Cass Sunstein, the legal scholar who current runs the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has called it (NGH: the south african constitution) “the most admirable constitution in the history of the world.'“ Though given Sunstein’s own reputation among Tea Partiers, I’m guessing we won’t hear him speaking up on Ginsburg’s behalf during an election year.“

Asked by the English-speaking interviewer whether she thought Egypt should use the Constitutions of other countries as a model, Ginsburg said Egyptians should be “aided by all Constitution-writing that has gone on since the end of World War II.”

“I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a Constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the Constitution of South Africa,” says Ginsburg, whom President Clinton nominated to the court in 1993. “That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary. … It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recent than the U.S. Constitution.”

Ginsburg, who spent her career before taking the bench advocating for gender equality, praised the U.S. Constitution and the founders, saying, “we were just tremendously fortunate in the U.S. that the men that met in Philadelphia were very wise.” But “it’s true that they were lacking one thing, that is there were no women as part of the Constitutional Convention, but there were women around who sparked the idea.”

Ginsburg said “we are still forming the more perfect union” and noted that “when the Constitution was new in the 1780s, we still had slavery in the U.S.”

But, she added, ”The genius of the Constitution, I think, is that it has this notion of who composes ‘We the people’. It has expanded and expanded over the years so now it includes people who were left out in the beginning. Native Americans were left out, certainly people held in human bondage, women, and people that were new comers to our shores. “

Why does Ruth Bader Ginsburg like the South African constitution so much? | FP Passport

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/02/06/why_does_ruth_bader_ginsburg_like_the_south_african_constitution_so_much

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