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The history of the State District Office for Libraries in Bautzen (1928–1946) clearly reflects the regional political events of the first part of the 20th Century. The German Reich possessed with Upper Lusatia an external frontier to Czechoslovakia and an internal frontier to the Wendish area, still today a bilingual area of Lusatia, and was therefore in two senses frontier territory. The official task and personal ambition of the head of the district office, Kurt Marx, was to promote the German language and cultural heritage in the Wendish villages of the district of Bautzen; this aim was of necessity accompanied by the repression of the Wendish language. He ensured that during the Nazi period all Wendish/Sorbian literature was removed from the school and local libraries of Saxon Upper Lusatia, along with all officially banned literature. Marx saw this as an important step in the battle for a German culture, which would only tolerate the Wends, if they declared themselves to be loyal citizens of the German state and its culture. He regarded state education as a means to force Wends to become part of the nation, by which he meant the German nation. He used state funds to build up the libraries and contacts to the state administration with its ‘Wend Department’ to achieve his goal at an official level. As a result, the battle for the German book turned into a battle against Wendish.
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On the face of things, a living Constitution definitely sounds better than its counterpart, a dead Constitution ‐ as William H. Rehnquist playfully puts it, “it would seem that only a necrophile could disagree”. If the question is worth asking a future Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, it surely still deserves to be analysed, especially given the rejuvenation of the debate thanks to the Obergefell v. Hodges case (2015) and the almost simultaneous recent publication of two antagonist studies: Jack Balkin’s Living Originalism (2011) and David Strauss’s The Living Constitution (2010) which, despite both having the word “living” in their titles, offer two current and opposing alternatives on the battlefield of legal interpretation of the Constitution.
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Constitutional change has been the subject of some of the most interesting debates in recent constitutional law scholarship. A distinction has been drawn between formal and informal constitutional changes, by using as a criterion the compliance with the requirements of the constitutional text regarding constitutional change. Usually, informal constitutional change is determined by various factors, among which the lack of clarity or the extreme rigidity of the Constitution. Constitutional Courts are among the authorities who are frequently responsible of making informal constitutional changes. The present article comprises a brief introduction on the differences between formal and informal constitutional changes, as well as the analysis of the Romanian cases of informal constitutional changes.
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The Republic of Moldova, a small country landlocked between Romania to the west and the Ukraine to the east, is arguably the most complex of the fifteen countries born out of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Moldova is a borderland that is deeply divided between Romanian speakers drawn towards the European Union and Russian speakers who continue to feel the tug of old ties to Moscow. While Moldova may be on the path toward European integration, in many ways it is a country stuck in the unresolved problems of a Soviet past, especially with respect to territorial and national integrity. Our research will focus on the devolved region in the Republic of Moldova: Gagauzia. Much scholarship is devoted to study of the de facto state of Transnistria, but the situation in the autonomous region of Gagauzia is no less important. Upon the 20th Anniversary of the Gagauz Autonomy, we will provide an overview of the developments in Gagauzia from the proclamation of the Gagauz Republic and the conflict it generated to the present state of affairs in Gagauz Autonomy. We will then evaluate problems and prospects for devolution in Moldova, identifying some acute issues in Chisinau‐Komrat relations. Onceconsidered a success and a potential model for settlement of other conflicts in post‐ Soviet space, we will consider whether autonomy in Gagauzia has been achieved.
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The democratic transition theory is rapidly expanding. Fed and inspired by the experiences of countries that emerged either from a conflict, or from a reign of dictatorship, this transition theory led to a real juridical process, strengthened by special mechanisms and independent institutions. When revolution happened, Tunisia begun a new phase on transitional process, and confided the key-stages of the democratic process construction, to independent authorities asked to organize and/or to regulate a sector. The audio-visual sector in Tunisia is a strategic one, that’s why it had been a state monopoly. The abolition of the main tools of repression in media sector, created a chaotic situation. The absence of a legal framework favoured the proliferation of private radios and television channels, emitting in total denial of law and regulations. In this fragile context marked by political and security instability, the necessity of setting up a new regulation authority of the audio-visual sector became a necessity, even an emergency. The present situation is feeding a hope of a new constitutional authority strengthened by mechanisms and texts in a progressive elaboration.
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