Constitutional Change

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The Local Dimension of Constitutional Change

by Michèle Finck In studies of constitutional law in general and constitutional change in particular, the focus often lies on the national level. With the exception of a number of decentralized States, constitutions are national documents, sometimes even playing a unifying role in otherwise diverse countries. Constitutions being national documents, the assumption that constitutional change is a centralized process comes naturally. A number of processes that lead to constitutional change indeed occur on a national scale, such as debates in the context of a national convention or a decision of a national constitutional court.
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Re-Framers: Proposals to Rewrite the U.S. Constitution

by Professor John R. Ville, Middle Tennessee State University. I have spent much of my academic life researching the constitutional amending process in the United States. My very first book Rewriting the U.S. Constitution: An Examination of Proposal from Reconstruction to the Present (1991) detailed approximately 40 proposals that individuals had offered from the period of Reconstruction through the publishing of the book in 1991 to either rewrite the U.S. Constitution or introduce a series of major changes to it. In the interim, I had been documenting additional proposals as individual entries for various editions of my Encyclopedia of Constitutional Amendments, Proposed Amendments, and Amending Issues. However, it was only in revisiting the subject for my book Re-Framers: 170 Eccentric, Visionary, and Patriotic Proposals to Rewrite the U.S. Constitution (ABC—CLIO, 2014) that I realized how significantly the number of such proposals had proliferated, particularly in the last two decades.
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The Referendum in Scotland: Leading the way to a new UK constitutional settlement

by John McEldowney The referendum held in Scotland on 18th September 2014 on Scottish independence is a significant event that will prove to be of major constitutional significance for the United Kingdom as well as for the devolved administrations in Wales, Northern Ireland and London for years to come. The NO vote in favour of the 307 year old Union gained a comfortable 55% majority over the YES, in favour of independence of 45%. Electoral turn-out was one of the highest seen in the UK at over 85% of the electorate. In the East Darbartonshire constituency the turnout was 91%. Sixteen year olds were given the vote for the first time.
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When more is less: the negative economic effects of longer constitutions

by George Tsebelis & Dominic J. Nardi, Jr. When the Eurozone crisis struck Europe in 2009, it soon became apparent that Southern European countries would have to drastically restructure government spending and improve their competitiveness in order to reduce excessive levels of public debt. However, some states found themselves unable to do so, and not merely because of lack of political will. In some cases, detailed socioeconomic provisions in their constitutions limited their scope of action. For example, Greece’s 1975 Constitution prohibits the privatization of universities (art. 16(5)). In short, such constitutional provisions risk locking governments into policies that in other countries would not even be considered questions of constitutional law.
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Two must-reads for anyone interested in constitutional change

by Dr. Alkmene Fotiadou. How often does one find answers to questions that lurked at the back of one’s mind? New scholarship has emerged addressing such questions and, most importantly, articulating more questions that, if answered, have much to offer to the manner in which constitutional change is approached. Prof. Richard Albert has recently posted two new articles on SSRN: “Constitutional Amendment by Constitutional Desuetude” (http://ssrn.com/abstract=2461509) and “The Structure of Constitutional Amendment Rules” (http://ssrn.com/abstract=2461507) that are a must read for anyone who strives to make sense of the complex ways formal and informal constitutional change occurs.
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How Constitutions are Changed

by Professor Christer Karlsson, Uppsala University. Constitutional change has emerged as a prominent topic in the research on constitutional politics and comparative law. In practice, constitutional change can be brought about in two fundamentally different ways: either by changing the wording of the constitutional document, or by changing the meaning of the constitution while leaving the constitutional text itself unaltered. The distinction between explicit and implicit constitutional change is certainly not a new one. Georg Jellinek published his seminal work Verfassungsänderung und Verfassungswandel as early as 1906 and more recent studies have shown that both kinds of constitutional change occur regularly in modern democracies.
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Some reflections on the obstacles to reform the Spanish Constitution

by Abraham Barrero Ortega and Irene Sobrino Guijarro. Over the last months, within the context of a complicated political scenario due to the economic crisis and the nationalist tensions, voices insisting on the need for constitutional reform are being intensively raised in Spain. Without questioning such a need, it may nonetheless be useful to reflect on the difficulties that such an enterprise would entail at the present date- May 2014.
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Recent constitutional revision debate in Denmark

by Helle Krunke. When the present Danish government was appointed in the fall of 2011 it announced that it wanted to initiate a new discussion of the Constitution and form a constitutional commission. This initiative was launched in a government platform together with other aims. However, the government now has one year left in office and no constitutional debate or commission has seen the light of day yet. In 2015 Denmark celebrates the 100-anniversary of the former 1915-Constitution which is normally said to be the Constitution which turned Denmark in to a real democracy.
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Is there a need of a deep constitutional reform in Albania?

by Dr. Arta Vorpsi, Legal adviser at the Constitutional Court of Albania. In November this year, it will be 16 years from the entry into effect of the Albanian Constitution. Lately, since the new election in June 2013 after which a coalition of Socialist Party and Socialist Movement for Integration came into power, there is a discussion regarding the need of a deep constitutional reform in Albania. The need to revise the fundamental document of the state may only be determined by political and institutional developments that have taken place during this period. In fact, Albanian constitutionalists, political actors and analysts, as well as representatives of some independent state institutions seem to concur that the Constitution should not be subject to frequent and partial amendments.
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Decisions on constitutional amendments by the Swiss sovereign

by Thomas Fleiner On May 18 the Swiss voters and the cantons had to decide on three popular initiatives. They adopted two constitutional proposals and rejected one initiative. On the same day the voters had also to decide on the acquisition of 22 Gripen, which are new military jets that Switzerland wanted to buy from Sweden for more than three billion francs. The Swiss legislature enacted a law to provide an endowment fund. Against this legislation, some people required a referendum. In the end, the peoples decided with 53% of the voters to reject this law.

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