Category: Developments
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Bachelet Appoints Group to Study New Constitution for Chile
—Claudia Heiss, Instituto de Asuntos Publicos, Universidad de Chile On April 23rd former President of Chile Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010), the front-runner candidate for the November presidential election, announced a commission to study a new constitution. The group is composed of nine lawyers (including two women) some of whom contributed to the 2005 reform signed by…
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Ireland’s Constitutional Convention Considers Same-Sex Marriage: Part II
—Eoin Carolan, University College Dublin Ireland’s Constitutional Convention has voted overwhelmingly in favour of a proposal to amend the Irish Constitution to allow for civil marriage for same-sex couples. 79 Convention members favoured the proposal with 19 against and 1 expressing no opinion.
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New Developments on Japan’s Proposed Constitutional Amendment Process
–Tokujin Matsudaira, Kanagawa University Faculty of Law Recently the Asahi Shimbun Weekly (ASW, a special Monday edition of Asahi News) interviewed eight constitutional scholars and asked them to answer a survey about the possible amendment of Japan’s postwar constitution. The results appeared in ASW on April 8 (in Japanese).
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Differencing Same-Sex Marriage
–Russell Miller, Washington & Lee University School of Law, Co-Author, The Constitutional Jurisprudence of the Federal Republic of Germany (2012), Co-Editor-in-Chief, German Law Journal As a comparative lawyer it is tempting to see a once-in-a-generation convergence of American and German constitutional law on what many regard as the era’s foremost civil rights issue: same-sex marriage.
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The End of Liberal Constitutionalism in Hungary?
–Gábor Halmai, Professor of Law, Eötvös Lóránd University (Budapest) and Visiting Research Scholar, Princeton University Last month, on March 11, the Hungarian Parliament voted on the fourth amendment to the the country’s 2011 constitution which has moved many statutory provision into the constitution despite Constitutional Court rulings striking them down and the European Union, the…
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Crisis Averted? Foreign Domestic Helpers, the Basic Law and Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal
–Alvin Y. H. Cheung, Barrister-at-Law, Sir Oswald Cheung’s Chambers, Hong Kong In the Vallejos Evangeline Banao v Commissioner of Registration & Another judgment handed down on 25 March 2013,[1] the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (“CFA”) held that, on a proper construction of article 24(2)(4) of the Basic Law, the constitutional document of the Hong…
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Ireland’s Constitutional Convention Considers Same-Sex Marriage
—Eoin Carolan, University College Dublin With some time to pass before the US Supreme Court delivers its keenly-watched ruling in U.S. v. Windsor, arguments about constitutional rights and same-sex marriage are due to receive another outing this weekend as part of Ireland’s ongoing Constitutional Convention.
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Leadership Shake-Up at the Indonesian Constitutional Court
–Stefanus Hendrianto, Loyola University Chicago Just a few months before the Indonesian Constitutional Court will celebrate its tenth anniversary in August 2013, it has undergone leadership change. In November 2012, Chief Justice Mohammad Mahfud told the House of Representative that he intends to leave his job in April 2013.
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Iceland: End of the Constitutional Saga?
–Tom Ginsburg (cross-posted with Huffington Post) In late 2008 and early 2009, thousands of Icelanders took to the streets in response to the largest banking collapse in history. What followed was a constitution-making process unprecedented in its transparency and level of public participation.
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Kenya’s Judiciary Passes Important Test
–James Thuo Gathii, Loyola Law School (reprinted from The Daily Nation) Only five years ago, Kenya’s Judiciary was not an option that electoral challengers dared consider. The institution was rife with corruption and ineptitude. There was no public confidence that judges could be neutral arbiters in the most important questions of the day.