—Geser Ganbaatar, P.h.D Student, University of Milan, Italy. Mongolia has become a de facto one-party dominant system after two parliamentary elections in 2016 and 2020. Thanks to the highly disproportional electoral system, the Mongolian People’s Party (MPP) has obtained a supermajority of legislative seats (eighty-five and eighty-one percent respectively), while obtaining a mere forty-five percent
Basic Structure and Tiered Amendment Processes: The Kenyan Supreme Court’s BBI Ruling
—Gautam Bhatia, SCRIPTS Centre for Excellence, University of Humboldt, Berlin [Editors’ Note: This is the fourth and final post in a joint symposium on the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) in Kenya, through which President Uhuru Kenyatta attempted to introduce the Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Bill, 2020. Among the various reforms proposed therein, the bill introduced
The BBI Judgment: Of Basic Structure Doctrines and Participatory Constitution-making
—Dr Silvia Suteu, Associate Professor, University College London Faculty of Laws [Editors’ Note: This is the third post in a joint symposium on the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) in Kenya, through which President Uhuru Kenyatta attempted to introduce the Constitution of Kenya (Amendment) Bill, 2020. Among the various reforms proposed therein, the bill introduced a
The Contingent Role of the Basic Structure Doctrine for Constitutionalism in Africa
—Berihun Adugna Gebeye, Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg [Editors’ Note: This is one of our biweekly ICONnect columns. For more information on our four columnists for 2021, please see here.] Kenyan courts’ use of the basic structure doctrine to strike down President Uhuru Kenyatta’s the
The Constitutional Chamber in El Salvador and Presidential Reelection: Another Case of Constitutional Authoritarian-Populism
—José Ignacio Hernández G., Fellow, Growth Lab-Center for International Development Harvard; Professor of Administrative Law at Universidad Católica Andrés Bello; Invited Professor, Universidad Castilla-La Mancha, and Tashkent University. A few months after the mass removal of the constitutional judges in El Salvador, the new Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court issued ruling number 1-2021, dated
Constituent Power and the Politics of Unamendability
—Mara Malagodi, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Law; Rehan Abeyratne, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Law; and Ngoc Son Bui, The University of Oxford [Editors’ Note: This is one of our biweekly ICONnect columns. For more information on our four columnists for 2021, please see here.] Judicial interventions in
Transformative Constitutionalism and the Basic Structure Doctrine: A New Account from Kenya
—Berihun Adugna Gebeye, Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg [Editors’ Note: This is one of our biweekly ICONnect columns. For more information on our four columnists for 2021, please see here.] On 13 May 2021, the Constitutional and Human Rights Division of the High Court of
Term Limits and the Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendment Doctrine in Indonesia
—Stefanus Hendrianto, Pontifical Gregorian University A controversy surrounding constitutional amendment has surfaced recently in Indonesia, after a veteran politician, Amien Rais, accused the administration of Joko Widodo (or Jokowi) of trying to sway the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) to amend the 1945 Constitution so that the presidential term could be extended.[1] Currently, President Jokowi is
The Straw that Broke the Back of the Constitution? When Quantity Transforms to Quality
—Yaniv Roznai, IDC Herzliya, Harry Radzyner Law School* On October 27, 2020, an extended bench of the Israeli Supreme Court held a hearing in HCJ 2905/20 et al. Regarding the Basic Law: Government, Amendment No. 8 and the Temporary Order (the Alternation of Government), a hearing that was broadcast live. One argument that came up
An Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendment? The Strange Case of the Postponement of the 2020 Brazilian Election
—Jairo Lima, Universidade Estadual do Norte do Paraná Among the many impacts the COVID-19 epidemic has had on political and constitutional activity worldwide, the postponement or cancellation of elections has been one of the key issues. According to data from the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, an institution that monitors electoral processes in the
