From Parchment to Practice

From Parchment to Practice explores the set of problems that arise when a new constitution has been adopted. All new constitutions must manage a balance or tension between two forces: aspirations for social and political transformation on the one hand and demands for preservation of old interests and institutions on the other. The period following the initial adoption of a new constitution, is the conceptual, temporal, and institutional bridge between the past and future. It is the moment when the transformative and the preservative forces in constitutional design can come into the sharpest conflict. Through a series of case studies, this volume analyzes the variable nature of these type of conflicts – and the diverse means through which they are mediated, whether successfully or not.

Author Biography

Tom Ginsburg is Leo Spitz Professor of International Law at the University of Chicago, where he also holds an appointment in the Political Science Department. He also co-directs the Comparative Constitutions Project, an National Science Foundation-funded data set cataloging the world’s constitutions since 1789. He is the author of several books, including How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (with Aziz Huq, 2018), Comparative Constitutional Law (with Rosalind Dixon, 2011), and The Endurance of National Constitutions (with Zachary Elkins and James Melton, 2009). Aziz Huq is Frank and Bernice Greenberg Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he teaches and researches in constitutional law. He is the author of How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (with Tom Ginsburg, 2018). His scholarship has won awards from the Association of American Law Schools, and been published in leading legal and peer-reviewed journals. Previously, Huq was Director of the Liberty and National Security Project of the Brennan Center for Justice, and a Senior Consultant Analyst for the International Crisis Group.