With the surge of right-wing populism in many parts of Europe and the United States, the prospects of democratic constitutionalism appear once again at risk today. Yet, in spite or perhaps because of it, comparative constitutional law is doing well. With our success, new challenges and questions have arisen. As a discipline, we must debate...
Counter-terrorism, IHL and the right to rebel
In my paper, I discuss the overlap of the legal regimes of anti-terrorism law and international humanitarian law (IHL). Increasingly, IHL gives way to anti-terrorism law, affecting the right to oppose an oppressive regime. Since 9/11 counter-terrorism policies have generated a growing body of legal cooperation regimes, at the international and regional level. Increasingly, domestic...
Courts and the Populist Moment
In the post-1989 wave of new democracies, courts served as important stopgaps as the complex institutional arrangements of modern democratic governance sought to take hold. Over the past few years, insurgent populist groups have used the structures of democratic election to unwind the liberal underpinnings of post-1989 democracies. While courts remain a critical arena for...
Courts without Cases: The Law and Politics of Advisory Opinions “Actors, Advice and Law“
For the last 150 years, Canadian courts of general jurisdiction have exercised a special function. At the request of the executive, they issue advisory opinions in the absence of a live “case or controversy“. Borrowed from the 1833 Judicial Committee Act, but absent from the U.K. domestic context as well other Anglo-American systems, advisory opinions...
Digitalisation in Hungarian elections
The digital word is effecting the people’s everyday life and also their political life. In the election process, several “e-questions“ arise: getting relevant information (or sometimes disinformation…?), e-voting, e-registration in the electoral roll. In a certain case from a current Hungarian practice in the paper I highlight the relevance of data protection and controll in...
Displacing Private Law: The Growing Dominance of Public Law in South Asia
This article examines how private law has been displaced across four South Asian: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. As courts in these jurisdictions have recognized a greater number of rights within the sphere of public constitutional law, there has been a corresponding displacement of private law. Indeed, some areas of private law, such as...
Do ‘Asian Values‘ on human rights exist?
To scholars and practitioners of international human rights law, the 1990s Asian Values Debate was irrefutably debunked by the Asian Financial Crisis and regional rights progress. Yet ASEAN states are stuck in a strange ‘time-warp‘ and invariably resurrect the Asian values defence to ward off ‘intrusive‘ human rights engagement, consequently preventing them attaining their ironically...
Economic Integration, Common Identity and Regional Framework for Migration: The Curious Case of ASEAN
This paper argues that the ASEAN‘s emerging framework for migration is both a result of, and has bolstered the region‘s vision of a common identity based on the idea of a particular kind of State — the investee State — that the ASEAN Economic Community is meant to create. The economic integration project has challenged...
Effectivity and Efficiency of Employment Quota for Persons with Disabilities: A Comparative Study of the French and Taiwanese Cases Based on the CRPD Objective
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities pursues a comprehensive protection of persons with disabilities for their effective integration in the economic sphere. In France as in Taiwan, a system of employment quota with pecuniary sanction has been established. Yet the lack of economic incentive may drive private employers to offer positions with least...
Equality, Diversity and Pluralism: Examining Spaces for the Preservation of Minority Rights and Multiple Identities in the Struggle for National Identity and Security
National security policies in the post-9/11 world reveal a dangerous turn towards the politics of fear, especially in the wake of frequent attacks by ‘home-grown terrorists‘. Viewed from the prism of identity politics, particularly ethnonational pluralism, I take a three-pronged approach to examining the impact of national security policies on identity pluralism. I interrogate the...