Month: February 2010
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Colombian Judges Stop Álvaro Uribe’s Reelection Plans
Back in 2005, in a 7-2 decision, the Colombian Constitutional Court decided to uphold the constitutional amendment that allowed current president, Álvaro Uribe, to be reelected. Today, also in a 7-2 decision, the Colombian Constitutional Court decided that it won’t take place the referendum that would have given to voters the last word on whether Mr.
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Chinese Constitutionalism
Professor Randy Peerenboom has an important article now available on SSRN regarding Chinese constitutionalism. It’s called “The Social Foundations of China’s Living Constitution.” The URL is: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1542463Here’s the abstract: The article examines the social foundations of constitutionalism in China, focusing on constitutions as a historical response to particular events.
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Socio-Economic Rights Resource
There is a wonderful resource for those interested in the issue of socio-economic rights in South Africa and other countries that may not be well known. It’s called the ESR Review, which stands for Economic and Social Rights in South Africa.
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Survey of empirical research on constitutions, constitutionalism, and constitutionalization
For readers who might be interested in a brief overview and critical assessment of the empirical literature on constitutions, constitutionalism, and constitutionalization, may I suggest a new paper, entitled simply “Constitutions,” in which I focus on a couple of topics with potentially considerable implications for normative constitutional theory and offer some thoughts on where the field stands from a methodological perspective and how it might progress from here.
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Prelude to the End of Mandatory Minimums in Canada?
On Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada may have signaled the imminent demise of mandatory minimum sentences. In Nasogaluak, a unanimous Court expressed deep reservations about the current sentencing regime in Canada. Earlier, the Court of Appeal had declared that sentencing judges were bound by the statutorily prescribed mandatory minimum sentences, and therefore could not exercise any discretion to depart from them.
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“Decolonizing” Justice in Bolivia?
President Evo Morales and his party MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo -Movement Towards Socialism) retained the presidency and won a comfortable supermajority in both chambers of Congress in the elections held last December 6, 2009. The consequences of that unquestionable triumph are beginning to be felt in Bolivia.
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Niger: Another Term Limit Violator Bites the Dust
Niger’s coup d’etat on Thursday has provoked widespread international reaction, as the country has been suspended from the African Union and the coup leaders condemned by Ban Ki-Moon, the EU and ECOWAS. Citizens of Niger, on the other hand, seem to be fairly happy about the development.
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Czech court outlaws extreme right party
As reported in several media outlets (e.g. here), the Czech Republic’s Supreme Administrative Court has banned the far-right Workers’ Party, established in 2003. The court held that the party advocates a dangerous xenophobic, homophobic, anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi agenda and thus poses an intolerable threat to Czech democracy.
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Canadian Religion Cases
The Supreme Court of Canada in October of 2009 issued an important freedom of religion decision in Alberta v. Hutterian Brethren of Wilson Colony, 2009 SCC 37. The Court rejected arguments that the Hutterites should be exempt from having photographs on their driver’s licenses.
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A New Constitution in the Dominican Republic
The process of constitutional change in the Dominican Republic, which I mentioned in a previous post, has successfully come to an end. On January 26th, after a long, thorough, and civil process (characteristics that have been conspicuously absent in the region’s recent wave of “constitutional revolutions” in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador) a new constitution was promulgated in the Dominican Republic.