Transformative Constitutions and Constitutionalism : A New Theory and School of Jurisprudence from the Global South?

The article seeks to interrogate, historicize, and problematize what transformative constitutions and their attendant constitutionalism/jurisprudence are. Some of the critical elements of transformative constitutions are analyzed as well as the development of the jurisprudence that is emerging from these constitutions. In the quest for an answer to the question posed, which is the title of the article, Kenya is used as a case-study. Kenya has had a transformative constitution since it was promulgated on 27 August 2010. Its core elements/pillars of transformation are highlighted in this article. Kenya’s experience with the implementation of this Constitution, particularly with regard to the development of jurisprudence to reflect the objectives and vision of the Constitution will assist in answering the question examined in the article. The question itself is of interest to both the Global South and Global North in the ongoing process of reverse learning.1 The analysis is therefore linked to the global context in the quest for political transformation of which the making of constitutions is an integral part

Ethnic Party Bans in East Africa from a Comparative Perspective

Since 1990 the banning of ethnic and other identity-based parties has become the norm in sub-Saharan Africa. This article focuses on Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda as three East African countries that have opted for different ways of dealing with such parties. Using case studies, it traces the origins of the party bans in Tanzania and Uganda and explores the reasons for the absence of a ban in Kenya. The analysis shows that the laws on particularistic parties have actually been implemented by the appropriate institutions. However, these laws have only marginally influenced the character of the political parties in the three countries: A comparison of regional voting patterns suggests that bans on particularistic parties have not ensured the emergence of aggregative parties with a national following in Tanzania and Uganda. In Kenya on the other hand, where such a ban was nonexistent until 2008, parties have not proven to be more regional.Das Verbot ethnischer und anderer identitätsbasierter politischer Parteien ist seit Beginn der 1990er Jahre im subsaharischen Afrika zur Norm geworden. Der vorliegende Aufsatz analysiert drei ostafrikanische Länder, die verschiedene Wege im Umgang mit partikularistischen Parteien eingeschlagen haben und untersucht, warum Tansania und Uganda ein Parteienverbot eingeführt haben, Kenia jedoch nicht. Die Untersuchung macht zudem deutlich, dass die zuständigen Institutionen die Gesetze zwar anwenden, dies jedoch nicht zu nationalen Parteien führt: Eine Analyse der Wahlergebnisse auf subnationaler Ebene zeigt, dass insbesondere Oppositionsparteien oft regionale Hochburgen aber keine landesweite Unterstützung haben. Politische Parteien in Kenia sind dabei trotz divergierender Parteiregulierung nicht deutlich weniger national als Parteien in Tansania und Uganda

Reflections on the Disability, Culture, and Human Rights Workshop

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Speech by Chief Justice & President, Supreme Court Republic of Kenya

A Speech by the Chief Justice & President, Supreme Court ,Republic of Kenya Dr. Willy Mutunga during the VC Inauguration ceremony at USIU-Africa on April 7th 2016Friends of Kenya and Fellow Kenyans Ladies and Gentlemen I have known Professor Paul Tiyambe Zeleza since 1979 when I was a law lecturer at the University of Nairobi and he was doing his PhD research there. Later he joined Kenyatta University. Afterwards we used to meet in Canada when I was doing my doctorate at York University in Toronto and he was teaching at Trent University in Peterborough, an hour’s drive away. After he moved to the United States, we would meet whenever he visited Nairobi. What has always struck me about Professor Zeleza is his passion for Africa, for Pan-Africanism, for Africa’s progressive transformation. He has been a keen commentator and participant in struggles for the construction of democratic developmental states in his native Malawi and across Africa as well as the enduring struggles of African diasporas for civil rights. These passions are reflected in his research and scholarship, which has always been animated by his insatiable compulsion to interrogate what the great Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui called the African condition

Finance Capital and the So-Called National Bourgeoisie in Kenya

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Human Rights States and Societies: A Reflection From Kenya

A human rights state is conceptualized as a liberal democratic state with a social democratic content, the modern day version of the capitalist welfare state. With the “collapses” of communism and neoliberalism, the paradigms of human rights and social justice have taken a center state. The birth of transformative constitutions and transformative constitutionalism linked to modern and comprehensive Bills of Rights have enriched the intellectual, ideological, and political debates of human rights and social justice paradigms. On one hand they have the ingredients of mitigating neo-liberalism while on the other hand they reflect some of the features of the paradigms that critique neoliberalism. Social democracy has thus become the basis of the search for a liberating paradigm in the context of the global order. In this article the conceptualization of human rights state, currently under-theorized, is undertaken. Kenyan transformative Constitution and its development of transformative constitutionalism is the practical case study in this inquiry. The theoretical and practical approach adopted in the article remains politically plausible to the interrogation of the critical contemporary question, namely, whether the paradigms of human rights and social justice can be the basis of fundamental restructuring of societies in the Global South

Transformative Constitutions and Constitutionalism : A New Theory and School of Jurisprudence from the Global South?

The article seeks to interrogate, historicize, and problematize what transformative constitutions and their attendant constitutionalism/jurisprudence are. Some of the critical elements of transformative constitutions are analyzed as well as the development of the jurisprudence that is emerging from these constitutions. In the quest for an answer to the question posed, which is the title of the article, Kenya is used as a case-study. Kenya has had a transformative constitution since it was promulgated on 27 August 2010. Its core elements/pillars of transformation are highlighted in this article. Kenya’s experience with the implementation of this Constitution, particularly with regard to the development of jurisprudence to reflect the objectives and vision of the Constitution will assist in answering the question examined in the article. The question itself is of interest to both the Global South and Global North in the ongoing process of reverse learning.1 The analysis is therefore linked to the global context in the quest for political transformation of which the making of constitutions is an integral part

Commercial Law and Development in Kenya

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