How long do constitutional systems persist and what explains their demise? This paper introduces a new set of data on the chronology and content of constitutions that facilitates a test of expectations about constitutional mortality and its associated risk factors. We develop a theory of constitutional longevity, in which executive ambition poses a principal threat to the constitutional order. ...

Buchanan and Tullock’s original trade-off model of constitutional design is used to analyze how constitutional design affects post-constitutional rent seeking, and, in turn, how the anticipation of postconstitution rent seeking should lead to modification of constitutional design—specifically with respect to imposing and maintaining effective (composite) supermajority decision rules. JEL classi...

This essay broadly addresses the issue of how differences in two national cultures, French and Scandinavian, shape the way multinational businesses in those cultures use Information Systems, in particularly collaborative technologies. The thesis of this paper is that differences in low-high context, monochronic/polychronic (Hall, 1990) and power-distance (Hofstede, 1980; 1991) constructs shape ...

The American feminist movement has twice mobilized for constitutional change. The constitutional amendment secured by the firstwave feminist movement is no longer of consequence, while the constitutional amendment sought by the second-wave feminist movement was never ratified. Yet today, courts and commentators agree that the Constitution guarantees women equality, even if that guarantee was ne...

The question of what constitutional constraints should apply to government efforts to regulate scientific speech is frequently contrasted to the question of what constitutional constraints should apply to government efforts to regulate scientific research. This comment argues that neither question is well formulated for constitutional analysis, which should instead turn on the relationship to c...

INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................... 304 I. COMMUNICATION AND CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION .............. 309 A. Basic Constitutional Communication .......................................... 311 1. Framers and Judges ............................................................... 312 2. Text......... .........................

Jack Balkin defies categorization. More precisely, he defies categories. His most recent books, Living Originalism and Constitutional Redemption, transcend the dichotomies of constitutional theory. Repeatedly, they show that what conventional wisdom views as a strict opposition (originalism versus the living constitution, for instance) is in fact not an opposition at all, or that a traditional ...

The author first explains that he will argue for the constitutional right to die, including the right of terminally ill persons to physician-assisted suicide. It would be a constitutional tragedy otherwise because it would entail that the Constitutional sanctions a horrible form of tyranny and that the Constitution allows citizens to author their own tragic endings. In the final part of the ess...

Our focus in this Article is not predominantly on the doctrinal intricacies of the constitutional framework in Northern Ireland. In fact, while we acknowledge the considerable sophistication of that framework, one of our contentions is that an overly legalistic focus on the shape and forms of constitutional architecture masks key questions concerning the broader political and ideological role o...

Our large theme is failure and success in constitution making, or the limits of constitutional democracy. The convergence of recent scholarly work in political science and law and political events throughout the world make this a timely project inside and outside of the academy. The number of new constitutional texts written in support of regime formation in the past thirty years is astonishing...