professor thorvaldur gylfason
The Icelandic Constitution Explained
Great meeting on March 29th in Parliament with Professor Thorvaldur Gylfason who won the highest number of votes in elections for the Commission to write Iceland’s “crowd sourced” constitution. The ICC had no elected politicians – now the Icelandic Parliament are chewing over the radical changes a referendum to approve the constitution will take place on the same day in June as Presidential elections ( boosting turnout) or later in the autumn. Thor said many memorable things during the event – not least that he thinks anyone wanting an independent Scotland should consider handing the task of creating a new Constitution for Scotland to the people and should start the process now. What follows is not the whole event but Thor’s full speech – a riveting 45 min...Read More
Iceland’s home-made Constitution – lessons for Scotland – Next Event
Iceland has made a steady recovery from the banking crash of 2008 which saw the country placed on the UK Terrorism Register. Slowly but surely this Nordic nation of just 300,000 people has been making sure such a crisis can never undermine the whole country again. It became clear that the 1944 Constitution (written when Iceland declared independence from Denmark), needed major revision. So a group of 25 ordinary folk was elected (from 550 self nominating volunteers) to rewrite the democratic rulebook. The Icelandic Economist Professor Thorvaldur Gylfason was involved from the outset and won the highest number of votes. The Icelandic Constitutional Council took 4 months to write the world’s newest Constitution with input by e-mail and social media (2/3s of Icelanders are on Facebook) and re...Read More