Editors' Introduction: What makes a Judge a ‘Towering Judge’?

Giving a Sense of an Excellent Conference

This Blog Symposium is based on a recent conference on ‘Towering Judges’, organised by Rehan Abeyratne and Iddo Porat and held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law on 25-26 January 2019. The conference brought together leading constitutional scholars to discuss the topic of prominent or pivotal judges in multiple states, and from a global perspective. Discussions ranged widely, and looked at what is meant by a ‘towering judge’ from multiple angles: see the introductory post by Rehan and Iddo, published today, to get a good overview of the conference and its aims.

This Symposium, which contains 15 posts from all conference participants, and broadly following the same sequence as the conference programme, promises to be a lively and thought-provoking collection of pieces. We are sincerely grateful to our contributors for agreeing to participate and to offer a sense of the diverse discussions held in Hong Kong. We expect that this Symposium will start many conversations!

We encourage you to submit responses to this Symposium, and ideas and proposals for future Blog Symposia to us at iacl.blogeditor@gmail.com.

Our First Symposium Co-Hosted with the ICONnect Blog

This is also our first time co-hosting a Blog Symposium with the ICONnect Blog. We are sincerely grateful to ICONnect’s editors, Richard Albert and David Landau, for responding so enthusiastically to our proposal to organise and co-host the Symposium.  We welcome this collaboration as an opportunity to maximise the value of our blogs to our respective (and overlapping) global audiences.  

Publication Schedule & Sequencing

After the introductory post by Rehan and Iddo, published simultaneously on both blogs today, posts will be published alternately on the IACL-AIDC Blog and the ICONnect Blog on each Monday, Wednesday and Friday (the IACL-AIDC Blog’s posting days) over the next few weeks. The next post is a framing piece by Rosalind Dixon, UNSW, on ‘Heroic Courts v Judges: Individual v. Collegial Demosprudence’, to be published on the IACL-AIDC Blog on 6 March. See below for the full publication schedule.

Contributions

1. 4 March - Introductory Post: Rehan Abeyratne and Iddo Porat

- Published on both IACL-AIDC Blog and ICONnect Blog

2. 6 March – Framing Post: Ros Dixon - Heroic Courts v Judges: Individual v. Collegial Demosprudence

- Published on IACL-AIDC Blog

(1)     Towering Judges in Mature/Stable Democracies:

3. 8 March – Gabrielle Appleby & Andrew Lynch (Sir Anthony Mason/Australia)

- Published on ICONnect Blog

4. 13 March – Tom Daly (Justice Kennedy/Ireland)

- Published on ICONnect Blog

5. 15 March – Mark Tushnet (US Supreme Court)

- Published on IACL-AIDC Blog

(2)    Towering Judges in New/Mixed Constitutions

6. 18 March – Jaclyn Neo & Kevin Tan (CJ Chan Sek Keong/Singapore)

- Published on ICONnect Blog

7. 20 March – Alon Harel (CJ Barak/Israel)

- Published on  IACL-AIDC Blog

8. 22 March – Mara Malagodi (CJ Shrestha/Nepal)

- Published on ICONnect Blog

(3)    Towering Judges in Transformative Constitutions

9. 25 March – David Landau (Justice Cepeda/Colombia)

- Published on IACL-AIDC Blog

10. 27 March – Rehan Abeyratne (CJ Bhagwati/India)

- Published on ICONnect Blog

11. 29 March – Dennis Davis (CJ Chaskalson/South Africa)

- Published on IACL-AIDC Blog

(4)    Towering Judges in Transitional/Non-Liberal Constitutions

12. 1 April – Gábor Attila Tóth (President Solyom/Hungary)

- Published on ICONnect Blog

13. 3 April – Sergio Verdugo (Judge Valenzuela/Chile)

- Published on IACL-AIDC Blog

14. 5 April – Concluding Post: Iddo Porat - 'Towering Judges and Global Constitutionalism'

- Published on both IACL-AIDC Blog and ICONnect Blog

Erika Arban and Tom Gerald Daly

Co-Editors