Constitutional crisis
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A constitutional crisis is a situation in which separate factions within a government disagree about the extent to which each of these factions hold sovereignty; as such, it is distinct from a rebellion, in which factions outside of a government challenge that government's sovereignty. A constitutional crisis can lead to government paralysis, collapse, or civil war.
List of constitutional crises
- The crossing of the Rubicon by Julius Caesar in 49 BC with his legions. This action, which had no precedent, precipated a crisis only fully resolved in 31 BC, when Octavian defeated all his enemies to become the sole master of the Roman world.
- The secession of the southern U.S. states prior to the American Civil War.
- The dissolution of the kingdom of Sweden-Norway in 1905.
- The 1911 Constitutional crisis in Britain, when the People's Budget was introduced and rejected by the House of Lords. This led to the Parliament Acts.
- The King-Byng Affair of 1926 in Canada, where Governor General Viscount Byng of Vimy refused a request by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King that Parliament be dissolved and new elections called. Instead, Byng dismissed King and appointed Arthur Meighen as Prime Minister.
- The Watergate Scandal in which the US Congress demanded President Richard Nixon surrender audio tapes containing incriminating evidence against him while the President refused claiming executive privilege to do so.
- The Australian constitutional crisis of 1975 that saw Prime Minister Gough Whitlam fired by the nation's normally apolitical Governor General.
- The constitutional crisis of 1993 in Russia, a conflict between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the Russian parliament which resulted in a military siege of the parliament building and street fighting which claimed 187 lives.
- The disputed 2000 presidential election in the United States.
- The succession crisis of 2002 in Argentina. Following a massive economic meltdown, Argentina's president resigned, followed by a mass of cabinet members, leading five different men to reluctantly assume the presidency for extremely brief periods over the course of three weeks.