The efforts of Professor Chilbi Mallat to offer constitutional options to Middle Eastern regimes that teetered on the verge of regime change were recently published.  Professor Mallat gathered students from across the Tufts and Harvard communities to work on documents that explored the potential movements toward democracy that were available to Egypt and Bahrain by amendment to their respective constitutions.  I participated in the Bahrain effort, the results of which were recently published in the Virginia Journal of International Law.  The organization Right to Nonviolence published the background papers that are associated with the final paper (I helped prepare the backgrounder on the constitutional changes to the Executive Branch.)  Although the entry of Saudi forces into Bahrain several months ago aborted that country's constitutional moment, the exercise offered an incredible window into the practice of advising on constitutional reform.

Journal's entry description:  http://www.vjil.org/articles/constitutional-options-for-bahrain
Publication: http://www.vjil.org/assets/pdfs/vjilonline2/Gelbort_Mallat.pdf

Backgrounders:  http://www.righttononviolence.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98&Itemid=45

One largely unexpected consequence of America's successful operation against bin Laden appears to be serious degradation in our ability to work with Pakistan--at least in the near future.  Pakistani government faces internal questions about its ability to secure sovereignty in the face of a blatant breach of its borders with the night time raid.  It faces questions from Congress and from the international community regarding the honesty of its counter-terrorism efforts, given its claimed ignorance that bin Laden lived less than an hour away from the capital.  It seems reasonable for Pakistan to respond to questions from its internal critics by publicly speaking against the U.S. and perhaps even publicly forbidding the U.S. from executing drone operations within its territory.  It also seems reasonable for our allies and Congress to question why we would be working in any way with such an unreliable ally.  Certainly Pakistan should not expect Congress to approve any more resources flowing its way in the near future.  And it's hard to imagine joint military exercises while American soldiers still hold the suspicion that Pakistani military and intelligence agencies were withholding information.