Professor Ginsburg reflects on recent experiences in contexts as diverse as Tuvalu and Nepal, Chile and the Arab Region to discuss how external assistance impact constitutional design choices.
Regional Human Rights Courts and Institutional Failure
This paper investigates the role of the regional human rights system in Europe and Latin-America in combating institutional failure, as opposed to addressing individual instances of human rights violations. I define institutional failure as a violation of a constitutional duty, typically a human right, of large scope ie that 1. affects large numbers of people,...
Re-Designing the European Citizens‘ Initiative: Revolution or More of the Same?
Since its inception, the European Citizens‘ Initiative (ECI) has been promoted as a way to strengthen citizens‘ participation in EU decision-making. The legal framework of the ECI, however, has received severe criticism for not allowing the mechanism to reach its full participatory potential. After a period of review, the Commission recently published a Proposal to...
Rebalancing Regulation of Speech: Hyper-Local Content on Global Web- Based Platforms
Public and private discourse online is mediated through global web-based platforms. The platforms hold, enable and carry local and hyper-local conversations between local actors with local consequences. Although online harmful speech has local dimensions, the usual local modes of intervention for harmful speech are no longer viable. Global intervention is difficult since context is often...
Rule of Law, State capability and economic and democratic development in Latin America
The paper aims to explore the connections between rule of law, state capability and development in Latin America. The interaction between these areas faces different problems and solutions than in other western countries. There is a lack of analysis of how the rule of law can effectively improve the state capability and therefore, promote the...
Reviewing the experts: a principled approach to the scrutiny of expert-based decision making in the CJEU
Arguments grounded on separation of powers and contextual expertise suggest that courts should refrain from undertaking searching inquiries into complex factual backgrounds. Measures that are the result of expert-intensive decision making have therefore traditionally been subject to a light-touch judicial review by the European Courts. Interestingly, things may be changing, as the CJEU has been...
Reputation as Regulation in the Platform Economy
In the last years, online rating and reputational mechanisms have become increasingly important in the regulation of behavior in the platform economy. Consumers tend to rely on online reviews to distinguish between service providers. The European Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and a strand of legal scholarship have praised these mechanisms for generating valuable information,...
Silences in constitutions and space for self-determination
The silences that are present in a constitution, most especially, in a constitution that is in competition with political violence, are of equal relevance to the constitutional language and canon. Such silences may be intended to leave space where consensus could not be found, allowing the constitution to be open to future interpretation. They may...
Social Impact Discrimination: the religious response to the liberal challenge
Religious communities in contemporary liberal democracies experience fundamental norm conflicts, but little is known on how they tackle them. How do religious decision- makers apply religious norms regarding gender and sexual orientation in an age of egalitarianism and liberalism? Bringing qualitative and experimental evidence from Israel and the U.S., this paper identifies a practice of...
Social Media and the Right to Vote
This paper discusses the legal implications of social media for the free exercise of the right to vote. In the last years, social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook) have been responsible for the rise and fall of several politicians. Social media platforms influence voters in numerous ways: they promote political debate, increase the electoral participation of...