America’s First Religious Public School?
On 24 January 2025, the US Supreme Court granted certiorari to a case that could fundamentally reshape the nature of public education in the United States by permitting public schools – so called charter schools – to become religious in character. However, this blog argues that this case is not merely about school choice or religious freedom, but rather reflects the culmination of “private disestablishment”— a legal phenomenon where entities that operate at the blurred boundary between public and private recast themselves as entirely private actors while performing public functions. By doing so, they secure public benefits—such as funding and regulatory advantages—without bearing the constitutional obligations, such as anti-discrimination mandates or religious neutrality, that typically constrain public institutions.
Continue reading >>
Democratizing Draghi
The Draghi Report is now published, outlining the “existential challenge” of European competitiveness going forward. In view of the geopolitical developments of the last several years, the scale of the challenge is difficult to deny, and the need for collective action at the EU level is commensurately intense. Despite these “compelling” reasons and the hoped-for “strength to reform”, however, the Report is hesitant on one crucial point: the EU is apparently not strong enough to undertake Treaty change to fulfil the Report’s ambitious objectives. We believe this approach is legally dubious, politically unwise and, eventually, helps constructing a diffused governance architecture that will fail to tackle the very real challenges the continent indeed faces.
Continue reading >>A Setback for Homeless Rights in the United States
On June 28, 2024, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson (Grants Pass), its most significant case on homelessness in decades. The decision overturned the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal’s 2018 decision in Martin v. Boise (Martin), which mandated that cities allow unhoused individuals to sleep in public spaces when shelter beds were not available. The decision fails to consider the root causes of homelessness in the United States and exacerbates the already fragmented regulatory landscape governing the vulnerable community of the unhoused.
Continue reading >>