Blog of the International Journal of Constitutional Law

Tag: abusive constitutionalism

  • The Role of a Judge in an Electoral Autocracy

    —Aparna Chandra, Associate Professor of Law and M. K. Nambyar Chair Professor on Constitutional Law, National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. [Editor’s Note: This is one of our ICONnect columns. For more on our 2024 columnists, see here.] The Autocrats’ Playbook This is the year of elections.

  • Democratic versus Abusive Feminism in India

    —Rosalind Dixon, Scientia Professor of Law and Director of the Gilbert+Tobin Centre of Public Law, UNSW Sydney, and Surbhi Karwa, PhD Candidate, UNSW Sydney The Indian Parliament recently passed a constitutional amendment bill, the 128th Constitutional Amendment Bill (also called the Women’s Reservation Bill) reserving one-third of the seats in the House of People and state legislative assemblies for women. 

  • Abusive Feminism

    —Rosalind Dixon, University of New South Wales Last month, the Hungarian Parliament elected the country’s first ever female president, Katalin Novák.[1] Novák is a former minister for family policy and close ally of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. She is also young, telegenic, and happy to talk about her role as a wife and mother.

  • 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 Constitution of Kenya Amendment Bill 2020 as unconstitutional has attracted many reactions both in Kenya and abroad.

  • Freedom at Stake in Brazil: An Illiberal Project Unfolds Under Bolsonaro’s Regime

    Special Series: Perspectives from Undergraduate Law Students –Pedro Abrantes Martins, Bachelor’s degree candidate, Federal University of Paraná (UFPR), Brazil; Research Fellow, Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development; member of the research group “Abusive Constitutionalism and Democratic Erosion,” UFPR Freedom is at stake in Brazil.

  • Introduction to I-CONnect Symposium: 30 Years of the 1988 Brazilian Constitution

    [Editor’s Note: I-CONnect is pleased to feature a one-week symposium on the 30th anniversary of the Brazilian Constitution. We are grateful to our conveners, Professors Glauco Salomão Leite and Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, for assembling an outstanding group of scholars to explore this pivotal and turbulent moment in Brazilian constitutionalism.]

  • The Trouble with Constituent Power in Latin America: A Reply to Joshua Braver

    —David Landau, Florida State University College of Law I would like to thank Joshua Braver for his post yesterday here at I-CONnect engaging my 2012 piece on constitution-making, and am gratified that the work is still relevant and useful for ongoing debates in Latin America and globally.

  • Putting “Abusive Constitutionalism” and Populism in Perspective

    –Joshua Braver, Tufts University The fear of “abusive constitutionalism” has set the agenda for scholarship on popular constitution-making.  It warns of the danger that “constitutional amendment and replacement can be used by would-be autocrats to undermine democracy with relative ease.”[1] The term’s author, David Landau, and fellow traveler William Partlett, are particularly wary of the invocations of the people to call illegal constituent assemblies to create new constitutions that centralize power.

  • A Peek at the Soft Underbelly of Constitutions: The Politics of No-Confidence Votes (I-CONnect Column)

    —Renáta Uitz, Central European University [Editor’s note: This is one of our biweekly I-CONnect columns. Columns, while scholarly in accordance with the tone of the blog and about the same length as a normal blog post, are a bit more “op-ed” in nature than standard posts.

  • Can International Organisations Help to Stem Democratic Decay? (I-CONnect Column)

    —Tom Gerald Daly, Fellow, Melbourne Law School; Associate Director, Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law [Editor’s note: This is one of our biweekly I-CONnect columns. Columns, while scholarly in accordance with the tone of the blog and about the same length as a normal blog post, are a bit more “op-ed” in nature than standard posts.