Articles for category: AAA General

Mercan v. Turkey: Waiting for the Last Word of the Turkish Constitutional Court

For the time being, the fallout of the attempted coup d’ètat of July 15th 2016 in Turkey will not reach Strasbourg. Victims of alleged human rights violations first have to exhaust domestic remedies before they can apply to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). This is the result of Mercan v. Turkey, the first of more than 3000 applications regarding alleged violations after the attempted coup and the declaration of a state of emergency. The Strasbourg court views the Turkish Constitutional Court (TCC) not as per se incapable of adjudicating in these cases in an effective way. If the TCC can live up to these expectations remains to be seen.

21. November 2016

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The Lure of the New Normal

No-one can remain in a constant state of exception, that would be a contradiction in terms. Any emergency that goes on for too long becomes somewhat normal over time. If things refuse to get less terrifying, all we can do is raise our level of terrification, isn't it? Donald Trump will let a White Supremacists' media darling shape his political strategies – but hey: he deserves a chance, right? Austria is weeks away from falling into the hands of the far-right populists, with other European countries lining up behind it – but please, let's not overreact, maybe we are all just out of touch with what ordinary people think and feel?

19. November 2016

The EU and Poland: Giving up on the Rule of Law?

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With an off-hand remark in a Belgian newspaper, President Juncker has called off the EU Commission's effort to pressure Poland into following the rule of law. If he went through with this, he would not only pull the rug from under his own First Vice President Timmermans and spare the national governments the necessity to live up to their responsibilities. The Commission President deciding that the slide of a member state into authoritarianism is not his business, with a Trump Presidency in the US coming, forgoes the European Union's claim to be capable of fulfilling its leadership role in the world.

15. November 2016

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Week #1 after Trump

I will not bore you with yet another account of how stunned I still am and how I shake in my booths now and so forth. We all do, I suppose. The world has changed over night, quite literally. And the world we woke up in on Wednesday morning appears to be a far less habitable place for liberal constitutionalists who believe that state and society should respect human dignity, protect the vulnerable, overcome discrimination and impose on their own power those legal restraints that empower them in the first place. How could this happen? What did we do wrong? What can we do now? Shall we stand our ground or adapt?

12. November 2016

Religious Installations in French City Halls: A Christmas Crib Story

Christmas, in certain circumstances, has its place in the Republic. Judges have agreed in a plenary session reviewing two different Court of Appeal cases (courtyard of Melun’s town hall and hall of the departmental council of Vendée) that a Christmas crib in a public building doesn’t a priori represent a threat to secularism. In fact, the installation is legal, says the Conseil d’Etat, provided that particular circumstances give it « a cultural, artistic or festive character ». The decision is questionable for two main reasons: its foundation is doubtful, and its outcome unsatisfactory.

11. November 2016

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National Constitutional Identity in the European Constitutional Project: A Recipe for Exposing Cover Ups and Masquerades

On November 8, 2016 the Hungarian Parliament did not adopt the Seventh Amendment of the Fundamental Law seeking to protect Hungarian constitutional identity in the face of European imposition. The Seventh Amendment was meant to cover up the minor scratch on the Government’s pride caused by lack of popular support for its relentless fight against the EU. Although the Amendment did not pass, supporters of European constitutional projects cannot afford to sit back and relax.

11. November 2016

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Thirteen Theses on Trump and Liberal Democracy

No one wants to go down in the history books like those fools who said in the 1930s, "well, Hitler isn't such a bad chap really..." Protecting our egos from the imagined judgment of prosperity, the cautious course is to predict the worst for the Trump Presidency, the very destruction of the American constitutional regime, the collapse of liberal democratic values. I however am willing to risk being proven a fool, so here goes...

10. November 2016

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The Paradox of Liberal Constitutionalism: a Call for Communal Constitutionalism

We should be careful when we embrace the new transnational paradigm. If dialogue can take place, this must not forget that constitutionalism's soul must be looked for at the local level, not in the fluid transnational arena - beyond the seemingly neutral vocabulary of technocracy, and reaching out to a physical space where claims can be put forward, resources allocated, boundaries defined, and decisions contested, within touching distance.

10. November 2016

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