Constitutionalism and the Challenge of Ethnic Diversityi

Yash Ghai1
Argument
This chapter examines how traditional notions of constitutionalism are challenged by
the rise of ethnic identity in numerous parts of the globe. In their origin, the rule of
law and constitutionalism, closely connected, paid little attention to diversities among
the people of the state. They were based on the assumption of the homogeneity of the
people, in part by the exclusion of specific communities, religious or ethnic, from
rights and participation in public life. After the Westphalian settlement, political and
legal concepts, developed under the sovereignty of the state, reflected the essential
principles of the modern state. Gradually the concept of citizenship, based on the
rights and duties of the individual, became central to membership in the political
community constituted by the state. With growth of the notion of human rights and
democracy, members of excluded communities were given the right to citizenship.
This did not imply the political incorporation of these communities, as such; instead
citizenship became a means towards their assimilation in the wider political
community.
From the eighteenth century onwards, as the political map of Europe came to be re-
drawn, the homogeneity of the people (defined by their cultural, particularly
linguistic, affiliation) became the basis of the creation of new states. Congruence
between a cultural community and the boundaries of the state became the major
principle of the re-organization of states (“nation-state”). This approach was justified
on the grounds of the preservation of both culture and democracy, and subsequently
social welfare (arguing that redistribution of resources implicit in welfare programs
was possible only if there is social solidarity, dependent on a common history and
culture). The rise of ethnic consciousness and its political mobilization (for which
phenomenon I use the term “ethnicity”) has challenged many of these assumptions,
including the concept of a homogenous people. I examine reasons for the rise of
ethnicity, the form its challenge has taken, and the implications for the rule of law and
constitutionalism. Ethnicity presents its claims as imperatives of identity. Under its
impact, some key principles and components of the liberal state (which came to
personify the rule of law and constitutionalism in its “highest” form) have been
critically examined and are being re-defined: sovereignty as vested in the entire
people as a collectivity and manifested in the centralization of the state; common
citizenship with equal rights and obligations; equality; uniformity of law and legal
institutions; majoritarian democracy; the nature of rights; and the distinction between
the public and the private.

Constitutionalism
There is a close connection between constitutionalism and the rule of law. Both are
premised on the importance of limits on the power of the state, with law as the

1
Emeritus Professor, University of Hong Kong. I would like to acknowledge with thanks the
Distinguished Researcher Award which has facilitated my research for this paper.

Reprinted by permission of Yash Ghai and the American Bar Association.

 principal means of defining and ensuring the limits. Charles Howard McIwain said
that “in all its successive phases, constitutionalism has one essential quality: it is a
legal limitation on government; it is the anti-thesis of arbitrary rule; its opposite is
despotic government, the government of will instead of law”2. The rise of the notion
of limits on power can be traced to disputes about the prerogatives of the monarch; in
England at least the limitations were introduced through decisions of courts. The
democratic element of constitutionalism came later, with the end of royal rule, and the
supremacy of parliament. Courts, which were in the forefront of the struggle for the
limitation of state power, were now subordinated to parliament (in terms of
jurisdiction and the degree of the scrutiny of the executive)—justified by the
democratic imperative. For a while the courts tried to introduce limitations by
invoking the common law3, but could not long resist the superiority of legislation.
Subsequently parliamentary sovereignty itself came to be seen as a threat to the rule
of law.
However, in most countries, which adopted formal constitutions, led by the US and
France, the powers of the legislature were also limited; the constitution, not
parliament, was supreme, establishing close connections between constitutionalism
and the rule of law. Both were concerned with the limits on state power, but unlike the
origins of the rule of law, constitutionalism also emphasized the political mandate and
accountability of the government, which placed a greater responsibility, and
importance, on the legislature. In fact increasingly the constitution became the
foundations of the state, the social contract among the people—even though the
constitution often did little more than reflect the balance of social and economic
forces in society4. The constitution became an act of deliberation, not necessarily
organic growth—a notion which marked earlier understandings of a constitution—
“that assemblage of laws, institutions and customs, derived from certain fixed
principles of reason, directed to certain fixed objects of public good, that compose the
general system, according to which the community hath agreed to be governed”5. As I
shall argue later, the role of the constitution, and the process of making it, in
contemporary multi-ethnic states is fundamentally different; nation building is as
important, if not more, than state building6.

2
C H McIlwain, Constitutionalism: Ancient and Modern (Ithaca, NY: Great Seal Books, 1947) p. 21-
22.
3
McIlwain says that for some early ‘liberal conservatives, the safeguarding of necessary liberties
seems to have implied the preservation intact of the customary law in its entirety. Sir Edward Coke
appeared to have thought nothing less than the whole body of English common law must be kept
inviolate if the liberty of the subject was to be protected against arbitrary rule; he saw the common law
as ‘fundamental law’ (p. 12, op. cit).
4
Soon after the Philadelphia Constitution, Thomas Paine said that a constitution ‘is to liberty, what a
grammar is to language’ and a government without a constitution is ‘power without right’ (quoted in
McIlwain, op. cit, p. 2.
5
This is a major theme of McIlwain’s book, and informs much of the criticism of modern
constitutional approaches by James Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in An age of
Diversity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
6
For the changing functions of constitutions, see Yash Ghai, ‘A Journey Around Constitutions:
Reflections on Contemporary Constitutions’ 122:4 (2005) South African Law Journal, pp. 804-31.

Reprinted by permission of Yash Ghai and the American Bar Association.

 Frequently commentators have seen a contradiction between the rule of law and
democracy7. Democracy as the will of the people and their rulers, tended towards the
expansion of state power, and was seen to threaten the rule of law. The notion of
people’s power implied restrictions on the jurisdiction of judges, so as not to subvert
its sovereignty. The rule of law began to be seen as a conservative ideology, blocking
social and economic reform.
Various attempts have been made to bridge the gap between democracy and the rule
of law, particularly by the common acceptance of the centrality of human rights. The
concept of the rule of law has been broadened, from absolute fidelity to any law, to
the notion of just law made through the democratic process. The rule of law now also
focuses on institutional arrangements of the state, including the separation of powers,
and the franchise. This broader concern first appeared in the Delhi Declaration on the
Rule of Law in the 1950s (and is now extensively elaborated in the American Bar
Association Index on the Rule of Law). On the other hand, the notion of democracy
became more substantive than procedural, emphasizing the rights of citizens and the
protection of minorities.
Traditionally neither the rule of law nor constitutionalism paid much heed to ethnic
differences. The states in which constitutionalism arose did not acknowledge this kind
of diversity. The Virginia Declaration of the Rights of Man ignored not only women,
but also slaves and aboriginal people; as did the Philadelphia Convention (where
slaves were acknowledged only in determining the size of representation of states in
the Senate, for which they did not themselves vote—and were deemed as the property
of others). The French revolution was explicitly about developing a common national
identity; and Shakespeare’s dramas played their role in the formation of English
nationalism. The political reorganization of Europe after each major war increasingly
took the form of the “nation state”, determined primarily by linguistic homogeneity.
Elsewhere “national” languages displaced “local dialectics”. The King’s religion
became the religion of the region (until, after the scourge of centuries of religious
wars, secularism was discovered as the remedy to peace). There were many advocates
of the “nation state” (like John Stuart Mills), but the high priest was undoubtedly the
German philosopher, Herder. He invoked the authority of God in his revelation that
“best political arrangements obtain when each nation forms a state of its own”. He
also described as “unnatural” states in which there is more than one nation; “they
become oppressive and doomed to decay”. Another of his memorable statements is
that “Only one language is implanted in an individual, only to one does he belong
entirely, no matter how many he learns subsequently”. Consequently he drew the
conclusion that “A group which is a nation will cease to be one if it is not constituted
into a state”. 8
This framework of constitutionalism is now under threat from the rise of identity
politics, which forces us to re-examine the foundations of constitutionalism as we
have understood the term, including the relationship between territory and political

7
For recent perspectives, see Jose Maria Maravall and Adam Prezeworski (eds), Democracy and the
Rule of Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
8
I have taken Herder’s quotes from Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (New York: Frederick A. Praeger,
1960).

Reprinted by permission of Yash Ghai and the American Bar Association.

 power, and to explore its relevance in an increasingly multi-ethnic and multi-cultural
world.

Foundations of constitutionalism
Constitutionalism is based on the notion of a supreme law which governs the
jurisdiction and powers of state institutions and determines the limits and mode of
their exercise. In England this supreme law was effectively created and enforced by
the courts, defining the restrictions on kingly powers, in the face of countervailing
authority and doctrines of the royal prerogative (and confirmed by the Glorious
Revolution). In many other places it is the constitution which established the supreme
law (the US and France). An understanding of certain principles, rules and procedures
developed around the concept of the rule of law associated with the supremacy of the
law: the importance of law (written or otherwise) and its non-retrospectivity
especially as regards criminal liability, the independence of the judiciary, certain
presumptions (like that of the innocence of the accused), open trials, and access to
lawyers and courts. Courts became central to making law and maintaining its
supremacy; some of the most distinguished names and heroes of the movement, at
least in its home, England, were lawyers and judges (Glanvill, Bracton, Coke,
Mansfield).
The focus of much legal activity was the powers and privileges of the executive in the
form of the monarchy. Subsequently attention shifted to the law making process,
particularly the powers of the legislature which began to monopolize law making.
Limits on the powers of the legislature were most clearly enunciated in the form of
the protection of fundamental rights. In England itself, the supremacy of Parliament
prevented the notion of the supremacy of the constitution. Even to this day there are
doctrinal, although no serious practical, problems with parliamentary supremacy as
the UK joined the EU, granted autonomy to Scotland and adopted the European
Convention on Human Rights. Much of this took place without full attention to
democracy; there were wide restrictions on the right to vote and to stand for elections.
The introduction of democracy introduced new understandings of the responsibilities
of the executive and the legislature, and diminished the importance of the judiciary,
raising key theoretical dilemmas about the relative importance of legality and
democracy. The recognition of the sovereignty of the people to replace the
sovereignty of the monarch (which was used in England to overcome precedents
tending towards supreme monarchical powers) marks the turning point in the rule of
law and constitutionalism. From the more technical aspects of jurisdiction in which
the debate about the rule of law was conducted, fundamental questions of political
representation, franchise, political processes, including accountability, became more
central concerns. Much thought was given to how people’s sovereignty should be
reflected in the state, and limited (e.g., the Madison representative government and
fundamental human rights). The constitutionalization of the emerging principles of
democracy, checks and balances, and in time political relations between classes, came
to the fore (the notion of “people” being more complex than “monarchy”). Questions
of political theory superseded those of legality. In the fullness of time
constitutionalism or the rule of law came to encompass a number of components,
values, institutions and procedures, including criteria for procedure and substance that

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 determined whether a rule purporting to be law would in fact enjoy the status of
binding rule. States in which these principles were central came to be known as liberal
states.
Another dominant influence on the structures of state and the importance of law was
the emerging market principles of organization of the economy. The case in which the
courts questioned the authority of the monarch to grant monopolies of commerce and
trade in restraint of the ability of others to engage in these areas was one of the first
decisions to limit the power of the monarch—and in the typical English way, the
monarch, without conceding the restriction, promised not to grant monopolies by
prerogative. The market requires much more than restriction on monopolies—it
requires clear rules defining the nature and uses of, and transactions, in property, the
framework for, and the sanctity of, contracts, and guarantees of state enforcement of
agreements made by private parties (and yet limiting the direct role of the state in the
economy). Underlying the development of the infrastructure of constitutionalism has
been the imperative of the market, not seriously challenged until the rise of the
welfare state, which infused new values in our understanding of the rule of law.
The liberal vision of a multi-ethnic society is that of tolerance and pluralism, and in
which all cultures may flourish and members of minorities may freely pursue their
goals. An extensive bill of rights, concentrating on civil and political rights, is central
to this protective framework, guaranteeing various rights, such as the right to
association, the freedom of expression, the use of languages, the freedom of
conscience, protections of due process, freedom from discrimination and torture, etc.
The liberal state achieves these goals by relegating a large sector of life and society to
the private domain, the scope of which is expansively defined, in part by the
protections of rights and the definition of the polity (and its ultimate goal of individual
freedom). In the civil or private domain, communities may organize their own social,
religious, educational and economic life. They may converse with others in their own
language, and may cultivate cultural and social links with members of their own
ethnic or kin communities in other lands, such as through vernacular newspapers,
visits and other exchanges. At the same time they are protected from the imposition of
the norms, culture, institutions, and symbols of the majority communities. Thus a
sharp distinction between the public and private, which underlies the liberal state, is
essential to the protection of minorities.
This self-image of the liberal society has come under considerable criticism, in recent
years, by those who argue that it does not respond to the circumstances of a multi-
ethnic society. Bhikhu Parekh, for example, describes various institutional and
structural features of the modern state which in his view impose uniformity and
ignore diversity. The organizing principle is state sovereignty, which justifies the
centralization of power and displaces local and group sites of power. This sovereignty
operates on a territorial basis, with hard boundaries. Rules for the exercise of this
sovereignty are biased towards majoritarianism, stifling the voices of minorities 9.
People relate to the state through the concept of citizenship, based rigidly on equal
rights and obligations of all persons, premised on loyalty to the state, and

9
Bhikhu Parekh , “Cultural Diversity and the Modern State” in Martin Doornbos and Sudipta Kaviraj
(eds), Dynamics of State Formation (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997).

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 acknowledging no distinctions of culture or tradition. Citizens have rights but these
are rights of individuals, based on an abstract and uniform view of the human person.
The state operates through the medium of the law, but it is the law created by the
state, rather than pre-existing bodies of customs or local law. The state favours the
uniformity of structures and seeks to achieve the homogenization of culture and
ideology, propagating them as universal values. The domain of the state is the public
space, with an ever-shrinking area of private space, which alone allows some
expression of cultural diversity.
Another critic, James Tully, writes that the modern constitution, based on the
assumption of a homogenous culture, was designed to exclude or assimilate other
cultures and thus deny diversity10. Noting different communities or groups who are
seeking constitutional recognition of their cultural or social specificity—immigrants,
women, indigenous peoples, religious or linguistic minorities—he concludes that
what they seek is participation in existing institutions of the dominant society, but in
ways that recognise and affirm, rather than denigrate, exclude, and assimilate their
culturally diverse ways of thinking, speaking, and acting. They share a longing for
self-rule: to rule themselves in accordance with their customs and ways11. Symmetries
of power, institutions, and laws which define the modern state are inconsistent with
the diversity of forms of self-government that Tully considers necessary for a just
order in multi-ethnic states. Such a constitution should be “a form of accommodation”
of cultural diversity, of inter-cultural dialogue in which the culturally diverse
sovereign citizens of contemporary societies negotiate agreements on their forms of
association over time12.

The nature of ethnicity

I use the term ethnicity to refer to a situation when a community goes beyond a mere
consciousness of what binds the community together (such as language, religion,
race) and what distinguishes it from other communities, to claims that these
differences are politically significant, constitute the community as a “people” or
“nation” which is entitled to special recognition as such. The process of the rise of
political consciousness is not dissimilar to that of the stimulation and promotion of
“nationalism”, which in earlier periods formed the basis of the “nation state”. It
generally begins with intellectuals or persons with political ambitions, who begin to
give symbolic, emotional and material significance to their differences from other
communities in the state (cementing internal cohesion and distancing from others
communities). This therefore involves the presence of some objective factors like
language or religion, but which increasingly take on a symbolic or political meaning.
This subjective factor can rise from a consciousness of discrimination against or
social or economic exclusion of the community, a re-discovery of history when the
community existed as a political entity, and increasingly of demands and insurgencies
happening in other places.

10
Tully, op.cit., p.58.
11
James Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism n an Age of Diversity (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995) p.4
12
Tully, op.cit., p.30

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 The political claims that it makes vary from a constitutional or legal recognition of
some aspects of its culture (such as relations within the family or dispute settlement
mechanisms), special measures to improve its social and economic situation, inclusion
through representation, and state support for its religion or culture. Sometimes
(especially when their claims are denied) there is progression from modest to the
more substantial demands, including a fundamental re-design of the state or even
secession (arguing that only through this radical reform can its legitimate demands be
met). Increasingly these claims are justified by reference to international norms of
human rights.
There are a number of reasons why in recent decades there has been such a resurgence
of ethnicity, such a ready response to those who would mobilize on the basis of ethnic
differences. There are many multi-ethnic states now. Unlike the policy of “self-
determination” which led to the establishment of “nation states” in empires
vanquished in wars in Europe in 19th and 20th centuries, in Asia and Africa the
territorial principle took priority over the cultural, except in the prominent case of
India—a partition which led to terrible carnage and massive transfers of people,
which event may have dissuaded the international community from the
cultural/linguistic basis of the de-colonised state. States that have customarily thought
of their populations as distinctively singular, particularly in the West, have become
diverse. Globalisation has intensified inter-state transfers of peoples, as has the
suppression of some communities in their homelands. In many states that emerged out
of the dissolution of states after the Second World War, the diversity produced severe
political conflicts.
The presence of diverse people does not necessarily lead to ethnicity. A distinguished
Indian political scientist, Rajni Kothari, has argued that rise of ethnicity is due to the
consequences of the centralization and monopolization of the state (comparing the
modern state to pre-colonial polities in Asia which did not aim at centralization of all
authority, recognized diverse communities with their religion and customary
practices, and whose borders were porous)13. The growth of market relations and
globalization led to the marginalization, and subsequently disrupting the cohesion, of
communities, causing insecurities produced by economic changes over which they
have no control. This also affects the nature of ethnic consciousness, turning it from a
positive and inclusive form to negativity, exclusion and violence.

In the West, it is more fashionable to talk of the resurgence of ethnicity in terms of the
imperatives of identity, based on Kant’s emphasis on the autonomy of the individual
(particularly the work of Charles Taylor14 and Will Kymlicka15). The antecedents of
this approach can be traced to the influential work of the anthropologist, Clifford
Geertz, who argued that ethnicity flows from “primordial” affiliations in the context

13
In an article now re-printed in Rajni Kothari, Rethinking Development: In Search of Humane
Alternatives (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1988) as “Ethnicity”.
14
This paper relies largely on his contribution, “The Politics of Recognition” in the anthology edited
by Amy Gutman, Multiculturalism (Princeton: Princeton University, 1994)
15
This paper relies principally on his first, important book, Liberalism, Community and Culture
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) and several subsequent articles.

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 of a state. Primordial links were based on what he called “givens”, the accidents of
birth in a community, to which one may be connected by ties of religion, language,
descent, history. “These congruities of blood, speech, custom and so on, are seen to
have an ineffable, and at times overpowering coerciveness in and of themselves”. In
new states, these primordial attachments are particularly strong and are in frequent
tension with the affiliation with and expectation from the state—and deeply
destabiliziling16
Charles Taylor defines identity as “a person’s understanding of who they are, of their
fundamental characteristics as a human being”. Identity is achieved through a
person’s search for their inner soul. At another point, he says, “There is a certain way
of being that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in this way…If am not true
[to myself], I miss the point of my life” (p. 30). According to Taylor, this
consciousness of the uniqueness of one’s identity is the result of the breakdown of
social hierarchies, which had defined our roles and gave us the understanding of our
place in society. But with democracy and the re-ordering of society, our identity
comes from self-reflection and contemplation. Identity has become essential to the
sense of our own dignity, as an attribute of our being human. Thus dignity is closely
related to equality. And equality in turn depends on recognition by others, in the form
of demands for the equal status of cultures and gender.
Although identity understood in this sense is an intensely personal affair, achieving a
satisfactory understanding of oneself and one’s potential, and of orienting oneself,
depends on our contacts with others. Kymlicka says that our orientation, the way we
negotiate values and makes choices, comes from our membership of a cultural
community. Thus in their different ways, Taylor and Kymlicka place the individual
securely within a cultural context, and interactions within a community. In an earlier
period, Herder and other German philosophers had claimed uniqueness for these
communities, a unique, historically, even ethnically derived identity for each
community, the nation. Thus Kant’s emphasis on individual autonomy was given firm
roots in the community. The politics of recognition, in public and private spheres, has
become central to our quest for just political and social orders.
Although there is now wide acceptance of the recognition of identity, and its corollary
of social and cultural diversity, there are acute controversies about the nature of
identity and the forms of its recognition17. If in the West identity is a matter of
psychic satisfaction, in Asia, identity politics are important as a means to resources,
although just as in the West material benefits are not irrelevant, in Asia pride in one’s
community is also an important factor (although Taylor’s explanation of the
importance of individual identity due to the disappearance of social hierarchy, does
not apply equally in Asia). Identity is more a matter of political mobilization than a
precise delineation of a community’s characteristics or beliefs. Ethnicity has become a
way of dealing and bargaining with the state. Because electoral politics and

16
Clifford Geertz, “The Integrative revolution” in C. Geertz (ed.), Old Societies and New States (New
York: Free Press, 1963).
17
See the critiques of Amartya Sen (Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (London: Allen
Lane, 2006)) and Anthony Appiah, “Identity, Authencity, Survival: Multicultural Societies and Social
Reproduction’ in Amy Gutman (ed.), Multiculturalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994))

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 government interventions respond to ethnic pressures, economic issues are
transformed into issues of cultural survival. For example, in most cases, ethnic
fighting is not about religion, but about jobs; religion is used as a pretext, emptying
religion of its sacred and ritual aspects.
A community’s entitlements may depend on how it and others perceive it. A self-
conscious ethnic group can place itself in different categories, deriving from political
science or legal discourse—it can be a cultural, religious or linguistic group, or it can
be a minority, or a nation, or a “people” or “indigenous peoples”. Each of these
categories is associated with a specific set of claims—participation, representation,
recognition of language, religion, education, land, autonomy, etc. How does one
establish a claim to one or the other category? They are in part derived from political
theory or practice, such as a “nation”, with a clear notion of the right to self-
determination, including separatism or secession, or a minority or indigenous peoples,
which derives more from legal norms or rules (e.g., article 27 of the ICCPR, or the
Declaration on the Rights of Minorities, or the ILO Conventions on Indigenous
Peoples). Perhaps the most significant of these are the concept of “nation” and
“indigenous peoples” as they carry a large or high set of entitlements. To this extent a
community’s self-definition is determined or at least influenced by international
political or legal norms, and sometimes the characterization or classification under
national law (as in Spain).
Minorities have an interest in bringing themselves under the category of “people”, for
in this case they are entitled to self-determination. Although the political
understanding of self-determination is still associated with the “nation state” (and has
political resonances as such), its contemporary legal meaning is for the most part
restricted to the internal organization of the state, and the right of all citizens and
communities to participate in decisions on that organization, including the drafting of
the constitution. The right of minorities to participate in public affairs and in state
institutions as well as to enjoy their culture now ranks high in the lexicon of self-
determination. This much is clear from the way the UN Human Rights Committee has
interpreted article 1 of the two covenants and linked it to article 25 (“public
participation”) and article 27 (“minorities”) of the Covenant on Social, Economic and
Cultural Rights. Self-determination in this sense has become the framework for
negotiations between the state and insurgents, denied the option of independence by
internal and external forces.

Constitutionalism for Diversity

The critical claims of ethnic groups concern the orientation and structure of the state.
We have already noted critiques of the liberal state (embedded in the philosophy of
the rule of law) as failing to meet these claims. There is now a wide variety of
principles and institutions that seek to accommodate ethnicity. The recognition of
ethnicity as a politically relevant category yields different results, paradoxically a
“neutral”, “liberal”, secular state (in an attempt to be fair to all groups), a federal type
solution where each group has significant autonomy, a corporate autonomy based
state (Belgium), or perversely, a state which privileges one ethnicity over others
(Israel, apartheid South Africa, and Fiji). “Schizophrenia” is also possible: torn

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 between the liberal and the cultural or ethnic; a state with the formal features of a
liberal state but the practices of ethnic hegemony.
For present purposes, two distinct approaches are identified. One seeks to respond to
the concerns of minorities within a broadly traditional liberal framework, avoiding the
political recognition of communities, but providing electoral and other incentives for
different communities to work together. This approach, relying on rights of individual
citizenship, and seeking political integration, can be accommodated within traditional
understandings of constitutionalism and the rule of law. The other major approach
(which is the focus of this chapter) proceeds from the political recognition of
communities, and their participation in the affairs of the state. Individual citizenship is
combined with rights of communities, producing a complex set of relationships
regarding entitlements. There is a particular emphasis on power sharing as well as
autonomy of communities, and proportionate share in state institutions.

There are clear implications for the design of the state for diversity following from
this last approach. The traditional notion of state sovereignty that tends towards its
centralization needs to be revised, perhaps through a notion of sovereignty shared by
communities and regions, as for example in federalism. The “nation state” theory with
its exclusive cultural underpinnings must give way to the concept of a multi-cultural
or multi-national state in which all cultures will be equally respected (and diversity of
regimes of personal and family laws will be applied in place of a unified code). The
excessive emphasis on human rights as (a) individual rights and (b) civil and political
rights has to be balanced by group rights and economic and social rights (the latter
being especially important to minorities who tend to be socially and economically
disadvantaged). Democracy has to be re-conceptualized, moving away from the
majoritarian model, as a compact not so much between citizens as between
communities. New forms of representation and electoral systems must be established.
More participatory and collaborative forms of the exercise of power must be devised.
Citizenship itself has to be re-conceptualized, establishing legal links not only to the
state but to communities.

Some of these developments may require the re-consideration of the distinction

between private and public spheres—ethnicity pushes into the public domain what has
largely been seen, at least in modern state forms, as belonging to the private domain.
This results in part from the emergence of human rights which recognize private
rights in the public sphere, and because of the demands for public recognition of
communities with their relationships and practices. Yet at another level, communities
(which may not have a distinction between the public and private such as Hinduism
and Islam) get more control over community affairs, what might otherwise be state
functions or responsibilities, creating different spheres of the public. It is possible
here to consider only a few of these directions.

Nature of constitutions and constitution making process

Traditionally the role of the constitution was to establish institutions of the state and
define their jurisdiction, based on the assumption that, because of common history
and underlying cultural understandings, there is substantial agreement on values,

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 aspirations and identity. It is indeed these understandings (and joint commitment to
live together) which makes it possible for the people to form a state. It is claimed that
Britain did not need a written constitution because of the great agreement among its
people (“a nation”) on values and procedures of government. James Madison thought
that the underlying assumption on which the Philadelphia Convention could proceed
to make a constitution was that the people of the thirteen colonies had already agreed
to “form one society”—as with Rousseau, he considered that the agreement among
the people to form one nation was necessary (but “nowhere reduced to writing”),
before they could proceed to establish a system of government)18.
When there is not this commonality, the constitution must provide it. Thus there are at
least two roles of the constitution in multi-ethnic societies faced with identity crisis: to
fashion or consolidate a compact among the people, defining a new identity, and to
establish and maintain political and legal systems for its different communities, with
very fine balances (inherently subject to continuing contestation)19. The first compact
is usually negotiated around the principles of the constitution since differences among
the communities are about the organization of the public space—and their share in
and control of it. This is primarily a process which involves communities (or at least
is conducted in the name of communities). In its idealized form, it would resemble the
framework that the Canadian Supreme Court sets out in its decision on whether
Quebec has a unilateral right to secede from Canada (Reference re the Secession of
Quebec 2 SCR 217 (1998)).
The court held that there was no right under Canadian or international law which
entitled Quebec to secede unilaterally. But that was not the end of the matter, for if in
a democratic and pluralistic society as Canada, a member wished to secede, the
central and other governments were obliged to negotiate with it to solve the problem,
even if by secession20. An interesting aspect of the framework is that before a
community is entitled to negotiate with the state, it must prove that there is a
significant support within the community for secession or some other adjustment in its
relations with the rest (in this case to be manifested through a referendum (“clear
support on a clear question”)). On the one hand this results in the communalization of
politics; and on the other, it excludes from negotiations those members of
communities who support a more cosmopolitan or national approach.
The Court also implies that the negotiations must be conducted in good faith, which
means that each side must try to understand the concerns of the others, and search for
ways in which differences can be resolved. The decision therefore has particular
relevance to constitutional discourses and the making of constitutions. A common

18
Walter Berns, ‘The Making of the Constitution of the United States’ in Robert A. Goodwin and Art
Kaufman (eds), Constitution Makers on Constitution Making (Washington, DC: American Enterprise
Institute, 1988), pp. 121-22.
19
James Tully and Simone Chambers, “Contract or Conversation? Theoretical Lessons from the
Canadian Constitutional Crisis”, 26:1 (1998) Politics and Society pp. 143-72.
20
The Court said, ‘Our democratic institutions necessarily accommodate a continuous process of
discussion and evolution, which is reflected in the constitutional right of each participant in the
federation to initiate constitutional change. This right implies a reciprocal duty on the other participants
to engage in discussions to address any legitimate initiative to change the constitutional order (para.
150).

Reprinted by permission of Yash Ghai and the American Bar Association.

 identity is a matter of negotiations. Negotiations must involve not just a few “leaders”
but communities and the people generally. A settlement reached after such
negotiations will be the more stable and will strengthen the sense of belonging to the
new political identity so fashioned.

Re-defining sovereignty
In practice it is unlikely that negotiations will be conducted in this form: the
negotiators do not often have the mandate of their communities or of the state (being
commanders of warring factions); they have interests which may not reflect the true
wishes of the community; the circumstances of armed conflict are such that the
Supreme Court’s formula for “clear support for clear question” may be impossible to
test (Sri Lanka is a classic example). There is considerable disagreement as to which
communities are entitled to a seat at the table—perhaps a combination of success at
reinventing a group as a “nation”, “a nationality” “a distinctive people” and the
possession of a sufficient number of AK47s. If a constitution is achieved, it is
proclaimed not in the name of “We the People” but “We the Nations, Nationalities
and Peoples of [Ethiopia]” or in the name of “Bosniacs, Croats, and Serbs, as
constituent peoples (along with Others), and citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina”. Or
there are other indications that the true bearers of sovereignty are not the people but
“constituent peoples”. Progress in the making of the Spanish constitution of 1978
became possible only when the question of sovereignty was resolved, enabling a
move away from Franco’s unitary and centralized state, through an ambiguity that
both recognized Spaniards as a sovereign people and gave its communities
considerable sovereignty through autonomy
Sovereignty is compromised in another way. Internal conflicts almost always bring
about the intervention of the international community, which attempts to play a
critical role in resolving them (although this was not the case in Spain). Constitution
making is then less an exercise of people’s sovereignty than dictates of outsiders (for
example, the peace process in the Sudan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo). The
current EU fashion is to convert diversity into apartheid, in the name of peace (as
discussed below).
Here it is appropriate to give a brief account of the ways in which communities are
incorporated in constitutions, as necessary background to understand specific
constitutional devices discussed below. There is no single model for the recognition
of communities (for example, though the constitutions of Northern Ireland, Bosnia-
Herzegovina, and Fiji recognize communities, the entitlements which are connected to
community membership are significantly different). For an overview it suffices to say
that preambles celebrate diversity of communities, and some specifically and more
significantly, constitute them as political entities. Rights are vested not only in
individual citizens, but also in communities. Some of these rights are exercised by the
community collectively (such as linguistic or religious, of ancient lineage, or
ownership of land) but some by individuals through membership of a community
(such as affirmative action or residence in a locality). Regimes of personal laws,
based on religion or culture, seem to fall in between. Communities may be entitled to
autonomy, territorial or cultural, giving it a degree of self-government.

Reprinted by permission of Yash Ghai and the American Bar Association.

 Recent developments have emphasized political rights of or relating to communities.
In some extreme cases, as in Bosnia-Herzegovina, political representation in
legislative and executive bodies is distributed by community, as are certain state
offices. Members of a community elect their own representatives, and in the
legislature and the executive these representatives share power (as for example in
collective presidency and rotation in other important offices). Complex rules of
decision making are based on a high degree of consensus, and some times give a
community veto over laws or policy deemed to be prejudicial to its interests. This
often has the effect of privileging some communities over others (as in Bosnia-
Herzegovina). Much of the system of government is designed for inter-community
negotiations. Because of the centrality of communal interests, some constitutions
provide, as part of the state structure, for umpiring by outsiders (as administrators,
judges and peace keepers) to ensure the prescribed ethnic balance and procedures.
The incorporation of communities as political entities makes the constitutional and
political systems complex, dependent on continuing negotiations. Thus the
constitution is important not only for defining political identities but also setting up
complex and delicate balancing between them, vulnerable to the dynamics of
communal politics. The fragmentation of sovereignty compels toward the consensus
principle, introducing considerable rigidity. Thus, unlike constitutions in “nation-
states” which operate for the most part smoothly due to common understanding of the
national interest, the constitution of multi-ethnic states requires constant support and
nourishment, often with outside intervention.
Sovereignty is not only fragmented internally, but it seems to be conditional. The
incipient doctrine of “earned sovereignty” is a threat, but for the moment, the more
critical is international supervision (especially now with another incipient doctrine,
the duty to protect, requiring international intervention in national politics). The
United Kingdom suspended the “sovereignty” of Northern Ireland for non-conformity
with the Good Friday Agreement, and in Bosnia-Herzegovina, there is an
international component which exercises important aspects of its sovereignty
(particularly in the appointment and powers of the High Commissioner and to a lesser
extent external presence in the Constitutional Court). Apart from fragmented
sovereignty, the complexity arises from the changed concept of citizenship to which I
now turn.

Citizenship
What might seem at first sight as the strength of the liberal state from the perspectives
of minorities, that is equal rights and obligations of citizenship, is seen as problematic
from identity point of view. The primary political relationship in liberalism is that
between the individual, as citizen, and the state. But if citizenship with plenitude of
rights, is a means to inclusion, it can also be the means of limited or extensive
exclusion—by the denial of citizenship. Certain categories of persons will be entitled
to citizenship (e.g., those born in the country or born of parents at least one of whom
is a citizen). But the prospects of others to citizenship depend on the discretion of the
government within rules which define eligibility rather than entitlement. In most
states there are restrictions on the acquisition of citizenship (sometimes on racial or
cultural criteria), and in some there are rules for the deprivation of citizenship. Even

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 liberal states vary in this respect, some with greater bias towards territory, some
towards “culture/nation”. 21
Citizenship rules produce anxiety among long term residents or migrants at the
prospects of expulsion and make it difficult for them to integrate in the “host
community” or to protect their legitimate interests (Amartya Sen notes that the
generous British rules of political participation granted to all members of the
Commonwealth have facilitated their integration). The application of the rules can
also result in some members of a “foreign” community becoming citizens and others
not, and yet the community has social and cultural cohesion, and common interests.
Even when members of minorities have equal citizenship, the critique of liberalism
advanced earlier says that this equality is superficial; that it hides the reality that the
values and mores of the majority in fact suffuse the state, to the great economic, social
and political disadvantage of minorities and their culture. Because the public space in
which many of these rights are exercised may not be culture or religion neutral (for
example, holidays based on the dominant group’s major religious ritual or festivities,
its language the official language, and laws, for example on marriage or inheritance
grounded in the social or religious traditions of the majority, and electoral laws
favoring the majority), minorities may feel alienated and insufficiently recognized.
Consequently they demand what has come to be called “differentiated” citizenship
which, by recognizing their cultural, linguistic or religions differences, provides them
with effective equality and participation. There are many ways in which “differences”
can be recognized, as I have tried to show.
Some, perhaps most, of these rights can be secured only through political and
constitutional recognition of ethnic communities, as collective or communal rights.
What happens when communities are so recognized? We have seen how they can
affect the understanding of sovereignty. How do they bear on the understanding of
citizenship? The following sections on democracy, human rights, and autonomy spell
out the structural and procedural aspects of the recognition of special rights. Here it is
sufficient to note that the consequent recognition of communities introduces a key
factor in citizenship: some rights can only be exercised through membership of the
prescribed community, when certain voting, economic or land rights, for example, are
restricted to the community. Thus the rules defining membership of the community
can take a significance no less critical than the rules defining citizenship. As part of
the autonomy of the community, rules whereby a person acquires and loses
membership of the community, and the differential consequences of membership, are
left to the community itself. While on the whole this kind of scheme is intended for
the benefit of members of the community, it is possible that some of them may be
disadvantaged, such as women or persons belonging to lower castes within the
community.

21
Rogers Brubaker (Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1996)) compares and contrasts the attitudes towards citizenship and the rules for
acquiring it, with France more generous but also more assimilationist, and Germany ethno-cultural and
restrictive.

Reprinted by permission of Yash Ghai and the American Bar Association.

 How then are their citizenship rights to be protected? And as under autonomy
regimes, authority structures of the community are vested with functions of
government and regulation (e.g., the allocation of resources, or rule making), how can
equal political and participatory rights of all its members can be protected (when
traditionally a key characteristic of the community may have been age, gender or
caste discrimination—sometimes sanctioned by sacred texts?) So here we are
concerned not only with relations of the members of the community with citizens
outside the community, especially as the exercise of special rights impact on the latter
(for example as land historically vested in the community) but also the equality of
rights between different members of the community. Obligations also vary among
different categories of citizens, not only because of duties owed to the community, but
also because there may be exemptions for certain citizens from duties owed to the
state (e.g., the wearing of helmets when riding a motor bike which is extended to
Sikhs who wear turbans, or the consumption of liquors otherwise prohibited often
extended to indigenous communities). Thus the relationship of some citizens to the
state is defined through membership and mores of the community. It is then easy to
see how fundamental principles and values of citizenship under liberalism can come
under severe strain through this kind of mosaic, in the spheres of rights and
democracy.
There is a further dimension to the constitutional recognition of communities.
Communities compete with the state for jurisdiction and moral authority—and
loyalty. Sometimes the relationship of the community to the states is set out in the
law, and in any case it is deeply influenced by politics. And then there is the
relationship between communities. For example, in Pakistan, an Islamic state, the
religious status of a community will not only effect its relationship with the state but
also with other communities (as the Ahmediyyas have learnt to their cost) [footnote].
And in a place like Fiji with communal forms of representation and voting, the state is
forced to mediate between competing claims of communities. Distinctions between
the public and the private are difficult to maintain, especially in multi-ethnic societies,
where consciously or unconsciously there is the desire for the political recognition of
the fundamental values or symbols of the community, as well as dominance of even
the private domain by the politically and economically powerful. The state is
inevitably drawn into the affairs of the community—something a liberal state
professes to avoid.

Human Rights22
Ethnicity both invokes and undermines human rights. The fundamental dilemma of
rights and diversity is well captured by Charles Taylor when he writes, “Now

22
This and the next sections draw upon several of my publications, including Public Participation and
Minorities (London: Minority Rights Group, 2001, rev. edition, 2003); ‘Constitutional Asymmetries:
Communal Representation, Federalism, and Cultural Autonomy’ in Andrew Reynolds (ed.), The
Architecture of Democracy (Oxford: OUP, 2002); Human Rights and Governance: The Asia Debate
(San Francisco: The Asia Foundation, 1994); “Universalism and Relativism: Human Rights as a
Framework for Negotiating Interethnic Claims” 21:4 Cardozo Law Review (2000) 1095-1140; and
“Understanding Human Rights in Asia”, in Martin Scheinin and Markus Suksi (eds), Human Rights: A
Textbook (tentative title, forthcoming).

Reprinted by permission of Yash Ghai and the American Bar Association.

 underlying the demand [for recognition of diversity] is a principle of universal
equality. The politics of difference is full of denunciations of discrimination and
refusals of second class citizenship. This gives the principle of universal equality a
point of entry within the politics of dignity. But once inside, as it were, its demands
are hard to assimilate to that politics. For it asks we give acknowledgement and status
to something that is not universally shared. Or, otherwise put, we give due
acknowledgment only what is universally present—every one has an identity—
through recognizing what is peculiar to each. The universal demand powers and
acknowledgement of specificity”.23
The post-second world war development of the regime of human rights was based on
individual rights, with minimum explicit recognition of community rights.
Undoubtedly many of these rights (such as equality, freedom of conscience, rights to
and of family, freedom of movement, freedom of expression, and the right of
association, assembly and demonstration) benefit minorities. But until recently
international instruments were parsimonious about cultural or minority rights. Little
serious attention was paid to economic and social rights. This was undoubtedly due to
the hostility of supporters of the market economy, as distorting the economy and
increasing the role of the state. But the resistance to economic and social rights has
been expressed in term of their inconsistency with the rule of law. A distinction is
made between law and policy; civil rights, with clear rules, are compatible with law
but economic and social rights, dependent on the availability of resources and open
ended in scope, is policy. The emphasis on individual rights came under considerable
attack from the proponents of cultural relativism, who stressed links between a society
and its culture. The subordination of economic and social rights upset the
marginalized communities as it deprived them of means of redress, and deprived
society of possibility of balancing communal interests.
These attacks highlighted what seem to be various contradictions between human
rights and ethnicity. Human rights seek to be colour blind, aloof from religious or
other affiliations; ethnicity makes these affiliations basic to identity and human
existence. Human rights empower the individual; ethnicity the group. Human rights
are the framework for relations between citizens inter se and between citizens and the
state; ethnicity compels attention to and regulation of inter-ethnic relations, and the
relations of the group to the state. Human rights aim to be inclusive, ethnicity
exclusive. Thus ethnicity has posed problems for human rights in a way that
nationalism did not. Nationalism did not seek accommodation of rights within an
existing state, but sought its own state; ethnicity seeks accommodation within an
existing state. It internalizes to the state problems that would otherwise dissipate on
the formation of a new state; it brings problems of cultural relativism not as concerns
between distant societies, but as basic to the very definition and existence of a state.
Ethnicity seeks to re-configure the state as the principal framework for the
formulation and enforcement of rights, with fundamental implications for how the
scope and nature of rights are perceived (in the ways outlined above). If the quarter
century after the end of the Second World War saw the rise of the ideology of
individual oriented human rights, the last quarter saw a major challenge, in the name

23
Op. cit., 39.

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 of the community, to that approach. If in the first period, self-determination was the
foundation of state sovereignty, in the second period it was mobilized to challenge
that sovereignty.
For multi-cultural states, as people everywhere are finding new identities, human
rights, as negotiated understanding of the acceptable framework for co-existence and
the respect for each culture, are more important than for mono-cultural or mono-
ethnic societies, where other forms of solidarity and identity can be invoked, to
minimise or cope with conflicts. The conflict between human rights and cultural
relativism cannot be treated simply as a philosophical or political discourse, but as a
conflict which must be resolved concretely if some degree of order, stability and
mutual respect is to be achieved. In other words, precisely where the concept and
conceptions of rights are most difficult, they are most needed. The task is difficult, but
possible, even if it may not be always completely successful.
Here the Indian approach is of interest, and shows ways of balancing national identity
and interests with the communal. In preparing the bill of rights, the Indian Constituent
Assembly (sitting between 1947-50) tried to balance rights as the means to unify the
country and promote a common identity (just as Pierre Trudeau thought many years
later for Canada when he promoted the Charter of Rights) and to deal with cultural
diversity, social hierarchy and poverty. The Assembly were anxious to protect
minorities, wanted to move away from the divisive way the British had ruled India,
abandoning the conferment of corporate identities to religious or cultural groups, and
shifting towards a more liberal framework. Conscious of the cultural diversity of
India, they were at the same time pre-occupied by the imperative of “nation building”,
cultivation of a common identity and common loyalties. To an extent these opposing
objectives were balanced by adopting the device of an enforceable Bill of Rights for,
but not exclusively, civil and political rights, and a non-justiciable charter of Directive
Principles for measures of social and economic equality. Where the necessary social
and economic reforms could only be achieved by qualifying civil or political rights,
such as those of equality and property, the authority for this was clearly stated in the
Bill of Rights.
Notwithstanding that India was a deeply religious society, with many beliefs between
which there was tension, the Constituent Assembly decided that the Bill of Rights was
to be the principal agency of social reform. The bill is strongly oriented towards
universalism and social reform. Rights are used as a critique of culture, especially
Hindu culture. “Untouchability” is abolished and its practice prohibited (art. 17).
Traffic in human beings, servitude and similar practices of forced labor are abolished
(art. 23). The freedom of conscience and religion was drawn carefully to ensure that
practices like purdah or sati (widow burning) were not indirectly entrenched (art.
25(2). Hindu practices which prevent dalits (“untouchables”) from access to the use of
public facilities, including wells are prohibited. The imperative of social reform is
evident also in Directive Principles, particularly in article 38(1) which requires the
state to “strive to promote the welfare of the people by securing and protecting as
effectively as it may a social order in which justice, social, economic and political,
shall inform all the institutions of the national life”.

Reprinted by permission of Yash Ghai and the American Bar Association.

 The lesson perhaps is that in relation to most rights, the notion of absolutism is
unhelpful.; but qualifications on rights must be consistent with the core of the rights.
The appropriate formulation and protection of social, economic and cultural rights,
emphasising the “positive duties” of the state, is often fundamental to a settlement,
both to acknowledge the importance of culture and of redress of ethnic inequalities.
Thus for this (and other reasons of “ethnic” management) there arises the necessity
for an activist state. Since inter-ethnic relations are so crucial to an enduring
settlement and past history may have been marked by discrimination or exploitation, a
substantial part of the regime of rights has to be made binding on private parties.
Achieving this balancing involves the recognition of corporate identities as bearer of
rights. To preserve their culture, some communities claim wide exemptions from the
application of the bill of rights. This has a dual effect on possibilities of rights. One is
internal to the community which seeks exemptions; cultural values may in many
respects be hostile to rights and modern democratic thought, and this places groups
within the community at risk, such as women and lower castes. The other can be
discrimination against members of other communities, as with exclusive claims to
certain resources. The discrimination is resented by groups both within and outside
the community. The consequences spill over into the political domain, raising
questions of national integration. Affirmative action in Malaysia and India for
“indigenous” Malays or Dalits or tribals in India have caused much resentment among
other communities. At the same time it reinforces ethnic and caste communities,
particularly among the disadvantaged communities who would otherwise have an
interest in national and social integration as an escape—for it is only through
preserving those classifications that the preferential scheme can be sustained. And yet
it is by redressing past or present injustices that a sense of national unity can be
fostered.

Regimes of personal cultural or religious laws

Some of the dilemmas for the regime of human rights in the recognition of diversity
can be illustrated by an examination of the schemes of personal laws (based on
religion or custom), covering marriage and family. As has already been mentioned,
the development of a common regime of family law was the consequence of the
“nation state”. The major remnants of separate personal laws today are the hangovers
of colonies. Colonial powers, having an interest in preventing national consciousness
among their subjects, devised separate communal systems to emphasis differences
among them. Today, with assertions of identity and multi-culturalism, the concept
religion based personal laws has been revived (evidenced by intense debates on the
subject in Britain, Canada, Kenya, France, India, and Malaysia0.
Some members of a community, perhaps a minority, consider the application of
personal laws critical for maintaining its culture and identity. Others, particularly
members of the majority, may believe that common laws on these matters are
essential for national integration. These divisions emerged between the Hindu
majority and Muslim minority when the Indian Constituent Assembly wanted, in a
reversal of colonial policy, to mandate a common civil code. The compromise was
that the constitution prescribed a common code merely as an objective of state policy,
and over time a convention emerged that the shariah would continue to apply so long

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 as Muslims desired it (although in recent years this convention has become
controversial, worsening communal relations). The debate has become more complex,
adding to integration issue the effect on the vulnerable members of the community
due to its discriminatory rules. So differences arise not only between the majority and
the minority, but primarily within members of the community (as is evident in the
current Canadian controversy on whether and how the shariah should be applied)24.
But the issue is also of general interest, as religious or customary personal laws affect
women and children adversely.
The experience of Israel, which has an extensive scheme of personal laws, is
instructive25. Israel has courts for 14 recognised religious communities, with
exclusive jurisdiction over matters relating to marriage and divorce (there is no civil
marriage or divorce in Israel). These courts also resolve other personal and private-
law issues. Since legislative authority over these matters is rarely exercised, courts
have a profound effect on shaping the country’s political culture, involving rights of
women, contacts between members of different communities, and more generally the
lives of Israelis. Although linked to and supported by the state, these courts are
administered independently of the state.
The presence of shariah courts has reinforced Muslims’ sense of community and its
values, and helped in the social reproduction of the community—an important factor
for minorities, especially when under foreign occupation. These conclusions
corroborate an argument for cultural autonomy, namely, that it “supports political
stability by providing non-dominant (and unassimilable) groups with mechanisms that
enable them to minimise the effects of their inferior position in the larger society”26.
But the separate regime of Muslim law has isolated Arabs from the mainstream of
Israeli politics. For the Jews, the rabbinical courts have been deeply divisive,
symbolizing the fundamental schism between orthodox and secular Jews. In both
instances the courts give the clergy, committed to the preservation of orthodoxy, a
specially privileged position. The law is slow to change in these circumstances, and
can lag well behind social attitudes and social realities. Edelman concludes that while
civil courts have sought to promote democratic political culture based upon the rule of
law, religious courts and personal legal regimes have sharpened distinctions between
Israel’s communities, retarding the development of inter-community social relations
and a unifying political culture (p. 119). He observes, “Yet without a shared political

24
The arguments for and against are set out at length in the report by Marion Boyd to the Ontario’s
Attorney General and to the Minister Responsible for Women’s Affairs, Dispute Resolution in Family
Law: Protecting Choice, Promoting Inclusion (Dec. 2004)
(www.attorneygeneral.jus.govon.ca/english/about/boyd/fullreportpdf.). See also the controversial
speech of the Archbishop of Canterbury supporting the application of the sharia in Islamic courts in the
UK, and the flood of attack (www.archbishpofcanterbury.org/1575)
25
Martin Edelman, Courts, Politics and Culture in Israel (Charlottesville: University of Virginia,
1994), p. 119. This and the following paragraphs are based on this source.
26
J. Jacobsohn, Apple of Gold: Constitutionalism in Israel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1993),
p. 30.

Reprinted by permission of Yash Ghai and the American Bar Association.

 culture and the concomitant sense of a shared national identity, the prospects for a
sustained, peaceful national existence are not bright”.27
This view is not endorsed by Jacobsohn, who says that studies of Jewish public
opinion in Israel reveal that shared ethnicity and a shared set of religious symbols are
much more important than a shared set of values in providing unity for Israeli society.
“Thus, the subordination of cultural aspects to individual liberties on the basis of the
assertion that the latter are “principles” has less justification in a polity where cultural
imperatives may legitimately demand principled consideration.” 28 Here it may be
noted that the Indian majority wanted an integrated political society, while most
governments in Israel did not .
One of the major problems with cultural/religious/legal autonomy of this kind is that
it puts certain sections of the relevant community at a disadvantage. Edelman shows
how both Jewish and Muslim women come off worse in their respective autonomous
courts. In Canada (before reform impressed on it by the UN Human Rights
Committee) a woman from a first nation who married a person outside that
community lost all rights in the community (including access to land)—unlike a man
who married an outsider. In this way the hierarchies and discriminations in the
community are reinforced by state sanctioned personal laws. In India, Muslim women
are unable to benefit from the more liberal legal regime that has applied to other
Indian women after the reforms of the 1960s. One aspect of their disadvantage was
illustrated in 1985 by the famous Shah Banu case,29 where the Supreme Court held
that the maintenance that a Muslim divorced woman could claim from her former
husband was to be determined under the general national law, which provided a
higher amount than she would get under the shariah. This decision, although favoured
by many Muslims, provoked a violent reaction from a section of the community,
including the clergy, and preserve its political support, the government passed a bill to
overrule the decision. The rise of Hindu nationalism is often ascribed to this
“capitulation” by the government to Muslim minority demands. The irony is that the
debate or law on personal laws can also tear up the community concerned, as the
Indian and Israeli experience (and recent Canadian developments) shows.
Today, the question of special personal laws is inevitably controversial and
politicised. It raises critical and difficult moral and technical issues (for which there is
no space here). However, the dilemma for constitutionalism and the tensions between
individual rights and community cohesion, are well captured in two quotes from
Marion Boyd’s report. She criticizes the secular position excluding religious family
law from the legal system for failing to “acknowledge that some people live their lives
in a manner more closely aligned to their faiths than others” and that state laws
themselves may be influenced by the dominant religion, “making their impact
disproportionate on those who do not belong to the dominant culture” and serving “to
alienate from the mainstream those who do not see themselves reflected” (p. 91) in
these laws. At the same time she is able to say, “By placing primacy on the right of

27
Martin Edelman, op. cit., p. 119.
28
J. Jacobsohn, Apple of Gold: Constitutionalism in Israel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1993),
p. 37.
29
(1985) 2 Sup. Ct. Cases 556.

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 the minority group to protect itself from external influences, those individuals in the
minority group whose rights may be violated must bear the burden of the protection of
the culture within the dominant society. As a result, individual autonomy is sacrificed
for the sake of group survival” (p. 92).
Democracy
I have left till the last consideration of how under the understanding of democracy, as
the most comprehensive and complex concept of constitutionalism, has been affected
by the rise of identity politics. Democracy is supposed to provide an overarching
framework of values and procedures within which national decisions are made and
citizens pursue their common and separate objectives. It is based on the representation
of the people and the accountability of government. It is the liberal vision of nation
building. Liberal democracy is often contrasted with the consociational, representing a
partnership between ethnic communities. Constitutional devices for diversity
described in this chapter affect the conception and functioning of democracy,
critically the understandings of sovereignty, communities and citizenship. There is no
single model to which these devices conform, but there is a distinct bias towards the
consociational, and thus on ethnicity, on which my discussion is largely based.

Ethnicity leads to great politicization of society. The issues it raises, based on sharp
polarities, are emotional, simple and sharp, harp, simple, based on sharp polarities,
uncomplicated for the ordinary person. The complexities of life and relationships,
grounded on the multiplicity of identities of an individual, are obscured by the
singularization of identity, which governs the world view of so many caught up in
ethnic politics. Politics are less about policies than communal entitlements, which
leads to the “invention” of new communities. Public discourses on social issues are
impoverished. Social justice is viewed through a narrow perspective, often ignoring
women, children, workers, the disabled, and the most disadvantaged. So ethnicity
becomes the principal mode of mass mobilization. Political parties tend to rely on
blocks of ethnic supporters (the “vote bank” as Indians call the system). Communities
are given, in different forms, considerable powers of self-government, and become
significant sites of powers.

Consociation, especially when legislative seats or executive posts are ethnically

allocated, institutionalises these “vote banks”; the logic of the system is ethnic parties.
Within communities power passes to traditional or modern political elites—and this
too affects the quality of participation and democracy. Normally the extreme factions
outvote the more moderate (the experience of Northern Ireland and Bosnia-
Hercegovina attest to this). When communities play such important roles in the
political system, the quality of democracy is increasingly determined by their values
and practices. As we have seen, it is due to the inegalitarian and discriminatory nature
of many communities that there is resistance to their official recognition.

Constitutionally mandated coalitions affect participation, decision making, and

democracy. Key national decisions are made in negotiations between a small number
of key ethnic politicians. In the legislative body, there is little space for formal
opposition, and there is a strong tendency towards rubber stamping decisions made by
the ethnic leaders. In the executive, there is considerable horse trading, based on
ethnic sharing of resources. There is also, as mentioned above, considerable

Reprinted by permission of Yash Ghai and the American Bar Association.

 narrowing of the distinction between the public and civic/private spheres, resulting in
part from the politicization of communities. This degree of politicization of society is
inimical to constitutionalism.

Concluding Observations
There are very marked differences in the characteristics of “multi-ethnic”
constitutions that the “liberal” constitutions previously defined the rule of law and
constitutionalism. In many instances the distinction between the public and private
has become tenuous (although this has to some extent has been happening in
contemporary liberal systems). Citizenship now represents a complex set of
relationships; and can be highly differentiated. Cultural communities have become
political entities; sometimes the public sphere is carved among them. In Bosnia-
Hercegovina the traditional principle of the separation of legislative and executive
authorities has little relevance. Increasingly in multi-ethnic constitutions, the task of
balancing power is achieved by powers vested in communities, through multiple
membership of the presidency, as in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Iraq, or by the system
of voting in the legislature when in addition to an overall majority, each community
has a veto, at least on certain important issues.
Claims of community compete with claims of individuals. The concept of equality is
redefined; it is based on the legal recognition of differance. And individual equality is
not particularly valued, as we have seen in the case of schemes of cultural
autonomies. Distinctions may be more principled and carefully circumscribed when
related to social justice (as in affirmative action). An important function of the regime
of rights is to accommodate diversities, with particular regard to definitions of
religion and entitlements under it. There is a move away from thematic rights to group
rights (indigenous peoples, women, and children).
The nature of state sovereignty is re-configured, moving away form one central point.
This diffusion of sovereignty fragments the political community and leads to legal
pluralism undermining the uniformity of the legal system. There are new
understandings of democracy, away from majoritarianism to the balancing of
community interests. Rights of participation can depend even more on membership of
communities than citizenship. Fundamental issues of public policy may be
disregarded in the pursuit of ethnic balances, in the pursuit of singular rather than
multiple identities. Accountability can become difficult when politics are dominated
by alliances of ethnic leaders.
The constitution becomes more important because it is a register of negotiated
identities and difficult compromises that must be sustained. But the constant inter-
ethnic negotiations that are required by the constitution deprive the law of some of its
“autonomy”, and certainly can weaken the institutions of the law. A framework
constitution privileges negotiations over adjudication (although most ethnic
constitutions are a detailed codification of a settlement, unlike the Canadian
constitution which retains elements of the “framework”, at least as far as the first
nations are concerned, less so for Quebec).
I leave it at that and postpone to another occasion the important question: Do these
developments represent merely differences of technique from traditional rule of law

Reprinted by permission of Yash Ghai and the American Bar Association.

 and constitutionalism practices or reflect fundamental shifts in values and policy? For
now it suffices to say that the challenge is to reflect diversity and fairness to
communities within a constitutional framework which encourages political integration
and the building of a minimum core of common values.

i
Copyright (US) 2008, by Yash Ghai.
Funded by generous grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
This article was produced by the American Bar Association as part of the ABA’s World Justice Project, with the
objective of sharing information about the rule of law. The ABA and the author therefore grant permission for copies
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Reprinted by permission of Yash Ghai and the American Bar Association.