30 October 2020
Filling the Power Vacuum
Massive protests broke out after the Kyrgyz parliamentary elections on October 4, 2020. What unfolded in the aftermath is a political saga that nobody could have expected. At the moment, Sadyr Japarov, a convicted criminal, is acting as president and prime minister and moving forward with a number of unconstitutional initiatives. They could erase all positive achievements that Kyrgyzstan was able to reach in the course of the last fifteen years. Continue reading >>
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26 October 2020
The Time to Speak Up
The European Commission’s Rule of Law Report 2020, in its Spanish chapter, highlights in particular the situation of the Judicial Council as a challenge: The mandate of its members has expired in December 2018, but its new members have not yet been appointed. To unblock this situation a proposal was introduced in Parliament, but the envisaged reform does not comply with EU standards and endangers judicial independence, as the European Commission and GRECO have warned. Continue reading >>
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09 September 2020
Constitutional Dullness
Should the number of Italy’s Members of Parliament (MPs) be reduced from 945 to 600? Italian citizens will decide on that question in a constitutional referendum that will take place in less than two weeks. While other referendums in Italian history have been vectors of remarkable civic mobilisation, this one fails to capture the constitutional imagination of Italian citizens. What could – and should – be a radical public debate about Italy’s political system and the current order, in fact revolves around pettiness and trivial constitutional engineering. Continue reading >>07 August 2020
The Kafkaesque Edifice of Law
The current presidential campaign has already been described as a “révolution de femmes” by Le Monde and echoed with “an ordinary Belarusian wife looking after her two children […] posing the greatest threat to an authoritarian rule” by the Financial Times. The improbable presidential candidate Śviatłana Cichanoǔskaja (or Tsikhanouskaya) decided to run in the campaign in place of her husband Siarhiej Cichanoǔski. He and two other increasingly popular alternative candidates – Viktar Babaryka and Valery Capkała – were not allowed to compete for office, all for different reasons. They were unusually hard challengers for the current autocratic ruler Aliaksandar Łukašenka, who is running for his sixth consecutive term following his 26 years in power. Continue reading >>16 July 2020
Are These “Moral Dilemmas” Real?
Yesterday, András Jakab talked about the 'moral dilemmas' that constitutional scholars face when teaching in a country where the rule of law is eroding and illustrated some possibilities to deal with them. WOJIECH SADURSKI disagrees. Continue reading >>
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15 July 2020
Moral Dilemmas of Teaching Constitutional Law in an Autocratizing Country
We often (here and here) talk about the methodological challenges that autocratizing regimes pose to constitutional scholars. However, so far we have not given enough attention to the moral dilemmas that constitutional law scholars face on a daily basis when teaching at universities that are geographically located in autocratizing countries. Constitutional law professors in such regimes are today facing moral dilemmas that they definitely did not sign up for when they originally chose their jobs. Traditionally, in continental legal cultures, university education focuses on doctrinal-conceptual legal thinking (Rechtsdogmatik) which systematizes elements of positive law (legal provisions, judicial decisions) along key concepts, with the help of doctrinal academic writings. All this presupposes a minimum level of the rule of law, and exactly this is fading away in autocratizing countries. Continue reading >>07 July 2020
Practicing Parity
On July 15, the Constitutional Court of the German Land of Thuringia will announce its decision on the fate of Thuringia’s controversial Parity Act, which was passed by Thuringia’s parliament, the Landtag, in 2019. Like Germany’s first Parity Act in Brandenburg, it requires that electoral candidate lists put forward for Landtag elections will have to consist of an equal number of alternating women and men, with the aim of increasing the share of female lawmakers. Several lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of parity legislation have been filed. While not all arguments against the parity acts are convincing, it seems likely that they will be found unconstitutional. Like in other countries, supporters of parity could in this case resort to campaigning for a constitutional amendment. Continue reading >>
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18 June 2020
Inherited Confusion
Necessitas non habet legem, this ancient maxim meaning that necessity has no law appears to be applicable to Tunisia during the pandemic. The Tunisian authorities rapidly took measures to fight the coronavirus outbreak. But the broad language used in the legal texts ruling the COVID-19 crisis – such as the constitution and the various governmental and presidential decrees – combined with legal doctrine likening Tunisia’s constitutional emergency clause to that of France have added to the confusion of power. This is not only endangering the newly installed democratic government but illustrates how the adoption of a foreign constitutional framework impacts new democracies, making it difficult for the Tunisian constitutional system to evolve. Continue reading >>
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11 June 2020
From Legal Fiction to Reality: Securing the Dignity of India’s Manual Scavengers
Manual scavenging is one of the most inhumane and abhorrent sanitation practices prevalent in modern India: broadly, it means deploying individuals to manually clean up drainage systems. ‘Manual scavengers’ (unfortunately, for the lack of a better term) have been denied their humanitarian due for centuries in the Indian sub-continent and their constitutional due for 70 years in the Republic of India – it is high time the Law dismantles the structure that perpetuates their oppression. Continue reading >>
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04 June 2020