Armed opposition groups like the Taliban in Afghanistan and the FARC in Colombia often establish their own ‘courts‘ in territory they control. Can such rebel courts be seen as embodiments of the rule of law, or does the rule or law‘s association with state sovereignty preclude this? Drawing on fieldwork on the judicial practice of...
Tag: <span>MONDAY 25 June 2018 16:45-18:15</span>
Normativist Resistance
Constitutionalism properly so called is connected to a commitment to to self-government of free and equals through law. As such it is tied not only to a distinctive normative conception of public law, but also grounds justifications for resistance and revolution.
Old Law in New Bottles: Reintroducing National Security Legislation in Hong Kong
Fifteen years have passed since the shelving of the National Security (Legislative Provisions) Bill by the HK government after mass protests. There have been no indications of when new legislative proposals might be introduced or the possible shape of such proposals. It is argued that, while the 2003 bill can serve as a starting point...
Near Misses: Avoiding Constitutional Retrogression
There has been a good deal of attention to constitutional backsliding and erosion in many democracies around the work, including established democracies like the United States, Israel and Japan. Several newer democracies have failed completely. Understanding the processes by which backsliding occurs also draws our attention to cases in which it does not. What explains...
Negotiating sovereignty in the preliminary reference procedure
The organisation of the judiciary is close to the heart of any system of government. For that reason, the EU Member States have largely resisted surrendering regulatory power over judicial procedures and remedies to the Union level. In the absence of legislative action, it has fallen upon courts to manage the enforcement of Union rights...
Privacy and GPS investigation in Japan
In 2017, the Japanese Supreme Court held that warrantless GPS searches are illegal. This case shows the boundary of permissible investigation using high technology. Rapidly developing technology challenges legal research. The Japanese Constitution has no term for “privacy,“ and its notion and scope have been questioned in Japan. This paper reviews notion of privacy in...
Privacy issues of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence applications and Big Data technologies raise significant questions in the area of privacy. Users tend to disregard the fact that many databases they have provided their personal data to, are interconnected or are being harvested by data brokers. In this new era of Digital Age the privacy of citizens should be protected not...
Regulatory Takings and Planning Compensation Rights in the Sharing Economy
How does the regulation of the sharing economy affect constitutional rights? This question is particularly salient in the area of property rights. In particular, do restrictions on short-term leasing (such as via Airbnb) constitute unconstitutional takings of private property without just compensation? Do these restrictions rise to the level of regulatory takings (in the U.S....
Regional Human Rights Mechanisms as Enforcement Gap-Filling Institutions
This paper offers an account of how we should understand the nature and role of regional human rights mechanisms in Asia. The core thought is that such mechanisms need to be conceived of and operate as enforcement gap-filling institutions, i.e., help fill enforcement gaps in human rights law within the region. At the level of...
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...