I was touched to receive this gift last week from a reader of The Leaflet. It is a hand embroidered logo of this newsletter in a beautiful frame. I display it with gratitude in my home office.
*** This month marks the four-year anniversary of The Leaflet. I published the first edition on May 25, 2020. It was distributed to roughly 250 readers. Today, our audience has grown to 6000 readers across the world. Thank you for being part of our community of constitutionalists.
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I invite you to share The Leaflet with colleagues who have an interest in constitutions. I invite you also to continue sending me reading recommendations. And I welcome your suggestions for how to improve The Leaflet. I would like it to be useful to you and to the field. Thank you once again for reading. And happy 4th birthday to The Leaflet!
Richard Albert
Upcoming Doctoral Defense
Next month, Neslihan Cetin will defend her doctoral dissertation at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her topic is timely and important: the evolution of the rule of law in Turkey. While completing her doctoral studies, Neslihan has been teaching at the Université Paris-Est Créteil. Great luck to Neslihan! Connect with her here.
Ackerman in Chile
Bruce Ackerman recently delivered a wide-ranging lecture at the Universidad de Chile. His lecture on “Constitutional Processes in Chile” offers comparative, historical, and theoretical insights into the country's reform failures over the past two years. The full video is linked below.
Constitutional Reform in South Africa
The “land question” remains unresolved in South Africa. Almost three decades since the enactment of South Africa's transformative constitution of 1996, the debate continues: should the country amend the Constitution to permit the redistribution of land without financial compensation for expropriated property? Advocates believe the amendment would address the historical dispossession of the property of the majority of Black South Africans by the 1913 Land Act, the 1936 Land Act and the Group Areas Act.
Twelve constitutional scholars have finally answered a question that has gone unanswered for too long: which constitutional provisions are most important? This group of constitutionalists has evaluated the relative importance of over 300 constitutional provisions, and arrived at a conclusion about which of them are more or less important than others. The findings will be published soon in the new European Journal for Empirical Legal Studies. For now, the paper is available in final draft form here.
There is a scholarly initiative to call for a Constitutional Convention to amend the constitutional amendment process in the United States. The group intends “to release proposals for how to amend Article V, which contains the current means to amend the Constitution.” The U.S. Constitution is arguably the world's most difficult to amend.
Rights of Judges
Judicial independence is under attack in virtually every region of the world. What are the origins of these attacks, and what can courts do to withstand them? A recent paper by Bianca Gutan, Professor of Constitutional Law and Human Rights Law at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, examines the European case law on the rights of judges and evaluates which European countries raise the most concerns for judicial independence.
Top 10 Law Schools in Colombia
Dinero has released its 2024 ranking of law schools in Colombia. The Top 10, below, features four universities in Bogotá, the national capital. Congratulations to the Universidad de La Sabana on topping the charts.
*** For years now, I have been appointed a Visiting Professor of Law to teach courses on Constitutional Theory and Constitutional Reform at the Universidad Externado de Colombia, ranked #3 on the list. Congratulations to my many colleagues at Externado!
From Professor to Justice
Carissima Mathen has been appointed to the Superior Court of Justice of Ontario in Toronto. Formerly a Full Professor at the University of Ottawa, Justice Mathen is a graduate of McGill University, York University, and Columbia University. Justice Mathen is a prolific and impactful scholar, having published dozens of works, including the award-winning book Courts Without Cases: The Law and Politics of Advisory Opinions (Hart 2019). Justice Mathen has also served as General Editor of the popular law school casebook Canadian Constitutional Law (6th ed. Emond 2022), to which I had the privilege of contributing the chapter on constitutional amendment.
Our Newest Doctoral Fellow
Welcome to Alexandre Couto, our latest visiting doctoral scholar in the Constitutional Studies Program here at the University of Texas at Austin. Alexandre joins us from the Universidade de Brasília, where he studies under Professor Juliano Zaiden Benvindo. While here in the Constitutional Studies Program, Alexandre will write about constitutional unamendability in relation to presidential term limits.
Constitutional Reform in Saint Lucia
The Constitutional Reform Committee of Saint Lucia has now entered the third month of its work toward renewing the country's constitution. Its task is to advise the Government on what action to take on the nearly 200 recommendations made in 2011 by a team led by the late Justice Suzie D’auvergne. Cynthia Barrow-Giles, a member of the Constitutional Reform Committee, predicts that “it is likely that any radical proposal that would mire constitutional progression or transformation – any ‘poison pills’ unacceptable to the political elite – will be assiduously avoided.” She adds that “it is expected that St. Lucia will continue to operate under a Constitution that, while potentially including a more elaborate bill of rights embracing third and fourth-generation social and economic rights, remains substantially similar to its current form.” Nonetheless, constitutional reform is an event of high moment for any country – especially in Saint Lucia where many believe constitutional reform is long overdue.
End of Term
The Spring term has come to a close here at the University of Texas at Austin. I co-taught a writing-intensive seminar on “Comparative Constitutional Law and Politics” with Zach Elkins. Students have written publishable papers on subjects ranging from constitutional reform in Mongolia to unwritten constitutional norms in the United States. I also taught an advanced course on “Amending the U.S. Constitution.” A big part of this second course was reading and discussing my colleague Sandy Levinson's provocative and powerful book entitled Our Undemocratic Constitution.
Coups and Social Trust
Does social trust increase after a coup d’état? A trio of scholars argues yes. Drawing from a subset of 870 attempted coups d’état around the world – of which 230 were successful – the authors advance the claim that social trust rises when citizens confront a large-scale crisis event like a coup. The authors suggest an explanation for this phenomenon: trust becomes “a solution to vulnerability, such that increasing trust can be a rational response to the insecurity generated by a coup.”
The simulation featured an impressive group of law students, each representing a jurisdiction or interest in Canada. Their task was difficult: to engage in multi-day negotiations to reach agreement, if possible, on amendments to be made to the Canadian Constitution, consistent with the onerous amendment rules for reforming different rules and principles involving the Senate. My remarks to the delegates concerned the legal, political, and customary factors that conspire to make the Canadian Constitution one of the world's most difficult to amend. I nonetheless struck a hopeful note, stressing the importance of trying to amend the constitution – even if those efforts ultimately fail.
The mission of the International Forum on the Future of Constitutionalism is to marshal knowledge and experience to build a world of opportunity, liberty, and dignity for all.
