—Andrea Scoseria Katz, NYU School of Law [Editor’s note: This is one of our biweekly I-CONnect columns. For more information about our four columnists for 2020, please click here.] On Saturday, February 22, the United States Supreme Court granted an emergency request by the Trump administration to suspend a lower federal court order blocking a
The Superficiality of U.S. Confirmation Hearings and the Issue of Comparative Constitutional Law
—Stefanus Hendrianto, Boston College In the last five confirmation hearings in the United States Senate for nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court (Roberts, 2005; Alito, 2006; Sotomayor, 2009; Kagan, 2010; and Gorsuch, 2017), the role of comparative constitutional law in the American constitutional system was one of the main questions. Very recently, in the confirmation
Hellerstedt and Standing: A Comparative View
—Stefanus Hendrianto, University of Notre Dame The issue of standing appears to be relatively marginal in comparative constitutional law, because comparative constitutional scholars tend to see standing as a technical issue. For instance, in analyzing the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, Whole Women’s Health v Hellerstedt,[1] many legal analysts have missed an important aspect of
Human Dignity in Obergefell v. Hodges
—Michèle Finck, Fellow, London School of Economics, and Lecturer, Keble College, University of Oxford. Human dignity is currently somewhat of a buzzword in constitutional and human rights studies. While resonating well on an intuitive level, the concept is however tricky to define in legal terms – underlining the conceptual vagueness or flexibility that characterizes it.
Clapper v. Amnesty International: Still Trying for a Day in Court
—Sudha Setty, Western New England University School of Law In the last decade, U.S. courts have consistently blocked civil suits seeking damages for government overreaching in its counterterrorism programs. Most cases have been dismissed at the pleadings stage, as courts have found plaintiffs to be without standing and/or have found that plaintiffs who have standing
