Category: Analysis
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Video Interview: Courts and Constitution-Making Featuring Will Partlett
—Richard Albert, Boston College Law School In this installment of our new video interview series at I-CONnect, I interview Will Partlett on the role of courts in constitution-making. In the interview, we discuss constitution-making in general, his recent work on constitution-making in Russia and post-communist countries, as well as the relationship between political culture and constitutional structure.
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Should Prisoners Have the Right to Assisted Suicide?
—Michèle Finck, University of Oxford Recently, a Belgian inmate, convicted of murder and rape, received a lethal injection. Most Europeans would feel nothing short of a shock when reading these lines. After all, the death penalty has been abolished in most European States in the aftermath of WWII, and is now outlawed by Protocol No.
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Writs but no Weapons? A Stocktake on Administrative Justice in Myanmar
—Melissa Crouch, National University of Singapore and University of New South Wales (from December 2014) The former Chief Justice Ba U of the Supreme Court of Burma once described the constitutional writs as ‘weapons’. The early years of independence in Burma were a time of significant judicial activism, when the Supreme Court did not hesitate…
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Video Interview: Unamendability and Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments Featuring Yaniv Roznai
—Richard Albert, Boston College Law School In this latest installment of our new video interview series at I-CONnect, I interview Yaniv Roznai on unamendability and unconstitutional constitutional amendments. In the interview, we explore discuss the paradox of the concept of an unconstitutional constitutional amendment, the origins and modern legal implications of the concept, whether one can…
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Turkey Rolling Back the 2010 Reforms?
–Oya Yegen, Boston University, Department of Political Science Turkish judges and prosecutors cast their votes last week for the election of 10 regular and 6 substitute new members to the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK)[1]. The council’s new makeup has been the center of speculation.
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Video Interview: Developments in Spanish Constitutional Law Featuring Benito Alaez Corral
—Richard Albert, Boston College Law School In this installment of our new video interview series at I-CONnect, I interview Benito Aláez Corral on developments in Spanish constitutional law. In the interview, we explore the constitutional implications of secession, the tension between realizing the promise of socio-economic rights and the increasing financial pressures on the state, the role of Parliament in…
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Which Citizens? – Participation in the Drafting of the Icelandic Constitutional Draft of 2011
—Ragnhildur Helgadóttir, Reykjavik University School of Law The Icelandic draft constitution of 2011 has received wide attention, including on this blog. One reason for that is the emphasis placed on public participation in the drafting process. In its (otherwise quite critical) opinion, the Venice Commission (the European Commission for Democracy through Law) wrote: The wide range…