Page Archive
Constitutional Upheavals and Autocracy in Southeast Asia
The foundation for any modern nation-state is a written constitution. The emergence of constitutionalism as a legal doctrine in the Enlightenment period was one of the crucial developments necessary for the growth of democracy and decline of absolutism. A constitution is merely the means by which a state constitutes and specifies the limits of legislative power, executive power, and judicial power. This turn towards limiting these powers (which began with the Magna Carta and the English Glorious Revolution) marked a turn away from absolutism— although plenty of non-democracies have employed constitutions. It is thus now commonly accepted that constitutions form the bedrock of government, autocracy and democracy.
Truth Commissions and Transitional Justice in the United States
This project is the result of my work with Dr. Kelebogile Zvobgo and Zoha Siddiqui as part of the International Justice Labs. We are examining US Truth Commissions’ adoption and design, a novel subject for human rights, and specifically transitional justice, researchers. With Dr. Zvobgo, I published Democratizing Truth in 2021, and now Zoha, Dr. Zvobgo, and I are working on a new project seeking to understand the role of public opinion in US truth commission design and adopion.