Anab Whitehouse

Searching for Sovereignty Anab Whitehouse

This book explores a variety of perspectives concerning the construction of constitutions, as well as the idea of leadership. The discussion carries a great many implications for: sovereignty, democracy, governance, and social relationships. The backdrop against which the first, lengthy chapter of this book takes place is the Canadian constitutional debates of the 1980s. Nonetheless, the discussion throughout that chapter is intended to provide food for thought for anyone in any country with respect to fundamental themes involving the process of constructing constitutions. The book's two essays on leadership complement one another, as well as the chapter on constitution-making. The initial essay on leadership critically analyzes some traditional and modern approaches to that concept, while the second essay on leadership critiques a number of ideas concerning leadership within a Muslim context. The final chapter -- 'Constitutional 911' -- examines some of the problematic issues surrounding several of the investigations into the events of 9/11. More specifically, this chapter explores both the 9/11 Commission and the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) investigations of 9/11 and, in the process, outlines some of the ways in which those two studies violate fundamental principles in the Constitution. There is a deep need for our ideas about constitutions and leadership to be reconstructed on a regular basis. The present book is one attempt to address that need.