MEXICO CITY – The cool kids. The usual suspects. The ones everyone knows about. That’s how a law professor wryly describes the constitutions of South Africa, Canada and other countries commonly discussed as blueprints for democracy when a nation, like Chile this year, drafts a new one. “Everybody looks at foreign examples; it’s a question of degree.
Constitutions are pretty formulaic,” said the professor, David Law of the University of Hong Kong. Law, who studies constitutions around the world, said in an email: ″There’s a lot of peer emulation going on.” On April 11, Chileans elect an assembly to write fresh governing principles and put them to a national vote in 2022.