Showing papers on "Constitution published in 2010"

Does Europe Need a Constitution

Abstract: In what has become known as the ‘Maastricht II’ debate the call for a European constitution plays a great part. Often it is even expected to provide the solution to Europe's democracy problem. This paper looks at the calls for a constitution and asks how far they are already met by the Treaties and what consequences fully meeting them would have for the Union and the Member States.

Does Europe Need a Constitution? Demos, Telos and the German Maastricht Decision

Abstract: Through a close reading of the Maastricht Decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court Weiler examines critically the so-called No-Demos Thesis according to which the absence of a European Demos precludes democratisation of the Union at the European level and requires the mediation of Member State institutions. He traces the roots of this thesis to Carl Schmitt and argues that it represents a failure of the Court to understand the Union in terms different from the Schmittian strand in German constitutional theory. He claims, inter alia, that the No Demos thesis is premised on an organic understanding of peoplehood deriving from the European Nation-State tradition which conflates nationality and citizenship and can, as a result, conceive of Demos only in statal terms. Weiler first presents an alternative view of the Union and of supranationalism and then offers a non organic view of Demos and argues for a ‘European’ notion of membership in which each individual would belong to multiple demoi defined in different ways.

Canada's Indigenous Constitution

Abstract: Canada's Indigenous Constitution reflects on the nature and sources of law in Canada, beginning with the conviction that the Canadian legal system has helped to engender the high level of wealth and security enjoyed by people across the country. However, longstanding disputes about the origins, legitimacy, and applicability of certain aspects of the legal system have led John Borrows to argue that Canada's constitution is incomplete without a broader acceptance of Indigenous legal traditions. With characteristic richness and eloquence, John Borrows explores legal traditions, the role of governments and courts, and the prospect of a multi-juridical legal culture, all with a view to understanding and improving legal processes in Canada. He discusses the place of individuals, families, and communities in recovering and extending the role of Indigenous law within both Indigenous communities and Canadian society more broadly. This is a major work by one of Canada's leading legal scholars, and an essential companion to Drawing Out Law: A Spirit's Guide.

Legal Framework of the Water Sector in Vietnam

Abstract: Since 1986 and especially during the early 90s, environmental protection has become a constitutional principle in Vietnam as regulated by Articles 17 and 29 of the 1992 Constitution. The first Law on Environmental Protection, passed by the National Assembly on December 27, 1993 created a foundation for environmental legislation becoming an important field in Vietnam’s legal system. In the following, in January 1999, Vietnam enacted its very first Law on Water Resources (No. 08/1998/QH10) aiming to provide a foundational framework for managing the water sector in Vietnam. In recent years, the legislative framework on water resources management has further developed. Important water-related Government decrees, decisions and circulars on the guidance and implementation of the Law on Water Resources have been issued and often amended to meet the requirements of the country’s development, and its international integration. To date, Vietnam’s legislation on the water sector consists of a complex system of legal documents issued by different state agencies. Like in other legal fields, the groundwork of the legislation for the water sector is many-faceted. Though legislation of water sector management in Vietnam has greatly improved during the last decade, it has obviously not yet come to full fruition. Hence, this paper intends to analyze contradictions, gaps and overlaps of the current Law on Water Resources with other related laws/ordinances and secondary regulations that have bared themselves in the implementation process. Furthermore, the main aim of the study is to clarify and determine the need for a new comprehensive Law on Water Resources.

The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought

Abstract: According to a commonplace narrative, the rise of modern political thought in the West resulted from secularization - the exclusion of religious arguments from political discourse. But in this pathbreaking work, Eric Nelson argues that this familiar story is wrong. Instead, he contends, political thought in early-modern Europe became less, not more, secular with time, and it was the Christian encounter with Hebrew sources that provoked this radical transformation. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Christian scholars began to regard the Hebrew Bible as a political constitution designed by God for the children of Israel. Newly available rabbinic materials became authoritative guides to the institutions and practices of the perfect republic. This thinking resulted in a sweeping reorientation of political commitments. In the book's central chapters, Nelson identifies three transformative claims introduced into European political theory by the Hebrew revival: the argument that republics are the only legitimate regimes; the idea that the state should coercively maintain an egalitarian distribution of property; and, the belief that a godly republic would tolerate religious diversity. One major consequence of Nelson's work is that the revolutionary politics of John Milton, James Harrington, and Thomas Hobbes appear in a brand-new light. Nelson demonstrates that central features of modern political thought emerged from an attempt to emulate a constitution designed by God. This paradox, a reminder that while we may live in a secular age, we owe our politics to an age of religious fervor, in turn illuminates fault lines in contemporary political discourse.

Organizing Studies: Publications, Politics and Polemic:

Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between European and North American publication in the organization studies field by means of a political analysis of the constitution of centres and margins. This analysis is rooted in the historical development of business schools and their search for academic status which, in turn, is refracted through the globalization of business schools and the emergence of ranking systems for journals and business schools. The consequences of these developments are critically assessed in terms of their tendency to be exclusionary and conservative to the detriment of intellectual innovation within organization studies.

The Twilight of Constitutionalism

Abstract: INTRODUCTION PART I: CONSTITUTIONALISM AND THE EROSION OF STATEHOOD 1. The Achievement of Constitutionalism and its Prospects in a Changed World 2. Disconnecting Constitutions from Statehood: Is Global Constitutionalism a Viable Concept? 3. What is Constitutionalisation? PART II: THE QUESTION OF EUROPE 4. European Governance: Governing with or without the State? 5. Legitimacy in the Multi-level European Polity 6. Constitutionalism and Representation: European Parliamentarism in the Treaty of Lisbon PART III: CONSTITUTIONALISM WITHOUT DEMOCRACY? 7. More Law, Less Democracy? Democracy and Transnational Constitutionalism 8. On Constitutional Membership 9. Constitutionalism and Democracy in the World Society PART IV: CONSTITUTIONAL LAW AND PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW 10. The Best of Times and the Worst of Times: Between Constitutional Triumphalism and Nostalgia 11. In Defence of 'Constitution' PART V: GLOBAL ADMINISTRATIVE LAW: A VIABLE SUBSTITUTE? 12. Global Administrative Law and the Constitutional Ambition 13. Administration without Sovereignty PART VI: THE EMERGENCE OF SOCIETAL CONSTITUTIONALISM 14. Beyond the Holistic Constitution? 15. The Morphogenesis of Constitutionalism 16. Fragmented Foundations: Societal Constitutionalism beyond the Nation State

The Living Constitution

Abstract: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once remarked that the theory of an evolving, "living" Constitution effectively "rendered the Constitution useless." He wanted a "dead Constitution," he joked, arguing it must be interpreted as the framers originally understood it. In The Living Constitution, leading constitutional scholar David Strauss forcefully argues against the claims of Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork, and other "originalists," explaining in clear, jargon-free English how the Constitution can sensibly evolve, without falling into the anything-goes flexibility caricatured by opponents. The living Constitution is not an out-of-touch liberal theory, Strauss further shows, but a mainstream tradition of American jurisprudence-a common-law approach to the Constitution, rooted in the written document but also based on precedent. Each generation has contributed precedents that guide and confine judicial rulings, yet allow us to meet the demands of today, not force us to follow the commands of the long-dead Founders. Strauss explores how judicial decisions adapted the Constitution's text (and contradicted original intent) to produce some of our most profound accomplishments: the end of racial segregation, the expansion of women's rights, and the freedom of speech. By contrast, originalism suffers from fatal flaws: the impossibility of truly divining original intent, the difficulty of adapting eighteenth-century understandings to the modern world, and the pointlessness of chaining ourselves to decisions made centuries ago. David Strauss is one of our leading authorities on Constitutional law-one with practical knowledge as well, having served as Assistant Solicitor General of the United States and argued eighteen cases before the United States Supreme Court. Now he offers a profound new understanding of how the Constitution can remain vital to life in the twenty-first century.

As bases teóricas da história ambiental

Abstract: The article analyzes the emergence of environmental history as a self-conscious science in the historical and cultural context of the passage of the twentieth to the twenty-first century. He defines environmental history as an open and non-reductive investigation of the interactions between social systems and natural systems over time. Also discussed are the sociological factors and the fundamental epistemological issues present in the constitution of this new historiographical field.

Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788

Abstract: From the distinguished historian of Revolutionary-era America and author of the acclaimed American Scripture comes this fresh and surprising account of a pivotal moment in American history the ratification of the Constitution. When the delegates left the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in September 1787, the new Constitution they had written was no more than a proposal. Elected conventions in at least nine of the thirteen states would have to ratify it before it could take effect. There was reason to doubt whether that would happen. The document we revere today as the foundation of our country s laws, the cornerstone of our legal system, was hotly disputed at the time. Some Americans denounced the Constitution for threatening the liberty that Americans had won at great cost in the Revolutionary War. One group of fiercely patriotic opponents even burned the document in a raucous public demonstration on the Fourth of July. In this splendid new history, Pauline Maier tells the dramatic story of the yearlong battle over ratification that brought such famous founders as Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Jay, and Henry together with less well-known Americans who sometimes eloquently and always passionately expressed their hopes and fears for their new country. Men argued in taverns and coffeehouses; women joined the debate in their parlors; broadsides and newspaper stories advocated various points of view and excoriated others. In small towns and counties across the country people read the document carefully and knew it well. Americans seized the opportunity to play a role in shaping the new nation. Then the ratifying conventions chosen by We the People scrutinized and debated the Constitution clause by clause. Although many books have been written about the Constitutional Convention, this is the first major history of ratification. It draws on a vast new collection of documents and tells the story with masterful attention to detail in a dynamic narrative. Each state s experience was different, and Maier gives each its due even as she focuses on the four critical states of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York, whose approval of the Constitution was crucial to its success. The New Yorker Gilbert Livingston called his participation in the ratification convention the greatest transaction of his life. The hundreds of delegates to the ratifying conventions took their responsibility seriously, and their careful inspection of the Constitution can tell us much today about a document whose meaning continues to be subject to interpretation. Ratification is the story of the founding drama of our nation, superbly told in a history that transports readers back more than two centuries to reveal the convictions and aspirations on which our country was built."

Pachakutik: Indigenous Movements and Electoral Politics in Ecuador

Abstract: Chapter 1: The Politicization of Indigenous Identities Chapter 2: Uprisings Chapter 3: The Emergence of an Electoral Option Chapter 4: The Last Coup of the Twentieth Century Chapter 5: Indians in Power Chapter 6: A Citizens' Revolution Chapter 7: Rewriting the Constitution ... Again Chapter 8: 2009 Elections Chapter 9: Social Movements and Electoral Politics Bibliography

Strangers to the Constitution: Immigrants, Borders, and Fundamental Law

Abstract: Gerald Neuman discusses in historical and contemporary terms the repeated efforts of U.S. insiders to claim the Constitution as their exclusive property and to deny con-stitutional rights to aliens and immigrants - and even citizens if they are outside the nation's borders. Tracing such efforts from the debates over the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 to present-day controversies about illegal aliens and their children, the author argues that no human being subject to the governance of the United States should be a "stranger to the Constitution". Thus, whenever the government asserts its power to impose obligations on individuals, it brings them within the constitutional system and should afford them constitutional rights. In Neuman's view, this mutuality of obligation is the most persuasive approach to extending constitutional rights extraterritorially to all U.S. citizens and to those aliens on whom the United States seeks to impose legal responsibilities. Examining both mutuality and more flexible theories, Neuman defends some constitutional con-straints on immigration and deportation policies and argues that the political rights of aliens need not exclude suffrage. Finally, in regard to whether children born in the United States to illegally present alien parents should be U.S. citizens, he concludes that the Constitution's traditional shield against the emergence of a hereditary caste of "illegals" should be vigilantly preserved.

Putting the “Con” into Constitutions: The Economics of Prison Gangs

Abstract: This paper investigates the internal governance institutions of criminal enterprise by examining the law, economics, and organization of the La Nuestra Familia prison gang. To organize effectively within the confines of penitentiaries, the gang needs to provide a credible commitment for member safety to potential entrants and a means of preventing predation and misconduct within the gang. I analyze the governance structure outlined in the gang's written constitution and show how it solves the collective action problems associated with multilevel criminal enterprises. (JEL D23, K42, L23, P16) The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.

The Catholic Encyclopedia; an International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church

Abstract: authors includes some of the most famous names in religious scholarship in different countries. Among the articles this volume has such major topics as, "Fiction, " "Fire and Fire-gods, " Forgiveness, " "Freethought" with very limited treatment, "Friends, Society of," "Gifts, " "Gnosticism, " "God, " with sixteen writers, "Gospels, " "Grace, " " Graeco-Egyptian Religions, " "Greek Religion, " "Health and Gods of Healing," "Hegel," "Heredity," "Heresy, " "Hero and Hero-gods," "Hinduism," "Holiness," "Hospitality," "Humanism," with very limited treatment, "Human Sacl'ifice. " On the whole, proportion in treatment is better preserved in this than in some of the earlier volumes.

The constitution and the politics of national identity in Spain

Abstract: . The 1978 Spanish Constitution enshrined the recognition of linguistic, cultural, and some degree of ‘national’ pluralism in the country and outlined procedural mechanisms for the creation of regional ‘autonomies’, which has given rise to a de facto asymmetrical federal state. This article begins by analyzing the compromise over issues of national identity embedded in the Constitution and the process by which this was forged. It highlights the articulation among political forces of contending conceptions of national identity and different projects for reorganising the territorial structure within and/or against the Spanish state. It also describes the social bases of support for the respective projects. Next, the article examines recent challenges to the parameters of the constitutional compromise. It shows that citizens' support for the basic parameters of the 1978 compromise remains high and has even become stronger. It emphasises that the preferences of the general public stand in sharp contrast with the preferences of influential sections of the Basque and Catalan regional political establishment, and it concludes that current challenges to the constitutional compromise are driven by political elites.

Religion, State, and Democracy: Analyzing Two Dimensions of Church-State Arrangements

Abstract: One of the essential characteristics of a democratic regime is the separation of Church and state. The elected governors of a democratic regime's institutions require sufficient autonomy in order to make policy that is within the bounds of the constitution and which cannot be contested or overruled by non-elected religious leaders or institutions. However, this requirement is often confused by scholars and politicians to mean that a democracy must also be secular. Therefore, the idea of an “Islamic democracy” for example, is often derided as a contradiction in terms. Using quantitative data from Grim and Finke (2006) and Fox (2006) on cross-national Church and state relationships, this article argues that once the core autonomy prerequisite has been fulfilled, further separation of Church and state is not necessarily associated with higher levels of democracy. In fact, the data indicate that there is a wide range of Church-state arrangements which gives religion the possibility of a central role in political life while maintaining a high quality of democratic rights and freedoms. Drawing on the statistical results of this analysis, the article concludes by rethinking about the possibilities and limits for “public” religion to strengthen democratization processes.

What is a Political Constitution

Abstract: The question - what is a political constitution? - might seem, at first blush, fairly innocuous. At one level, the idea of a political constitution seems fairly well settled, at least insofar as most political constitutionalists subscribe to a similar set of commitments, arguments and assumptions. At a second, more reflective level, however, there remains some doubt whether a political constitution purports to be a descriptive or normative account of a real world constitution, such as Britain’s. By exploring the idea of a political constitution as differently articulated by J.A.G. Griffith, Adam Tomkins and Richard Bellamy, this essay explores why the normativity of a political constitution may be indistinct and ill-defined, and how compelling reasons for this indistinctness and ill-definition are to be found in the very idea of a political constitution itself. A political constitution is here conceived as a ‘model’ which supplies an explanatory framework within which to make sense of our constitutional self-understandings. The discipline of thinking in terms of a model opens up a critical space wherein there need not be some stark, all-encompassing choice between constitutional models, which, in turn, allows for more subtle understandings of Britain’s constitution as neither exclusively ‘political’ nor ‘legal.’

Constitutionalism, Legal Pluralism, and International Regimes

Abstract: The international legal order, although pluralist in structure, is in the process of being constitutionalized. This article supports this claim in several different ways. In the Part I, I argue that most accepted understandings of “constitution” would readily apply to at least some international regimes. In Part II, I discuss different notions of “constitutional pluralism,” and demonstrate that legal pluralism is not necessarily antithetical to constitutionalism. In fact, one finds a great deal of constitutional pluralism within national legal orders in Europe. Part III puts forward an argument that the European Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization are constitutional jurisdictions. In the Conclusion, I respond what I take to be the most important objections to these claims.

Written and Unwritten Constitutions: A New Approach to the Study of Constitutional Government in China:

Abstract: Criticizing the formalism in China’s constitutional studies over the past 30 years and following an empirical-historical perspective to deal with the dilemma of representation and practice, the author argues that both a written constitution and an unwritten constitution are basic features of any constitutional system, and China’s constitutional order can only be understood if China’s unwritten constitution is taken into account. Selecting four important constitutional issues (the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the National People’s Congress; the position of state chairman and the trinity system of rule; the relationship between the center and localities; and the constitutional structure of “one country two systems”), the author explores four sources of China’s unwritten constitution—the party’s constitution, constitutional conventions, constitutional doctrine, and constitutional statutes—and calls for taking into account China’s unique political tradition and reality to enrich curren...

Contemporary Japan: History, Politics, and Social Change since the 1980s

Abstract: Map vii Series Editor s Preface viii Acknowledgments x Part I Introduction 1 1 Transformations After World War II 3 2 The Lost Decade 23 Part II Risk and Consequences 39 3 Defusing the Demographic Time Bomb 41 4 Families at Risk 60 5 Jobs at Risk 77 Part III Politics and Consequences 93 6 Contemporary Politics 95 7 Security and the Peace Constitution 115 8 Immigration 136 9 War Memory and Responsibility 154 Part IV Environment and Disaster 175 10 Environmental Issues 177 11 3/11: Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Crisis 198 Part V Institutions at Risk 221 12 The Imperial Family 223 13 Yakuza 241 Part VI Postscript 261 14 Prospects 263 Glossary 270 Notes 278 Further Reading 293 Index 302

Civilian Praetorianism and Military Shirking During Constitutional Crises in Latin America

Abstract: Civilian Praetorianism and Military Shirking During Constitutional Crises in Latin America David Pion-Berlin and Harold Trinkunas Since the end of the Cold War, an elected civilian leader in Latin America is more likely to be displaced from office prior to the end of his constitutional term by mass mobiliza- tion than by a military coup. As Arturo Valenzuela has observed, thirteen of the fifteen nonconstitutional transfers of power in the region between 1990 and 2004 have been the result of civilian coups rather than military actions. 1 This phenomenon has occurred in Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador, while attempts in Peru and Venezuela have failed. Civilian coups are not confined only to Latin America; they have occurred in the Philippines, where “people power” displaced both dictators and elected presidents; in Ukraine with the “Orange” Revolution; and in Georgia with the “Rose” Revolution. In each case, a civilian elected leader was ejected from power by the mass action of civilian, rather than military, sectors of society. This article focuses on military responses (or the lack thereof) to mass protests against elected governments during moments of constitutional crisis in democratic states. These crises occur when opposition forces decide that merely changing gov- ernment policy is not enough; that what is required is a change in government itself. This may involve violent or nonviolent mechanisms, but the universe of cases ex- amined here is delimited by the opposition’s goals—changing governments outside the normal democratic processes established by the constitution rather than altering government policy. The cases draw on the Latin American experience with democra- tization both because the third wave of democracy struck the region earlier than most and because states in the region have had a long experience with military intervention in politics. At first glance what appears to have changed about contemporary politics in Latin America is the unusual lack of military intervention in moments of social contestation that might have produced a coup d’etat in previous eras. Samuel Huntington once argued that in praetorian societies, students riot, workers strike, and militaries coup. 2 The absence of military protagonism amidst social upheaval could certainly be viewed positively, as a confirmation of increasing civilian control over the armed forces in many new democracies. However, security forces play an important role in these civilian versus civilian contests. They make decisions about whether to support or withhold support from elected leaders. In nine of the thirteen cases examined from Latin America since 1990, militaries have refused presidential orders to intervene against civilian opposition forces during such crises and instead have remained quartered. 3 In a more

Self-Enforcing Consititutions: With an Application to Democratic Stability in America's First Century

Abstract: Most students of constitutions focus on normative questions or study the effects of particular constitutional provisions. This paper falls into a third and much smaller tradition that attempts to study what makes some constitutions more likely to survive. This paper develops a theory of self-enforcing constitutions and then applies it to the early United States. But for the issue of slavery, constitutional democracy in the United States was self-enforcing by about 1800. Nonetheless, crises over slavery threatened the nation on numerous occasions. The Civil War decisively ended slavery as a source of political division, allowing self-enforcing democracy (for white males) to reemerge following the Compromise of 1877.

The Constitution of the Roman Republic: A Political Economy Perspective

Abstract: The constitution of the Roman Republic featured a system of checks and balances that would eventually influence the American founders, yet it had very different characteristics from the system of separation of powers that the founders created. The Roman senate gave advice but did not legislate; the people voted directly on bills and appointments in popular assemblies; and a group of magistrates, led by a pair of consuls, proposed bills, brought prosecutions, served as judges, led military forces, and performed other governmental functions. This paper analyzes the Roman constitution from the perspective of agency theory, and argues that the extensive checks and balances, which were intended to prevent the recurrence of monarchy, may have gone too far. Suitable for an earlier period in which the population was small and the political class was homogeneous, the constitution proved unworkable when Rome acquired a vast, diverse empire. The lessons of Roman constitutionalism for the American constitution are also discussed.

Ahead of the game: land tenure reform in Rwanda and the process of securing women's land rights

Abstract: The Rwandan Constitution of 2003, the National Land Policy of 2004 and the Organic Land Law of 2005 all contain clear provisions which add up to a mandate for gender equality in land rights and set out a context in which all land shall be registered and rights gained under different means of access to land shall be considered equal. The Rwandan Succession Law of 1999 had already established the principle of equal inheritance rights to land for men and women. Articles from these four core documents together comprise the new body of land policy and law in Rwanda which is currently in the process of being implemented. This paper argues that an iterative approach to planning for the implementation of land tenure reform in Rwanda over a long period of research and consultations, including field consultations and subsequent “trial interventions”, and involving both government and civil society, has enabled the issue of how to secure women's land rights to be more fully considered within the overall lan...

The Political Form of the Constitution: The Separation of Powers, Rights and Representative Democracy

Abstract: According to article 16 of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, 'A society where rights are not secured or the separation of powers established has no constitution at all' Together with representative government, which to a large extent was assimilated to the second, these two principles have defined constitutionalism In recent years however, the first has come to predominate This article suggests an alternative story I shall argue that both historically and substantively liberal rights-based constitutionalism must be located within a more republican conception of the constitution as a system of politics’ I begin by analysing the main features and problems of the doctrine of the separation of powers, and its relationship to rights and the rule of law I then survey the historical development of the theory I note how it was first combined with organic theories of mixed government and the balancing of powers within the body politic, and then transformed by the view of political societies as a popular construct and incorporated within representative democracy

Out of Africa: Accounting for refugee policy and the language of causal attribution

Abstract: The words of political elites have the potential to play a significant role in the constitution and proliferation of racist discourse, especially when this discourse has the nuanced linguistic char...

2 women's rights in the middle east and north africa

Abstract: ★rights. The French mandate authorities, in agreement with the Lebanese authorities, included equal civil and political rights for all Lebanese citizens in the 1926 constitution. However, the election law did not give women the right to vote, prompting new protests by women’s rights activists. With the emergence of the campaign for independence from the French mandate, women’s suffrage lost its importance on the national front. In stead, women joined with men in organizing and taking part in demonstrations for independence across the country. After the independence was fi nally achieved in 1943, sectarian discord kept the women’s movement from regaining its previous momentum. It was not until 1953 that the Lebanese Women’s Council was offi cially established, and all Lebanese women received the right to vote and run in elections as candidates. 1 This achievement did not result in women’s representation in the parliament until the early 1990s, apart from one exception in 1963. 2 The women’s movement was also derailed by the 1975–90 civil war, as activists shifted their focus to social and relief services, helping to fithe gap left by the shattered state. The movement was revived after the war, and newly created women’s networks began to concentrate their efforts on the reform of discriminatory laws. Lebanon ratifi ed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1997. The following year, the government formed the National Com mission for Lebanese Women (NCLW) to oversee the implementation of the goals of CEDAW and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, and to develop national strategies and programs for the empowerment of women. 3 The end of the Syrian occupation was precipitated by the February 2005 assassination of Rafi c Hariri, who had overseen Lebanon’s reconstruction while serving as prime minister for most of the postwar period.