Akshat Agarwal

The Supreme Court of India’s (Supreme Court) decriminalisation of same-sex relationships in Navtej Johar v. Union of India (Navtej Johar) was a culmination of the almost two-decade long, bruising legal struggle for LGBT+ rights in India, which saw the earliest petitions being filed in 2001 …

Aradhya Sethia

Section 377, first enacted in 1860 in British India, was later exported to several erstwhile British colonies. “377” has become a symbol of anti-sodomy laws across Commonwealth countries. The provision has survived in India, like many other jurisdictions, despite anti-colonial movements and a subsequent constitutional democracy. As Douglas Sanders argues, this provision epitomizes, in many ways, the “afterlife of British colonialism in Asia.”

GUEST EDITOR | Aradhya Sethia

On 6 September 2018, in Navtej Johar v. Union of India, a five-judge bench of the Indian Supreme Court partially struck down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalized “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” The Court unanimously declared that criminalization of any consensual sexual relationship between two adults violates the rights to equality, freedom of expression, and privacy. The decision makes momentous advances in Indian fundamental rights jurisprudence, which will be of significant interest to comparative constitutional law scholars.

Iyabode Ogunniran

Nigeria adopted the federal system of government after independence in 1960 to assuage the feelings of the over 200 ethnic minorities. To provide further a sense of belonging the 'Federal Character Principle' was inserted into the 1979 Constitution. It is over three decades, has the principle promoted peace, stability, sharing of power and resources amongst the states?  

Joe Tomlinson & Katy Sheridan

Reading practitioner and academic texts on judicial review in the UK (with a few exceptions aside), it would be very easy to get the impression that the detailed assessment of evidence is no part—or at least not an important part—of judicial review. The long-favoured practitioner treatise—de Smith’s Judicial Review—only makes passing mention of evidence in a text which runs 1098 pages.

Kirsten Anker

Indigenous peoples in Canada have long protected their territories: historically through treaties and armed conflict; now, through the courts, negotiated settlements and direct action. The constraints on doing so are multiple: the burdens of proving activities on the land in the distant past, issues of capacity, policies of extinguishment, a hard-headed bargaining stance on behalf of provincial and federal governments, and the criminalization of protest.

Selin Esen

Editors' Note: This is the second part of a two part post discussing the impact of the recent Presidential and Parliamentary elections in Turkey.

Firstly, Turkey has been under a state of emergency since July 2016. Since then, the government extended the emergency regime for consecutively seven times, each time for three months.

Selin Esen

Snap elections in Turkey for presidential and parliamentary took place on June 24, 2018, more than 16 months ahead of schedule. These elections were critically important in various ways for Turkish constitutionalism and politics. 

Marta Simoncini

As analysed in the first Part of this Post, the EU Withdrawal Act 2018 offered a hard response to the repeal of EU law, while recognising some leeway to adjust the great repeal operation to the specificities of individual sectors and wider policy needs. This second Part will focus on the apparent revision of that strategy in light of the possible Withdrawal Agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union.

Stephanie Palmer

There has been a seismic shift in access to legal abortion in Ireland.  Since 1983, Irish law has been restricted by Article 40.3.3 of the Constitution, inserted by the Eighth Amendment, which specifically acknowledges the right to life of the unborn child as equal to the life of the mother. As a consequence, abortion laws have been highly restrictive. The law has had a chilling effect on medical practitioners who have faced criminal prosecution and even prison sentences for breaches in the law.