Putting the People back in the Constitution: On Arab popular revolt and other acts of defiance

摘要

Constitutions that are not mere shams are supposed to be by the people, of the people, and for the people. The recent wave of popular revolts throughout the Arab world has kindled hope in the eventual transformation of this bastion of authoritarianism into the new frontier of constitutional democracy. If this hope materializes, the Arab path to constitutionalism would become the latest chapter in a constitutional odyssey that started with the French and American Revolutions of the eighteenth century and that greatly accelerated since the end of World War Two. The consecutive transitions to constitutional democracy since 1945 have greatly varied in form and have given rise to differing constitutional regimes. In post-war Germany and Japan, the victors leaned