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What is the Right to Vote?

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The Right to vote

Is Voting a Privilege or a Right?

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Source of the Right to Vote in Singapore

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Implicit right to vote

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Proposals to make the Right to Vote Explicit

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1966 Constitutional Commission

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Reasons for recommendation

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Reasons for rejection

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2009 Parliamentary Debates

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Executive - Judicial Interpretation

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Exercising the Right to Vote in Singapore

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Elections

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Substantive Right to Vote

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Limitation's on Opportunities to Vote

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Voting in a foreign election
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Prioner's right to vote
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Overseas Voting
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Walkovers

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By-Elections

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The Value of the Right to Vote

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One-man one vote – GRC issue

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Selection Committee for Presidential Elections

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Fundamental law empowering and limiting government

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One of the most salient features of constitutionalism is that it describes and prescribes both the source and the limits of government power. William H. Hamilton has captured this dual aspect by noting that constitutionalism "is the name given to the trust which men repose in the power of words engrossed on parchment to keep a government in order."[1]

Constitutionalism vs. constitutional questions

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The study of constitutions is not necessarily synonymous with the study of constitutionalism. Although frequently conflated, there are crucial differences. A discussion of this difference appears in legal historian Christian G. Fritz's American Sovereigns: The People and America's Constitutional Tradition Before the Civil War,[2] a study of the early history of American constitutionalism. Fritz notes that an analyst could approach the study of historic events focusing on issues that entailed "constitutional questions" and that this differs from a focus that involves "questions of constitutionalism."[3] Constitutional questions involve the analyst in examining how the constitution was interpreted and applied to distribute power and authority as the new nation struggled with problems of war and peace, taxation and representation.

However,


A similar distinction was drawn by British constitutional scholar A.V. Dicey in assessing Britain's unwritten constitution. Dicey noted a difference between the "conventions of the constitution" and the "law of the constitution." The "essential distinction" between the two concepts was that the Law of the Constitution was made up of "rules enforced or recognised by the Courts," making up "a body of 'laws' in the proper sense of that term." In contrast, the Conventions of the Constitution consisted "of customs, practices, maxims, or precepts which are not enforced or recognised by the Courts" yet they "make up a body not of laws, but of constitutional or political ethics."[4]

Constitutionalism and Constitutional Economics

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Constitutionalism has been the subject of criticism for its previous ignorance of economic issues but this criticism is now taken into account by the development of constitutional economics. Constitutional economics is a field of economics and constitutionalism which describes and analyses the specific interrelationships between constitutional issues and the structure and functioning of the economy. The term “constitutional economics” was used by American economist – James M. Buchanan – as a name for a new academic sub-discipline. Buchanan received in 1986 the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his “development of the contractual and constitutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision-making.”[5] Buchanan rejects “any organic conception of the state as superior in wisdom, to the individuals who are its members.” This philosophical position is, in fact, the very subject matter of constitutional economics.

A constitutional economics approach allows for a combined economic and constitutional analysis, helping to avoid a one-dimensional understanding. Buchanan believes that a constitution, intended for use by at least several generations of citizens, must be able to adjust itself for pragmatic economic decisions and to balance interests of the state and society against those of individuals and their constitutional rights to personal freedom and private happiness. Constitutional economics draws substantial inspiration from the reformist attitude which is characteristic of Adam Smith’s vision, and that Buchanan’s concept can be considered the modern-day counterpart to what Smith called “the science of legislation.” Concurrently with the rise of academic research in the field of constitutional economics in the U.S. in the 1980s, the Supreme Court of India for almost a decade had been encouraging public interest litigation on behalf of the poor and oppressed by using a very broad interpretation of several articles of the Indian Constitution.[6] This is a vivid example of a de facto practical application of the methodology of constitutional economics.

The Russian school of constitutional economics was created in the early twenty-first century with the idea that constitutional economics allows for a combined economic and constitutional analysis in the legislative (especially budgetary) process, thus helping to overcome arbitrariness in the economic and financial decision-making: for instance, when military expenses (and the like) dwarf the budget spending on education and culture. In the English language, the word “constitution” possesses a whole number of meanings, encompassing not only national constitutions as such, but also charters of public organizations, unwritten rules of various clubs, informal groups, etc. The Russian model of constitutional economics, originally intended for transitional and developing countries, focuses entirely on the concept of state constitution. In 2006, the Russian Academy of Sciences officially recognized constitutional economics as a separate academic sub-discipline.[7] Since many a country with transitional political and economic system continues treating its constitution as an abstract legal document disengaged from the economic policy of the state, the practice of constitutional economics becomes there a decisive prerequisite for democratic development of the state and society.

Examples

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Descriptive use

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Used descriptively, the concept of constitutionalism can refer chiefly to the historical struggle for constitutional recognition of the people's right to "consent" and certain other rights, freedoms, and privileges.[8]

United States

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In U.S. History, constitutionalism—in both its descriptive and prescriptive sense—has traditionally focused on the federal Constitution. Indeed, a routine assumption of many scholars has been that understanding "American constitutionalism" necessarily entails the thought that went into the drafting of the federal Constitution and the American experience with that constitution since its ratification in 1789.[9]

There is a rich tradition of state constitutionalism that offers broader insight into constitutionalism in the United States.[10] While state constitutions and the federal Constitution operate differently as a function of federalism—the coexistence and interplay of governments at both a national and state level—they all rest on a shared assumption that their legitimacy comes from the sovereign authority of the people or Popular sovereignty. This underlying premise—embraced by the American revolutionaries with the Declaration of Independence—unites the American constitutional tradition.[11] Both the experience with state constitutions before—and after—the federal Constitution as well as the emergence and operation of the federal Constitution reflect an on-going struggle over the idea that all governments in America rested on the sovereignty of the people for their legitimacy.[12]

United Kingdom

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The United Kingdom is perhaps the best instance of constitutionalism in a country that has an uncodified constitution. A variety of developments in seventeenth-century England, including "the protracted struggle for power between king and Parliament was accompanied by an efflorescence of political ideas in which the concept of countervailing powers was clearly defined,"[13] led to a well-developed polity with multiple governmental and private institutions that counter the power of the state.[14]

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

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From the mid-sixteenth to the late eighteenth century, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth utilized the liberum veto, a form of unanimity voting rule, in its parliamentary deliberations. The "principle of liberum veto played an important role in [the] emergence of the unique Polish form of constitutionalism." This constraint on the powers of the monarch were significant in making the "[r]ule of law, religious tolerance and limited constitutional government ... the norm in Poland in times when the rest of Europe was being devastated by religious hatred and despotism."[15]

Prescriptive use

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The prescriptive approach to constitutionalism addresses what a constitution should be. Two observations might be offered about its prescriptive use.

  • There is often confusion in equating the presence of a written constitution with the conclusion that a state or polity is one based upon constitutionalism. As noted by David Fellman constitutionalism "should not be taken to mean that if a state has a constitution, it is necessarily committed to the idea of constitutionalism. In a very real sense… every state may be said to have a constitution, since every state has institutions which are at the very least expected to be permanent, and every state has established ways of doing things." But even with a "formal written document labelled [sic] 'constitution' which includes the provisions customarily found in such a document, it does not follow that it is committed to constitutionalism…."[16]
  • Often the word "constitutionalism" is used in a rhetorical sense – as a political argument that equates the views of the speaker or writer with a preferred view of the constitution. For instance, University of Maryland Constitutional History Professor Herman Belz's critical assessment of expansive constitutional construction notes that "constitutionalism . . . ought to be recognized as a distinctive ideology and approach to political life…. Constitutionalism not only establishes the institutional and intellectual framework, but it also supplies much of the rhetorical currency with which political transactions are carried on."[17] Similarly, Georgetown University Law Center Professor Louis Michael Seidman noted as well the confluence of political rhetoric with arguments supposedly rooted in constitutionalism. In assessing the "meaning that critical scholars attributed to constitutional law in the late twentieth century," Professor Seidman notes a "new order ... characterized most prominently by extremely aggressive use of legal argument and rhetoric" and as a result "powerful legal actors are willing to advance arguments previously thought out-of-bounds. They have, in short, used legal reasoning to do exactly what crits claim legal reasoning always does - put the lipstick of disinterested constitutionalism on the pig of raw politics."[18]

United States

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Starting with the proposition that "'Constitutionalism' refers to the position or practice that government be limited by a constitution, usually written," analysts take a variety of positions on what the constitution means. For instance, they describe the document as a document that may specify its relation to statutes, treaties, executive and judicial actions, and the constitutions or laws of regional jurisdictions. This prescriptive use of Constitutionalism is also concerned with the principles of constitutional design, which includes the principle that the field of public action be partitioned between delegated powers to the government and the rights of individuals, each of which is a restriction of the other, and that no powers be delegated that are beyond the competence of government.[19]


See also

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References

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  1. ^ Walton H. Hamilton, Constitutionalism. in Edwin R.A. Seligman et al. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillian 1931) at p. 255.
  2. ^ (Cambridge University Press, 2008).
  3. ^ a b Christian G. Fritz, American Sovereigns: The People and America's Constitutional Tradition Before the Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2008) at p. 6 [ISBN 978-0-521-88188-3.
  4. ^ Dicey, A.V., Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, 8th ed. (London: Macmillan 1914) (Part III: The Connection between the law of he constitution and the conventions of the constitution; Ch 14.
  5. ^ http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1986/buchanan.html
  6. ^ Jeremy Cooper, Poverty and Constitutional Justice, in Philosophy of Law: Classic and Contemporary Readings, edited by Larry May and Jeff Brown, Wiley-Blackwell, UK, 2010
  7. ^ Peter Barenboim, Natalya Merkulova, The 25th Anniversary of Constitutional Economics: The Russian Model and Legal Reform in Russia in The World Rule of Law Movement and Russian Legal Reform, edited by Francis Neate and Holly Nielsen, Justitsinform, Moscow, 2007
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Leonard Levy p. 473, 473 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ For the assumptions by historians, political scientists, and lawyers that have contributed to a view of constitutionalism essentially connected and confined to the U.S. Constitution, see Christian G. Fritz, "Fallacies of American Constitutionalism ," 35 Rutgers Law Journal (2004), 1327-69. See also, Christian G. Fritz, American Sovereigns: The People and America's Constitutional Tradition Before the Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2008) at p. 284 ("Invariably, the state constitutional tradition is deemed less authentic because of its departure from the federal model. This has led to the assumption that one need only study the federal Constitution to discover what American constitutionalism was then and is today.") [ISBN 978-0-521-88188-3].
  10. ^ G. Alan Tarr, Understanding State Constitutions (Princeton Univ. Press, 1998) and John J. Dinan, The American State Constitutional Tradition (Univ. Press of Kansas, 2006).
  11. ^ Paul K. Conkin, Self-Evident Truths: Being a Discourse on the Origins & Development of the First Principles of American Government—Popular Sovereignty, Natural Rights, and Balance & Separation of Powers (Indiana Univ. Press, 1974), 52 (describing "the almost unanimous acceptance of popular sovereignty at the level of abstract principle"); Edmund S. Morgan, "The Problem of Popular Sovereignty," in Aspects of American Liberty: Philosophical, Historical and Political (The American Philosophical Society, 1977), 101 (concluding the American Revolution "confirmed and completed the subordination of government to the will of the people"); Willi Paul Adams, The First American Constitutions: Republican Ideology and the Making of the State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era (University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 137 (asserting that statements of the "principle" of the people's sovereignty "expressed the very heart of the consensus among the victors of 1776").
  12. ^ Christian G. Fritz, American Sovereigns: The People and America's Constitutional Tradition Before the Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2008) at p. 284 (Observing that from the Revolutionary era to the period before the Civil War "Americans continued to wrestle with what it meant that their national as well as state governments rested on the sovereignty of the people") [ISBN 978-0-521-88188-3].
  13. ^ Gordon, Scott (1999). Controlling the State: Constitutionalism from Ancient Athens to Today. Harvard University Press. pp. 5, 226, 223–283, 327–357. ISBN 0674169875. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  14. ^ Bagehot, Walter (1867). The English Constitution. Chapman and Hall. pp. 2, 348. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) (Bagehot noted his intent to correct mistaken views of the British constitution, including whether the constitution was "laid down as a principle of the English polity, that in it the legislative, the executive, and the judicial powers, are quite divided….” )
  15. ^ Rohac, Dalibor (June 2008). "The unanimity rule and religious fractionalisation in the Polish-Lithuanian Republic". Constitutional Political Economy. 19 (2). Springer: 111–128. doi:10.1007/s10602-008-9037-5. Retrieved 2009-05-18.
  16. ^ Philip P. Wiener, ed., "Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas", (David Fellman, "Constitutionalism"), vol 1, p. 485 (1973-74).
  17. ^ Herman Belz, "A Living Constitution or Fundamental Law? American Constitutionalism in Historical Perspective" (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 1998) at pp. 148-49 (Belz further argues: "Constitutionalism shapes political life in a variety of ways. Constitutional principles can become matters of commitment and belief possessing intrinsic value that motivate political action. . . . When citizens and governing officials internalize constitutional values, acting out of fidelity to law rather than expediency, constitutionalism gives direction to political life. Constitutionalism has a configurative effect also in providing the forms, rhetoric, and symbols by which politics is carried on. Political groups and individuals ordinarily try to choose courses of action that are consistent with or required by the Constitution. They do so not because they are in each instance committed to the constitutional principle or value at issue . . . [but] because they know that the public takes the Constitution seriously, believing that it embodies fundamental values and formal procedures that are the touchstone of political legitimacy. In American politics the Constitution is a justifying concept, and groups that invoke constitutional arguments do so, from their own perspective perhaps and in an immediate sense, instrumentally. Considered from an external and long-range view in relation to the polity as a whole, however, reliance on constitutional principles and rules is normative and noninstrumental. In this way constitutionalism shapes political events") ISBN 9780847686438.
  18. ^ Louis Michael Seidman, "Critical Constitutionalism Now", 75 Fordham Law Review 575, 586 (Nov. 2006).
  19. ^ James Madison, in his remarks introducing the Bill of Rights, 8 June 1789, Annals 1:424-50. Link
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