“A Liberal and Enlightened Constitution”: The Scap Model
Shows how General MacArthur, early in February 1946, seized on a “scoop” by the newspaper Mainichi that convinced him that the Japanese cabinet was making little headway toward revising the Constitution. It recounts how a small group of officers at Government Section, under the leadership of General Whitney, Colonel Kades and Commander Hussey, drafted a model constitution for Japan in a week's time. Built on the parliamentary model, it placed sovereignty in the people, kept the emperor as a “symbol” of the nation, banned war and armed forces, and set forth a new bill of rights. The chapter concludes with the dramatic presentation of the draft to stunned representatives of the Japanese cabinet on Wednesday, February 13.
Keywords: bill of rights, emperor as symbol Courtney Whitney, A. Rodman Hussey, Charles Kades, parliamentary model, revised constitution, the Mainichi scoop the SCAP model
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .