In this first paper, Margit Cohn will provide a broad perspective for the panel by considering UK prerogative powers, argued in Miller and elsewhere, in light of comparative law and the looser concept of “non-statutory“ powers, sometimes considered in the UK as “third source“ or “new prerogatives“. The questions addressed in the panel will be...
Tag: <span>TUESDAY JUNE 26 2018 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM</span>
The Problem of Virtual Co-Location: China‘s Social Credit System and the Legal System of the Hong Kong SAR
The National-level policy for the development of a Social Credit System (SCS) in the PRC has been laid out in a Planning Outline adopted by the State Council in 2014. Due to be fully implemented by 2020, the SCS consists of a socially-embedded informational platform for reciprocal reporting and decision-making based on the ascription of...
What Value for Consensus? Human Rights, Normative Force, and Universality
The ECtHR sometimes relies on a notion of European consensus. Reasons why consensus is seen as important include values of identity, and democratic decision making. The question is to what extent relying on consensus is justified. I propose to understand the debate on the universality of international human rights as a relevantly similar concern about...
Walking with ‘the Quran in one hand and the Constitution in the other‘: The Islamic Women‘s Movement in India and Landscapes of Adjudication
This paper charts the landscapes of adjudication by the Indian Supreme Court by closely interrogating primarily two cases, Shah Bano v Union of India and Shayara Bano v Union of India to understand if religion and constitutionalism can speak to each other and if they are constitutive of each other. Recent studies have indicated the...
The Legal Logic of Chinese Economic Reform
The Chinese reform towards market economy has achieved remarkable success in the past 40 years. Yet the course of the reform experienced constitutional hurdles as the Constitution, established in 1982, held socialism, against capitalist way of production, as the central, ideological pillar that defines the Constitution. To legitimatize the reform, the authorities set out to...
Tribunais de Contas (Courts of Audit): the new protagonist of the 30th year of the Brazilian Constitution
The Brazilian Constitution of 1988 did not create the Courts of Audit, which exist in Brazil since the XIX century and nowadays are present in each state and federal governments and serve the purpose to control the public budget and to judge how the officials manage public money. Nevertheless, the Brazilian Constitution promulgated in 1988...
Towards an Analytical Framework of Constitutionalism in East Asia
Recent years have witnessed the reemergence of discussions on Confucian constitutionalism, communitarian constitutionalism, or Asian values. Despite the differences of these concepts, all reject Western liberal constitutionalism, emphasizing that Asian countries should prioritize social and economic rights over civil and political rights. Nevertheless, this dichotomy in fact does not hold in Taiwan and many other...
Transforming an Informal Political Grouping into a Legalized Intergovernmental Organization: Overcoming Legal, Capacity, and Cognitive Dissonances in Building a Rules-based ASEAN
While there are contemporary signs of ‘authoritarian pushback‘ eroding global governance in the ‘liberal‘ world, the converse seems to be happening in ‘soft authoritarian‘ Southeast Asia. Since the ASEAN Charter (2007), ASEAN members have strived to reform their intergovernmental grouping into a formal rules- and institutions-based regional organization that stands credibly in the international legal...
Thick and thin moralities and legitimacy in international adjudication – the case of the WTO
WTO adjudication faces a crisis of social legitimacy. I diagnose that crisis in terms of competing theories of interpretation, and thick and thin political moralities. WTO law‘s dominant self-image is as voluntarist-positivist treaty law, reflecting an implicit thin international political morality. Interpretation is exclusively a matter of textual analysis complemented by originalist intent. Yet text...
Three Approaches to Political Protest: A Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China Comparison
Different types of regimes face distinct political challenges, perceive and define political protest differently and develop unique measures to manage their political crises. This paper first identifies three distinct approaches to political protest: a security-based approach, a rule-based approach, and a rights-based approach, and then uses Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China as case studies...