The final intervention will reply to the previous four papers and will serve as the starting point for a round-table discussion which will extend to contemporary constitutional issues concerning the dominance of market rationality
Tag: <span>TUESDAY JUNE 26 2018 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM</span>
Courts and Constitutional Adjudication in Contemporary Malaysia and Singapore
This paper explores constitutional adjudication in the contemporary constitutional contexts of Malaysia and Singapore. It focuses on judicial decisionmaking in these post-colonial constitutional systems on issues engaging fundamental liberties and judicial articulation of the basic structure of these constitutions. The role of the courts can only properly be understood by situating their judgments in the...
Criticising the courts: from ‘foreign‘ judges to ‘dinosaur‘ judges
Court criticism often boils down to clashes between the principles of democracy and the rule of law, but severe criticism may challenge judicial authority and threaten the rule of law. And yet, certain types of criticism are more acceptable than others. This paper argues that collective criticism represents a more acceptable type of condemnation. Here...
Cultural Institutions versus Cultural Policies? Accommodating National Cultural Priorities within the International Treaty Framework protecting to Cultural Property
The increasing illicit trade in cultural property is a global problem in need of a global response. Accession to the international treaty system designed to tackle this trade and protect heritage more broadly has, however, been slow among many States, some of whom nevertheless regard cultural heritage as an important defining characteristic of their nationhood...
Deliberative Federalism
Haig Patapan examines a theory of ‘deliberative federalism‘ that claims ‘federalism, in giving political and legal authority to disparate voices within the federal state, can make institutional room for deliberation‘, which in turn might have salutary effects on the protection of rights in federal societies. Considering evidence from the United States, they reach the conclusion...
Democracy and Constitutional Legitimacy in Canada/Québec and Spain/Catalonia
In the 1998 Secession Reference, the Supreme Court of Canada opined that while a majority vote in favour of the independence of Québec would give rise to a duty to negotiate eventual separation, only the outcome of a negotiation, not the vote itself, could legitimate secession. Similar questions regarding the legitimacy of a unilateral declaration...
Developing a Right to Democracy in International Law: Protection by the Rule of Law?
“We reaffirm that human rights, the rule of law and democracy are interlinked and mutually reinforcing and that they belong to the universal and indivisible core values and principles of the United Nations.“ (United Nations Declaration of the High-level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Rule of Law at the National and International Levels...
Effectivity and Efficiency of Employment Quota for Persons with Disabilities: A Comparative Study of the French and Taiwanese Cases Based on the CRPD Objective
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities pursues a comprehensive protection of persons with disabilities for their effective integration in the economic sphere. In France as in Taiwan, a system of employment quota with pecuniary sanction has been established. Yet the lack of economic incentive may drive private employers to offer positions with least...
EU-Japan Perspectives on Law in the Digital Era
Japan has recently signed a comprehensive free trade agreement with the EU, the Japan-EU Economic Partnership Agreement or JEEPA. JEEPA made some tentative steps towards addressing the digital transformation, yet refrained from the US promoted (and then abandoned) model of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which enshrined protections for free data flows and against data localization...
From Government to governance; from judiciary to…?
In constitutional law, the focus on regulators is accountability, given their power to legislate, administer, and adjudicate. In politics, the focus is to establish and maintain public legitimacy, and they are in the political spotlight only if something goes wrong, e.g. financial crisis. This is tied to “institutional strength“, to have the greatest impact in...