Blog of the International Journal of Constitutional Law

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Symposium | Feminist Constitutionalism: Part III – How Feminist Constitutionalism Embraces Diversity: Challenging Quebec’s Bill 21

Published: 4 April, 2024

This is the third essay in a special eight-part series on Feminist Constitutionalism, organized by Melina Girardi Fachin, as part of the project 'Transforming Judicial Outcomes for Women in Canada and Brazil,' which is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). For more information about Feminist Constitutionalism, please contact Melina...

The future for citizens’ assemblies in Ireland

Published: 3 April, 2024

—Seána Glennon, Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law In the past decade, the Irish people have voted in favour of a range of liberalising constitutional amendments: from marriage equality to abortion rights to removing the offence of blasphemy from the Constitution. These changes have coincided with the incorporation of citizen deliberation into...

What’s New in Public Law

Published: 1 April, 2024

--Yassin Abdalla Abdelkarim, Judge at Luxor Elementary Court, Egypt. LLM Leeds Beckett University, UK. --Jose Mario de la Garza-Martins, Assistant Professor of Constitutional Theory, Universidad Panamericana, Mexico In this weekly feature, I-CONnect publishes a curated reading list of developments in public law. "Developments" may include a selection of links to news, high court decisions, new...

After the Indonesian 2024 General Election: What Went Wrong With Indonesian Democracy?

Published: 26 March, 2024

--Stefanus Hendrianto, Pontifical Gregorian University On March 20th, 2024, the Indonesian Election Commission officially declared that the Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto won the Presidential Election, which took place on February 14, 2024. The result might not be shocking because Prabowo had maintained a lead in the pre-election survey. Nevertheless, it is still surprising that he...

What’s New in Public Law

Published: 25 March, 2024

—Silvia Talavera Lodos, PhD Candidate, School of Advanced Studies Sant’Anna. —Benjamin Nurkić, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Law University of Tuzla and a member of the Constitutional Committee of the House of Representatives of the Parliament of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this weekly feature, I-CONnect publishes a curated reading list of developments in...

Symposium | Feminist Constitutionalism: Part II – Multilevel: The Impact of Feminism in Constitutional Debates

Published: 22 March, 2024

This is the second essay in a special eight-part series on Feminist Constitutionalism, organized by Melina Girardi Fachin as part of the project ‘Transforming Judicial Outcomes for Women in Canada and Brazil’, which is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). For more information about Feminist Constitutionalism, please contact Melina...

What’s New in Public Law

Published: 21 March, 2024

--Mikołaj Wolanin, Master’s student, University of Warsaw (Poland) In this weekly feature, I-CONnect publishes a curated reading list of developments in public law. "Developments" may include a selection of links to news, high court decisions, new or recent scholarly books and articles, and blog posts from around the public law blogosphere. To submit relevant developments...

ICON-S “New Scholarship Showcase”

Published: 15 March, 2024

New Scholarship Showcase is a brand new format promoted by the ICON-S Committee on “New Directions in Scholarship”. We will periodically invite a public law scholar to discuss his or her newly published book. Our second edition of this new format features Mathew John, Professor and Executive Director, Centre on Public Law and Jurisprudence, Jindal Global...

Celebrating International Women’s Day by Promoting Pro-Women Constitutional Amendments: A Risky Strategy?

Published: 13 March, 2024

--Tania Groppi, Università degli Studi di Siena [Editor’s Note: This is one of our ICONnect columns. For more on our 2024 columnists, see here.] March 8, 2024, International Women’s Day, was marked, in France and in Ireland, by two constitutionally significant events with very different outcomes. Both were aimed at ‘celebrating’ Women’s Day by amending...

What’s New in Public Law

Published: 11 March, 2024

--Yacine Ben Chaabane Mousli, Research Assistant, Institut Michel Villey, Panthéon-Assas University In this weekly feature, I-CONnect publishes a curated reading list of developments in public law. "Developments" may include a selection of links to news, high court decisions, new or recent scholarly books and articles, and blog posts from around the public law blogosphere. To...

Symposium | Feminist Constitutionalism: Part I – The Rise of Feminist Constitutionalism: Shaping the Future Through the Lens of Equality

Published: 7 March, 2024

This is the inaugural essay in a special eight-part series on Feminist Constitutionalism, organized by Melina Girardi Fachin, as part of the project 'Transforming Judicial Outcomes for Women in Canada and Brazil,' which is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). For more information about Feminist Constitutionalism, please contact Melina...

What’s New in Public Law

Published: 4 March, 2024

--Wilson Seraine da Silva Neto, Master in Constitutional Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Coimbra – Portugal. Lawyer. In this weekly feature, I-CONnect publishes a curated reading list of developments in public law. “Developments” may include a selection of links to news, high court decisions, new or recent scholarly books and articles, and...

Introducing the 2024 ICONnect Columnists

Published: 27 February, 2024

--David Landau, Florida State University College of Law The editors of ICONnect are very pleased to announce our new slate of columnists for 2024: Esther Ang’awa,  Aparna Chandra, Tania Groppi, and Miguel Schor. We are certain that they will provide a diverse and fascinating set of voices for our readers, representing a range of regional...

What’s New in Public Law

Published: 26 February, 2024

--Surbhi Karwa, PhD Candidate, UNSW-Sydney In this weekly feature, I-CONnect publishes a curated reading list of developments in public law. "Developments" may include a selection of links to news, high court decisions, new or recent scholarly books and articles, and blog posts from around the public law blogosphere. To submit relevant developments for our weekly...

ICON Volume 21, Issue 4: Editorial

Published: 25 February, 2024

Editorial: In this issue; In this issue—Reviews; 10 good reads 2023 In this issue In an Editorial Reflection, Aileen Kavanagh considers the importance of unwritten norms to written constitutions—and to the study of comparative constitutional law. According to Kavanagh, closer attention to these norms will deepen our understanding of fundamental constitutional commitments, broaden our understanding...

ICON Volume 21, Issue 4: Table of Contents

Published: 24 February, 2024

I•CON Volume 21 Issue 4 Table of Contents Editorial: In this issue; In this issue—Reviews; 10 good reads 2023 Editorial Reflection Aileen Kavanagh, The ubiquity of unwritten constitutionalism Articles Jeffrey Steven Gordon, Comparative judicial federalism Julen Etxabe, A dialogical model of human rights adjudication Neli Frost, The global “political voice deficit matrix” I•CON: Debate! Alma...

What’s New in Public Law

Published: 19 February, 2024

--Nicola Abate, Ph.D. candidate in Law and Teaching Assistant at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain). In this weekly feature, I-CONnect publishes a curated reading list of developments in public law. "Developments" may include a selection of links to news, high court decisions, new or recent scholarly books and articles, and blog posts from around the...

What’s New in Public Law

Published: 12 February, 2024

--Sonder Li, GDL Candidate, City University of London In this weekly feature, I-CONnect publishes a curated reading list of developments in public law. "Developments" may include a selection of links to news, high court decisions, new or recent scholarly books and articles, and blog posts from around the public law blogosphere. To submit relevant developments...

What’s New in Public Law

Published: 5 February, 2024

– Neslihan Çetin, PhD Candidate, University Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne In this weekly feature, I-CONnect publishes a curated reading list of developments in public law. "Developments" may include a selection of links to news, high court decisions, new or recent scholarly books and articles, and blog posts from around the public law blogosphere. To submit relevant...

Editorial: The human ChatGPT—The use and abuse of research assistants

Published: 27 January, 2024

[Editor’s Note: This Editorial is forthcoming in ICON] Recent meetings of the Advisory Boards of I•CON and EJIL were dedicated, among other issues, to, surprise surprise, the ChatGPT challenge. In the context of law faculties and legal education, one acute problem, as a recent Editorial noted, relates to the possible use of AI by students...
  • The Indian Constitution through the Lens of Power – III: Asymmetric Federalism

    Published:

    —Gautam Bhatia, Advocate, New Delhi and independent legal scholar [Editor’s Note: This is one of our ICONnect columns. For more on our 2023 columnists, see here.] In my previous two columns, I examined the Indian Constitution as a terrain of contestation across two axes of power: the centre-state [“federal”] axis, and the legislature-executive [“parliamentary”] axis.

  • 100 Years of Austrian Republicanism – 100 Years of Austrian Federalism?

    Published:

    —Anna Gamper, Professor of Public Law, University of Innsbruck 2018 is a very special year for Austrian constitutional lawyers since it was exactly 100 years ago today that the Republic of (German-)Austria (since 1919: Republic of Austria) was founded. After the end of the First World War, the representatives of the remaining, predominantly German-speaking parts of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy (the so-called “Kronländer” or Cisleithanian Länder) assembled as the “Provisional National Assembly for German-Austria” in Vienna.

  • Brazilian Federalism and Asymmetries on the 30th Anniversary of the 1988 Constitution

    Published:

    [Editor’s Note: This is the third entry in our symposium on the “30th Anniversary of the Brazilian Constitution.” The introduction to the symposium is available here.] —Marcelo Labanca Correa de Araujo, Catholic University of Pernambuco The historical formation of the Brazilian State has much to do with processes of centralization and political-territorial decentralization.

  • Special Issue of Perspectives on Federalism on “The Constitution of Canada: History, Evolution, Influence and Reform”

    Published:

    —Richard Albert, Boston College Law School Under the leadership of Giuseppe Martinico, the Scuola Sant’Anna in Pisa hosted an international symposium in May 2017 to mark the Sesquicentennial of the Canadian Constitution Act, 1867. The symposium invited scholars to explore four dimensions of the Constitution of Canada: its history, evolution, influence and reform.

  • Taking Aim at Cooperative Federalism: The Long-Gun Registry Decision by the Supreme Court of Canada

    Published:

    —Johanne Poirier[*], Université libre de Bruxelles  On March 27, 2015, a highly divided Supreme Court of Canada rendered a momentous ruling which reveals a severe divergence on the nature of Canadian contemporary federalism.[1]  The tight 5 to 4 decision also underlines a different conception of the role of the judicial branch regarding the defence and promotion of cooperative behaviour by public authorities, principally the legislative branch, under Canadian constitutional law.

  • Cooperative Federalism Divides the Supreme Court of Canada: Quebec (Attorney General) v. Canada (Attorney General)

    Published:

    —Paul Daly, University of Montreal, Faculty of Law On Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada brought to an end the lengthy saga of Canada’s long-gun registry. There was a sharp split on the Court, with a bare majority of five justices giving a narrow win to the federal government over the joint dissent of their three Quebec colleagues (with whom one other justice agreed).

  • New Scholarship Review: Interview with Jonathan Marshfield on Federalism and the Amendment Power

    Published:

    —Richard Albert, Boston College Law School In this installment of I-CONnect’s interview series, I speak with Jonathan Marshfield about his forthcoming paper on Decentralizing the Amendment Power. In his new paper, Marshfield explores how and why constitutional amendment rules might be structured to include subnational units in the process of formal amendment.

  • Introducing the 2024 ICONnect Columnists

    Published:

    —David Landau, Florida State University College of Law The editors of ICONnect are very pleased to announce our new slate of columnists for 2024: Esther Ang’awa,  Aparna Chandra, Tania Groppi, and Miguel Schor. We are certain that they will provide a diverse and fascinating set of voices for our readers, representing a range of regional and substantive areas of focus.

  • ICON Volume 21, Issue 4: Editorial

    Published:

    Editorial: In this issue; In this issue—Reviews; 10 good reads 2023 In this issue In an Editorial Reflection, Aileen Kavanagh considers the importance of unwritten norms to written constitutions—and to the study of comparative constitutional law. According to Kavanagh, closer attention to these norms will deepen our understanding of fundamental constitutional commitments, broaden our understanding of constitutionalism “beyond the courts” (including the work of politicians as well as public administrators, non-governmental organizations, and actors in civil society), and help to bring to light the importance of relationships in constitutional law—including the possibility that government can be imagined as a matter of collaboration, rather than conflict, among public institutions.

  • ICON Volume 21, Issue 4: Table of Contents

    Published:

    I•CON Volume 21 Issue 4 Table of Contents Editorial: In this issue; In this issue—Reviews; 10 good reads 2023 Editorial Reflection Aileen Kavanagh, The ubiquity of unwritten constitutionalism Articles Jeffrey Steven Gordon, Comparative judicial federalism Julen Etxabe, A dialogical model of human rights adjudication Neli Frost, The global “political voice deficit matrix” I•CON: Debate!