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Helping Achieve Constitutional Democracy

Indiana Law Professors David Williams and Susan Williams didn’t go looking for a connection with Burma or Liberia—in a way, the countries found them.

“We didn’t sit down and look at a map or read a newspaper and say ‘Oh, that’s a good place,’” says Susan, who directs Indiana University’s Center for Constitutional Democracy in Plural Societies (CCDPS) with her husband, David, the center’s executive director and the John S. Hastings Professor of Law. “We were invited by people inside the democracy movements in those countries,” she says. “They chose us.”

The CCDPS studies and promotes constitutional democracy in countries marked by ethnic, religious, and linguistic divisions. It remains one of the only centers in the world to do active constitutional design consulting.

Over the past several years, David and Susan have expanded their shared passion for constitutional law and the rights it guarantees to oppressed or under-represented populations in plural societies.

David is the primary author of the first constitutional commentary in Liberia, but the bulk of the Williams’ work is in Burma. David has advised the United Nations in its efforts to bring about a peaceful transition in Burma, which is now in its second era of military rule (the first began in 1962, when the military quelled a peaceful student protest by killing 100 students). The Burmese democracy movement is struggling to rewrite Burma's constitution in a way that will eradicate the human rights violations that led the United States to intensify sanctions there in 1997.

David works with the Burmese on everything from federalism issues to constitutional structure, such as the ways to preserve autonomy within various ethnic communities, while Susan works on the issues of individual rights, gender equality, and states of emergency.

The initial impetus for the CCDPS was a Burmese refugee who came to IU as a student and asked David to act as his advisor. The student introduced David to a representative from the group responsible for writing one of Burma’s state constitutions.

“At the end of the day, [the group’s representative] said, ‘So, have you ever been to Asia?’” David recalls of his first invitation to Burma after a meeting in Bloomington. “This was in 2003. A couple months later, we were at a seminar in Thailand, advising all of the states that were meeting about this.” When the group asked to hear about gender issues, David asked Susan, who was traveling with him, to present the information, bringing her expertise to the table.                                                                                                

“We’ve learned a huge amount about how constitutional issues are addressed in other places, about what’s working and what’s not, about the anthropological literature, and about what sort of cultural conditions or factors are relevant to constitutional design,” says Susan. “This has been a very steep learning curve for us.”

While it will take decades to effect real change in Burma, David and Susan are hopeful that small changes may occur imminently because of international attention centered on the area. “It’s an exciting time for Burma,” says Susan. “People around the world who care about Burma are very focused now.”

The work is slow-going and extremely challenging, but David says he has never been tempted to give up. He references a Burmese attorney who was arrested for successfully defending someone accused of being a political dissident—then jailed for seven years for telling the government that he thought the coups of 1961 and 1991 violated the constitution.

“His faith in constitutionalism was such that not to give those answers would be violating his sense of self,” says David, adding that the man is now free, and they plan to bring him to Bloomington at their next opportunity so he can work with the CCDPS. “There’s such goodness in this man, and such belief that law can save us from each other, that it contains the violence among us. It reinvigorates your faith. It’s a reason to get up in the morning, to work with people like this.”

New Degree Program

In August 2008, the Law School inaugurated a new degree program for LLM and PhD students. The degree will provide intense exposure to constitutional studies for students who are likely international reformers, want to work in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or are members of international organizations that are involved in reconstruction projects in other countries, says Susan. The theory- and practice-based, interdisciplinary program will require that students take courses in political science and anthropology as well as law.

“We’ve learned so much going out and doing this in the world, stuff you just wouldn’t get out of books. The books help, because when we went out there we were able to bring that to them,” says David. “But, then, what the reformers brought to us was a real sense of how this worked. It’s the partnership between us and the people abroad that’s made a huge difference.