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About the Working Paper Series:
This series of working papers is a response to the imperative for targeted expertise in support of constitution building in the wake of the Arab Spring. As one of the primary international institutions supporting constitution building in the Middle East and North Africa region, International IDEA commissioned leading international experts to produce research papers on specific issues of constitutional design that will need to be addressed by states in the region seeking more democratic institutional frameworks. International IDEA, together with Constitutional Transitions, has brought these papers together in this Working Paper Series.
Tunisian Constitutional Reform and Fundamental Rights: Reactions to the Draft Constitution of the Republic of Tunisia
By Jörg Fedtke
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Abstract:
This paper presents an analysis of the fundamental rights set out in the three drafts of the Constitution of the Republic of Tunisia, as made public in August 2012, December 2012, and April 2013. The paper raises a number of general issues relevant to the protection of fundamental rights, provides reactions to a number of specific rights as contained in the April 2013 draft Constitution, and considers the mechanisms proposed in the April 2013 draft Constitution for the protection of rights, including judicial review and the creation of a Constitutional Court, the Independent Media Authority, and the National Authority for Human Rights. The analysis closely follows the text of the April 2013 draft Constitution itself.
Jörg Fedtke
Jörg Fedtke is A.N. Yiannopoulos Professor in Comparative Law at the Tulane University Law School. He is General Editor (with Sir Basil Markesinis) of the book series The University of Texas Studies in Foreign and Transnational Law (Routledge, London and New York 2006-), is the co-editor of Human Rights and the Private Sphere – A Comparative Analysis (Routledge, London 2007, with Dawn Oliver), and the author of “The Judge as Comparatist” (2005) 80 Tulane Law Review 11 (with Sir Basil Markesinis) and “Constitutional Transplants – Returning to the Garden”, (2008) 61 Current Legal Problems 49. Within the framework of the “Democratisation Assistance Programme” of the German Foreign Office, Professor Fedtke has provided expert advice on questions of constitutionalism to members of the Iraqi National Assembly and, in the context of the United Nations Development Programme, for the Office of Constitutional Support (OCS) of the United Nations Mission for Iraq.