Small State and Big Challenges: Eswatini’s Authoritarian King and the (Mis)uses of Swazi Law and Custom

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Small State and Big Challenges: Eswatini’s Authoritarian King and the (Mis)uses of Swazi Law and Custom

Sinethemba MEMELA

Sinethemba Memela examines the uses and misuses of law and custom in Eswatini as a small constitutional state. In the country, authoritarianism has been discursively legitimised through an identitarian construction of Swazis as an inherently peaceful and acquiescent people – a narrative systemically weaponized to repress political dissent and domesticate the judiciary.

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Constitutional Weaving in Tonga, a Small State with Traditional Authority: A Theoretical Framework for Tonga’s Constitutionalism

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Constitutional Weaving in Tonga, a Small State with Traditional Authority: A Theoretical Framework for Tonga’s Constitutionalism

Mele Tupou VAITOHI

In Pacific constitutional studies, written constitutions are often framed as postcolonial products – legal instruments adopted in the wake of empire. Tonga stands apart from this narrative. As the only Pacific Island nation never formally colonised (though it was a British protectorate from 1900 to 1970), Tonga developed its own constitutional order through a process that cannot be explained adequately by modern constitutional theory or legal pluralism.

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Small State Constitutionalism: Introduction to the Symposium

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Small State Constitutionalism: Introduction to the Symposium

Elisabeth PERHAM, Rosalind DIXON and Maartje De VISSER

New Symposium: Elisabeth Perham, Maartje de Visser and Rosalind Dixon introduce a new symposium on the Blog on Small State Constitutionalism. Based on an edited collection of the same name published by Hart in 2025, the symposium highlights the constitutional issues caused by or encountered in relation to small state jurisdictions.

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Setting Standards on Judicial Councils: The Spanish Case before the Venice Commission

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Setting Standards on Judicial Councils: The Spanish Case before the Venice Commission

Tania GROPPI

With Opinion CDL-AD(2025)038-e, adopted at its 144th session on 9–10 October 2025, the Venice Commission was called upon to apply international standards on the composition of judicial councils to a consolidated Western European democracy, Spain, following a request submitted by the President of the General Council of the Judiciary (hereinafter GCJ). In doing so, the Opinion ultimately reaffirms that the composition of judicial councils is no longer a matter of exclusive domestic concern grounded solely in State sovereignty, but rather constitutes an integral element of a European legal order founded on the rule of law and, as such, falls within the scrutiny of European institutions.

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