Constitutional compliance varies significantly across countries and over time. One might, therefore, expect that constitutional change is systematically used to bring constitutional rules in line with constitutional practice. We investigate whether constitutional change indeed induces better...

Die aktuelle Schuldenbremse verhindert notwendige Zukunftsinvestitionen. Dieser Beitrag enthält einen pragmatischen Änderungsvorschlag des Artikel 109 Abs. 3 GG, der im Kern für einen Übergang von der kameralen Betrachtung der Einnahmen und Ausgaben zur kaufmännischen Betrachtung als...

Constitutional compliance varies significantly across countries and over time. One might, therefore, expect that constitutional change is systematically used to bring constitutional rules in line with constitutional practice. We investigate whether constitutional change indeed induces better...

This paper provides a review of the empirical evidence cited in the current public discussions on removing the remaining constitutional restrictions on foreign-equity ownership in certain economic sectors. A fuller appreciation of the given evidence shows that lifting equity restrictions is not...

This study was commissioned by the European Parliament's Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the AFCO Committee. It examines the evolving role of the European Council in the EU's constitutional structure. As the study demonstrates, the increasing...

This study was commissioned by the European Parliament's Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the AFCO Committee. It examines the evolving role of the European Council in the EU's constitutional structure. As the study demonstrates, the increasing...

This study was commissioned by the European Parliament's Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the AFCO Committee. It examines the evolving role of the European Council in the EU's constitutional structure. As the study demonstrates, the increasing...

This study was commissioned by the European Parliament's Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the AFCO Committee. It examines the evolving role of the European Council in the EU's constitutional structure. As the study demonstrates, the increasing...

The different theoretical constructions around the conceptualizations of Buen Vivir and decolonial feminisms have been the subject of fervent debate at the beginning of the governmental periods of Evo Morales in Bolivia (2006 - 2019) and Rafael Correa in Ecuador (2007 - 2017) when Constitutional...

On 24 March 2024, presidential elections were held in Senegal, with opposition politician Bassirou Diomaye Diakhar Faye, who was 43 at the time, emerging as the winner. On 2 April 2024, he was sworn in as the fifth President of the Republic of Senegal. This event may mark a turning point in the...

It has often been claimed that if constitutions are not complied with, they will be changed. Because an ineffective constitutional contract is a bad contract, a lack of enforcement should induce constitutional reform. This paper empirically tests this conjecture based on a dataset of 170...

This paper provides a review of the empirical evidence cited in the current public discussions on removing the remaining constitutional restrictions on foreign-equity ownership in certain economic sectors. A fuller appreciation of the given evidence shows that lifting equity restrictions is not...

De jure judicial independence (JI) is the single most important predictor of de facto JI. In this paper, we describe under what conditions countries are likely to include JI in their constitutions. We describe and analyze both their original choice in this regard as well as change over time...

We use Comparative Constitutions Project (CCP) data to explore whether Constitutions that follow revolutions are designed differently. We employ matching methods using 31 treatments (revolutionary Constitutions) and 162 control units (new Constitutional adoptions without a revolution). We find...

The paper discusses a broader tendency towards participatory citizenship as an intrinsic part of a wider development of rethinking democracy. The focus is on participation in constitutional reform - as a core dimension of reimagining democracy - in a variety of manifestations and intensities. It...

Constitutional loyalty, the importance ascribed to complying with constitutional rules, is difficult to measure across countries due to differences in context, history, and culture. We overcome this challenge by exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic as an ideal setting in which societies around the...

An address to a meeting in Dunedin introducing A Constitution for Aotearoa New Zealand on 30 November 2016. The address makes the case for a written constitution in the light of concerning trends overseas, such as the rise of the “post-truth” age in Donald Trump’s United States and the...

The keynote address to the Open Source/Open Society Conference, delivered on 22 August 2016. The address introduces Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Dr Andrew Butler’s new book, A Constitution for Aotearoa New Zealand, and discusses the shortcomings of New Zealand’s unwritten constitution

Over the past three decades, the Supreme Court has led a historicist revolution in equity jurisprudence. In a series of decisions known as the “new equity” cases, the Court has sought to limit federal equitable remedies to the forms of relief typically issued by the English Court of Chancery...

For a long time, a key condition for Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) to entry into force was the implementation of the European Court for Human Rights (ECtHR) in the case of Sejdić-Finci v Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) and Zornić v B&H. According to the judgment of the ECtHR, the...

In contemporary constitutional jurisprudence, capacious notions of individual liberty are ascendant. Under the First Amendment, due process, takings, nondelegation, and a range of interpretive doctrines, advocates are seeking greater respect for individual liberty, and greater constitutional...

In The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution: Reconstructing the Foundations of American Democracy (2022), Joey Fishkin and William E. Forbath seek a restoration to American politics of a coupling of political-cultural dispositions long in evidence here but recently gone out of style: for a casting of...

This short essay argues that the congruence and proportionality test of City of Boerne v. Flores—which the U.S. Supreme Court applies to laws passed pursuant to Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment—should not apply to federal voting rights legislation. This test is inapplicable because the...

A stable core-shell structure with Ih symmetry, Au 12 @Au 30 , has been investigated by first-principles calculations. The stability of the core-shell Au 42 structure is evaluated by vibrational frequency analysis and molecular dynamics simulations. Analysis of the adaptive natural density...

"This Introduction summarizes the contents and explains the methodology of the book and of its main policy conclusions on how constitutional democracies should respond to the increasing governance failures inside and beyond states. All UN member states have employed constitutional law for...

Do citizens legislate different tax policies than parliaments? We provide quasi-experimental evidence for causal effects of direct democracy. Town meetings (popular assemblies) replace local councils in small German municipalities below a specific population threshold. Difference-in-differences,...

The threat of climate change demands far-reaching, systematic changes to the global economy—and similar changes to how governments around the world set environmental policies. In recent years, many environmental policymakers have developed plans to “decarbonize” the economy. These plans...

On January 27, 2020, Virginia became the thirty-eighth state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Yet despite having met the amending requirements of Article V, the Twenty-Eighth Amendment has not been promulgated by the National Archivist, as required by federal statute. The ERA remains...

In this paper, I look at the Afghan Shīʿī communities’ position on the idea of constitutionalism and their vision for a modern constitutional state. Drawing on two draft constitutions that Afghanistan’s most prominent Shīʿī Islamist parties published in the 1990s, I argue that the...

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed an unprecedented governance challenge, with governments resorting to very different (legal) strategies to respond to the health emergency. A rich literature is already dedicated to measures adopted in individual States. This article adds an original comparative...

The United States Constitution has been a document that, during every era, has helped further white supremacy. White supremacy constitutes a “political, economic and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white...

The original constitution of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) rested on a neoliberal approach to interstate federalism à la Hayek. This approach appealed to political elites at the time of the Maastricht Treaty, promising to overcome the so-called ‘crisis of governability’ of the 1970s and...

The citizen assembly of the Swiss canton Glarus decided to radically reduce the historical number of communes from 25 to three. Studies show that the financial and economic consequences are surprisingly small. This paper analyzes the effects on citizens’ vote participation as an indicator of...

Differentiated integration has becomes a pervasive feature of the EU legal and political reality. It happens when legal rules are not uniformly valid across the EU Member States. This report explores to what extent regimes of differentiated integration are compatible with EU constitutional...

The traditional school of economic policy analysis predicts that globalisation will give rise to predatory competition between the governments of the European nation states. The consequence is anticipated to be a marked reduction in, if not the destruction of, the benevolent Welfare State. The...

In April 2020, I posted on SSRN a proposed draft Voting Rights and Reform Act of 2021, and in August 2020, I posted a set of proposed constitutional amendments to reform the U.S. Supreme Court, the office of the U.S. Attorney General, issues relating to the inability and succession of the...

Constitutions are commonly regarded as uniquely national products, shaped by domestic ideals and politics. This paper develops and empirically tests a novel hypothesis, which is that constitutions are also shaped by transnational influence, or “diffusion.” Constitutional rights can diffuse...

With a new constitutional amendment (Federal Law Gazette I No. 2/2008), Austrian constitutional law has seen its most comprehensive reform since 1945. In particular, the fragmented structure of Austrian constitutional law had previously been seen as a failure of the constitution in its...

In this article, Avi-Yonah argues that the global intangible low-taxed income regime may be an unconstitutional attempt to tax the foreign-source income of foreign entities, and he offers an alternative