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Constitutional amendments in federal political systems have to be negotiated between national and sub-national actors. While theories of negotiation usually explain the outcome by looking at these actors, their preferences and bargaining powers, the theoretical model developed in this article also includes their interaction orientation. The article determines a typical sequence of bargaining and arguing and identifies favourable conditions for cooperation based on different interaction orientations. The article states that actors can reconcile the conflicting logics of intergovernmental or party competition and joint decision-making in constitutional politics through a sequence of bargaining and arguing. However, constitutional amendments negotiated in this way run the risk of undermining the legitimacy and functionality of constitutions.

Constitutions are designed to control, or at least influence, future events – political events, adjudicative events, to some extent even interactions between private parties. Yet the future is unknowable, largely unpredictable, and inevitably variable. At any moment there exists a short-run future, a long-run future, and a future in between. The future is virtually certain to contain some progress, some regression, some stability, some volatility. How is a constitution supposed to operate upon this vast panoply? That is a question that ought to loom large in the deliberations of persons who propose and ratify new constitutions and new constitutional amendments. It is also a question that should form part of the backdrop against which particular constitutional provisions are interpreted. Here I plan to address just one small part of that inquiry: what perspective on the future should guide courts in interpreting the speech, press, and assembly clauses of the first amendment to the United States Constitution? My thesis is that in adjudicating first amendment disputes and fashioning first amendment doctrines, courts ought to adopt what might be termed the pathological perspective. That is, the overriding objective at all times should be to equip the first amendment to do maximum service in those historical periods when intolerance of unorthodox ideas is most prevalent and when governments are most able and most likely to stifle dissent systematically. The first amendment, in other words, should be targeted for the worst of times. I would not make that claim about all provisions of the federal Constitution. Certain clauses – the equal protection and cruel and unusual punishment clauses, for example – may be designed, or at least most wisely interpreted, to serve the society primarily in periods of unusual idealism or cohesion. Provisions of that sort may be more significant for their capacity to stimulate, channel, or institutionalize progressive social change than for any role they may play in preserving traditional arrangements. But the speech, press, and assembly clauses of the first amendment, as well as some other provisions of the Constitution – the religion clauses and the dormant commerce clause come to mind – are best viewed as having primarily a preservative function. It is accordingly the pathological perspective that ought to inform the way those clauses are interpreted.

Выявляются и раскрываются особенности развития публично-властных отношений в сфере местного самоуправления в постсоветской России. Отмечается, что в начале 1990-х гг. был взят курс на европейский опыт формирования и функционирования института местного самоуправления, показываются причины такого выбора. Однако в дальнейшем оказалось, что такой подход не соответствует российским традициям и реалиям, в результате он был существенным образом изменен и нашел логическое закрепление в конституционных поправках – 2020, предусматривающих большую степень огосударствления местного самоуправления. Обосновывается авторская позиция о перспективах института местного самоуправления в России. ; The features of the development of public-power relations in the field of local self-government in post-Soviet Russia are identified and revealed. It is noted that in the early 1990s a course was taken on the European experience of the formation and functioning of the institution of local self-government, the reasons for this choice are shown. However, later it turned out that this approach did not correspond to Russian traditions and realities; as a result, it was significantly changed and found a logical consolidation in the 2020 constitutional amendments, which provide for a greater degree of nationalization of local self-government. The author's position on the prospects of the institution of local self-government in Russia is substantiated.

"The author proposes and defends a constitutional amendment to require that laws of Congress be upheld unless the Supreme Court by unanimous vote decides that a particular law is unconstitutional. This will strengthen the people's right to be governed by majority rule, including in cases where rights are concerned"--

This article focuses on the recent Mexican controversy about the legal status of the indigenous population and the nature of nationalism, which is linked to recent constitutional amendments and new policy strategies. Changes in legislation and policy are examined in the context of a widespread economic and political crisis of the populist regime after 1982, which radically affected the previous indigenous discourse; but they are also seen as having been motivated by Indian demands and mobilisations against the official vision of citizenship as a function of cultural homogeneity and mestizaje. The article analyses the implications of the new constitutional amendments and the heated debates that they have provoked among different political actors, including indigenous organisations. In particular, it examines two areas of disagreement. The first concerns the multiple meanings of multiculturalism - as a threat of fragmentation and fundamentalism, a new form of state control or a strategy for indigenous national participation and empowerment. The second concerns the definition and levels of implementation of indigenous political autonomy. Negotiation over such disagreements, leading to inclusive citizenship, constitute a great challenge for ethnic intellectuals and theoreticians of Mexican nationalism. References. Adapted from the source document.

The article considers the risks of amendments to the basic law of the state, which are associated with the inability to accurately predict political and managerial problems arising in the new constitutional context. An analysis is conducted of the changes in constitutions as the basis of the political, economic, and social life of the societies that are bifurcation points from which development can proceed in various directions. This creates risks at the stages of formation and functioning of complex public systems of authority, whose work greatly influences the creation of an optimal quality of life as the criterion of the basic goal of a modern democratic state. The analysis is comprised of factors that affect the reduction or levelling of such risks, or increase the possible of their occurrence. A developed democratic political culture and a high degree of public readiness for radical changes in the foundations of the political system (for example, France after World War II) are identified as factors that positively affect the state system, and excessive haste in decision making and lack of broad public fundamental changes discussion (for example, Germany in the early 90-ies of the last century) are identified as factors that negatively affect the social integration of society and the achievement of uniformity in the quality of life on the territory of the state. Both examples demonstrate in the Russian context the need to balance state policy in the process of implementing political decisions that led to amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 2020.

Includes "Extra" session. ; Title varies slightly. ; At head of title: California legislature, First session- ; Mode of access: Internet.

This article is about two things; one general, the other specific. The general point is about the nature of interpretation and of the constraints that the text places on interpretation. The specific is about the ninth amendment. My general claim about interpretation is that no textual provision by itself seriously constrains how it is going to be interpreted. This, I argue, is true not just about the open-ended provisions like the ninth amendment, but quite generally, about all textual provisions. The fact that no text by itself constrains interpretation, however, does not mean that interpretation is unconstrained; only that constraints operate within a particular context in which the text is interpreted. In this context, there is always a number of easy interpretive questions which, under particular circumstances, are answered exactly as if the text by itself controlled the process of interpretation. But easy questions are easy, I argue, only because others are not, and there is no way of either avoiding complex questions or reducing them to the simple ones. Hence, the open-ended provisions (and, in the struggle about interpretation, all controversial provisions are bound to become open-ended, even if they did not start as such), will never be decisive for resolving controversial issues of interpretation. The ninth amendment is no exception here, and I begin by arguing that for every interpretation that sees it as support for judicial activism there is another, respectable one, that does not. Much of the recent theory of constitutional interpretation has been focused on the problem of "interpretivism" versus "noninterpretivism," and the ninth amendment is sometimes thought to legitimize the latter. I argue at some length that the dispute is dominated by what I view as mistaken assumptions about the role of the text in constitutional interpretation and that expansive judicial review need neither devalue the role of the text nor go beyond its interpretation. Good interpretations of open-ended constitutional provisions do not rely on dictionary-like reading of words, but rather on overall theories concerning the nature and functions of the institutions set up by the document and the values the political system is designed to implement. Placing too much reliance on the mere words of a single constitutional provision can in fact only confuse the task of constitutional interpretation. Similarly, a number of very important constitutional provisions could be absent from the text altogether, and yet the norms they state would be enforced anyway by any fair-minded reading of the text. While many provisions of the Bill of Rights have this character (and the founding fathers initially thought they were unnecessary), some have it to a greater degree than others, and none equals the ninth amendment. The ninth amendment is void of any substantive content; instead, it states a rule of construction which, even if assumed to entitle a court to engage in expansive judicial review, not only does not add anything to what we would know without it, but is also incapable of doing any real work in the process of actual interpretation. If an unenumerated right is capable of being derived from the overall scheme endorsed by the Constitution, the whole weight of that derivation (its legitimacy) will rest on its own argument, rather than the ninth amendment. If, on the other hand, the right cannot be otherwise convincingly derived, the ninth amendment will not help us either. The only (if any) thing the ninth amendment can do, I conclude, is to lead us astray by changing the discourse of constitutional law from the one shaped by political theory to one dominated by morality and ultimately religion.