The papers in this panel address a number of questions relating to the role of courts as democracy builders. What are the costs and benefits of a court-centred strategy for protecting democracy? Are the circumstances in which a court-centred strategy is likely to be successful rare? What are the challenges for the courts if they...
Category: <span>Panel Paper</span>
CONSTITUTIONAL IDENTITY AND CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE IN THE GLOBAL NORTH AND GLOBAL SOUTH
This panel is an invitation to start a public law oriented discourse about the legal concept of “constitutional identity“, which conceived here as the “identity of the constitution“. It is seen as a part of the constitution, with which the constituent people/nation can identify with as they created it in the course of constitution-making and...
EQUAL RIGHTS PROVISIONS IN CONSTITUTIONS WORLDWIDE: WHICH GROUPS ARE LEFT OUT, AND WHAT WORKS TO STRENGTHEN LEGAL PROTECTIONS?
Over the past 50 years, explicit protections against discrimination on the basis of certain aspects of identity, such as gender, race, and religion, have become increasingly common in constitutions worldwide. Today, 85% of constitutions explicitly prohibit gender discrimination, compared to just 50% of those adopted before 1960. Yet far fewer include language guaranteeing equal rights...
MANAGING INTERFACE CONFLICTS: ENTANGLED LEGALITIES BEYOND THE STATE
As spheres of authority in the global order increasingly overlap and provoke conflicts between them, this panel explores the ways in which these interface conflicts are dealt with and produce a new order ‘at the margins‘. Interface conflicts arise when actors have conflicting views about international norms and rules associated with international authorities. Actors from...
EXTERNAL ASSISTANCE TO CONSTITUTION MAKING IN THE 21ST CENTURY
The proposed panel will discuss external assistance to constitution making. The panelists all have recent experience in delivering such advice in dozens of countries around the globe. Reflecting on their own experiences, the panel will discuss questions such as: – Does external constitutional advice contribute to a growing global constitutionalism? Is this a problematic or...
JUDGING IDENTITIES. LGBT RIGHTS BEFORE EUROPEAN COURTS
This panel focuses on LGBT‘s fundamental rights judicial process of acknowledgement in Europe both at national and supranational level. In particular, it unfolds along three lines of thought: firstly, from a general and comparative perspective, the contribution of the vertical division of powers – as indicated by the contributory action of subnational legislation, administrative practice...
JUDICIAL GUARANTEES, IMPEACHMENT AND POLITICAL JUDGMENTS: INTER-AMERICAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS AS DEMOCRACY PROTECTOR?
There is a close bond of interdependence between State, Constitution, Democracy and Human Rights. Based on this intrinsic relationship, international bodies, such as the Inter-American Human Rights System have built substantial standards of the democratic rule of law in the region. Within the material nucleus of democracy there are judicial guarantees -especially those contained in...
LEGAL PLURALISM AND INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS
Considerations of legal pluralism and human rights do not go readily hand in hand – on the face of it they appear to have different core concerns and motivations, with the former being conceptual in character while the latter is normative (Provost & Sheppard 2012: 1). This panel challenges this alleged incompatibility, and proceeds on...
INQUIRING OF JUDICIAL DECISION MAKING
This panel brings together various scholars of law and politics from Europe and United-States whose research in various fields (constitutional law, discrimination law and theory of law). They look at the contemporary outcomes of mechanisms of judicial decision making. As opposed to classical literature on legal reasoning, which is much concerned with legal interpretation, this...