Flexibility, Federalism and the Iraqi Constitution
The closer my book comes to publication, the more ideas I'm willing to share on which I drew in order to write it. We're still a bit away, but the link below contains an article that is as close as I've come to laying out, as I will do in more detail and nuance later in the book, models and ideas of constitutional change developed by others that I employ to show why I think the Iraq constitution isn't so bad. The paper itself is on the basis of a conference at Penn last semester when I was a bit on my own defending the document. But that's okay, I can live with my iconoclastic and contrarian reputation. (No real choice when so much of the world is wrong . . . .)
Abstract and link below, please do download, run up those numbers.
Abstract:
This paper is a defense of sorts of the Iraqi constitution, arguing that the language used in it was wisely designed to allow some level of flexibility, such that the constitution could evolve as social and political circumstances necessitated. The point is more than a theoretical one. Enormous changes in the political landscape and understandings of popular will have occurred. Due to the flexibility of the language, and the Constitution has not only survived them, but has had its own legitimacy considerably broadened as a result
Link: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1753232
Abstract and link below, please do download, run up those numbers.
Abstract:
This paper is a defense of sorts of the Iraqi constitution, arguing that the language used in it was wisely designed to allow some level of flexibility, such that the constitution could evolve as social and political circumstances necessitated. The point is more than a theoretical one. Enormous changes in the political landscape and understandings of popular will have occurred. Due to the flexibility of the language, and the Constitution has not only survived them, but has had its own legitimacy considerably broadened as a result
Link: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1753232
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