Author: rhirschl
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UKSC rules on Jewish school admission criteria
As the New York Times and other media outlets report, on Wednesday, Dec. 16 the newly established UKSC released its landmark ruling in a case involving apparently discriminatory admission criteria by a Jewish school in North London. According to the traditional Orthodox Judaism definition, a person may be recognized as Jewish only if his or…
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Turkey’s Constitutional Court bans pro-Kurdish party
Under the 1982 Turkish Constitution, Turkey’s Constitutional Court – a stronghold of Kemalist-statist interests and an active defender of Turkey’s militant secularism – is vested with the power to order the closure of political parties whose agenda is found to be “in conflict with the indivisible integrity of the State with its territory and nation,…
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A Win for Wal-Mart, in Canada of All Places
Last week I wrote here about a landmark anti-privatization ruling by the Supreme Court of Israel. But those who thought the days of pro-business, neo-liberal jurisprudence were over, got a sobering reality check reminder last Friday, courtesy of the Supreme Court of Canada.
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Israeli Supreme Court says Privatized Prisons Unconstitutional
Until the early-1980s, Israel’s economy was one of the most centralized in the non-communist world. Over the last two decades, it has undergone considerable liberalization that at times amounted to a local version of an all-out Thatcherite neo-liberalism. During much of the 1990s, the Supreme Court was quite cooperative, granting property rights an elevated constitutional…
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Canadian Language Wars (yet again)
Canada is arguably one of the world capitals when it comes to language rights jurisprudence. The fundamental disagreements concerning the preferential status of French in Quebec vis-à-vis Canada’s commitment to bilingualism have been a perennial bone of constitutional contention over the last 30 years.
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Quiet ending (for now) to the debate over judicial appointments in Israel
A couple of weeks after Justice Sotomayor’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court was confirmed, another, longer and more intense struggle over judicial appointments has reached its quiet ending, with the appointment of three new justices to the Supreme Court of Israel.
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The Continental Divide Writ Small
One of the interesting phenomena in North American constitutionalism is the subtle duet of convergence alongside enduring divergence in the constitutional law and practice of the United States and Canada. The border between the two countries is often described as the longest friendly border in the world.
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Israel’s equality in education
Equality in education continues to be a main issue in the ongoing political and culture wars within Israeli society. On August 6, the Supreme Court of Israel, seating as High Court of Justice released an important ruling in a case dealing with a clash between the right to sectarian autonomy in education, and equality rights.
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Symposium on constitutional design
A very interesting symposium issue of the Texas Law Review (June 2009) has just been published. It deals with the theory and practice of constitutional engineering and is aptly entitled “What, if anything, do we know about constitutional design?” The symposium issue includes fourteen articles by such luminaries as Sanford Levinson, Mark Tushnet, John Ferejohn,…
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Pakistan’s constitutional war continues
First off, these are no doubt good times for the comparative study of constitutions. A blog devoted to comparative constitutional law and courts would have been a near-fantasy merely a decade ago. More than anything else, its establishment reflects the growing interest and tremendous advancement in the comparative study of law and courts over the…