1 the Unnecessary Referendum: Popular Sovereignty in The
The Unnecessary Referendum: Popular Sovereignty in the Constitutional Interregnum Richard Stacey October 2017 v.2 We are the Egyptian people, sovereigns in a sovereign homeland. This is our will and this is the Constitution of our revolution. Preamble to the Constitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt, 2014 We, the people of Kenya … adopt, enact and give this Constitution to ourselves and to our future generations. Preamble to the Constitution of Kenya, 2010 We, the people of South Africa … adopt this Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic. Preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 We, the representatives of the Tunisian people, members of the National Constituent Assembly … in the name of the Tunisian people, with the help of God, draft this Constitution. Preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of Tunisia, 2014 We the People of the United States … do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Preamble to the US Constitution, 1787 I Introduction The relationship between constitutions and popular sovereignty is a close one, at least textually. Many of the world’s constitutions make the preambular claim to having been adopted and enacted by the people themselves in an exercise of sovereign self-government. The constitution claims to be the voice of the people and, the people having spoken, is the authoritative statement of sovereign power and popular will in the nation.1 And once in place, the constitution is 1 Stephen Tierney, ‘Constitutional Referendums: A Theoretical Inquiry’ (2009) 72(3) Modern Law Review 360, at 365-66; Stephen Tierney, Constitutional Referendums (Oxford, Oxford University Press 2012), at 133; Stephen Gardbaum, ‘Revolutionary Constitutionalism’ (2017) 15 International Journal of Constitutional Law 173, at 182; Martin Loughlin, The Idea of Public Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), at 84; Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Edwin Curley (ed) (Indianapolis and Cambridge, Mass: Hackett, 1994), ch XVII at para 13; ch XVIII at paras 6-7.
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