Category: David Law
-
The ECHR and the new Swiss constitutional ban on minarets
The decision by Swiss voters, by a 57.5% margin, to ratify a constitutional amendment backed by nationalist parties that bans the construction of new minarets is not a proud moment for Switzerland. It is hard to see what motivation could lie behind popular ratification of the amendment except old-fashioned religious prejudice.
-
Supreme Court of Canada v. detention of juveniles at Guantanamo Bay
Today the Supreme Court of Canada heard oral argument in Prime Minister of Canada et al. v. Omar Ahmed Khadr. Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick (a fellow Canadian, if I am not mistaken) has a very nice story about it here. In a nutshell, the Canadian Supreme Court is being asked to clean up the legal mess…
-
The European Court of Human Rights says no to crucifixes in Italian classrooms
Short version of Lautsi v. Italy: an Italian mother of Finnish origin has two children in school. The classrooms in which her children are instructed have crucifixes prominently displayed. She unsuccessfully petitions the government to have them removed before seeking relief from the European Court of Human Rights.
-
Constitutional convergence, international law, and … local government law?
Wherever there is government, there is by definition also constitutional law, in the sense of a set of legal rules, practices, and institutions that define and allocate public power. Everyone knows that constitutional law is not a phenomenon that occurs exclusively at the nation-state level.
-
Why constitutional theory needs to be comparative and international
What’s wrong with mainstream constitutional theory? Among other things, it is neither comparative nor international, at a time when other countries and the international legal regime are in need of constitutionalization and might actually benefit from some applied theory. Here’s a rundown of the argument, with thanks to both the Constitution in 2020 and Balkinization…
-
The Japanese Election: Much Ado About Very Little?
It’s rare for Japanese politics to get a lot of attention in the Western media, but this was admittedly no ordinary election. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)’s trouncing of the Liberal Democratic Party on August 30 made the front page of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and so forth.
-
More on the election campaign against conservative justices in Japan
As promised, Colin Jones has an interesting update on the public campaign to unseat a pair of sitting Supreme Court justices in the upcoming Japanese election. Thus far, in a nutshell, a retired Supreme Court justice is calling for the election defeat of two of his former colleagues in an advertising campaign that expressly uses…
-
When Supreme Court justices attack … each other
Imagine if Justice O’Connor were to sponsor a full-page advertisement in the New York Times calling for the impeachment of her former colleague, Justice Kennedy, because she disagrees with the positions he has taken on some issue–say, voting rights. Hard to imagine, right?
-
Notable new book on the constitutionalization of international law
It’s rare to come across a collection of papers and to feel that one may be witnessing something fresh and important, the birth of a field, or at least a subfield. But I’ve had that experience twice this year – once this spring, when I got my hands on the recent “Rule by Law” collection…
-
How do you say “ladies, gentlemen, and judges of the jury” in Japanese?
For the first time in decades, as the Economist reports, Japan once again has a jury system (or, if you’re feeling saucy, a “saiban-in seido”), and it is puzzling in a variety of ways. The first puzzle has to do with its sheer existence.