Constitutional Rights And Custom: How Can Law Reform Address The Tension?

Abstract

The current international society is filled with a colourful variety of states with different histories, cultures and systems which makes it easier to overlook that a rather surprising number of them are identified as small states. There is a lack of consensus around the definition of a small state, but the standards frequently used to classify a state as small are quantitative measures such as population size, territorial extension or gross domestic product (GDP). The World Bank classifies a state as small if the population size is under 1.5 million and those states in the World Bank form the Small States Forum consisting of 50 members (42 countries).