Category: Developments
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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.
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Petition 72: The Struggle for Constitutional Reforms in Vietnam
–Bui Ngoc Son, Vietnam National University Vietnam is comprehensively revising her 1992 constitution for the second time, 12 years after the first amendment in 2001. The draft new constitution prepared by the Constitutional Amendment Committee has been released to the public for debate from January to April, 2013.
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Canada’s Supreme Court upholds hate speech laws
—Carissima Mathen, Associate Professor of Law, University of Ottawa A comparative discussion of North American civil liberties invariably notes that Canada has a more limited scope of protection for freedom of expression than the United States. Nowhere is this more evident that the treatment of hateful expression.
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Zimbabwe’s New Constitution
—Richard Albert, Boston College Law School Zimbabweans will vote to approve a new constitution on Saturday. Drafting a new constitution was a condition of the 2008 coalition formed between political rivals President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. The draft constitution is the product of a 25-member committee on which all three political parties…
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Creating a Constitutional Process Design for Libya via Constitutional Amendment
—Lorianne Updike Toler, The Constitutional Sources Project & Lorianne Updike Toler Consulting. The feared unrest in Libya prior to 15 February and now the confusion introduced by the Libyan Supreme Court’s decision last Tuesday to invalidate Amendment No. 3 of Libya’s Constitutional Declaration can all be attributed to the poor constitutional design of the Declaration…
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Get ready for new battles over Japan’s Constitution
–Lawrence Repeta, Meiji University Faculty of Law Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is focused on the economy — check out the collapse of the yen and the boom in the stock market since he took center stage. In his policy speech to open the new Diet session on January 28, Abe talked about the economy and…