Rutgers Center for State Constitutional Studies Celebrates First Decade of Developing Constitutions Across Nation, World.
September 26, 2007
CONTACT: Mike Sepanic, Rutgers-Camden communications office, (856) 225-6026, msepanic@camden.rutgers.edu
For Immediate Release
CAMDEN -- What do Myanmar, Brazil, Cyprus, and Russia have in common with New Jersey, Alabama, Colorado, and Pennsylvania?
They share a common resource: the Center for State Constitutional Studies at Rutgers University—Camden, which provides expert research and consultative services to define states’ powers.
Across the United States, many states wrestle with the challenge of updating their constitutions for the 21st century. Around the world, subnational units struggle to define the structure that guarantees law and rights for their citizens.
Since its launch in 1997, the Rutgers-Camden center has served as a resource for the New Jersey state government on property tax reform; advised states such as Alabama, California, Colorado, Indiana, Montana, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, and Wisconsin on how to update and revise their constitutions; and helped countries like Brazil, South Africa, Cyprus, Spain, Russia, Myanmar, and Mexico understand the importance of the rights and powers of states or subnational units.
The Rutgers-Camden center currently is working with Colorado on matters related to updating that state’s constitution.
“The study of American state constitutions and subnational constitutions is particularly important because these constitutions structure the operation of those governments that most directly impact the lives of ordinary citizens,” says G. Alan Tarr, CSCS director and a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Camden.
“Particularly in ethnically divided societies, subnational constitutions provide an avenue for recognizing the distinctive perspectives of groups that are minorities nationally but majorities within subnational units, thereby providing an opportunity for permitting diversity without courting secession. Also, because American state constitutions have changed dramatically over time, they are a window into understanding how American politics have changed over time.”
The center started 10 years ago as a common interest between two Rutgers University–Camden professors. Today, that organization has both national and international influence.
“There’s an outflow of information but also an inflow of information at the center because, both in the U.S. and abroad, the area of state constitutions hasn’t really been studied that much,” says Robert Williams, associate director of the center and a distinguished professor at the Rutgers School of Law at Camden. “We’re developing a lot of new information, and we able to share it.”
One of the ways the center shares its findings is through State Contusions for the 21st Century, a project funded by the Ford Foundation that brought together scholars, public officials, civil-society groups, and other experts from around the country to create three volumes of information. These volumes provide assistance to those who want to reform state constitutions that are, in some cases in the United States, out of date and hinder rather than help states govern their citizens in the best ways possible.
“The center has helped us and Rutgers establish a reputation as being the place to go when there are issues of constitutional reform and design,” says Tarr. “That’s worked domestically and we’ve been called upon to go abroad to talk about issues of federalism and the division of powers.”
Most recently, Williams and Tarr traveled to the U.S. Virgin Islands to talk to prospective delegates who will write the territory’s constitution. They have given presentations in Italy and Greece in an effort to bring their knowledge to an international audience, and, through the center at Rutgers-Camden, set up the International Association of Subnational Constitutional Law (IASCL).
“Through our travels, we’ve met a lot of new, young scholars interested in this field,” says Williams. “And we hope that in the future we have a multi-day conference in this area to pull all these people together to talk about subnational constitutions.”
The Rutgers-Camden center also has a role in New Jersey’s efforts at property tax reform. “New Jersey has the highest reliance on property taxes in the country, and people have been clamoring for relief, but the legislature could not move on it,” says Williams. “So it was proposed that the state have a constitutional convention and elect people who would be delegates to that convention with the sole purpose of property tax reform.”
The Rutgers-Camden faculty served as advisors on how to make that constitutional convention, called the New Jersey Fiscal Convention, a reality.
Work at the center has influenced Williams’ book, State Constitutional Law: Cases and Materials, now in its fourth edition. “Having the center has helped me get more information to make the book a better. More of what I’m learning can be put into that textbook and transmitted to the students,” says Williams. “Getting out and around on this practical side through the center fuels our academic work. It’s really what academics and teaching ought to be.”
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