From Parchment to Practice
Implementing New Constitutions

Asks how the 'parchment' promises of a written constitution are translated into political practice, working through the many problems of constitutional implementation after adoption.

Tom Ginsburg (Edited by), Aziz Z. Huq (Edited by)

9781108487733, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 April 2020

250 pages, 5 b/w illus. 2 tables
23.4 x 15.7 x 2 cm, 0.56 kg

'Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals.' E. C. Sands, Choice

From Parchment to Practice explores the set of problems that arise when a new constitution has been adopted. All new constitutions must manage a balance or tension between two forces: aspirations for social and political transformation on the one hand and demands for preservation of old interests and institutions on the other. The period following the initial adoption of a new constitution, is the conceptual, temporal, and institutional bridge between the past and future. It is the moment when the transformative and the preservative forces in constitutional design can come into the sharpest conflict. Through a series of case studies, this volume analyzes the variable nature of these type of conflicts - and the diverse means through which they are mediated, whether successfully or not.

1. Introduction. The first-period problem of constitutional implementation Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Z. Huq
Part I. The Problem of Transformation in Constitutional Design: 2. Looking 'backward' or 'forward' to American constitutional development: reflections on constitutional 'endurance' and 'adaptation' in the 'First Republic' Sanford Levinson
3. Marking constitutional transitions: the law and politics of constitutional implementation in South Africa Rosalind Dixon and Theunis Roux
4. India's first period: constitutional doctrine and constitutional stability Madhav Khosla
5. Two steps 'forward', one step 'back'? Transformation and correction in the implementation of Ecuador's 2008 constitution Eric Alston
Part II. The Issue of Gender: 6. The long road ahead: the first period of a gender-responsive constitution in Zimbabwe Claudia Flores
7. Constitutional reform and women's political participation: electoral gender quotas in post-Arab Spring Egypt, Tunisia, and Jordan Susan H. Williams
Part III. Institutional Development and the Role of Courts: 8. Explaining the institutional role of the Colombian Constitutional Court Diego González
9. Implementing a new constitution in a competitive authoritarian context: the case of Kenya James Thuo Gathii
Part IV. Authoritarian Transitions: 10. Transformational authoritarian constitutions: the case of Chile Tom Ginsburg
11. Authoritarian straitjacket or vehicle for democratic transition?: the risky struggle to change Myanmar's constitution Melissa Crouch
12. The Ethiopian constitution and ethnic federalism Daniel Abebe.

Subject Areas: Constitutional & administrative law [LND], Comparative law [LAM], Constitution: government & the state [JPHC], Comparative politics [JPB]