Special Series: Perspectives from Undergraduate Law Students Ishika Garg and Shamik Datta, National Academy of Legal Studies and Research, Hyderabad (India) Introduction Recently, in Rajeev Suri, the Supreme Court of India (‘SCI’) has recognised participatory democracy as a strong element of the Indian representative democracy, embedded in the Constitution itself. However, the government has failed...

Special Series: Perspectives from Undergraduate Law Students LL.B. Student Contribution –Prannv Dhawan and Anchal Bhateja, B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) Students, National Law School of India University, Bengaluru (India) In a significant judgment rendered in case of Vikash Kumar v. Union Public Service Commission, a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India constitutionally fortified the right...

Special Series: Perspectives from Law StudentsJ.D. Student Contribution --William Skewes-Cox, 3L, Georgetown University Law Center On April 10th and 11th, 2021, Chile will hold elections to select the 155 members of the Constitutional Convention that will write the country’s new constitution. Chileans will vote across twenty-eight electoral districts, each with between three and eight seats...

—Richard Albert, William Stamps Farish Professor of Law, The University of Texas at Austin In “Five Questions” here at I-CONnect, we invite a public law scholar to answer five questions about his or her research.  This edition of “Five Questions” features a short video interview with Antonia Baraggia, Assistant Professor of Comparative Law at the University of Milan. ...

Editors' Note: We are pleased to feature these two posts on Hong Kong Constitutional Law, authored by students learning the subject under the supervision of Professor Rehan Abeyratne at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Below, Professor Abeyratne first offers a brief introduction; the two student posts follow. Introduction to Hong Kong Constitutional Law Student...

--Mikołaj Barczentewicz, DPhil in Law Candidate, University of Oxford Much will be written about Obergefell v Hodges, the momentous decision of the US Supreme Court endorsing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, but in this short blog post I will limit myself to one aspect of the judgment: does it constitute unconstitutional constitutional change? It...

Special Series: Perspectives from Undergraduate Law Students J.D. Student Contribution --Larissa Warren, rising 3L, Boston College Law School [Editor’s note: The students in my advanced seminar on constitutional amendment wrote excellent papers in their take-home examination for the course. They were given a choice of two questions to answer: (1) “Is the United States Constitution Too Difficult to...

--Maxime St-Hilaire, University of Sherbrooke Over the past few years, I have been led to try to draw theoretical implications and conclusions (not to mention political and moral ones) from new forms of constitutional law practice such as the Venice Commission’s, a broad advisory organ of the Council of Europe. When it was created in...

--Michèle Finck, University of Oxford Next month, voters in Luxembourg will have to participate in a referendum (voting is mandatory in Luxembourg) that raises three different questions, among which is the following: do you agree that those residents that are not Luxembourg nationals should be entitled to participate in national legislative elections under the condition...

–Adam Perry, Lecturer in Law, Queen Mary University of London  Some statutes have ‘constitutional’ or ‘quasi-constitutional’ status. What is the legal significance of a statute’s constitutional or quasi-constitutional status? The answer is different in different jurisdictions. In Britain, Canada, and some other jurisdictions, the answers are different than they once were. Britain Britain does not have...

–Léonid Sirota, JSD Candidate, NYU School of Law; Lecturer, Civil Law Section, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law One week ago, on April 15, 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada delivered its decision in Mouvement laïque québécois v. Saguenay (City), 2015 SCC 16, holding that the respondent city’s practice of starting municipal council meetings with a prayer...

–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’...

--Dr. Fatima AlMatar, Kuwait University, Department of Public Law The political situation of Kuwait today resembles 17th century Britain, where the Amir[1] still has the power to dissolve parliament whenever he pleases so long as he provides a reason for doing so, and so long as the parliament is not dissolved again on the same...

--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. He concludes that "although...

Special Series: Perspectives from Undergraduate Law Students J.D. Student Contribution [Editor's note: The students in my advanced seminar on constitutional amendment wrote excellent papers in their take-home examination for the course. They were given a choice of two questions to answer: (1) "Is the United States Constitution Too Difficult to Amend?"; or (2) "Assume the year is...

Special Series: Perspectives from Undergraduate Law Students J.D. Student Contribution [Editor's note: The students in my advanced seminar on constitutional amendment wrote excellent papers in their take-home examination for the course. They were given a choice of two questions to answer: (1) "Is the United States Constitution Too Difficult to Amend?"; or (2) "Assume the year is...

AMERICAN SOCIETY OF COMPARATIVE LAW  YOUNGER COMPARATIVISTS COMMITTEE CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT The Younger Comparativists Committee of the American Society of Comparative Law is pleased to invite submissions for its third annual conference, to be held on April 4-5, 2014, at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon.  The purpose of the conference is to highlight, develop,...

–Richard Albert, Boston College Law School In this installment of I-CONnect’s interview series, I speak with Federico Fabbrini about his forthcoming paper on The Euro-Crisis and the Courts: Judicial Review and the Political Process in Comparative Perspective. In his paper, Professor Fabbrini explores the increasing involvement of courts in the fiscal and economic affairs of the state, with a...

–Richard Albert, Boston College Law School In this installment of I-CONnect’s interview series, I speak with Vanessa MacDonnell about her forthcoming paper on The Constitution as Framework for Governance. In her paper, Professor MacDonnell proposes a new way of thinking about the role of government, specifically with regard to its affirmative obligations to advance and secure constitutional...

--Fernando Muñoz León, Assistant Professor, Universidad Austral de Chile 2011 was an important year for social movements and popular protest in liberal democracies. For instance, the United States had the Occupy movement and Spain the Indignados. Chile had its own share in the form of massive student protests that put the government on the ropes...