[artinfo] Toward a World Constitutionalism

[by way of Janos Sugar]

TOWARD A WORLD CONSTITUTIONALISM

Hello!
let’s talk about world constitutionalism!

Prof. Dr. Carmo D’Souza and I were asked to contribute for a magazine
called “abstract".
We thought, that we should also concern the formal aspect of the work and
that the form should be more experimental and OPEN, not a conventional
text, but having a much more discoursive form, less a manifest, more an
open fragment of search und research, and also an invitation to EVERYONE
to join in thinking about a world constitutionalism.

Prof. Dr. Carmo D’Souza is working for years on the theme, he wrote:

World Constitutionalism
-	Perhaps we could substitute World Constitution with World
Constitutionalism. As there may be a backlash 
from European Constitution experience.
-	Constitutionalism  so as to include philosophy, culture, values ,
institutional set up if any etc.
-	We refer to British , American , Indian Constitutionalism, which gives
meaning life and depth to a constitutional document.

Components of Constitutionalism:
-	1. Concepts (concepts, values, culture, 
skills) 2. Instrument (if any) 3.Institutional 
set up

Concepts :
-	Do we need to use concepts to build world Constitutionalism as they are
used in marketing, business, fashions, mass media etc.?
-	Is it necessary to evaluate present day concepts  whether they are
relevant to (a) present society? (b) Fostering of  World Constitutionalism?
-	Surprisingly the Greeks and the Romans, highly civilized society could
live with the incompatible concept of slavery. In Sparta euthanasia/murder
of disabled children  was carried out without any remorse. The cultured
India civilisation glorified Sati , self immolation of widows.
-	Surprisingly even today we have modified concepts of slavery, child
labour, child soldiers and so on.
-	Identification of Concepts : People could be invited to identify
concepts needed to foster  a New World Order i.e. World Constitutionalism.
-	Identification of Values : People could be invited to identify values
say five or ten needed for World Constitutionalism as well as request them
to give order of priority.

Document (Invite suggestions)
-	Does the world need a supra national document in order to assure people
of sense of justice?
-	Should the document be just an 
enunciation of principles like Charter of
Human rights containing value content?
-	Should the document contain  a minimum 
international law for survival of
the world as a whole with binding nature?
-	What could be the scheme of the document?


Institutions
-	Should the document be of binding nature with a soft Judiciary, soft
Executive, soft Legislature or with any one or none of them?
-	Can the UN Charter develop into such a 
document with proper reforms or orientation?
-	What should be the components of the document (if any)? Preamble?
Minimum Fundamental right to People of World? Fundamental Right to
Nations? Judiciary? Executive? Legislature?
-	What should be the nature of 
international Institutions under the document?
-	Do any existing International Institutions  have a role in the World
Constitutionalism?. Identify them and give your opinion.

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Methodology
A world constitution could be understood as two ideas coming together:
democracy and openness. Democracy would garantee human rights und openness
means, that there will not be any exclusion.  But openness and democracy
are also a question of aesthetics: The idea of openness and democracy
/emancipation should not only be part of the content, but the form of the
discourse, that we build up, should be open und pointing to emancipation.
So the discourse would not only reflect on a world constitution as it’s
subject and deny on the content-level any exclusion, but the form und
aesthetics of the discourse would follow the corresponding principles.

So what we would need to discuss now, are the principles of communication.
We have selfmade temporary “laws”. For exempel, I would suggest:
1. 
that every mail is adressed to ONE or more NAMED persons and is
written as an e-mail.
2. Everybody can use existing texts, but he must forward and edit them for
the purpose.
3. Our deadline would be the 10.th August. The deadline for the book would
be the 20.th August. Then we have 10 days to edit a final version (every
autor will be named).
4. The design of the text should reflect something concrete: For exampel,
when we have a kind of final dialog, everyone could vote on the different
parts of contribution and the size of the letters would reflect the number
of people which agreed to this text. This is only an idea of the
principle, that the layout has a concrete function.
5. We should start with the constitution of the rules of our discourse on
the World Constitution.


Small text: http://www.kein.org/node/18

Glück zu allen	!
till


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