24 August 2022
The Constitution of What?
On 4 September, the Chilean people will vote on whether a draft constitution, the result of the work of a Constitutional Convention, will replace the current constitution, which dates back to Pinochet’s dictatorship. Chile’s constituent process, one might think, will thus soon be over. The future is less clear. The draft can be understood as as an exercise of social self-constitution. Its feasibility, however, seems to depend on accommodating social pluralism with the opposed logic of the realm of politics and its permanent dynamic of generating a unity that speaks with one voice. Continue reading >>
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22 June 2021
Chile’s Kaleidoscopic Constituent Assembly
Chile is getting rid of Pinochet — at long last. Last month, Chileans elected a constituent assembly that will draft a constitutional text to replace the current Constitution, which the dictator imposed in 1980. Though the result of the deliberative process that will soon commence is uncertain, one thing is sure: Chile’s constituent assembly resembles the country in ways that no political arrangement had allowed so far. Continue reading >>
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04 March 2021
Assembling Social Rights
In April 2021, Chile will hold elections for its first constitutional assembly. It will draft a new constitution to replace the current one, born in 1980 during Chile’s military dictatorship. One topic that will be at the center of the assembly’s debate is the status that ‘social rights’ shall have in the new constitution. The most debated issue in this regard is whether such rights should be directly enforceable. Despite the distance in time, space and culture, the drafting of Chile’s new constitution can learn important lessons from Germany’s constitutions of 1919 and 1949 in this field. Continue reading >>
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06 April 2016
Iceland’s Citizen Constitution: the Window Remains Wide Open
Iceland is, once again, in political turmoil after the Panama Papers revelations. This might revitalize a project which had fascinated constitutionalists from all over the world before it seemingly was derailed by the political establishment - a new constitution written by the citizens of Iceland themselves. Continue reading >>
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