Cardozo's Marci Hamilton on What it Will Take for Egypt to Plant the Seeds of an Open and Free Democracy

At first, it seemed to me that the Egyptian protests would fall into the category of China's Tiananmen Square uprisings—young, educated, brave fighters for democracy ultimately doomed by a dictatorial government. Now, I think we are watching another version of the Berlin Wall falling. These persistent rebels seem to have gotten past the tipping point. Yet, while the end of oppression by dictatorial rule seems similar, there is little question that the landing for these democracy proponents will be decidedly different. When Eastern Germany overcame and left behind the oppression of Communist rule, it became part of Europe, with all of its western traditions, constitutions, and human rights. There was this either-or situation, so that the East Germans simply had to shrug off the oppressors to be released to a western, pro-democracy, stable rule-of-law order. Read full article at www.patheos.com... Marci Hamilton holds the holds the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at YU's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and is the author of Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children (Cambridge, 2008) and God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law (Cambridge, 2005, 2007).