Over the years, the concept of discrimination and the legal doctrines that protect it, have widened and additional classifications and actions have been recognized as constituting discrimination. This paper explores yet another new category, student ability, and argues that tracking students according to their ability is discriminatory. The analysis in the paper is both philosophical...
State Capitalism and Foreign Investors: Towards a New Protectionism in Europe?
Over the past years, many European Countries have taken a significant measures that clearly fall within the traditional area of industrial policies. These include, inter alia, bailouts or the infusion of public capital into banks, support to struggling national enterprises and attempts to invest in research and development plans. Additional mechanisms of public governance of...
State Constitutional Pluralism
The complexity of engagement among multiple legal systems is now an increasingly studied subject. However, despite a broad range of legal pluralism scholarship examining the presence and engagement of state/non-state as well as state/state legal systems, much constitutional law scholarship tends towards a monist perspective in examining state constitutions. While constitutional pluralism has emerged as...
Source of Resilience in Hong Kong‘s Politico-Legal Culture: Comparative Perspectives from Macau
This paper presents comparative perspectives from Macau regarding sources of resilience in the Chinese Special Administrative Regions (SARs). It will signal what in my view are commonalities between the two SARs, the main differences as well as the paths of evolution verified on both sides of the Pearl River estuary autonomic territorial entities. Some aspects...
South African President Zuma‘s contribution to the constitutional jurisprudence
South Africa‘s President Zuma has contributed significantly to the growth and development of the country‘s constitutional jurisprudence. Since taking office in 2009, there have been numerous constitutional cases decided by various courts against him both personally and as a president. Three recent judgments are particularly worth noting since they have changed the way we understand...
The Implications of Platform Speech Regulation of Disinformation
Perhaps the most comprehensive regime of speech regulation in U.S. history was enacted over the past year. It was put into place by private companies, not the government. In response to criticisms following the 2016 U.S. election, Facebook and Google have altered their algorithms, advertising policies, terms of service, and even mission statements — all...
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights and its Control over National Practices Concerning Serious Human Rights Violations: Developments, Challenges, and Prospects
In 2001, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) was the first court at the international level that found national legislation, namely, self-amnesty laws on serious violations of human rights, to be null and void. This seminal development was lauded by human rights practitioners and scholars alike. However, subsequent national reactions to the decisions of...
The invisible separation of powers
When examining the proper functioning of the principle of the separation of powers not only the institutional design of state institutions and their formal powers shall be taken into consideration. Legal institutions with primary functions not related to the system of the separation of powers can also affect the sphere of action of state powers,...
The identity of Public Law in view of the Constitutionalisation, Deconstitutionalisation and Europeanisation of Italian Administrative Law
After briefly introducing the concepts of constitutionalisation and europeanisation of the Italian administrative law, the paper deals with the relationship between these two processes, stressing on the one hand their substantial convergences (i.e. the europeanisation partially steers the constitutionalisation of administrative law) and on the other hand underling some problematic aspects. Moreover, the effective role...
The Enigmatic Notion of Constitutional Identity
Constitutional identity is the buzz word of the day in constitutional theory and European politics. Member States invoke it to question the primacy of EU law and sometimes even to justify illiberal constitutional politics. Nevertheless, its meaning remains vague. This paper will shed light on constitutional identity by contrasting it with important conceptions of collective...