Tag: United States
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Is There an Optimal Constitutional Design for Presidential Impeachments?
—Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasília Comparative constitutional law is now faced with a rich debate over the scope, limits, and consequences of impeachment proceedings. Since the Brazilian President Dilma Roussef was temporarily suspended from office and thereby replaced by the acting President Michel Temer after the Senate had voted to begin an impeachment trial…
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Video Interview: “Constitutional Sunsets and Experimental Legislation” featuring Sofia Ranchordás
–Richard Albert, Boston College Law School In this latest installment of our new video interview series at I-CONnect, I interview Sofia Ranchordás on her new book on Constitutional Sunsets and Experimental Legislation: A Comparative Perspective, published by Edward Elgar. Here is the publisher’s abstract for the book: This innovative book explores the nature and function of ‘sunset clauses’…
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Showing Germans the Light
–Or Bassok, Tikvah Scholar, NYU School of Law Conferences in the US on German public law often digress into an attempt by Americans scholars to show their German counterparts the scholarly “light.” The recipe has several variations.[1] According to the milder version, German public law scholarship fails to give an adequate account of reality when it…
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Marry me or tax me? That is the constitutional question
—Angelique Devaux, French Licensed Attorney (Notaire), LL.M. in American Law (Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law) To marry or tax me. This could be the modern Shakespeare quote heard in the oral arguments last March 27th at the US Supreme Court in the pending case Windsor v.
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Four Models of Politicized Judicial Selection
—Richard Albert, Boston College Law School Judges on national courts of last resort are generally appointed in politicized processes. Judicial selection is politicized when the choice rests on popular consent mediated in some way through elected representatives. We can identify four major models of politicized judicial selection in constitutional states: (1) executive unilateral appointment; (2)…
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Differencing Same-Sex Marriage
–Russell Miller, Washington & Lee University School of Law, Co-Author, The Constitutional Jurisprudence of the Federal Republic of Germany (2012), Co-Editor-in-Chief, German Law Journal As a comparative lawyer it is tempting to see a once-in-a-generation convergence of American and German constitutional law on what many regard as the era’s foremost civil rights issue: same-sex marriage.
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Book Review/Response: Claudia Haupt and Markus Thiel on Church and State in Germany and the United States
[Editor’s Note: In this installment of I•CONnect’s Book Review/Response Series, Markus Thiel reviews Claudia Haupt’s recently-published book Religion-State Relations in the United States and Germany: The Quest for Neutrality. Claudia Haupt then responds to Markus Thiel’s review.] —Markus Thiel, Professor of Public Law, University of Applied Sciences for Public Administration North Rhine-Westphalia, Cologne, and Associate…
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Toward a New European Abortion Constitutionalism?
—Ruth Rubio Marin, European University Institute Modern constitutionalism, born at the end of the 18th century with the French and American Revolutions, is a historically grounded venture. At the time, women did not enjoy civil equality, their freedom being largely dependent on their marital status, nor political citizenship–female enfranchisement not becoming a widespread reality until…
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Our Electoral Exceptionalism
—Nicholas Stephanopoulos, Assistant Professor, University of Chicago In all countries that employ single-member districts (or small multimember districts), redistricting is a vital issue. How districts are drawn influences, among other things, how competitive races will be, how many members of minority groups will be elected, and which party will control a majority in the legislature.…