Chile's constitutional moment began as a popular demand in late 2019. This collection seizes the opportunity of this unique moment to unpack the context, difficulties, opportunities, and merits to enhance the status of environmental and social rights (health, housing, education and social security) in a country's constitution. Learning from Chilean and international experiences from the Global South and North, and drawing on the analysis of both academics and practitioners, the book provides rigorous answers to the fundamental questions raised by the construction of a new constitutional bill of rights that embraces climate and social justice. With an international and comparative perspective, chapters look at issues such as political economy, the judicial enforceability of social rights, implications of the privatisation of public services, and the importance of active participation of most vulnerable groups in a constitutional drafting process. Ahead of the referendum on a new constitution for Chile in the second half of 2022, this collection is timely and relevant and will have direct impact on how best to legislate effectively for social rights in Chile and beyond.

This volume brings together contributions that resemble spotlights thrown on the past twenty-five years of science and technology studies. It covers a broad range: history of science; science and politics; science and contemporary democracy; science and the public; science and the constitution; science and metaphors; and science and modernity and provides a critical overview of how the field of science and technology studies has emerged and developed.

An Economist Best Book of the Year How India’s Constitution came into being and instituted democracy after independence from British rule. Britain’s justification for colonial rule in India stressed the impossibility of Indian self-government. And the empire did its best to ensure this was the case, impoverishing Indian subjects and doing little to improve their socioeconomic reality. So when independence came, the cultivation of democratic citizenship was a foremost challenge. Madhav Khosla explores the means India’s founders used to foster a democratic ethos. They knew the people would need to learn ways of citizenship, but the path to education did not lie in rule by a superior class of men, as the British insisted. Rather, it rested on the creation of a self-sustaining politics. The makers of the Indian Constitution instituted universal suffrage amid poverty, illiteracy, social heterogeneity, and centuries of tradition. They crafted a constitutional system that could respond to the problem of democratization under the most inhospitable conditions. On January 26, 1950, the Indian Constitution—the longest in the world—came into effect. More than half of the world’s constitutions have been written in the past three decades. Unlike the constitutional revolutions of the late eighteenth century, these contemporary revolutions have occurred in countries characterized by low levels of economic growth and education, where voting populations are deeply divided by race, religion, and ethnicity. And these countries have democratized at once, not gradually. The events and ideas of India’s Founding Moment offer a natural reference point for these nations where democracy and constitutionalism have arrived simultaneously, and they remind us of the promise and challenge of self-rule today.

Because social media and technology companies rule the Internet, only a digital constitution can protect our rights online.

Do countries that add rights to their constitutions actually do better at protecting those rights? This study draws on global statistical analyses and survey experiments to answer this question. It explores whether constitutionalizing rights improves respect for those rights in practice.

Bowling Alone, the title of Robert Putnam's 1995 article (later a bestselling book) perfectly captured a sense of national unease: Somewhere along the way, America had become a nation divided by apathy, and the bonds that held together civil society were disappearing. But while the phrase resonated with our growing sense of atomization, it didn't describe a new phenomenon. The fear that isolation has eroded our social bonds had simmered for at least two decades, when communitarianism first emerged as a cogent political philosophy. Communitarianism, as explained in the works of Michael Sandel, Alasdair MacIntyre, Amitai Etzioni, and others, elevates the idea of communal good over the rights of individuals. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, communitarianism gained popular and political ground. The Clintons touted its principles in the '90s, and the two presidents Bush make frequent references to its central tenets. In its short life, the philosophy has generated plenty of books, both pro and con. Beau Breslin's authoritative and original examination, The Communitarian Constitution, contributes to the debate from a wholly original standpoint. Existing critiques focus on the debate between liberalism and communitarianism—in other words, the conflict between individual rights and the communal good. Breslin takes an entirely different stance, examining the pragmatic question of whether or not communitarian policies are truly practicable in a constitutional society. In tackling this question, Breslin traces the evolution of American communitarianism. He examines Lincoln's unconstitutional Civil War suspension of habeas corpus and draws on Federalist and Anti-Federalist arguments, pegging the Anti-Federalists as communitarians' intellectual forebearers. He also grounds his arguments in the real world, examining the constitutions of Germany and Israel, which offer further insight into the relationship between constitutionalism and communitarianism. At a moment when American politicians and citizenry are struggling to balance competing needs, such as civil rights and homeland security, The Communitarian Constitution is vital reading for anyone interested in the evolving tensions between individual rights and the good of the community.

Joel Bakan argues that the Canadian Charter of Rights (1982) has failed to promote social justice because it is administered by a conservative judiciary and because social and economic conditions constantly interfere with its principles.