By Michael J. Kelly. 114 Penn St. L. Rev. 707.
The Kurds have long struggled to control their own destiny. Through centuries of cyclical oppression and autonomy, the Kurds of northern Iraq finally united and seized an opportunity to secure a firm legal status for their de facto state within a federal Iraqi state in the aftermath of the Iraq War. In March 2009, I traveled to Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, and consulted with the Kurdish regional parliament‘s constitutional drafting committee as they finalized their new constitution.1 As a professor of comparative constitutional and international law, this was a rewarding experience to say the least. [keep reading]