We are one month away from Election Day here in the United States. Most Americans will vote on that day – on November 5 – but many have already cast their ballot in early voting beginning on September 20. Now, what happens after Election Day? The U.S. Constitution and statutory law establish a sequence of steps leading to the inauguration of the president on January 20, 2025. But written law can only do so much. Troy Smith has drawn attention to what he describes as the “priceless legacy” of America's longstanding yet unwritten practice of the peaceful transfer of power. As we approach Election Day and later Inauguration Day, he issues a call to action – and a warning: “Let us commit that, despite our political differences, we will support and expect from our officials a peaceful transfer of power and constitutional rule by the winners. For legacies, once abandoned, are hard to restore.”

Democracy is a relatively young phenomenon. A recent report based on research by Anna Lührmann, Marcus Tannenberg and Staffan Lindberg demonstrates that only ten countries have been democratic for more than 90 years. Fourteen democracies are 61 to 90 years old. Fifteen are between 19 and 30 years old. Twenty-one are no older than 18 years old. The plurality of democracies – thirty-one in total – are between the ages of 31 and 60. As for liberal democracies, there are many fewer in the world than simple democracies: in the year 2023, there were only 32.

The Constitution of Malta turned 60 years old last month. To mark this special anniversary, Tonio Borg and John Stanton have published a book of essays reflecting on the Constitution's history, evolution, and application. The Constitution of Malta at Sixty contains almost 20 chapters divided into four major sections. A book worth reading!

Registration for the 2025 Global Summit on Constitutionalism closes on November 4, 2024. The Global Summit is an international conference showcasing all areas of constitutionalism, held here at the University of Texas at Austin on March 20-22, 2025. There is no cost to register. The first edition was held in 2021. The second in 2023. The 2025 Global Summit will be the third. All are welcome! Details and registration here.

Whether you are inclined to read the U.S. Constitution as an originalist, a textualist, a living constitutionalist or in some other way, this book is a must-read. If you reject originalism, you will find support for your views. And if you endorse originalism, you will find value in confronting the arguments leveled against it. Madiba Dennie has written a book for our times. 

The new edition of the International Review of Constitutional Reform is now published in open access. The 2023 IRCR is a global collaboration of 100+ judges and scholars, featuring 90 country reports on constitutional reform around the world. Thank you to our outstanding editorial team: my co-editor President Luís Roberto Barroso, and our associate editors Elisa Amorim Boaventura, Maria Letícia Borges, Bruno Santos Cunha, Matheus de Souza Depieri, Júlia Quintão Frade, and David Sobreira. And congratulations to all contributors for their outstanding reports! 

 

In his new paper now available on SSRN, Holger Spamann rejects the foundational tenet that civil law and common law are different in their operation. He acknowledges their differences in lineage and traditions but, for him, there is no analytical difference between them. To quote from his paper, “much of what is written about common/civil law does not have nearly the evidentiary support it purports to have.”

I am looking forward to reading this book by Marie-Eve Loiselle, to be published in November: Building Walls, Constructing Identities: Legal Discourse and the Creation of National Borders. As the author describes her book, it “brings socio-legal studies into dialogue with geography, history, and border studies to demonstrate the relationship between the law and wall building between the US and Mexico in informing meanings about territorial sovereignty and national identity.”

My students were treated to a visit last week from Carlos Bernal, former Justice of the Constitutional Court of Colombia and currently Commissioner on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Our topic of discussion was the doctrine of unconstitutional constitutional amendment—a doctrine he helped to shape as a scholar and later applied as a judge.

I traveled recently to Texas Tech University to present my draft on Why Rawls is Wrong about Constitutional Amendment. My host was Andrew Young of the Free Market Institute. Andrew's area of research is constitutional political economy, with an interest in constitution-making and constitutional change. Happily for me, my visit coincided with a home football game. In the first photo below, you'll see one of the fun football traditions on campus: to wrap the statue of Will Rogers and his horse Soapsuds in red crepe paper. The second photo is my view of the game. There were 58,795 people in attendance for the Texas Tech victory over Arizona State, 30-22.