Abstract
Amid the epic and sporadically tragic twentieth-century political turmoil, which spawned new states and liberated others after a dark internment of nearly fifty years, record numbers of new national constitutions were drafted and implemented. The drafting of these foundational documents was spawned in part due to the release of long-simmering and sometimes naïve democratic impulses exemplified in many of the former states of the Soviet Union on its often fiery and ham-fisted dissolution. Imperial geopolitical engineering by Western powers crafted new states in the Near East and Northern Africa. Some, such as Jordan and Morocco, conceived and enacted constitutions which anchored the activity of governing to orderly processes but retained the supreme authority and succession provisions of hereditary monarchy. Saudi Arabia adopted an unusual approach; there, the Qur’an and the Sunna of the Prophet, peace be upon Him, were declared in the Basic Law as comprising the Saudi Arabia Constitution. South Africa, by contrast, vested in its powerful Constitutional Court the authority to review and determine the compliance of draft constitutions prepared by its Parliament sitting as a Constitutional Assembly.
Recommended Citation
Zimmer, Markus B.
(2011)
"Judicial System Institutional Frameworks:
An Overview of the Interplay between
Self-Governance and Independence,"
Utah Law Review: Vol. 2011:
No.
1, Article 7.
Available at:
https://dc.law.utah.edu/ulr/vol2011/iss1/7