Sri Lanka‘s constitutional policy regarding religion affords a ‘foremost place‘ to Buddhism obligating the State to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana, whilst assuring the rights and freedoms of the other religions. By explicitly creating a special status for Buddhism, it has produced the category of “The Other“. This distinction is discriminatory in a pluralistic...
Constitutional identities and the institutionalization of transnational judicial networks
In Asia, it can be observed that efforts are underway to institutionalize networks between judiciaries, including constitutional courts. As international dialogue and research is beginning to be institutionalized among networks of these “guardians of national constitutions“, how does this affect the identities of such associations and their members? This is especially an intriguing and also...
Constitutional Identity in Israel: Proposed Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People
The paper article focuses on the definition of Israel as a Jewish state. It argues that while the debate on the Jewishness of the state has focused, for many years, on questions of religion and state, in recent years the focus has shifted from religion to nationalism, in a manner that makes it difficult to...
Constitutional Intent and Reflexive Identity
The paper attempts to show how constitutional intent and the reflexive character of constitutional identity are intertwined. The first section explains the notion of constituent power as the ultimate source of a legal order. The second section explores the triple singularity of constituent power. First, it has a reflexive identity which means that “it relates...
Constitutional reform and the rule of law. Challenging democracy in times of crisis. A comparative study of the Greek and the Italian cases.
The paper considers the attempts recently made both in Greece and in Italy to amend the Fundamental Charters and their relation with the wider context given by the economic crisis and the emerging challenges to the rule of law. The comparative approach allows to detect similarities between the two cases and to envisage possible solutions...
Constitutional Transformation: Hungary
This chapter uses recent developments in Hungary to examine how the equivalent of political revolution can occur through changes that are, taken individually, in compliance in the constitution but collectively amount to wholesale transformation of the constitutional order. It confronts the question of what limits, if any, exist on constitutional revolutions of this type.
Constructions of Identity and the Carabinieri Force for the Protection of Cultural Heritage
The Carabinieri Force for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, a special unit of the Italian federal police force, combats crimes against cultural heritage within the Italian territory and has an international impact through its activities. As a part of the Italian Ministry of Culture and with its emphasis on the protection of national heritage, the...
Corporations are people too? – on the status of non-human legal persons in public law
This paper asks whether non-human persons, especially corporations, can be the subject of human rights, whether they can possess such rights.The paper attempts to offer a general, conceptual analysis of this question, irrespective of the particular legal system. A danger exists, that corporate resources, which individuals seldom have, will mean that the most prevalent use...
Deliberative Federalism
Haig Patapan examines a theory of ‘deliberative federalism‘ that claims ‘federalism, in giving political and legal authority to disparate voices within the federal state, can make institutional room for deliberation‘, which in turn might have salutary effects on the protection of rights in federal societies. Considering evidence from the United States, they reach the conclusion...