[rohrpost] Toward a World Constitutionalism

[Till Nikolaus von Heiseler]

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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