Category: Analysis
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Constitutional Court Crisis in Slovakia: Still Far Away from Resolution
—Tomáš Ľalík, Associate Professor, Comenius University (Bratislava) July 2 marked the second anniversary of incumbent Slovak President Andrej Kiska’s refusal to fill in two vacancies at the Constitutional Court (CC). The CC has been managing its affairs two judges short since then, but the situation deteriorated further this February when the term of a third judge…
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Video Interview: Constitutional Statutes, Featuring Farrah Ahmed and Adam Perry
—Richard Albert, Boston College Law School In this latest installment of our video interview series at I-CONnect, I interview Farrah Ahmed (Melbourne) and Adam Perry (Oxford) on the phenomenon of “constitutional statute,” the subject of two of their recently co-authored papers.
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Was the Brexit Referendum Democratic?
Cross-posted with permission from the UK Constitutional Law Association Blog. The original post appears here. —Stephen Tierney, University of Edinburgh The past three weeks have seen a steady backlash against the referendum. It is understandable that many don’t like the outcome, after all 48% voted for Remain.
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Developments in Slovak Constitutional Law: The Year 2015 in Review
[Editor’s Note: This is the second installment in our Year-in-Review series, which began earlier this year with the publication of the 2015 year-in-review of developments in Italian Constitutional Law, prepared by Marta Cartabia, Pietro Faraguna, Michele Massa and Diletta Tega. We invite scholars from around the world to prepare similar reports on their own jurisdictions for publication…
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Pulling the Article 50 ‘Trigger’: Parliament’s Indispensable Role
Cross-posted with permission from the UK Constitutional Law Association Blog. The original post appears here. —Nick Barber, Fellow, Trinity College Oxford; Tom Hickman, Reader, UCL and barrister at Blackstone Chambers; Jeff King, Senior Lecturer in Law, UCL In this post we argue that as a matter of domestic constitutional law, the Prime Minister is unable to issue…
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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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Do All Democracies Need Party Dissolution Mechanisms?
—Brian Christopher Jones, Liverpool Hope University Although it may appear harsh or severe, the ability of many democracies to dissolve political parties based on the (supposedly) “unconstitutional” or “anti-democratic” nature of their existence is an inherent constitutional feature of many states.
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Going Against the Consociational Grain: The Debate on the Dutch Advisory Referendum Act and the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement Referendum
—Reijer Passchier & Wim Voermans, Leiden University On April 6, 2016, the Netherlands held the first referendum under its new Advisory Referendum Act of 2015 (Wet raadgevend referendum)[1] and the third national referendum in two centuries.[2] This was a test on a highly controversial issue: Dutch political (consocialist) culture and referendums do not mix well.
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Constitutional Challenge to the State Religion Status of Islam in Bangladesh: Back to Square One?
–Ridwanul Hoque, Professor of Law, Dhaka University On March 28, the High Court Division of the Bangladesh Supreme Court summarily dismissed a 28 year-old constitutional petition challenging Islam as the state religion. The court said that the petitioners lacked standing to litigate, but it did not hold any hearing at all.[1]