The US government has employed torture, drone assassination, and suspended due process in its “War on Terror. These methods have been criticized on moral grounds for violating basic principles of justice and constitutional grounds for usurping power not delegated to the executive. My critique focuses on a third overlooked factor. I show that many actions...
Judicial Protection of Social Rights in Hong Kong
The recognition of socio-economic rights in constitutions, legislation and policies, and the recent growth in jurisprudence in SER in different countries, is partly due to the rising interests in adopting a right-based approach to socio-economic issues and the increased demands in equality in government allocative decision making. This trend can also be seen in Hong...
Workplace (in)justice, law and labour resistance in Vietnam
The limitations of labour law and its implementation in Vietnam have been identified by scholars as the main reasons for the persistence of factory strikes, yet there has been little analysis concerning how workers themselves perceive the labour law and how law matters in workers‘ resistance to abusive practices. This paper explores how workers‘ ideas...
Women‘s Human Rights: From Progress to Transformation (An Intersectional Response to Nussbaum)
This article asks ‘the intersectional question‘ about women‘s progress. The purpose is to understand whether the successes of the women‘s movement and women‘s human rights have improved the conditions of women who are disadvantaged not only because of their sex or gender but also disadvantaged by their race, colour, caste, religion, region, disability, age, sexual...
Religious Freedom and Abuse
This research will deal with the notion of protected democracy with regard to extremist Islamic movements and their role as anti-systemic forces. This topic is still mostly overlooked from a juridical, or rather a constitutional, point of view. This essay will evaluate the main legislative, administrative and judiciary measures that banned Islamist movements in some...
Police Facial Recognition Surveillance and the Right to Privacy
Facial recognition technology (FRT) is fast becoming the tool of choice for law enforcement agencies looking to police public space. Over the last year, in England and Wales, FRT has been used at a number of crowded events to identify suspects and prevent crime. This technology is more intrusive than ordinary CCTV surveillance as it...
Political Insurance for the Poor: Liberal Constitutionalism and Extreme Inequality
Constitutional directives—normative directives addressed to the state found in several constitutions—range from obliging the state to reduce material inequality, secure universal access to education, promote indigenous culture, protect the environment, and so on. On a conservative count, at least 31 constitutions around the world feature ‘directive principles‘ (identified as such). Counts based on the structural...
Open Justice and the Rule of Law
The principle of open justice is innately connected to the integrity of the legal system. A fundamental aspect of the system of checks and balances at common law, it has been enshrined as a key institutional feature in democracies which value the independence of the judicial branch. In Ireland, the administration of justice in public...
Parliamentary control of Europol: challenges of collective access to information
Parliamentary control of security policies uncovers an apparent paradox: it relies on the sharing of information that is strictly put under executive dominance not to harm the essential security interests. This issue is gaining renewed interest at European level after the establishment of the Joint Parliamentary Scrutiny Group (JPSG) on Europol. Access to sensitive non-classified...