Category: Analysis
-
Reviewing Ireland’s Abortion Regime
—Eoin Carolan, University College Dublin The recent death of a woman from septicaemia following a miscarriage has focused attention on the legal regime regulating the carrying out of abortions within Ireland. Since the Constitution was amended in 1983 to insert a provision recognising the right to life of the unborn, the issue of abortion has…
-
The Real Winner in the Egyptian Constitution? The Military
[cross-posted from the HuffingtonPost] As Cairo’s streets fill with protestors after the rushed passage of the new draft Constitution, all eyes are on the confrontation between the newly re-energized opposition and the supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet, while controversy swirls around the reach of Islam and the…
-
The Illusion of the Romanian Constitution?
—Bianca Selejan-Guţan, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Simion Bărnuţiu Faculty of Law On July 29th, 2012, over 8 million Romanian citizens (i.e. over 46% of the electoral records) voted in the referendum organized for the dismissal of the President. More than 87% voted in favor of the dismissal.
-
Tunisian Constitutionalism and Women’s Rights
—Adrien K. Wing, Bessie Dutton Murray Professor of Law, University of Iowa College of Law The world was in shock and awe in the winter of 2010 when Tunisia, a small North African country, was able to remove its twenty-three-year leader President Zine El Abedine Ben Ali from power in less than a month—and with…
-
Comparative Access to Justice
— Steven D. Schwinn, Associate Professor of Law, The John Marshall Law School Access to justice is one of the more widely recognized privileges in constitutional law and international human rights today. All of the most progressive and contemporary constitutions and human rights instruments recognize some form of it.
-
Five Electoral Systems that make even less sense than the Electoral College
–Daniel Lansberg-Rodríguez and Tom Ginsburg, University of Chicago Law School [reprinted from www.foreignpolicy.com] Grousing about our arcane and nonsensical Electoral College, and calling publicly for its end, have by now become time-honored election season traditions in the United States. This year, even the Russians, themselves no paragons of functional democracy, have gotten in on the…
-
Making Government Work for the 99%? (And the 53%? And the 47%)?: Why we Need to Re-think the Separation in the Separation of Powers
—Eoin Carolan, Lecturer in Law, University College Dublin Has the separation of powers outlived its usefulness? After all, contemporary government bears little if any resemblance to the 18th century structures on which Montesquieu’s influential account of the separation of powers was modelled.
-
Constitutional Comparativism and Splendid Isolation?
—Jaakko Husa, Professor, Legal Culture and Legal Linguistics, University of Lapland, Finland Long gone are the days when comparative law was ruled by private law scholars only. After the collapse of socialism we have experienced a global expansion of constitutionalism, judicial review, and human rights.
-
Designing Administrative Law: Free Trade vs. Accountability Networks
—Francesca Bignami, Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School In seeking to guarantee market access, international trade regimes generally include not only a substantive component, for instance a commitment to non-discriminatory product safety regulation, but also a procedural component designed to ensure that foreign firms can make themselves heard in the domestic administrative process.