-national world order. Already during antiquity the idea of a transcendent universal order took on a differentiated form at the same time as there happened to be institutionalization. Since the legal revolution of the long 12th century, this duality has been constitutional and has had a hierarchical structure. However, not only was the invention legal, it was also organizational; hence, the modern political, legal and organizational powers emerged long before the more celebrated state-building processes of the 16th and 17th centuries. The point is that the order was both political and cosmopolitan, institutional and universal. The nation-state was an exception compared with this long and widespread legacy of cosmopolitan power. But the universality of subjective rights was re-institutionalized according to principles that excluded inequalities. This was set in motion even before the UN Charter, not just with the ideas of 1789 but also institutionalized in Roosevelt’s New Deal together with the social and political rights that were institutionalized specifically as a consequence of the World Wars and the political claims that followed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article recovers a lost episode in the neglected early history of comparative constitutionalism in the United States. In 1913, pioneering comparative lawyer Frank Goodnow went to China to assist the new Chinese Republic in the writing of its first constitution. Goodnow's mission reflected the growing interest of the United States in China's legal development in this era, and his constitution-writing project won broad support from the U.S. legal profession. Goodnow's tenure ultimately generated great controversy when he advised China's leaders to adopt a constitutional monarchy rather than continue on as a republic. This article describes this controversy and how the international engagement of the United States was increasingly shaped in the early twentieth century by the attempted export of U.S. legal models as a presumptively altruistic mechanism of modernization. Goodnow's allegiance to comparative legal science agitated against this more parochial view of legal internationalism, and in the end he was excommunicated from U.S. foreign policy affairs. More broadly, this article shows how the early history of comparative constitutionalism in the United States had its roots in the early twentieth century discourse on colonial administration. Goodnow and other U.S. lawyers of the era turned to indirect engagements with foreign legal reform only after the popular rejection of colonialism that had been constitutionally sanctioned by the now infamous Insular Cases. This article further argues that these colonial roots and Goodnow's feckless misadventure in China hold key lessons for today's comparative constitutionalists. It provides a vivid example of how the technocratic illusion of engaging in depoliticized legal reform abroad is self-defeating and untenable. Further, it warns against the inherent tensions between a methodologically coherent comparative law and the desire to export U.S. constitutional models abroad, and how such tensions can undercut clear-sighted understanding of foreign legal developments. [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.)

The article discusses orientalism, orientalist narratives, and the dismantling of ancient constitutions between the 18th and 19th centuries, with a focus on Europe and the British colonial empire in India. Topics discussed include background on orientalism and its application to historical writing, a comparison between the history of the period between the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe and in India, and the changes and restructuring in Europe resulting from the Napoleonic empire and the French Revolution.

The history of colombian constitutionalism has been characterized by many interesting contradictions and particularities in terms of constitutional theory. This essay seeks to study some of the situations that we consider part of relative constitutionalism or the constitutional disguise. We believe that this concept can explain the reasons why Colombia has conserved certain stability despite having not consolidated rule of law. Some of the phenomena that are relevant in colombian constitutionalism and are characteristic of relative constitutionalism are: the constitutional dictatorship, the war and its relationship with constitutional legitimation, and the change in the meaning of sovereignty to facilitate the transfer of power to a benevolent dictator. We will try to show those ideas through a brief historical review, an approximation to classical authors of Constitutional Theory, the use of those concepts in Colombian republican history and at this moment. In our opinion we will demonstrate that relative constitutionalism has been the way to avoid material demands proper to the rule of law, while managing to maintain the appearance of a strong defense of constitutionalism and its values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]