Back in 2018, during the IACL World Congress in Seoul, we realized that throughout the program several speeches touched gender-related issues but only a single panel was explicitly focused on them…
Read MoreNowadays, both justices in the United States and the European Union are confronting similar challenges from governments that seek to consolidate their powers by undermining basic civil liberties and eroding the rule of law…
Read MoreWe began this symposium asking three questions that ought to be at the heart of debates about the functions and operation of constitutions: how much value should be attributed to these texts; what is their relationship with state identity and culture…
Read MoreThis post aims to explore the relationship between the lack of formal constitutional amendments in Japan and the general public’s perception of the Constitution by focusing on public surveys and education…
Read MoreIn his recent book, Brian Jones defines ‘constitutional idolatry’ as “drastically or persistently overselling the importance and effects of written constitutions.” Jones prefers ‘political constitutionalism’ (in which legal primacy rests in majoritarian decision-making institutions such as Parliaments) to ‘legal constitutionalism’…
Read MoreHowever one feels about the outcome of Love v Commonwealth of Australia, one of the most controversial High Court of Australia decisions in recent memory, there appears to be little doubt that the methods and legal reasoning used to get to where the judges ultimately got was unorthodox…
Read MorePolitical opposition in Bangladesh is a matter of suspicion rather than appreciation, suppression rather than collaboration and disruption rather than construction. Ruling parties are historically comfortable in parliament in the absence of strong opposition…
Read MoreIn his book ‘Constitutional Idolatry and Democracy’, Brian Christopher Jones describes constitutional idolatry as ‘drastically or persistently over-selling the importance and effects of written constitutions’. For a scholar trained in Dutch constitutional law this is a rather foreign concept…
Read MoreOn 15 March 2020, the South African Minister of Cooperative Governance declared a “state of disaster” in terms of the Disaster Management Act (“Disaster Act”) to combat COVID-19. Shortly afterwards, a lockdown was imposed – one of the strictest in the world…
Read MoreSlinging the constitution across the table to the Prime Minister in a national security council meeting may not be the only way to trigger a national crisis, but it is one that requires the existence of a codified constitution. The ability to (literally) throw down the constitutional gauntlet might be all there is to be gained from having a codified constitution, if Brian Christopher Jones’s main argument in Constitutional Idolatry and Democracy is taken to the extreme.
Read MoreViewed apart from the political crisis and ominous threat to democracy that ensued in its aftermath, the 2020 election of Joseph Biden as president of the USA ranks as routine and well within the canons of American democracy… When viewed in the context of the sequence of events that transpired from election day, 3 November 2020, until the day of final certification by the US Congress, 6 January 2021, however, the 2020 election has come uncomfortably close to culminating in an authoritarian coup.
Read MoreThere have been extraordinary scenes in Dublin over the past few months, as anti-mask protests, apparently coordinated among various far right groups, have resulted in violence and arrests. At one such protest in October, Gardaí (national police) struggled to contain violent clashes between hundreds of anti-mask demonstrators and counter protesters.
Read MoreThe supreme law in Taiwan is officially known as the Constitution of the Republic of China (ROC Constitution), which was enacted in Nanjing, China in 1947. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the then ruling party, the Kuomintang Party (KMT), fled to Taiwan, with the nascent ROC Constitution in tow.
Read MoreI strongly believe the “veneration” directed at the U.S. Constitution has become almost a “clear and present danger”; it blinds Americans to the possibility that certain features of the 1787 Constitution contribute to the current dysfunctionality in the United States.
Read MoreContemporary constitutions not only set up the institutional infrastructure and allocate state powers; they are also expected to inspire, strengthen public confidence and trust, bring government and the people closer together, enhance citizenship, and give expression to a society’s sense of self.
Read MoreThe blog of the International Association of Constitutional Law (IACL)
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