Akademiforelesningen i humaniora og samfunnsfag 2014

Bilde

Abstract:
The world is in the midst of an extraordinary period of constitutional ferment, in which calls for new constitutions echo everywhere from Thailand to Tunisia to Tanzania, and many other countries in every part of the world are engaged in major amendment processes.  Many of these changes involve transformations of political regimes, from dictatorship to democracy.  These conscious efforts to redesign the state have taken our attention away from the small set of countries which continue to be governed by very old constitutions, in which constitutional change has proceeded gradually. In these countries, constitutional change has facilitated regime evolution rather than revolution.  The lecture will explore how the evolutionary approach has some significant advantages, using the example of the Norwegian Constitution on the occasion of its 200th anniversary.

Tom Ginsburg
Leo Spitz Professor of International Law, Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Research Scholar and Professor of Political Science, The University of Chicago Law School