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Full-Text Articles in Law
Dignity Rights: Courts, Constitutions, And The Worth Of The Human Person, Erin Daly
Dignity Rights: Courts, Constitutions, And The Worth Of The Human Person, Erin Daly
Erin Daly
The right to dignity is now recognized in most of the world's constitutions, and hardly a new constitution is adopted without it. Over the last sixty years, courts in Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and North America have developed a robust jurisprudence of dignity on subjects as diverse as health care, imprisonment, privacy, education, culture, the environment, sexuality, and death. As the range and growing number of cases about dignity attest, it is invoked and recognized by courts far more frequently than other constitutional guarantees. Dignity Rights is the first book to explore the constitutional law of …
Constitutional Protection For Environmental Rights: The Benefits Of Environmental Process, Erin Daly
Constitutional Protection For Environmental Rights: The Benefits Of Environmental Process, Erin Daly
Erin Daly
More and more constitutions around the world -- from Bangladesh to Bolivia, and from the Philippines to the countries of the EU -- are explicitly protecting environmental rights and the values of a clean and healthy environment. In many instances, environmental rights are recognized not as substantive entitlements (which would allow litigants to sue if the government polluted their rivers or clearcut their forests), but as procedural rights. Examples of procedural rights include imposing on governments the obligation to consult with communities before they take actions that will affect their environment or giving individuals the right to participate in governmental …
New Directions In Earth Rights, Environmental Rights And Human Rights: Six Facets Of Constitutionally Embedded Environmental Rights Worldwide, James May, Erin Daly
New Directions In Earth Rights, Environmental Rights And Human Rights: Six Facets Of Constitutionally Embedded Environmental Rights Worldwide, James May, Erin Daly
Erin Daly
This essay provides an overview of the worldwide phenomenon of constitutional environmental rights. Since the Stockholm Convention, nearly 60 countries have constitutionally entrenched environmental rights, according their citizens basic rights to environmental quality in one form or another. The list is diverse politically, including countries with civil, common law, Islamic, and other traditions. Some of the more recent of these include Kenya in 2010, Ecuador in 2007, France in 2005, Afghanistan in 2004, and South Africa in 1996. As a result, domestic courts and international tribunals are enforcing constitutionally enshrined environmental rights with growing frequency, reflecting basic human rights to …
Dignity In The Service Of Democracy, Erin Daly
Dignity In The Service Of Democracy, Erin Daly
Erin Daly
At a broad level, perhaps the most noticeable trend in Latin American constitutional law is the increasing muscularity of constitutional tribunals. Throughout the region, particularly in South America, tribunals charged with interpreting their country’s constitution are increasingly asserting themselves and inserting themselves into public controversies, from abortion to same sex marriage to the rights of political association. This heightened judicial activity can come at a cost to democracy: typically, the more social issues are decided by unelected and unaccountable judges rather than through a political process, the less the people control the resolution of those issues. The more outcomes are …
Human Dignity In The Roberts Court: A Story Of Inchoate Institutions, Autonomous Individuals, And The Reluctant Recognition Of A Right, Erin Daly
Erin Daly
Throughout its history, the Supreme Court has assumed that dignity is relevant to constitutional interpretation, though it has rarely considered exactly how. In the post-war years, the Court (like its counterparts around the world) found that human dignity underlay many individual rights, and in the 1990s, the Court's federalism jurisprudence found that the dignity of states immunized them from most lawsuits in both state and federal courts. This article examines the Court's past references to dignity and argues that the conception of dignity that is evoked in the federalism cases -- which focus, at root, on the autonomy of the …
Vindicating Fundamental Environmental Rights: Judicial Acceptance Of Constitutionally Entrenched Environmental Rights, James May, Erin Daly
Vindicating Fundamental Environmental Rights: Judicial Acceptance Of Constitutionally Entrenched Environmental Rights, James May, Erin Daly
Erin Daly
This article examines the extent to which constitutionally embedded fundamental environmental rights have met the promise of ensuring a right to an adequate environment. It explains these results and suggests ways to neutralize judicial resistance to these emerging constitutional rights. In Part II we explain the prevalence of constitutionally entrenched rights to a quality environment. In Part III, we provide examples of the extent to which courts have enforced these provisions. In Part IV, we examine institutional and structural factors, conceptual disjunctions, and pragmatic considerations that help to explain judicial receptivity to constitutionally entrenched environmental rights. And in Part V …