Work on better law-making and quality of legislation has boomed over the last decade. It is often cast as a gateway to law that better lives up to its very nature of rule-making in a normatively valuable sense, where societal challenges can be meaningfully tackled and goals achieved. There is a growing literature on the...
Does Discretion in Citizenship by Investment Programs Affect the Quality of Legislation?
Citizenship by investment programs (CIPs) – granting citizenship on grounds of economic transactions – have been catching the attention of scholars during the last decade. Most agree that CIPs represent a form of selling citizenship. The introduction of the Maltese program, which grants not only national but also European citizenship, represented a turning point. Although...
LAW-MAKING IN THE FACE OF THE MIGRATION CRISIS: TO FIND THE BEST LEGISLATIVE POLICY (THE SWEDISH CASE).
The recent Syrian crisis and the following increase in migratory fluxes have put many European welfare states under pressure. At least initially Sweden has been one of the most generous European recipient of migrants, confirming its world-image as a safe harbor for “people in need“ around the globe. However, due to factors of internal and...
The Design of Jurisdiction in Asylum Proceedings. Reflections on the Italian Case
Since the 1951 Convention on refugees, the right not to be returned to a country where one is at risk of prosecution is recognised as one of the few principles that international law imposes on States‘ discretionary power. An extensive international literature has focused on the ways in which states have tried to circumvent this...
This is Very Urgent Indeed‘: How the 2015 ‘Refugee Crisis‘ Justified Departing From Established Processes of Law-making
During the 2015 ‘refugee crisis‘ Sweden adopted one of the strictest asylum policies in the EU through temporary legislation. A feeling of urgency marked the drafting process. Key elements of the law-making process were disregarded: e.g. rapidly drafted proposals with no analysis of the consequences and the proportionality of the measures suggested, extremely short deadlines...
Your income is too high, your income is too low: Discretion at work in labour migration law and policy in Macau and the Netherlands
The tension between EU harmonisation of economic migration law and Member States‘ concern over their sovereignty has downplayed or neglected EU legal obligations by Member State legislators. The law-makers‘ design of a system granting either no or very wide discretion to the street-level bureaucrats, as is the case in the Netherlands, creates an atmosphere of...