In the last years, online rating and reputational mechanisms have become increasingly important in the regulation of behavior in the platform economy. Consumers tend to rely on online reviews to distinguish between service providers. The European Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and a strand of legal scholarship have praised these mechanisms for generating valuable information,...
Tag: <span>MONDAY 25 June 2018 16:45-18:15</span>
Social Movement and Constitutional Change: The Case of America and China
The major challenge that the theory of constitutional change in contemporary United States faces is social movement, and its core concern is to balance and maintain legal and political authorities of the Constitution through interpretation. At the descriptive level, the thoughts of liberal scholars who criticized the theory of originalism restored the true colors of...
Separation of Powers under Siege: What Went Wrong in Central Europe?
The concept of separation of powers is notoriously vague and contested. Usually, we realize what separation of powers (SOP) is only once we have lost it, as evidenced by recent efforts by ruling parties in Hungary & Poland. We argue that to understand recent challenges to the SOP in Central Europe (CE) we need to...
Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roe: Reverend Ammi Rogers and the Pre-history of Roe v. Wade
This paper addresses the 1818 criminal case of a Connecticut minister named Ammi Rogers who was accused of impregnating Asenath Smith, a young woman to whom he was not married, and then giving her an abortion-inducing substance. Procedural and substantive difficulties in prosecuting Rogers were said to be the impetus behind an 1821 Connecticut statute...
Sex/Gender Rights and Untimely Evolution in International Human Rights Law
In international human rights law (IHRL), women‘s rights have been a staple of UN activity since the 1990s. LGBT* rights have entered the UN stage more recently via focus on non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and developments such as the Yogyakarta Principles. Women‘s and LGBT* rights, however, continue to be perceived as distinct....
Security-based migration laws in Europe. Crimmigration against “the Others“
Since 1990. European societies have become more and more distant towards migrants who started to be perceived as the “Others“. This fueled the expansion of anti-immigration discourse, followed by increasing fear of migrants and its presence. It reflected on the decisions taken by the member states‘ governments and strongly influenced the process of creation of...
The Aesthetics of Constitutional Space
Constitutional theory will by default subsume spatial phenomena under the territorial template of its statist paradigm. Constitutional space is, then, the ‘container‘ that is more or less compatible with the spatial expanse that the constitutionally delimited state occupies. Alternatively, constitutional space may be seen metaphorically as an organizational schematic, as a ‘constitutional architecture‘ in which...
The age of hyper-legislation?
In order to frame the panel discussion, this paper defines the phenomenon of hyper-legislation and outlines the constitutional problems that it poses. Roach coined the phrase “hyper-legislation“ to describe Australia‘s legislative response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Arguably, the phenomenon extends beyond the national security realm. The Australian legal system is now populated by innumerable...
Subsidiarity and Interpretive Pluralism in International Human Rights Law
The salience of principles & practices of subsidiarity in IHRL is linked to value pluralism & communal self-determination. I argue that an analysis of the variations in the practice of subsidiarity by different IHRL mechanisms is a useful proxy to elucidate the idea of legitimate interpretive pluralism in IHRL, defined as a plurality of incompatible,...