Month: August 2013
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Petition to Save the Rechtskulturen Project
Russell Miller (Washington and Lee) asked that we pass along a petition to save the Rechtskulturen project in Berlin. The project hosts the Verfassungsblog, Germany’s new, much-admired and dynamic constitutional law blog, as well as other programming aimed at promoting critical and interdisciplinary comparative law work in Germany and the world.
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Freedom of Expression or Freedom from Electoral Unfairness?: The ECHR Upholds a Ban on Political Advertising
—Eoin Carolan, University College Dublin The decision in Animal Defenders International v. U.K. represents the European Court of Human Rights’ latest effort to resolve the contentious and long-running debate about the compatibility of a prohibition on political advertising with the protection afforded to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
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The Constituent Power of Student Protests in Chile
–Fernando Muñoz León, Assistant Professor, Universidad Austral de Chile 2011 was an important year for social movements and popular protest in liberal democracies. For instance, the United States had the Occupy movement and Spain the Indignados. Chile had its own share in the form of massive student protests that put the government on the ropes (two Ministers of Education resigned, and a third one was impeached by the opposition under student pressure) as well as many universities (for example, mine was on the brink of insolvency after five months of a student strike).
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The First Ten Years of The Indonesian Constitutional Court: The Unexpected Insurance Role
–Stefanus Hendrianto, Santa Clara University On August 13, 2013, Indonesia celebrates the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the country’s Constitutional Court. The rise of the Indonesian Constitutional Court, indeed, has been one of the success stories of the democratization process in Indonesia.
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Nathan Brown: Quick Reactions to Egypt’s New Draft Constitution
–Nathan Brown, George Washington University A verson of the new draft Constitution has been published this morning in Egypt. Al-Shuruq says that it is still undergoing linguistic correction, and the draft as published has some gaps, so it is not clear how authoritative it is.
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Margin of Appreciation at the African Court
Our sometimes contributor Adem Kassie Abebe has a new post over at AfricLaw in which he further analyzes the recent case of the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights against Tanzania, Tanganyika Law Society and The Legal and Human Rights Centre and Reverend Christopher Mtikila v.
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Review of Courts and Consociations, by Christopher McCrudden and Brendan O’Leary (OUP 2013)
—Reviewed by Tom Ginsburg In its 2009 decision in the case of Sejdić and Finci v. Bosnia, the European Court of Human Rights found in favor of two applicants who challenged the provision of the Bosnian Constitution restricting certain political offices to three “constituent peoples”.
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Egypt: What’s Next?
—Mohamed Abdelaal, Assistant Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law, Alexandria University, School of Law Was the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi on June 30 a popular revolution or a military coup? The debate is outdated. What is more important is that the events of June 30 returned Egypt to square one, right back where it started from in January 2011, when President Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down under the pressure of massive popular demonstrations.
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The Liberty-Equality Debate: Comparing the Lawrence and Naz Foundation Rulings
Cross-posted with permission from the Oxford Human Rights Hub Blog. —Ajey Sangai, Research Associate, Jindal Global Law School Last month marked the 10-year anniversary of Lawrence v. Texas, where the United States Supreme Court ruled that laws that criminalized sodomy were unconstitutional.
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Why Entrench Formal Amendment Rules?
–Richard Albert, Boston College Law School Constitutional changes, both big and small, are underway in Egypt, Fiji, Tunisia and elsewhere. Constitutional designers in these and other countries face daunting challenges in dividing powers between governmental branches, balancing state prerogatives with individual rights, and managing majority-minority relations.