Scribd, a website where users can post .pdf file copies of documents, is carrying what purports to be the first draft of the Libyan Transitional Council's effort at a Constitutional charter. I make no guarantees as to its authenticity, but the Tripoli Post says it's legit:
http://www.tripolipost.com/...
TunisiaLive.net also references a press release by the NTC wherein they disseminated this document:
http://www.tunisia-live.net/...
I found it an interesting document, and good food for thought. What would you write if it were you writing a blue print for a Constitution from scratch for a new nation? Read it yourself, here:
http://www.scribd.com/...
This document could have been written by a kossack, as it contains a lot of guarantees of personal and religious freedom and social justice for women. Who knows, maybe it was written by a kossack. Stranger things have happened!
It creates a state obligation for social security, a rough approximation of a First Amendment and, notably, no specific reference to a right to keep and bear arms. Based upon the pictures we are seeing from Tripoli, I guess that goes without saying.
While religious freedom is explicitly guaranteed, the draft document also explicitly makes Islam the official state religion, and Sharia law the "principal source for all legislation" in this nascent nation. Notably, there does not appear to be any mechanism for resolving conflicts between the provisions of the Constitution and Sharia law, which is deemed to be the "supreme law", and a Sharia Court will resolve all such conflicts. That will make for some interesting jurisprudence.
That a new Libya is intended to be a socialist democracy which downplays the tribalism that maintained the Qadaffi regime is clear. There are specific guarantees of equal opportunity, a fair standard of living, a right to work, a right to an education, a right to medical care, a right to social security, a right to individual property and a right to private property.
Good luck to the Libyan nation in balancing out all of these rights and guarantees once the oil revenues run out.