Constitutional Movement Research Articles

The Bakhtiyari Tribes in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution

I n June 1909, eight hundred Bakhtiyari horsemen (sawars) rode from their summer pastures in the Zagros Mountains toward Tehran to restore the Majlis (Parliament), and defend the constitutional movement in Iran. By early July, a twelve-hundred-man Bakhtiyari cavalry with one mountain gun had gathered at Rubat Karim, just southwest of Tehran, and planned to join nationalist mujahideen fromGilan and the Caucasus at the Karaj River. The Bakhtiyari and the nationalist mujahideen entered Tehran on 12 July from the hills north of the city through the Bahjatabad Gate and then moved to make their headquarters at Baharistan, the site of the old Parliament bombarded by the forces of Muhammad ‘Ali Shah during the coup of 1908. By 16 July, the number of Bakhtiyari tribesmen in Tehran had swelled to nearly two thousand, forcing the shah’s Russian-led Cossack Brigade to surrender and compelling the sovereign to seek refuge in the Russian Legation. As the event unfolded, it appeared that under the banner of constitutionalism (mashrutiyat), the Bakhtiyari were poised to become the next tribal dynasty of Iran. As supporters of the constitutional cause, the Bakhtiyari tribes were fondly portrayed in the revolutionary press as “the protectors of the nation” (hami-yi millat) from Qajar rule and European imperialism. An article in the 5 July 1909 edition of the revolutionary newspaper Habl al-Matin (Firm Rope) beckoned the tribes to come to Iran’s aid: “Oh lucky Bakhtiyari, oh persevering Qashqa’i, oh brave Shahsavan, oh Pushtikuhian, oh Kalhurian—rise up (‘barkhizid’). Unite for Islam and the nation. Put aside your differences and drive away the foreigners from the sanctuary. Don’t stand content while your country’s independence is blown

Social Democratic Ideas during the Constitutionalist Movement in Iran: Development and Role of Secret Societies

Social Democratic Ideas during the Constitutionalist Movement in Iran: Development and Role of Secret Societies

La jurisdicción constitucional y las posibilidades de concretización de los derechos fundamentales sociales

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Ulster opposition to Catholic emancipation, 1828–9

The centre stage of early nineteenth-century Irish politics has long been held by Daniel O’Connell and the Catholic Association. This may be justifiable, as O’Connell created a mass constitutional movement for liberal reform out of a Catholic, peasant population on the fringe of Europe. Less justifiable is the single perspective that sees the struggle for Catholic emancipation as Catholic Ireland’s battle with the British establishment. In 1828 and 1829 there was also a massive Protestant political campaign in Ireland. This centred on the new Brunswick Clubs and Ulster. Yet anti-Catholic and Ulster politics merit few sentences in narratives of these years. Indeed, there is a general neglect of Ulster politics in the first half of the nineteenth century. Presbyterianism, the evangelical revival, Catholicism, sectarian conflict, the Orange Order, the Irish Yeomanry, the economy and the growth of Belfast as a city have all received detailed treatment, but the nuances of politics remain vague. The Catholic Association appears to have reduced Ulster’s importance in shaping political developments in the island as a whole from its high-water mark of the 1790s. This does not, however, justify simply leaving Ulster out of the story. This article aims to look at the Ulster anti-emancipation campaign and to correct the skewed picture of Ireland in these years.

The Turkish Pendulum between Globalization and Security: From the Late Ottoman Era to the 1930s

The primary goal of this article is to understand the historical dynamics which led in Turkey to the emergence of a pendulum between liberalization/ globalization at the time perceived as integration with the modern and popular west, in particular, Europe and national security, seen as the preservation of the Ottoman lands against both external (ironically the large European powers and Russia) and internal enemies (internal in the sense of those nations and ethnic groups which aspired to be independent of Ottoman rule and which were, again ironically, open therefore to the manipulation of the external enemies). To understand these dynamics requires two main missions. First, by looking into the political liberalization initiatives of the late Ottoman era (seen in the most general sense as those attempts to share political power with the Sultan) and their relation with the tremendous public concern over the empire's security, the article explores the genealogy and formation as well as the overwhelmingly shared perception of a dichotomous relationship between security and liberalization.' Second, by carrying out a detailed analysis of the two attempts to introduce multi-party politics during the republican era, I try to show how the previously identified dichotomy between liberalization and security developed into a 'national security syndrome', through which the democratic liberalization process would be systematically administered, managed and, ultimately, contained. It can be argued that the Ottoman state was, by and large, a garrison state, in which the waging of war was one of the main factors behind its construction and resulting structure.2 At a time in history when the rule of the day was conquest, power, alliances and geopolitics, the Ottoman state was a true example of a geopolitical state/empire. This primacy of geopolitics made the Ottoman state a largely centralized and highly hierarchical power apparatus at the hands of the sultans, and for the most part, security issues were able to be handled quite efficiently.

The Role of Constitutional Courts in the Transition to Democracy

The transition to democracy has been the matrix of three generations of European constitutional courts. Their power to review laws in abstracto has been the basis of the activism of these courts and their self-conscious relationship with the legislature. The third generation, the post-Communist constitutional courts, are distinguished by the fact that they were born into the global constitutional movement, which has determined their rapid reception of international standards and legal solutions and strong mutual cooperation. The article focuses on the inevitable problems of such transition - retroactive criminal legislation, lustration and compensation of victims - elucidating the grounds of the decision by the Hungarian Constitutional Court to weigh legal certainty against substantive justice. Third-generation constitutional courts typically returned to the Kelsenian model of abstract norm control but developed cooperation with the legislature, and turned their role of `negative legislator' into pronouncing positive rules, especially in Hungary. The Hungarian Constitutional Court has also managed to extend constitutional interpretation to the ordinary courts by reviewing the `living law', that is the law as applied by the courts. Finally, the article points to the importance of access by citizens to the constitutional court for popular acceptance of the new constitutional order.

Essay: Postnationalism, (Dis)organised civil society and Democracy in the European Union: Is Constitutionalism Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem?

The idea of a European constitution has been a constant refrain in academic and political discourse on European integration, and has recently gathered considerable momentum due to the intervention of politicians and the media and its explicit institutional recognition in the Laeken Declaration on the Future of the European Union. If much of the debate is characterised, tainted even, with a top-down logic of legal-constitutional engineering - a logic which arguably flows from the elitist political roots and philosophy of the project itself - there is nevertheless a growing tendency to examine the theoretical alternatives through which a more open and inclusive constitutional process might be understood. There is considerable irony in an endeavour to ‘democratise’ a postnational polity through a constitutional settlement, brought out when the theoretical underpinnings of the constitutional movement are laid bare, and the alternatives to a hierarchical or legocentric understanding of constitutionalism's reach are examined. The purpose of this paper is to suggest some of the possible pitfalls in a constitutionalist position fixated on a hierarchical or federal arrangement, and highlight some theoretical alternatives which appear accommodating, even demanding, of a more bottom-up approach and conducive to a radical inclusion of civil society, both organised and disorganised, in the structures of constitutional construction and negotiation.

Seeking Modernity in the United States, 1900-1927 (review)

Reviewed by: Seeking Modernity in the United States, 1900-1927 Huping Ling (bio) Weili Ye. Seeking Modernity in the United States, 1900-1927. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. xii, 330 pp. Hardcover $49.50, ISBN 0-8047-3696-0. Since Yung Wing, the first Chinese male student to graduate from an American University (Yale, in 1854), the flow of Chinese students studying in the United States has never ceased. Following a brief interruption during the Cultural Revolution, the study-abroad movement reached a new high in 1979, after the normalization of relations between the People's Republic of China and the United States, which resulted in the largest wave of students coming to America from China. The increasing visibility of Chinese students in America has attracted the attention of scholars, many of whom are themselves Chinese who came here as students and who have since chosen the topic of Chinese students in the United States for their doctoral dissertations. Weili Ye's "Crossing the Cultures: The Experience of Chinese Students in the U.S.A. 1900-1925" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1989) and Jesse Chain Chou's "A Survey of Chinese Students in the United States, 1979-1987" (Ed.D. diss., Columbia University Teachers College, 1989), for [End Page 588] instance, are two good examples of a number of dissertations on Chinese students in the United States. Ye's Seeking Modernity in the United States, 1900-1927, based on her earlier dissertation work, is an important addition to the scholarship on this topic, after, for instance, Rose Hum Lee's "The Stranded Chinese in the United States" (Phylon, Summer 1958), Y. C. Wang's Chinese Intellectuals and the West, 1872-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966), and Leo A. Orleans' Chinese Students in America: Politics, Issues, and Numbers (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1988). Ye's book is divided into six topical chapters. Chapter ., "Student Associational Life and Chinese Nationalism," briefly discusses the establishment of Chinese student organizations—giving special attention to the Chinese Students' Alliance, the largest and most influential of all the Chinese student organizations in the United States at the time—and how they relate to the search by Chinese students for a modern identity. Initially, there was great enthusiasm among the members of these student organizations; however, this gradually faded as they became "disheartened spectators" at the failure of the constitutional movement in China to bring about constitutional government (p. 40). Chapter 2, "The Professionals: Predicaments and Promises," examines the professional lives of students and the contributions they made to China's modernization. In line with China's eager pursuit of industrialization, most Chinese students looked to the promise of technology, majoring in subjects such as engineering, the result being the education of the first generation of modern Chinese professionals. Meanwhile, American-educated sociologists also established sociology as an academic discipline in China. Chapter 3, "The Question of Race," deals with that issue in relation to Chinese students. It is noteworthy that the author here attempts to interweave the story of Chinese students into the complex fabric of Chinese immigration to the United States in general. There are unfortunate elitist overtones, however, in its treatment of Chinese laborers. Chapter 4, "The Women's Story, 1880s-1920s," discusses Chinese female students, whom Ye divides into three distinct generational groups. The first group consisted of only a tiny band of women studying to become doctors; the second largely entered the field of teaching; and the third broadened their career outlook to include professional fields traditionally perceived as "masculine." Ye's inclusion of female students in this study indicates her sensitivity to the importance of gender and how it affected the lives of the students. Chapter 5, "Between Morality and Romance," looks at the emotional world of the students. The issues of gender relationships, love, sexuality, and interracial marriage are examined in the context of the conflict between Chinese concepts of morality and Western attitudes toward romance. [End Page 589] Chapter 6, "The Seriousness of Recreation," examines two extracurricular activities of Chinese students: athletics and theater. Participation in sports, Ye believes, served to help Chinese students develop an appreciation for physical...

Expectations From The Last Ottoman Parliament As To Istanbul Press

In Ottoman Empire, the declaration of the Constituon in1876 is accepted as the beginning of Ist Mesrutiyet. During the period of Ist Mesrutiyet, the Assembly could have been active only for five months and then it was suppended by the decision of Abdulhamit the 2 nd . With the decleration of 2nd Mesrutiyet (1908) Assembly days begin again. From that date until 1920 Ottoman Assembly had continued its works in spite of some deduction. The last Ottoman Assembly had been active between January 12 nd 1920 and April 11 th 1920. The Assembly had taken some important decisions in spite of that short period. The most important of them is the acceptance and decleration of Misâk-i Milli (National Pact of 1920). And also this Assembly is the last Constitutional movement in Ottoman state and providing to cause a new state is rather important. As a result with the closing of the last Assembly of Ottoman State, T.B.M.M will take its place and the new state which is going to be established will be formed by this Assembly.

V ANESSA M ARTIN , Creating an Islamic State: Khomeini and the Making of a New Iran (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2000). Pp. 263.

Vanessa Martin's second book begins like an intellectual challenge and mostly succeeds in giving an original and sophisticated view of Ayatollah Khomeini's political thought. Her previous field of study, the history of clerical militancy in the Constitutional Movement, resulted in a brilliant book entitled, Islam and Modernism: The Iranian Revolution of 1906 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1989). A common query seems to characterize the two works: how have the Islamic theologians managed to adapt their political beliefs to modernity?

When Good Lockeans Go Bad: Common Law Courts, the Classical Liberal Tradition, and Resistance to the Modern Administrative State

This article describes and analyzes the ideology of the "constitutionalist" movement, a form of contemporary right-wing extremism, as a contemporary folk appropriation of classical liberal thought combined with the American tradition of frontier individualism. The constitutionalist movement has resulted from the conflict of that individualism with the growth of an administrative state. Constitutionalists use a variety of pseudo-legal forms to "exit" from what they view as a corrupted republic, and convene "common law courts" to judge those they view as responsible for the Constitution's demise. Constitutionalists often use Lockean language, describing the current government as having declared war on the people and arguing that they are not bound by legal requirements to which they have not themselves consented. While embraced only by a small group at the fringes of American politics, constitutionalists' ideology, and the pseudo-legal mechanisms they use to absent themselves from the social contract, demonstrates the incompatibility of social contract theory and radical individualism.

The Revolution of 1908 in Turkey

This is a book version of Kansu's doctoral thesis, in which his objective"was to show [the political] transformation [in the beginning of thecentury]-however elusive- by re-telling the political history of modemTurkey in a radically different fashion" (p. ix). He states that this radicalapproach is based on an '"historical' viewpoint [which is) opposed to a'political' one"(p. ix).In order to show his radical re-telling of the political transformation of theOttoman Empire in the beginning of the previous century, the bookcommences with a critical but analytical and enjoyable chapter on Turkishhistoriography by making special emphasis on the interpretation of theRevolution of 1908. In doing so, Kansu summarises the attitudes of theTurkish academics and intellectuals towards the interpretation of recentTurkish history. This in tum is an attempt to clarify his ideological standas regards the Kemalist revolution of 1923 and the Young Turks.The first concept the reader encounters with the first chapter is'Revolution'. For Kansu the year 1908 is the most crucial year in modemTurkish history, "because a new era opens before the Turkish socialformation through a genuine revolutionary movement. 1908 is thebeginning of the establishment -for the first time in modem Turkishhistory- a constitutional monarchical form of government whichlegitimates itself on the presence of a representative parliament to which itis totally responsible" (p. l). It has to be stated that while the "genuinerevolutionary character" of the constitutional movement is open to question,Ottomans had the first parliamentary political structure not in 1908 butin 1876, albeit it lived only a short while due to Abdulhamid H's politicalambitions and, one has to accept, it was not as strong as the 1908experience in its representation. However, Kansu claims that it was the ...

The Qajar era in the mirror of time

When I was in college (1937-41, that is the second decade of the Pahlavi era), the study of Qajar history was far less fashionable than that of earlier periods of Persian history. The earlier periods were thought of as the time frames for the political, military, or cultural achievements that one could feel good about, or else the temporal receptacles of calamities and defeats one could lament. The Qajar period, however, was not distant enough to command “historical” respectability. As might be expected in the aftermath of a fallen dynasty, the names of the Qajar kings were too much tainted by allegations of backwardness, ineptitude, corruption, and abuse of royal power to inspire sufficient interest. Social sciences had not yet made adequate headway in Persia to encourage the recording and analysis of contemporary events. Pioneers in researching Qajar history, like Abbas Eqbal, were few, and those who occupied themselves with it focused mainly on selected events of particular import, such as Persian defeats in the Perso-Russian wars, the reforms of Amir Kabir and his execution, Anglo-Russian intervention in Persian affairs, the Tobacco Régie and the Constitutional movement.

The left in Iran: illusion and disillusion

The Left has never held power in Iran, has never come close to holding power, even for a brief historical moment. Yet its impact on the political and intellectual history of the country has been profound. From the constitutional period, through the oil nationalization crisis, to the Islamic revolution, leftist forces have played a significant and even, as Maziar Behrooz remarks, sometimes a determining role.' Their influence, in both organizational and ideological terms, on the evolution of Islamist trends, including on Khumayni himself, is clear. The leftist forces in Iran have been, furthermore, historically among the most advanced in the nonEuropean world. At the very beginning of the twentieth century socialdemocratic ideas made rapid headway, first among Iranians in emigration in the Caucasus of the late Russian Empire and then in Iran itself. In 1920 local communists joined with the Jangali movement to produce in Gilan the first declaration of a Soviet republic in the Middle East while, in prerevolutionary 1978, working-class action was decisive, the wave of economic and political strikes which swept the country between June and December of that year constituting a phenomenon rare, if not unique, in the experience of the Middle East. The proximity of Iran to the Soviet Union has always been a crucial component in these developments. Contact with the Russian socialdemocratic milieu provided inspiration during the constitutional years while radicals on the left wing of the constitutional movement, such as the poet Abulqasim Lahuti, received their first education in Marxism from the soldiers' committees set up within the disintegrating Tsarist armies in Iran in 1917. The impetus given to the left in Iran was organizational as well as ideological. It was under the umbrella of Soviet power that the Tudeh made such great strides in the 1940s. Yet for the Iranian left the power of their Soviet neighbour was a double-edged sword. The Tudeh discovered, as communist parties elsewhere had already found to their cost, that it was all too easy for the fraternal solidarity of the CPSU to slip into a menacing quasi-imperial domination and the interests of the Iranian communist movement to become identified with the needs of the Soviet state.

The Life and Times of Pancho Villa

The Life and Times of Pancho Villa

Parallel Struggles: Irish Republicanism in the American South, 1798–1876

PARALLEL STRUGGLES: IRISH REPUBLICANISM IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH, 1798–1876* DAVID T. GLEESON What is that in your hand? It is a branch. Of what? Of the Tree of Liberty. Where did it first grow? In America. Where does it bloom? In France. Where did the seeds fall? In Ireland.1 as this often cited password of the United Irishmen suggests, Ireland’s first republicans believed that there was a connection between their own revolutionary struggle and those taking place in other countries. Similarly, the efforts of later generations to break the connection between Britain and Ireland also seemed to depend upon extraterritorial aid, particularly from the United States. The sheer number of Irish immigrants in nineteenth -century America and their growing prosperity were vital to republican plans. Historians have recently begun to examine the impact that Irish republicanism had upon America, but they have not examined the subject in a regional context to any great degree. Just as we are learning that IrishIRISH REPUBLICANISM IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH, 1798–1876 97 * Research for this article was partially funded by grants from the O’Shaughnessy Irish Research Fund of the Irish American Cultural Institute and the Snellgrove Fund of the Department of History at Mississippi State University. 1 Quoted in Kevin Whelan, The Tree of Liberty: Radicalism, Catholicism, and the Construction of Irish Identity, 1760–1830 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), 57. American economic and political life varied in regional terms, so too did Irish republicanism.2 In particular, the Irish in the antebellum American South did not seem to fit the traditional stereotype that historians have constructed of Irish republicans generally in America.3 While many of them embraced republicanism because they wished for revenge against British misrule in Ireland, a far greater number embraced it because it helped them to integrate more easily into southern society. I United Irish exiles in Jeffersonian America had an immediate affinity with their fellow republicans. Their belief in the universal tenets of republicanism helped them to adapt rapidly to the tumult of American politics. The political views that they espoused allowed them to maintain an interest in removing Britain’s dominance of Ireland without any fear of being considered “un-American.”4 However, what might be called “classical” Irish republicanism declined sharply after 1798, and in its place there arose a more Anglophobic nationalism that made it increasingly difficult for Irish refugees to assimilate. The millions who immigrated to America between 1815 and the beginning of the Civil War, and especially those who arrived in the wake of the great famine of the late 1840s, carried with them a “psychological legacy” of British oppression. To all intents and purposes they became cultural “exiles” in the United States, exiles who leaned heavily upon that familiar crutch of the republican faith: the desire to sepIRISH REPUBLICANISM IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH, 1798–1876 98 2 David N. Doyle, “The Regional Bibliography of Irish America, 1830–1930: A Review and Addendum,” Irish Historical Studies 23 (May 1983), 254–83; Dennis Clark, Hibernia America : The Irish and Regional Cultures (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986). 3 In this paper the South is defined as the eleven states that officially joined the Confederacy in 1861. “Republican” is used here not just for immigrants who were active in the various republican movements but also for those who harbored similar views. Therefore, many Irish southerners, although they supported constitutional movements, could be justifiably defined as republican. 4 Nancy J. Curtin, The United Irishmen: Popular Politics in Ulster and Dublin, 1791–1798 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 282, states: “Early Irish republicanism bore little resemblance to its later separatist reincarnations” and “cannot be dismissed simply as separatist and anti-English.” Whelan also recognizes the uniquely eighteenth-century Enlightenment characteristics of the United Irishmen. David A. Wilson’s United Irishmen, United States: Immigrant Radicals in the Early Republic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 177, sees more of a continuity between the various incarnations of Irish republicanism in America but believes that United Irishmen assimilated well into American politics and were able “to bolster the country’s sense of mission, its belief that it was the political, social...

Iranian intellectuals in the 20th century

Since the middle of the nineteenth century, Iranian intellectuals have been preoccupied by issues of political and social reform, Iran's relation with the modern West, and autocracy, or arbitrary rule. Drawing from a close reading of a broad array of primary sources, this book offers a thematic account of the Iranian intelligentsia from the Constitutional movement of 1905 to the post-1979 revolution. Ali Gheissari shows how in Iran, as in many other countries, intellectuals have been the prime mediators between the forces of tradition and modernity and have contributed significantly to the formation of the modern Iranian self image.His analysis of intellectuals' response to a number of fundamental questions, such as nationalism, identity, and the relation between Islam and modern politics, sheds new light on the factors that led to the Iranian Revolution - the twentieth century's first major departure from Western political ideals - and helps explain the complexities surrounding the reception of Western ideologies in the Middle East.

Seyyed Jamal Vaez and the Aljamal newspaper in Iran

It is usually the intellectuals who first become aware of or develop novel ideas and hence acquire a desire for social change. In order to transmit their new perceptions and desire for change to the masses, they develop a sense of mission to communicate their vision effectively to the public. To mount a social movement these change-oriented intellectuals must either adapt the existing media of public communication to their purpose or adopt suitable new ones. The aim of this article is to discuss the development of the media during the constitutional movement in Iran. Between 1905 and 1911 there was a series of protests against internal corruption, misgovernment and foreign influence, which led to the establishment of a constitutional system of government.1 Informing, agitating and guiding the public was an integral part of the movement. Contact with the West played an important part in the awakening of the constitutional leaders. The ideas of democracy and equality before the law had come from the West. After recognizing the need to arouse the people, some liberal intellectuals sought the assistance of the preachers who were trained to deliver homilies and sermons from the pulpit and in some cases were themselves liberal and pro-Western. Others tried the newspaper, a recent innovation that had come from the West. Our guiding hypothesis for the examination of both the Islamic pulpit and the newspapers during the constitutional movement in Iran is that during a social movement, the need for public communication increases. We intend to examine the adaptation that some intellectuals brought about in an existing medium of public communication, the Islamic pulpit, in response to this need. We want to know in what ways the pulpit changed as a communication medium during the constitutional movement, and how effectively it performed its function in informing, agitating and guiding the public. Further, we would like to investigate briefly the relationship between the pulpit and the new medium, the newspaper. Did the pulpit facilitate the emergence and the acceptance of the newspaper? To provide specific issues and concrete illustrations for our discussion, we concentrate on one well-known preacher of the constitutional period and a newspaper that emerged from his pronouncements from the pulpit.

The Factional Function of Print: Liang Qichao, Shibao , and the Fissures in the Late Qing Reform Movement

��� Shibao (The Eastern Times), the Shanghai daily which would become the most influential reform organ of its day, was one of the seventeen newspapers created or actively supported by Liang Qichao throughout his career as a publicist.1 Its history began by dictate from the group of reformists exiled to Tokyo after the 1898 coup. In the early spring of 1904, Kang Youwei instructed Di Baoxian and Luo Xiaogao, who were both living in Japan, to return to Shanghai and prepare for the establishment of the new daily.2 In April of that year, Liang Qichao risked visiting Shanghai in order to guide these preparations. Forced to remain under cover, he changed his name and took up residence on the third floor of the Japanese Tigers' Den hotel in the Hongkou Section of the city. During his approximately three week stay, Liang acted as Kang Youwei's emissary in laying the groundwork for the establishment of Shibao, meeting frequently with Di, who was to become the newspaper's future publisher, and Luo, who was to serve as general editor. It was Liang who chose the newspaper's name, wrote the Inaugural Statement for its first edition, and outlined its general regulations.3 Kang and Liang's role in founding Shibao, combined with the historicgraphical tendancy to view reform elites in this period as part of a single monolithic force, has led to the characterization of Shibao as either the propaganda organ of the exiled reformists, or as the mouthpiece of the constitutional movement.4 These representations fail, however, to reflect the complexity of the newspaper's network of affiliations, the distinctiveness of its own political positions, and the fissures that existed in the late Qing reform movement.

Three Recent Decisions of the Yemeni Supreme Court

DESPITE A RICH history, beginning with the Ottoman constitutional movement in the latter part of the nineteenth century and that of Qajar Iran at the beginning of the twentieth, Middle Eastern constitutions have a propensity to turn into dead letters. Unless and until constitutional watchdogs begin to protect the rights of citizens and subjects in a manner compatible with the generous display of constitutional liberties and entitlements in the supreme texts, the rule of constitutional law will be constrained by the needs of contemporary decision-makers. The absence of constitutional protection results from the combined legacy of historical pressures (which, in the twentieth century, undermined the liberal experience) and the noted absence of any influence of the American legal tradition. Whether in the British tradition of parliamentary sovereignty or in the French tradition of a supreme Civil Code, the colonial experiment in the Middle East left behind as its legacy a judiciary that was powerless to assess the legality of a statute in terms of the supreme law of the land. Constitutions, where they exist, serve to regulate the operation of non-judicial institutions and are important only to the extent of providing a general scheme of executive and legislative power, as well as offering a measure of legitimacy in times of crisis. During the last decade, disparate and seemingly unrelated factors have converged to remove the constitutional texts from their ivory towers of ineffectiveness in various Middle Eastern countries, and new independent judicial bodies have been entrusted with the responsibility of protecting and implementing the previously innocuous fundamental texts. Two Middle Eastern countries have established independent judicial bodies with constitutional competence. The first, and most successful, is the Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court (al-mahkama aldustariyya al-'ulya), introduced by the Constitution of 1971 and effectively established in 1980. At nearly the same time, the Iranian Constitution of 1979 stipulated that all legislation must be in conformity with Islamic law and with the Constitution and created a Council of