Category: Analysis
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Indonesian Constitutional Court Reconsiders Blasphemy Law
–Dr. Melissa Crouch, Postdoctoral Fellow, Law Faculty, National University of Singapore In 2012, a new case challenging the constitutionality of Indonesia’s Blasphemy Law was lodged with the Constitutional Court.[1] Since Indonesia’s transition to democracy, over 150 individuals from minority religious groups have been convicted of blasphemy.
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Should Egypt Drop the Presidency?
—David Landau, Florida State University College of Law Bruce Ackerman recently wrote an op-ed in the New York Times calling for Egypt to drop the institution of the presidency from its new constitutional order, and instead to use a parliamentary system with a constructive vote of no confidence.
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Of Generals, Judges, and Constitutional Democracies
—Menaka Guruswamy, International Visiting Associate Professor of Law, Columbia University (Fall 2013) Cross-posted from the Blog of the UK Constitutional Law Group On July 3, General Fattah al-Sisi, the 58 year old Chief of the Egyptian Army announced on television that the army had removed President Mohammad Morsi from power and suspended the constitution.
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How the financial crisis has affected constitutions
–Dr. Alkmene Fotiadou, Centre for European Constitutional Law (Athens, Greece) In the comparative chapter of the book Constitutions in the Global Financial Crisis by Xenophon Contiades (ed.), we attempted to trace how the financial crisis impacted formal and informal constitutional change based on data and analysis provided in the book by constitutional scholars from Greece,…
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The Constitutionalism Debate in China
—Rogier Creemers, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies & St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford Cross-posted from the Blog of the UK Constitutional Law Group Over the past few months, a heated debate about the role of the Constitution in Chinese political life has emerged.
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One Year After: How the Romanian Constitutional Court Changed its Mind
–Bianca Selejan-Guţan, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Simion Bărnuţiu Faculty of Law July 2012 was the scene of the most important constitutional crisis in Romania since December 1989. I explored some salient aspects of the crisis in an earlier post on this blog.
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Facing l’etat d’exception: The Greek Crisis Jurisprudence
—Christina M. Akrivopoulou, Adjunct Lecturer, Democritus University of Thrace Greek courts have only recently attempted to control the Memoranda entered into between the Greek state and the European Union and IMF, which impose austerity measures on the country. This judicial self-restraint has mainly been due to the extreme severity of the financial crisis.
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Constitutional Writs as “Weapons” in Myanmar?
—Dr. Melissa Crouch, Postdoctoral Fellow, Law Faculty, National University of Singapore In 2011, Myanmar began its transition to democracy under a civilian-military led government. The process has taken place within the framework of the 2008 Constitution and it has been followed by a range of legal and institutional reforms.
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Says Who?
—Claudia E. Haupt, Associate-in-Law, Columbia Law School Cross-posted from the Center for Law and Religion Forum at St. John’s University School of Law Just in time for my post on symbols, the New York Times picks up the topic as well.
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A partial supranational solution to the problem of regressive constitutional amendments
–Adem Kessie Abebe, University of Pretoria, South Africa With the significant reduction in the number of coup d’états, one major constitutional crisis facing countries in Africa and beyond is the enactment of regressive constitutional amendments, amendments that are intended to reinforce the powers of incumbents or otherwise weaken vertical and horizontal accountability mechanisms.