This paper considers post-Cold War African cases relevant to the issue of democratization. Institutional weakness continues to cripple some African courts, but others repay richer study. The Constitutional Court of Benin, stand-out of West Africa, has played a regular role in electoral disputes. The Kenyan Supreme Court has adopted a bolder, if sometimes precarious, stance...
POLITICAL RIGHTS AND MIGRATION POLICIES: “Right to vote, and right to be voted“
This paper aims to contribute on debates about the legal regime of political rights in migration policies. The Brazilian constitutional system establishes that nationals from other countries have the right to vote and are eligible for the majority of office positions only if attended some criteria. Two of these criteria are: a) that foreigners be...
Multi-tiered (multinational) systems in the African continent: the rationale behind constitutional asymmetries
Contemporary federal theory indicates that recent federal systems are fragmenting and multinational states that experience asymmetrical responses to internal differences. The more comprehensive approach is needed to research asymmetrical arrangements as a mechanism for diversity accommodation. The African continent proves to be especially interesting for research. In the last decades a number of African countries...
National Security Concerns in Trade Disputes: An Analysis of Art. XXI (b) (iii) GATT
The paper elaborates on a legal issue of the GATT which has remained essentially unsolved so far: the security exceptions of Art. XXI (b) (iii) GATT and its potentially abusive application in trade-related conflicts between WTO Members. The invocation of Art. XXI (b) (iii) GATT regularly results from political reluctance to international cooperation and is...
Privacy, Data Protection and National Security: The EU-Canada PNR Agreement Before the CJEU
This analysis examines the balance between the right to privacy and national security, as framed in Opinion 1/15 of the CJEU on the draft agreement between Canada and the European Union dealing with the transfer of PNR data. Moving from this case-study and taking into account previous landmark judgments on personal data (Digital Rights Ireland,...
Regulated Memories: Memorial Laws, Memory Wars and Freedom of Speech
Collective memory matters politically. It is closely related to national identity and statehood; it can be used to legitimate a political power by creating a desired image of the past. This explains why states are preoccupied with legal regulation of collective memory prescribing by law what should be remembered and be forgotten. The paper is...
Refugee Acceptance and the Social State
On July 18, 2012, the German Federal Constitutional Court determined that cash benefits paid to asylum seekers for subsistence are unconstitutional according to the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act. According to the Court, the benefits are evidently insufficient and incompatible with the fundamental right to a minimum existence, which is protected as the right to human...
Rupture or Continuity? On Reception of Rule of Law Standards in Poland 25 Years After the “Democratic“ Transition
The Polish democratic transition was portrayed as a shining example of the victory of liberal values over the socialist clientelistic authoritarianism. Yet, for the past two years the ruling Law and Justice party has been actively dismantling the system of checks and balances that was carefully put post-1989 and pre-EU accession. The easiness of this...
Russia v ECtHR: protecting national identity using constitutional brakes
This paper builds heavily on Anchugov and Gladkov prisoner voting case – the Russian Constitutional Court‘s refusal to implement a decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) declaring prisoner voting ban contrary to the universal suffrage since the Constitution explicitly prohibited prisoner voting. This case is a result of Russian national measures designed...