U.S. federalism interacts with commitments to democratic equality in complex ways. As a matter of current constitutional law and structure, the U.S. Congress is less “representative“ of the national polity as a whole — if representativeness is examined only from a one-person one-vote perspective — than each state legislature is with respect to its state...
Is there such a thing as ‘populist constitutionalism‘?
The paper deals with recent deviations from the shared values of constitutionalism towards a kind of ‘populist, illiberal constitutionalism‘, particularly in East-Central Europe. The theoretical question that these backslidings raise is whether populism and illiberalism are reconcilable with constitutionalism at all. The paper concentrates on a particular version of populism, which is nationalist and illiberal,...
Judging in Europe: Do Legal Traditions Matter
EU competition appeals typically involve applications by private businesses to annul decisions made by the European Commission. Moreover, these appeals are first assigned at random to a chamber, with a judge then designated as the rapporteur who will be most closely involved with the case. Using hand-collected original data on the background characteristics of EU...
Meet the New Experts: Legitimacy and Accountability Deficits in the Platform Economy
The platform economy disrupted existing paradigms, announcing the end of the experts as we know them.Licenses and permits applicable to professional services are not valued here. For quality control, consumers rely on online ratings and reviews. However, consumers rely particularly on the reviews of ‘frequent reviewers‘ (e.g., Yelp Elite) or the endorsements of the so-called...
Legal powers and constitutional change
My object is to analyse the concept of a legal power to change a constitution (and more broadly, to change constitutional law). I will look at how the notions of constitution-making (constitution-changing) powers used in constitutional change literature map onto debates specifically on legal powers (in public law and in private law). For instance, I...
Labour constitutionalism
This intervention will discuss the chapter on social rights and protection of work. In particular, the potential offered by the constitutionalisation of a contradiction between individual property rights and labour rights will be explored and assessed. The discussion will be opened to examples from different constitutional jurisdictions.
Judicial Transplantation as a Backdoor to Environmental Normative Integration in ASEAN
This paper argues that Southeast Asian judiciaries hold a backdoor key that would allow the incorporation of environmental norms in a region sensitive to international law intruding on domestic sovereignty. Although the level of receptiveness may vary, decisions and rules crafted by a select ASEAN judiciaries indicate a growing openness to applying environmental law principles...
Judicial interpretation in the age of hyper-legislation
This paper will outline the phenomenon of hyper-legislation in an Australian (i.e. federal) context and then consider judicial responses to it. It will do so with particular reference to the principle of legality. That inquiry will consider also the role which the principle may increasingly play to ensure that proper consideration is given in statutes...
Parliamentary oversight between security exceptions and executive confidentiality
Parliamentary oversight requires accessibility of information. In foreign and security policy however, executive institutions have possession and discretion over (sensitive) information. Practice shows that oversight at times is not activated at all due to ‘deep secrets‘, i.e. parliaments are unaware of certain executive action or its scope (the case with the PRISM programme and U.S....