International Impact

By John Greenwald

In overwhelmingly Catholic Ireland, the constitution outlaws abortion and divorce and proclaims the Holy Trinity the source of all political power. Japan's national charter renounces war. Portugal's forbids private ownership of television stations. Peru reprints its charter in the Lima telephone directory, filling ten pages of fine print. Yet beneath such diversity, each document can trace its rights and freedoms to U.S. soil. Says Joseph Magnet, a law professor at Canada's University of Ottawa: "America has been and remains the great constitutional laboratory for the entire world."

Of the 170 countries that exist today, more than 160 have written charters modeled directly or indirectly on the U.S. version. Those states range from the giant Soviet Union to the tiny Caribbean island country of Grenada. While Poland and France became the first to follow America's lead when they drafted modern constitutions in 1791, the largest impact has been recent. More than three-quarters of today's charters were adopted after World War II. Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, could have been speaking for the rest of the Third World when he told the U.S. Congress in 1949, "We have been greatly influenced by your own Constitution."

Some charters are roundly ignored. China's declaration of human rights was powerless to stop the abuses of the 1960s Cultural Revolution. In Latin America dictators often simply disregard national charters during times of unrest. Many African leaders have stymied democracy by outlawing opposing political parties and turning their countries into one-party states, often without bothering to amend their charters. Yet so strongly have constitutional ideals taken hold worldwide that few countries dare to abandon them completely.

Indeed, constitutions are living documents that are constantly being created and reshaped. Voters in the Philippines went to the polls in January to approve a new charter, the country's fifth, that prohibits human rights violations and retains Corazon Aquino as President until 1992. In Nicaragua this year, the Marxist-influenced Sandinista leadership unveiled that country's twelfth constitution in 149 years. Haitians in March approved their 23rd charter since 1804 in the country's first free election in three decades.

As such figures show, many constitutions have managed to survive only until the next upheaval or military coup. Three-quarters of the world's constitutions have been completely rewritten since they were first adopted, making America's fidelity to a single charter highly unusual. Some experts contend that frequent constitutional changes can be healthy. Says Albert Blaustein, a Rutgers University law professor who has helped draft six foreign charters: "Jefferson concluded that every 20 years the new generation should have its own constitution to meet current needs. That might not be a good idea for the U.S., but it's really not a bad idea for other countries."

Some constitutions are born of disaster. After World War II, Americans played a key role in drafting charters for the defeated nations of Japan and West Germany. The Japanese charter declares that the country will never again make war or maintain an army, navy or air force. As a result, Japan spends only about 1% of its gross national product on defense, freeing the economy for more productive purposes. Ironically, the U.S. is pressing the Japanese to boost defense outlays.

The West German constitution, written under the watchful eye of U.S. occupation leaders, sought to prevent the rise of another Hitler by limiting the executive branch. Recalls Joachim von Elbe, a Bonn legal expert: "We did not want to make the Germans just imitate the American constitutional model but rely on themselves to reform, rebuild and overcome the Nazi period." The framers decreed that the Bundestag, or parliament, could not oust a Chancellor without first choosing a successor. That has helped prevent a return of the political chaos that brought the Nazis to power in the 1930s.

Italians, with memories of Mussolini still fresh in their minds, went even further than the Germans in reining in the executive branch. While this has guarded against a new outbreak of tyranny, the inability of any one of Italy's parties to win a majority in parliament has led to frequent political turnover: Italy has had 46 governments since 1945.

The constitutions of Eastern Europe bestow supreme power on the Communist Party. While charters from Bulgaria to Poland ring with declarations of human and civil rights, they all contain loopholes that permit governments to set such rights aside should the party so require. Thus many guarantees -- like the widely promised right to complain about government misdeeds without fear of retribution -- are honored mainly in the breach, and supposedly independent courts almost never hand down rulings the party does not like.

The same gulf between rhetoric and reality exists in China. The country's current charter, its fifth since 1949, grants "freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration." Peking nonetheless responded to widespread student protests last winter by detaining the leaders, firing university officials and halting demonstrations. Authorities then shut down half a dozen liberal periodicals and banned scores of books, magazines and films throughout the country.

Among Third World nations, India has often seemed the most faithful to its U.S.-inspired constitutional ideals. The world's largest democracy included a declaration of "fundamental rights" in its 1949 charter and backed them up by borrowing the U.S. system of judicial review. "Thank God they put in the fundamental rights," says Nani Palkhivala, a constitutional expert who was India's Ambassador to Washington in the late 1970s. He observes, "Since 1947 we have had more harsh and repressive laws than were ever imposed under British rule." Indian courts, however, overturned most of them.

Leaders in Africa, confronted by tribal rivalries and the constant threat of coups, have taken far greater pains to stay in power than to preserve democratic rights. Troublesome constitutions are usually ignored or tailored to suit. "If anyone speaks to you about a multiparty political system, catch him and hit him hard," declared Gabon President Albert-Bernard (Omar) Bongo in a widely quoted 1983 speech. At least 28 of the continent's 53 states have only one political party, and 27 African nations are under military rule. Countries ranging from Guinea in West Africa to Somalia in the east have gone so far as to declare dissent a treasonable crime that can be punished by death. Notes British Historian Lord Blake: "The political tradition in many parts of Africa is authoritarian, and that's what has taken over."

In Latin America, coups and military dictatorships have often been the rule. Chile's 1981 constitution grants dictatorial authority to President Augusto Pinochet, the general who seized power in 1973. In Argentina, the three-year effort at civilian rule under constitutionally mandated human-rights principles still sways precariously if the military glowers too hard. Mexico is politically stable and boasts a constitution that provides for separation of powers between branches of government, but the Institutional Revolutionary Party and its forerunner have controlled the presidency -- and much of the other branches -- since 1929.

Though many U.S.-inspired constitutions have gone their own ways over the years, the seed planted in Philadelphia in 1789 should continue to flower. "The idea that individuals have rights against government is probably the most profound influence of the U.S. Constitution," says Oscar Schachter, professor emeritus of international law and diplomacy at Columbia University. "The whole notion of human rights as a worldwide movement was grounded in part in the Constitution." Those rights may not always be honored, but they have fired the imaginations of individuals, free and otherwise, around the world. After two centuries, the U.S. Constitution remains the standard against which people of all sorts measure their governments, and some governments even measure themselves.

With reporting by Alastair Matheson/Nairobi and Bing W. Wong/Hong Kong, with other bureaus