Jaclyn L. Neo

For the first time since its independence in 1965, Singapore has a female President. Madam Halimah Yaacob was sworn in as the country’s 8th President on 14 September 2017. She is also Singapore’s first Malay President since the presidency was changed from a nominated office to an elected one in 1991.

Eszter Bodnár

In November 2017, two government-initiated national surveys came to end in two remote edges of the world, with several similarities.

Australia: The Marriage Law Postal Survey

Marriage equality has been a very debated issue in Australia. The opinion polls consistently showed that a majority of Australians supported same-sex marriage …

Argelia Queralt

Carles Puigdemont, en su tarea de internacionalización del conflicto catalán, ha vuelto a insistir en que España se avergonzará de nuevo ante los Tribunales Internacionales. Estas mismas palabras ya las refirió cuando el Tribunal de Estrasburgo publicó la decisión en el caso Atutxa y otros haciendo creer que era una una aviso a los jueces de que no cabía inhabilitar a representantes públicos por actuaciones políticas.

Elisa Arcioni & Helen Irving

As foreshadowed in our earlier post, the High Court of Australia has now delivered its judgment in a case concerning the eligibility of dual nationals to serve in the Australian parliament. At issue was section 44(i) of Australia’s Constitution which renders ineligible any person who (in addition to being an Australian citizen) is a citizen of a ‘foreign power’. Seven federal parliamentarians faced the Court. Some of them denied that they were foreign citizens and some conceded that they were; most had acquired their non-Australian citizenship by descent and had no knowledge of it before the case arose; all had since taken steps to renounce it.

Peter C. Oliver

It has been 150 years since three of the colonies of what was then British North America came together to form a federation made up of four provinces and a new federal level of government, an event accomplished in law through the enactment by the Westminster Parliament of the British North America Act, 1867 (subsequently renamed Constitution Act, 1867).  Three provinces and the northern territories were added over the subsequent decade, two further provinces in 1905, and the tenth province in 1949.

Richard Stacey

Holding a referendum allows the drafters of a new constitution to seek popular approval for the political order that constitution would establish. Is a constitutional referendum therefore a vehicle for the exercise of popular sovereignty? Is it a mechanism of self government by which ‘the people’ can constitute their political association and set its fundamental terms? My view is that we should not conflate popular sovereignty with the constitutional referendum.

Martin Scheinin

This brief blog post addresses the purported referendum on 1 October in Catalonia, concerning the question whether that province of Spain should unilaterally proceed towards independent statehood. The purpose of this post is to provide some context to what I wrote as five separate tweets on Twitter the evening of 1 October and then on 2 October reposted as a Twitter “thread” with some additional tweets as explanations.

Antoni Abat i Ninet

At the beginning of the new century there are more constitutional democracies than ever, and authoritarian regimes seems to be weaker, isolated and more pointed and under pressure. Even so, the analysis of the relation between constitutionalism and authoritarianism continues to fascinate academics worldwide. 

Renáta Uitz

October 13, 2017 turned out to be a momentous day for the rule of law in Hungary.

This was an accident, as October 11, 2017 was meant to be the magic day.

October 11, 2017 was set by an amendment of the national higher education act, adopted in the spring of 2017, as major deadline for the continuing operation of foreign private universities in Hungary (Act no. 204 of 2011).

Gautam Bhatia

Towards the end of August, a nine-judge bench of the Indian Supreme Court unanimously held that the right to privacy was a fundamental right under the Indian Constitution. The case arose out of a constitutional challenge to the Indian government’s national biometric identification scheme (commonly known as “Aadhaar”). During the course of arguments, the Attorney-General for India argued that there were two previous decisions of the Court – handed down by benches of eight and six judges – that had held that privacy was not a guaranteed right under the Constitution.