Comparative and Foreign Law Commons^™

Rethinking The Context Of Hate Speech Regulation, Robert Kahn

Robert Kahn

In this essay I review Michael Herz and Peter Molnar (eds.) The Content and Context of Hate Speech: Rethinking Regulation and Responses (Cambridge University Press 2012). As I show in the review, the Herz and Molnar volume advances our understanding of comparative hate speech regulation in three ways. First, the essays suggest that local context has a role to play in understanding, assessing, and applying hate speech regulations, even in an age when online hate speech is pressuring states and regions to reach common solutions to these problems. Second, the essays rebut the commonly held premise that the United States …

Looking Beyond The Negative-Positive Rights Distinction: Analyzing Constitutional Rights According To Their Nature, Effect And Reach, Jorge Farinacci-Fernós

Jorge Farinacci-Fernós

In this brief Article, I wish to challenge and transcend the narrow dichotomy of political-rights-as-negative-rights versus socio-economic-rights-as-positive-rights, and analyze the different variables applicable to constitutional rights, taking into account several interacting features. First, the nature of a right, that is, whether it is civil and political or socio-economic. Second, the effect of a right, that is, whether it is negative rights that protect the titleholder against the actions of others or positive rights that entitle its titleholder to require others to act. Third, the reach of a right, that is, whether it is vertical rights opposable to the state or …

Does It Matter How One Opposes Memory Bans? A Commentary On Liberte Pour L'Histoire, Robert Kahn

Robert Kahn

This paper examines Liberté pour l'Histoire, a group of French historians who led the charge against that nation’s memory laws, in the process raising unique arguments not found elsewhere in the debate over hate speech regulation. Some of these arguments – such as a focus on how the constitutional structure of the Fifth Republic encouraged memory laws – advance our understanding of the connection between hate speech bans and political institutions. Other arguments, however, are more problematic. In particular, Liberté historians struggle to distinguish the Holocaust (which is illegal to deny) from the Armenian Genocide (which is not). The Liberté …

Originalism In Puerto Rico: Original Explication And Its Relation With Clear Text, Broad Purpose And Progressive Policy, Jorge Farinacci-Fernós

Jorge Farinacci-Fernós

Originalism is neither inherently conservative nor exclusive to the United States. Puerto Rico, a self-governing U.S. jurisdiction, has been using a particular form of originalism as its main methodological tool for constitutional interpretation and adjudication since 1952. Puerto Rican originalism has several key traits. First, it's politically progressive, due to the framers' explicit progressive agenda which is palpable from the historical sources. Second, their intent is empirically verifiable, due to the formality and transparency of constitutional creation that generated a formal and elaborate record. Third, the constitutional record is considered the authoritative source of constitutional meaning. Fourth, the textual characteristics …

The Urban Situation: Cities’ Place In Decentralized Government Frameworks, Michael R. Miller

Michael R Miller

This article compares how several developing, emerging market, and former socialist countries' laws classify or rank city governments in relation both to other tiers of subnational government (e.g., state-, province-, and county-level governments) and to other cities. It primarily focuses on the laws of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria, Kenya, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Egypt, Iran, Morocco, China, Vietnam, Philippines, Russia, Poland, and Kazakhstan.

The Ciudades Modelo Project: Testing The Legality Of Paul Romer’S Charter Cities Concept By Analyzing The Constitutionality Of The Honduran Zones For Employment And Economic Development, Michael R. Miller

Michael R Miller

Over the last several years, the Honduran government has been aggressively advancing a "model cities" project that it argues will provide options for its citizens to escape the extreme violence in their country without migrating to the U.S. The model cities, which are formally called "Zones for Employment and Economic Development" ("ZEDEs"), are purported to be autonomously governed areas that will attract foreign investment and compete for residents by establishing safer communities and better managed institutions governed by the rule of law.

The ZEDEs trace their origin to a concept formulated by development economist Paul Romer, who proposed the idea …

Constitutional Interpretation In Law-Making: China’S Invisible Constitutional Enforcement Mechanism, Tom Ginsburg, Yan Lin

Tom Ginsburg

Abstract: It is conventional wisdom that China’s Constitution is unenforceable, and plays little role in China’s legal system, other than as a symbolic document. This view rests on the fact that the Supreme Court has no power to interpret the Constitution. The formal body with interpretive power, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, has never issued an official interpretation. Despite this apparent lack of enforcement, we argue that China’s Constitution indeed plays an increasingly important role within the party-state. It does through not through the courts but through the legislative process, in which formal requirements of constitutional review …

The Abolition Of The Mandatory Death Penalty In The Commonwealth: Recent Developments From India And Bangladesh, Andrew Novak

Andrew Novak

India and Bangladesh are following the Commonwealth-wide trend toward discretionary death penalty regimes and away from the common law mandatory death penalty. This case note analyzes three recent decisions of the Supreme Court of India and the Bangladesh Appellate Division invalidating mandatory death sentences.

Andrew Novak is an adjunct professor of law at American University Washington College of Law, and an adjunct professor of criminology, law, and society at George Mason University. He is the author of The Global Decline of the Mandatory Death Penalty: Comparative Jurisprudence and Legislative Reform in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean (Ashgate 2014) and The …

Homeschooling As A Constitutional Right: A Claim Under A Close Look At Meyer And Pierce And The Lochner-Based Assumptions They Made About State Regulatory Power, David M. Wagner

David N. Wagner

In 2012, a German family of would-be homeschoolers, the Romeikes, fled to the U.S. to escape fines and child removal for this practice, which has been illegal in Germany since 1938. The Sixth Circuit, in denying their asylum request, conspicuously did not slam the door on the possibility that if the Romeikes were U.S. citizens, they might have a right to homeschool. This article takes up that question, and argues that Meyer and Pierce, the classic cases constitutionalizing the right to use private schools, point beyond those holdings towards a right to homeschool; and that the permissible state regulations on …

Cross, Crucifix, Culture: An Approach To The Constitutional Meaning Of Confessional Symbols, Frederick Mark Gedicks, Pasquale Annicchino

Frederick Mark Gedicks

In the United States and Europe the constitutionality of government displays of confessional symbols depends on whether the symbols also have nonconfessional secular meaning (in the U.S.) or whether the confessional meaning is somehow absent (in Europe). Yet both the United States Supreme Court (USSCt) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) lack a workable approach to determining whether secular meaning is present or confessional meaning absent. The problem is that the government can nearly always articulate a possible secular meaning for the confessional symbols that it uses, or argue that the confessional meaning is passive and ineffective. What …

The Eu’S Accession To The European Convention On Human Rights: An International Law Perspective, Jed Odermatt

Jed Odermatt

Article 6(2) of the Treaty on European Union establishes that the Union “shall accede to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.” In early 2013, negotiators of the 47 Council of Europe member states and the European Union finalised a draft Accession Agreement that would allow the EU to accede to Convention. Taking this draft Accession Agreement as a starting point, this paper examines the issues and challenges that EU accession poses from an international law perspective. Much of the literature on the EU accession has focused on the effect that this process will have …

The Right To An Exclusively Religious Education – The Ultra-Orthodox Community In Israel In Comparative Perspective, Gila Stopler

Gila Stopler

The ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Israel has its own separate education system which is funded by the state and in which boys are given an exclusively religious education with almost no exposure to secular subjects or to civic education. At the same time that the Israeli Supreme Court was scheduled to rule that the state may not continue to fund ultra-Orthodox private schools that do not teach the national core curriculum the Israeli parliament passed the Unique Cultural Educational Institutions Act which upholds the right of the ultra–Orthodox community to give their boys an exclusively religious education funded by the …

Corruption, Constitutions And Crude In Latin America, Fredrick V. Perry, Scheherazade S. Rehman

Fredrick V. Perry

This paper examines the perception of corruption that exists throughout Latin America, and analyses the importance of the institutional environment in Latin American countries, which are both richly endowed with and dependent on oil and natural gas. First, we look at corruption generally in the region and then carry our analysis by looking at various countries’ GDP per capita versus several indices measuring different dimensions of countries’ economic development, political progress, and social performance. We also combine corruption indices and separate them by typology of corruption in order to investigate the particular facets of corruption that pose the greatest impediment …

We The Peoples: The Global Origins Of Constitutional Preambles, Tom Ginsburg, Daniel Rockmore, Nick Foti

Tom Ginsburg

No abstract provided.

Valuing Our Discordant Constitutional Discourse: Autonomous-Text Constitutionalism And The Jewish Legal Tradition, Shlomo C. Pill

Shlomo C. Pill

This paper considers the viability of autonomous-text constitutionalism, a constitutional interpretive and adjudicative theory based on Hans Georg-Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. As the paper explains, this theory is premised on the subjectivity of all interpretive activity; it admits the legitimacy of a wide spectrum of reasonable interpretations of the Constitution, each given their unique character by the dialectical merging of experiential horizons between the fixed text and individual interpreter. This theory embraces a plurality of constitutional meanings in theory, limited by the need for unity in national spheres of constitutional practice. Such practical certainty is achieved by our empowering judicial institutions …

Flemming Rose's Rejection Of The American Free Speech Canon And The Poverty Of Comparative Constitutional Theory, Robert Kahn

Robert Kahn

In the fifteen page English language excerpt of his recent memoir The Tyranny of Silence, Danish publisher Flemming Rose gave an extended defense of his decision to run the cartoon images of the Prophet Mohammed. Current First Amendment doctrine almost certainly would treat this act as protected speech. But Rose barely mentions the First Amendment. Instead, he develops a highly personal theory of speech based on his experience in the Soviet Union and discussions with Salman Rushdie. Like many American legal academics Rose opposes bans on hate speech, but he does so for different reasons.

From a comparative law …

Constitutional Patriotism: A Reasonable Theory Of Radical Democracy?, Vito Breda

Vito Breda

Since its first appearance just over a decade ago, Habermas's constitutional patriotism has inspired a rich and articulate series of theoretical analyses and has indirectly encouraged constitutional projects such as the Constitution for Europe. The popularity of constitutional patriotism among political and constitutional theorists has, however, also generated some confusion over the aims and basic structure of Habermas's endeavour. For instance, it is unclear whether constitutional patriotism ought to be considered a constitutional or political theory. This paper seeks to clarify some of the misunderstandings surrounding constitutional patriotism. It will contend that the theory is, at its core, a political …

Judicialization Of Socio-Economic Rights In Brazil: The Subversion Of An Egalitarian Discourse, Vanice L. Valle

Vanice L. Valle

This article describes the historical origins of the Brazilian constitutional frame of socio-economic rights, and the political context that lead to their enforcement through the Judiciary. Based in a particular constitutional text that asserts socioeconomic rights’ immediate enforceability, the present theoretical comprehension is that they establish the State’s obligation to provide goods and services. The consequence is an intense judicialization of rights such as health, education and housing, which results in a wide exercise of judicial activism in controlling public policies – with the Judiciary renouncing to the objective rational criteria consubstantiated in the law, and to an approach that …

Why Do Europeans Ban Hate Speech? A Debate Between Karl Loewenstein And Robert Post, Robert Kahn

Robert Kahn

European countries restrict hate speech, the United States does not. This much is clear. What explains this difference? Too often the current discussion falls back on a culturally rich but normatively vacant exceptionalism (American or otherwise) or a normatively driven convergence perspective that fails to address historical, cultural and experiential differences that distinguish countries and legal systems. Inspired by the development discourse of historical sociology, this article seeks to record instances where Americans or Europeans have argued their approach to hate speech laws was more “advanced” or “modern.”

To that end this article focuses on two authors whose writing appears …