On Constitutional Disobedience

The Dead Hand of the Past? Toward an Understanding of “Constitutional Veneration”

“…One reason for this is that the amendment process outlined in Article V makes the Constitution among the hardest in the world to amend (Lutz 1994). But some argue that a culture of ''constitutional veneration'' among the public acts as an additional, psychological barrier to constitutional change: citizens' reverence for the Constitution renders them reluctant to support proposed changes to it, sometimes even when they prefer or would benefit from the policy embodied in the proposal (see, e.g., Levinson 1990Levinson , 2006Levinson and Balkin 2009;Sabato 2007;Seidman 2013). There is at least some evidence supporting this claim.…”

“Constitution (Written or Unwritten)”: Legitimacy and Legality in the Thought of John Rawls

“…It might, from the text, be simply a pragmatic claim that a constitutional norm of unbound parliamentary supremacy can and does, in some countries, work out better than a judicially administered higher‐legal code for the cause of the liberal values of freedom and equality that Rawls himself espouses . Quite a few constitutional scholars so suspect or believe, not all of them British (see Seidman ; Tushnet ; West ). It is another question, though, whether a constitution of legally unconstrained parliamentary supremacy can provide the justificational service envisaged by the LPL.…”

“…A procedural pact might do better in customary‐conventional than in formal‐legal dress to sidle its way past that difficulty. Debates over applications may then be less doctrinally cut‐and‐dried, less adversarial, less one‐right‐answerish, less victor‐and‐vanquished, less divisive (see Seidman , 141–2; Waldron , 1383–5; West , 1476; , 1414, 1427–8).…”

“…I read Rawls to say that in some historical‐cultural milieux , the moral project of an ethos of reciprocity is advanced by having available both a corpus of publicly acknowledged, substantive, higher‐normative guarantees, vague as those must sometimes be, and contestable at the point of application, and a corps of more‐or‐less trusted interlocutors to guide the contestations (see Rawls , 178). The corpus of guarantees provides at least, in the words of L. M. Seidman (, 8), a “common vocabulary for our disagreements.” The court serves as guide, even as provisional referee, for the debates. It serves to give them publicity, structure, direction, intelligibility, credibility.…”

El federalismo argentino después de la reforma constitucional de 1994

“…(86) En esa misma línea, no debemos olvidar que nos inspiramos en una idea fuerza de "concertación", que viene de "concierto", y que -para nosotros siguiendo a Manili- (87) "dista de ser una fórmula jurídica", pero que tiene rango constitucional para quienes la percibimos como un fruto del espíritu humano. Porque es una "composición musical para diversos instrumentos en que uno o varios llevan la parte principal" (88) , necesita de partitura que comprenda, y asigne su rol propio, a todos los integrantes de la orquesta; de esta orquesta compuesta por todos: gobierno federal y gobiernos de provincias; y hoy también los municipios.…”