On the eve of the thirtieth anniversary of the Constitution, it is urgent to take stock of this reality. The 1988 Constitution structures the welfare state model with a view to eradicating inequalities based, above all, on the strengthening of the social order and the protection of human rights. In this sense the prospective meaning...
Tag: <span>TUESDAY JUNE 26 2018 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM</span>
HUMAN RIGHTS PERFORMANCE IN TAIWAN
In the past three decades, Taiwan has made a great stride in protecting human rights since democratization. This is all the more remarkable given the emergence of democratic backsliding around the globe and should be attributed not only to the government, including all three branches but also to civil society. This panel comprises four students...
EMERGENCY, LEGALITY AND RESISTANCE IN ASIA
This panel explores relationships between sovereign prerogative, legality and rights in different Asian contexts. Eva Pils and Rawin Leelapatana apply long-standing theorisation about exceptional state power to contemporary politics in China and Thailand respectively. Pils draws on Frankel‘s conception of the “dual state“ to analyse the reversion to arbitrary displays of state power in China....
RIGHTS, GOVERNANCE AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN A DATA INTENSIVE AGE
In the inexorable march of digital technology, one‘s identity is constantly being shaped, measured and defined by fellow citizens, private enterprises and public authorities. This affects the understanding of ourselves as voters, of others as honest citizens, and of heroes of bygone days which we once held dear in our hearts. While individuals‘ lives are...
STRUCTURAL PRINCIPLES FOR PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW
Traditional accounts of the ‘structural’ principles of international law are ‘positivistic‘ and ‘voluntarist‘, suggesting that: a) law and morality are conceptually distinct; and b) no international obligations can exist without state consent. Each paper in this panel challenges these orthodoxies in different ways. Whether by assessing the limits of legitimate democratic rule, the need to...
ICONOCLASM, NATIONAL IDENTITY, CULTURAL HERITAGE AND MONUMENTS
Clashes surrounding the allowance or prohibition of iconoclasm reveal how public law addresses diverse cultural beliefs. Discussions concerning confederate monuments in the United States and the continuing existence of Fascist monuments in Italy have shed light on the different values societies ascribe to the iconology of certain cultural heritage. States’ decisions to own or control...
‘Royal Prerogative: Exploring the conceptual architecture‘
In the second paper, Robert Craig will address a particular conceptual puzzle raised by Miller: the existence or otherwise of the prerogative to withdraw from the EU. He will argue that, even where statute has put the prerogative into abeyance (following De Keyser‘s), the prerogative is best understood, not as having been abolished, but as...
“Defining and Tracking the Trajectory of Liberal Constitutional Democracy“
We provide some definitional and empirical scaffolding for thinking about whether the Egyptian and Turkish cases are outliers or exemplars of the current state of democracy. This means first considering how “democracy“ should be defined and analyzed. We argue that in thinking about democratic decline, it is most useful to focus on ‘liberal constitutional democracy’‘...