Working Group on Law and Democracy
The collected works of faculty and students associated with the Working Group on Law and Democracy.
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On the Interpretability of Law: Lessons from the Decoding of National Constitutions
(Cambridge University Press, 2012)An implicit element of many theories of constitutional enforcement is the degree to which those subject to constitutional law can agree on what its provisions mean (call this constitutional interpretability). Unfortunately, ... -
Getting to Rights: Treaty Ratification, Constitutional Convergence, and Human Rights Practice
(2013)This Article examines the adoption of rights in national constitutions in the post-World War II period in light of claims of global convergence. Using a comprehensive database on the contents of the world’s constitutions, ... -
Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism
(Cambridge University Press, 2013-11-14)The presidential-parliamentary distinction is foundational to comparative politics and at the center of a large theoretical and empirical literature. However, an examination of constitutional texts suggests a fair degree ... -
Constitute: The world’s constitutions to read, search, and compare
(2014-07-07)Constitutional design and redesign is constant. Over the last 200 years, countries have replaced their constitutions an average of every 19 years and some have amended them almost yearly. A basic problem in the drafting ... -
On the influence of Magna Carta and other cultural relics
(2016-05-24)Magna Carta’s status as a touchstone of modern thinking about the rule of law rests on several well-known myths. This article evaluates the influence of Magna Carta on modern constitutions, both in termsof formation as ... -
The Role of Courts and Constitutions in the New Politics of Welfare in Latin America
(Cambridge University Press, 2014) -
Diffusion is no Illusion: Neighbor Emulation in the Third Wave of Democracy
(Comparative Political Studies, 2006)This article develops and tests a specific model of the role of diffusion as a determinant of the magnitude and direction of regime change, using a database covering the world from 1972 to 1996. The authors find that ... -
Classifying Political Regimes in Latin America, 1945-2004
(Oxford University Press, 2007) -
Classifying Political Regimes in Latin America, 1945-1999.
(Studies in Comparative International Development, 2001)This article is about how political regimes should generally be classified, and how Latin American regimes should be classified for the 1945-99 period. We make five general claims about regime classification. First, ... -
From legal poverty to legal agency: establishing the rule of law in Latin America.
(Organization of American States, 2009-03) -
Inequality, Institutions, and the Rule of Law: The social and institutional bases of rights.
(Kellogg Institute, 2008-08)This article elaborates and tests a theory connecting the high levels of inequality in many Latin American states to the failure to develop mechanisms to effectively protect and enforce formal rights enshrined in ... -
The Role of Courts and Constitutions in the New Politics of Welfare in Latin America.
(Cambridge University Press, 2013) -
'A tale of two cities': The judiciary and the rule of law in Latin America
(Routledge, 2012)
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