The idea of a national constitution may bring to mind images of stately leaders inscribing the words that will steer the course of a country for centuries. That image is a myth, said Illinois Wesleyan University 2003 alumnus James Melton.
A new book co-written by Melton aims to dispel notions of a constitution as something unchanging or permanent. “We tend to look at constitutions as if they are written in stone, yet the expected lifespan of a country’s constitution is around 19 years,” said Melton, who offered his insights to the Illinois Wesleyan campus at a lecture recently in Beckman Auditorium of The Ames Library.
Melton discussed the book, The Endurance of National Constitutions (Cambridge University Press, 2009), co-written by law professors Tom Ginsburg of University of Chicago Law School and Zachary Elkins of the University of Texas at Austin Law School, and Melton. For the past five years, the three scholars, along with a team of researchers, have been collecting data on all formally written constitutions of independent nations since 1789. Their observations and findings make up the new book, which was released this month. Speaking about The Endurance of National Constitutions brought Melton back to Illinois from the ancient city of Lucca, Italy, where he now works as a postdoctoral fellow with the IMT (Institutions, Markets, Technologies) Institute for Advance Studies.
In the book, the trio explores what political conditions create an enduring constitution. Each constitution is set against an extensive 669-question survey to analyze how well it meets the book’s criteria for a lasting constitution, which includes how flexible the constitution is for future change, how ideas were included in the drafting process and throughout the life of the constitution, and how great the level of detail was in created the groundwork for the document.