The National Constitution Center and the Center for Constitutional Design at Arizona State University present a comparative discussion of how democracies amend their constitutions, at home and around the world. A panel of distinguished scholars, including Wilfred Codrington of Brooklyn Law School, Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and Rosalind Dixon of the University of New South Wales, survey the constitutional amendment process around the world to cast light on our debates in the U.S. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.
This program is presented in partnership with the Center for Constitutional Design at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law.
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Participants
Wilfred Codrington III is an associate professor of law at Brooklyn Law School and a fellow at the Brennan Center for for Justice at NYU School of Law. He was previously the Bernard and Anne Spitzer Fellow and counsel at the Brennan Center, where he focused on voting and election security, constitutional reform, and the rule of law. He is the co-author of The People’s Constitution: 200 Years, 27 Amendments, and the Promise of a More Perfect Union.
Rosalind Dixon is a professor of law at the University of New South Wales. She is the co-editor of the leading handbook, Comparative Constitutional Law, and its related volumes: Comparative Constitutional Law in Asia and Comparative Constitutional Law in Latin America. She is also the editor of the Constitutional Systems of the World series, and her forthcoming book is Responsive Judicial Review: Democracy and Dysfunction in the Modern Age.
Jeffrey Sutton has served almost 20 years as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, where he was appointed chief judge in 2021. Among other books, he is the author of 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law and most recently Who Decides?: States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources
- Jeffrey Sutton, Who Decides: States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation
- National Constitution Center, Interactive Constitution, Article V
- Rosalind Dixon and David Landau, "Tiered Constitutional Design," George Washington Law Review
- Donald Lutz, "Toward a Theory of Constitutional Amendment," The American Political Science Review
- John Dinan, The American State Constitutional Tradition
- John Kowal and Wilfred Codrington, The People's Constitution: 200 Years, 27 Amendments, and the Promise of a More Perfect Union
- The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa
- Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Company (1895)
- Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022)
- Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (1949)
- Florida Constitution Revision Commission
- National Constitution Center, "The Proposed Amendments," Constitution Drafting Project
- Switzerland's Constitution of 1999 with Amendments through 2014
- Rosalind Dixon and Felix Uhlmann, "The Swiss Constitution and a weak-form unconstitutional amendment doctrine?" International Journal of Constitutional Law
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