Articles for category: English Articles

An Exotic Right

The Spanish Supreme Court's ruling in the trial against Catalan secessionist leaders will definitely not help to solve the conflict. Quite on the contrary, it will make it intractable in the short run, as we are beginning to see in the riots in the streets of Barcelona. In my opinion, this ruling is unjust and legally wrong. Even worse, it is unconstitutional since it compromises the fundamental democratic rights of protest – the freedom of expression, the freedom of assembly, and the right to demonstrate.

18. Oktober 2019

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The European Ombudsman as an Insurmountable Roadblock?

On 17 September 2019, the European Ombudsman adopted a decision rejecting a complaint against the European Parliament submitted by The Good Lobby, an NGO “committed to giving voice to under-represented public interests and bringing more citizens into the public policy process”. The action was supported by Alberto Alemanno, also co-founder and director of the NGO, and Laurent Pech. In their post of last May 2019 they already described in detail their dealings with the Authority of European political parties and European political foundations (hereinafter the Authority) and with the President of Parliament. The subsequent stages and the Ombudsman’s take reveal the wider consequences of this process and some silver linings.

15. Oktober 2019

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›Ze-Gate‹: Excepting Accountability

On September 24, the democrats in the House of Representatives announced a formal impeachment inquiry of President Trump for allegedly having pressured Ukrainian President Zelenskiy during a call to probe Joe Biden, former US Vice-President and Trump’s political rival. The content of the conversation raises questions about the integrity of Ukraine’s President. Impeaching Zelenskiy, however, is not a viable option as Ukraine’s constitution sets a practically unattainable threshold for impeachment.

15. Oktober 2019

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Deep Rot in Slovakia

Unlike in Poland and Hungary, the government in Slovakia has not mounted a serious offence against the judiciary in the preceding decade. On the contrary, there is a persuasive argument that a high degree of judicial (and prosecutorial) independence has shielded individuals from being held accountable.

14. Oktober 2019

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Is One Offended Pole Enough to Take Critics of Official Historical Narratives to Court?

In a recent interview with Verfassungsblog, Wojciech Sadurski lists his fears accompanying the high probability of the Law and Justice forthcoming electoral victory. He mentions fundamental rules and values, such as the constitutional order, an independent judiciary, fair elections and free press. However, what can also be at stake and what just seemingly may be considered of lesser importance, is the possible conclusion of the process of reshaping the historical narratives and introduction of a state-imposed vision of historical truth.

12. Oktober 2019

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10 Anti-Constitutional Commandments

Poland is on the eve of the parliamentary elections to be held on October 13, 2019. This provides a good opportunity to step back for a second to analyse the turbulent years of 2015-2019 and to piece together scattered elements of a new constitutional doctrine that has emerged since November 2015. Such a perspective should help readers of Verfassungsblog to truly understand and appreciate the scale and depth of the change that has happened to the prevalent (and what was presumed to be unshakeable) post-1989 constitutional paradigms.

12. Oktober 2019

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Miller/Cherry 2 Goes to Kashmir

There are certain principles which emerge from Miller/Cherry 2 which are meaningful for cases involving judicial review of executive powers. The application of these principles, especially in cases where the line between the executive and legislature is thin (resulting in what Bagehot described as the ‘fusion of powers’), can guide comparative lawyers to hitherto underexplored areas of administrative law accountability of the executive to legislative bodies.

11. Oktober 2019

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