23 July 2024
Never Again. And Not Quite.
Those who build new public law act with the past hovering over their shoulders. Rejecting regimes of horror explains much of the content of new constitutions. Aversive constitutionalism – in which constitutionalists overtly steer away from a country’s appalling pasts – guides how they understand these new texts. On balance, even among those who disagree over precisely how the past is memorialized as “never again” in new constitutions, evidence shows that the horrors of the past influence public law in the present much more than do the dreams of some ideal future. Continue reading >>
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22 July 2024
“Never Again”
“Never again” is, first and foremost, a story. It’s a story about our collective fears, anxieties, and aspirations, those moments and events that we have promised ourselves that will never be repeated. The Jewish story is interwoven with the Holocaust—the killing of six million Jews in Europe and the urgency of the re-establishment of a Jewish state to solve the problem of Jewish homelessness. Yet the constitutional and international meaning of “never again” depends on one’s position and point of view, and it changes over time. The chain reaction that began with the horrors of WWII continues to drive constitutional and international agendas. It is clear that “history talks,” but in which direction? Continue reading >>
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