21 December 2021
Constitutional Democracy and The Sound of (Academic) Silence
Many constitutions, and the liberal values that permeate them, constitute the reaction to the mass atrocities, often in the face of academic silence (if not full-blown endorsement). Therefore, a constitutional law scholar that does not denounce attempts to subvert the constitutional order as such is actually sacrificing the pursuit of legal knowledge at the altar of a misguided – and historically damned – attempt at ‘neutrality’. The sound of academic silence, in the face of constitutional regression, is deafening. Continue reading >>
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19 April 2017
Of course you can still turn back! On the revocability of the Article 50 notification and post-truth politics
The British Prime Minister Theresa May has announced yesterday the intention to call a ‘snap’ general election to be held on the 8th of June 2017. This announcement, which has caught literally everyone off-guard, makes some strategic sense if read together with another contention stressed by Prime Minister May: that there is no turning back from Brexit. Which is untrue, both from the legal and political point of view. To put it shortly, the PM is lying. Continue reading >>13 July 2016
Like a Bargaining Chip: Enduring the Unsettled Status of EU Nationals Living in the UK
Yesterday, the UK Government has issued a statement to reassure EU nationals living in the UK as to their post-referendum status. While hundreds of EU nationals channel their relief through social media in welcoming the news and British businesses praise the Government for giving them the reassurance needed, to a more expert eye things seem much less reassuring. Continue reading >>29 June 2016
Sovereign and misinformed: Brexit as an exercise in democracy?
Rather than criticising the Brexit referendum as a decision-making tool because ‘the people’ don’t have the necessary expertise to take decisions of this magnitude, we should question the conditions in which many UK voters were called to express their opinion. They, like many all over the world, have seen the progressive hollowing-out of those basic rights that make voting the expression of the right to individual and collective self-rule in the first place. Continue reading >>20 November 2015
The Conservatives’ 2015 Fiscal Charter: A Wanting Desire for Constitutional Change
The UK Conservatives’ "Charter for Budget Responsibility" has, with the aid of a number of Labour MPs, passed the House of Commons. The charter's intention is that of committing the current and future Governments into running a permanent budget surplus – a sinister attempt to bind future governments as regards fiscal policy. Its inconsistency with the opposition against the EU Fiscal Compact in 2011/12 exposes, though, how much the Conservative's desire to constitutionalize fiscal surplus policy in the UK is wanting. Continue reading >>
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