In this issue;
In this issue—Reviews;
My patria is the book: Ten good reads 2024
In this issue
In our Editorial, Joseph H. H. Weiler shares his annual “Good Reads”, carefully chosen for those seeking inspiration for a gift or for a very good read at home on a lazy Sunday.
Our Articles Section then features five contributions. In the first, Michael Karayanni reflects on the positioning of the Palestinian-Arab minority as a “third camp” in the Israeli constitutional upheaval of 2023, with the help of the theory and practise of “democratic deficit”. He shows how such positioning serves as a springboard to the Palestinian-Arab minority, from which they voice unique challenges to Israel’s constitutional order. In the second article, Martijn Hesselink explores paths towards a more radically democratic European private law, and proposes the introduction of deliberative citizens’ assemblies and citizens’ panels in the context of EU private-law making. In the third article, Dian Shah explores the variety of political actors and tools used in the dismantling of democratic change in Asia. The author shows that anti-democrats have used ordinary legislation, non-judicial interpretation and incremental changes more than constitutional amendments in political conventions. This is followed by an article by Lorianne Updike Toler, who explores consensus in constitution writing and formulates a theory for how rules can contribute to corporate trust upon which constitutional consensus depends. The U.S. Constitutional Convention is used as a case study. Finally, in the fifth article, Yaniv Roznai, Ittai Bar-Siman-Tov, Tamar Hostovsky Brandes, Eliav Lieblich,and Adam Shinar discuss scholactivism at the service of counter-populism, with a focus on the constitutional overhaul in Israel.
In the next section, Afterwords to the Foreword, five authors engage with the 2024 Foreword, “Gender and Legal Academy”, by Gráinne de Búrca, Rosalind Dixon, and Marcela Prieto Rudolphy, published in our 22:1 issue. In the first Afterword, Shreya Atrey picks up on the Foreword authors’ statement that a feminist legal academy is necessary to attain gender equality in the academy, and insists on the need for that academy to be intersectional, both normatively and practically. In the second Afterword, Cora Chan reflects on the Foreword’s main takeaways from the perspective of a woman constitutional law scholar based in Hong Kong, which is both a former British colony and now a special administrative region of China. In the third Afterword, Jaclyn Neo explores the question of the gender gap in legal education and its direct connection to the gender gap in legal academia. This is followed by an Afterword by Stefano Osella, who argues for a cultural revaluation of care more generally within academic institutions. This series of Afterwords ends with Ayelet Shachar’s contribution, in which she pushes further the Foreword’s commitment to a “feminist legal academia” and explores several steps towards a more just and inclusive academia. The Afterwords are followed by a Rejoinder by Gráinne de Búrca, Rosalind Dixon, and Marcela Prieto Rudolphy. The authors integrate the five commentators’ rich insights into their own evolving thoughts on the issues, and reflect on the next steps towards a real move to a feminist legal academia.
AB
In this issue—Reviews
This issue includes one review essay and three book reviews, covering both English and non-English language books and ranging across constitutional law and international law. The books discuss a variety of topics in a number of jurisdictions, including the transition to democracy after fascism in Italy, women in international law, a pluralist constitutional theory, and the French practises of international law.
In her review essay on Giuliano Vassalli tra fascismo e democrazia. Biografia di un penalista partigiano and Transitional Justice in Italy and the Crimes of Fascism and Nazism, Maria Crippa suggests that the Italian transitional experience unveils how criminal law mechanisms have an only partial and limited role in the process of transition to democracy from authoritarian regimes. Instead, the interdependences between legal instruments and political options become difficult to untangle, blurring the line between politics and law and revealing the limits of criminal justice as an instrument for the resolution of conflicts.
Birte Böök reviews Portraits of Women in International Law: New Names and Forgotten Faces?, demonstrating that the contributions of women to international law over the centuries have been obscured and have remained unacknowledged, not for a lack of talent, hard work, experience or qualifications, but due to the gendered and unequal structures present in the international law context. Matej Avbelj reviews New Constitutional Horizons: Towards a Pluralist Constitutional Theory, arguing that it neatly distinguishes between various layers of theoretical engagements and achieves a high degree of conceptual clarity that much of the existing pluralist constitutional theory might lack. Finally, in her review of Un droit international français?, Odile Ammann analyzes the relationship between international law and domestic constitutional law in France and reflects on the role of academic publishers in the development of comparative international law.
CCL
My patria is the book: Ten good reads 2024
[Professor Weiler’s annual list of Ten Good Reads was previously published on the blog here.]
Comments