{"title":"Responding to Democratic Decay in South Asia: The ‘Federalism Constraint’ on Regional Emergency Powers in India","authors":"Kritika Vohra","doi":"10.1515/icl-2021-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/icl-2021-0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract 2020 marked the 14th consecutive year of democratic decline in the world, and South Asia has been no exception to this global phenomenon. This paper focuses on one particularly egregious onslaught on democracy in India. In August 2019, the Indian government stripped the former state of Jammu and Kashmir of its special status under the Constitution of India, and reorganized its territory into two union territories. The government’s use of its regional emergency powers provided the legal basis for operationalizing these changes. Their use in this manner raises the question of the proper scope of these powers, independently of whether the proclamation of the regional emergency was constitutionally valid. What, if any, are the substantive limitations that constrain the center’s exercise of regional emergency powers? This paper offers a partial response to this question. It relies on the basic structure doctrine to theorize a substantive limitation on their exercise and situates this limitation in the wider legal and historical landscape on regional emergency powers. Articulating it as the ‘Federalism Constraint’, the paper argues that, even when a validly proclaimed regional emergency is in force in a state, the center cannot exercise its regional emergency powers to effect a permanent change to the detriment of the state, as doing so would damage federalism, a basic feature of the Constitution. On this basis, the paper argues that the recent changes to the status of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir are unconstitutional.","PeriodicalId":41321,"journal":{"name":"ICL Journal-Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91119288","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Self-Determination Through Autonomy or Independence? – On the Current and Future Position of New Caledonia","authors":"M. Suksi","doi":"10.1515/icl-2020-0030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/icl-2020-0030","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract New Caledonia is a colonial territory of France. Since the adoption of the Nouméa Accord in 1998, a period of transition towards the exercise of self-determination has been going on. New Caledonia is currently a strong autonomy, well entrenched in the legal order of France from 1999 on. The legislative powers have been distributed between the Congress of New Caledonia and the Parliament of France on the basis of a double enumeration of legislative powers, an arrangement that has given New Caledonia control over many material fields of self-determination. At the same time as this autonomy has been well embedded in the constitutional fabric of France. The Nouméa Accord was constitutionalized in the provisions of the Constitution of France and also in an Institutional Act. This normative framework created a multi-layered electorate that has presented several challenges to the autonomy arrangement and the procedure of self-determination, but the European Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee have resolved the issues regarding the right to vote in manners that take into account the local circumstances and the fact that the aim of the legislation is to facilitate the self-determination of the colonized people, the indigenous Kanak people. The self-determination process consists potentially of a series of referendums, the first of which was held in 2018 and the second one in 2020. In both referendums, those entitled to vote returned a No-vote to the question of ‘Do you want New Caledonia to attain full sovereignty and become independent?’ A third referendum is to be expected before October 2022, and if that one also results in a no to independence, a further process of negotiations starts, with the potential of a fourth referendum that will decide the mode of self-determination New Caledonia will opt for, independence or autonomy.","PeriodicalId":41321,"journal":{"name":"ICL Journal-Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75311949","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Constitutional Imaginary: Shared Meanings in Constitutional Practice and Implications for Constitutional Theory","authors":"Alexander Latham-Gambi","doi":"10.1515/icl-2021-0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/icl-2021-0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article, I seek to defend three main claims: Firstly, that the kinds of practices that are the object of study of constitutional theorists are undergirded by certain fundamental shared understandings. Secondly, that these shared understandings together form a rich fabric of meaning that is, broadly speaking, held in common across modern western societies, which I call the ‘constitutional imaginary’. Thirdly, that political institutions play a symbolic role as ‘repositories’ of shared understandings, which is crucial for the development, maintenance, propagation and evolution of the constitutional imaginary. On the basis of these claims, I propose a distinctive role for constitutional theory: the interpretation of the social meaning of political institutions and the actions and events that take place in and around them.","PeriodicalId":41321,"journal":{"name":"ICL Journal-Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88239870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Names beyond Gender-Based Borders","authors":"L. Detre, E. Orbán","doi":"10.1515/icl-2020-0036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/icl-2020-0036","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The Constitutional Court of Hungary held that the lack of regulation which provides a name changing procedure for lawfully settled non-Hungarian citizens violated the right to human dignity and the prohibition of discrimination.","PeriodicalId":41321,"journal":{"name":"ICL Journal-Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89929606","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Frontmatter","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/icl-2021-frontmatter4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/icl-2021-frontmatter4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41321,"journal":{"name":"ICL Journal-Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84661569","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Legitimate and Illegitimate Political Self-entrenchment and Its Impact on Political Equality","authors":"Antonios Kouroutakis","doi":"10.1515/icl-2020-0028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/icl-2020-0028","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Self-serving politicians and self-entrenchment of the political establishment is a diachronic problem tantalizing liberal democracies. Incumbent political actors around the world constantly purport to entrench not only their presence in the political arena, but also their power and as a result, barriers to entry to new political actors are set, the chain of the democratic choice is disrupted and equality of opportunity is distorted. This article focuses on the available means in the constitutional system in order to safeguard a level playing field in the political arena. To this end, this article has three scientific objectives. First, it elaborates on the significance of equality of opportunities in the political system. Second, it identifies how political self-entrenchment creates an uneven playing field. Third, it focuses on the remedies that exist in the constitutional system and examines both legal and quasi legal mechanisms. With an analysis on the current means that are available in the constitutional system, the judicial review, and the alternative political processes based on independent bodies and quasi-judicial mechanisms, this article concludes that self-entrenchment and self-serving politicians are mainly left to be resolved by political means, the so called self-corrective promise of politics.","PeriodicalId":41321,"journal":{"name":"ICL Journal-Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85651343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction: Constitutional Courts in a 100-Years Perspective and a Proposal for a Hybrid Model of Judicial Review","authors":"Yaniv Roznai","doi":"10.1515/icl-2020-0039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/icl-2020-0039","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41321,"journal":{"name":"ICL Journal-Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75774836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Frontmatter","authors":"","doi":"10.1515/icl-2020-frontmatter4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/icl-2020-frontmatter4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41321,"journal":{"name":"ICL Journal-Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86305195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Constitutional Review Complaint as an Evolution of the Kelsenian Model","authors":"Jeongran Yun","doi":"10.1515/icl-2020-0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/icl-2020-0024","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract A centralized constitutional review system, generally known as the Austrian Constitutional Court model established in 1920 by Hans Kelsen, has spread globally after World War II and is now the most active constitutional tribunal in Europe. Interestingly, although the Constitutional Court of Korea was classified as this Kelsenian model, besides a typical kind of constitutional review procedure, the Court runs an additional procedure for the constitutional review of legislation. The latter has some comparatively special and unusual requirements and procedure, but the statistics indicate it has been actively used. It takes the form of a constitutional complaint, but in practice, it is treated as the second type of constitutional review of legislation in Korean constitutional adjudication. Through this special procedure, individuals appear to participate in a tripartite conversation on constitutional interpretation along with the judicial branch and the Constitutional Court. Moreover, to some extent, this sui generis complaint is perceived to make up for the prohibition of constitutional complaint on judgments of ordinary courts (‘Urteilsbeschwerde’) in Korea. In Austria, the individual complaint on constitutional review of statutes was introduced by a constitutional amendment in 2013, whereby the individual parties of the pending cases are entitled to file a constitutional review with the Constitutional Court as of 1 January 2015. In terms of enabling the individual party to request to the Constitutional Court for constitutional review of legislation, the Austrian new complaint is similar to the Korean one, but their requirements and procedures are different. From the perspective of enhanced individual access to the Constitutional Court, however, both complaints may be viewed as an evolution of the Kelsenian model to meet the demands of the times. In this regard, the Korean practice for over three decades may provide useful insights into the implementation of a new practice and further improvement in Austria. This article will examine the Korean ‘Constitutional Review Complaint’ and compare it with the Austrian ‘Gesetzesbeschwerde (Parteiantrag auf Normenkontrolle)’ to explore mutual references that will help improve both institutions. Then, I will assess what this kind of evolutionary invention of the constitutional review implies to the centennial of the Austrian model.","PeriodicalId":41321,"journal":{"name":"ICL Journal-Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77692861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Kelsen versus Schmitt and the Role of the Sub-National Entities and Minorities in the Appointment of Constitutional Judges in Continental Systems","authors":"Antoni Abat Ninet","doi":"10.1515/icl-2020-0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/icl-2020-0015","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In composed and decentralised states, sub-national entities and (ethnic, linguistic, racial) minorities ought to play a determinant role in the process of appointment of constitutional courts justices to obtain a balanced representation in the guardian of the constitution. The necessary appearance of constitutional justice independence can be at stake without a proportionated participation of minorities and sub-national entities in the court. It is not enough to introduce a symbolic presence. The first section of this essay analyses the transcendence and political-legal significance that the system of appointment of constitutional court judges has and its relation to the separation of powers (horizontal and vertical). The second section is a return to the roots, ie the system of appointment the Austrian Constitution of 1920, even that first constitutional court was created in 1919, and Kelsen’s theory on federalism. The third section carries out an analysis from a comparative constitutional law perspective by using as an analytical basis the reports on the composition of the Constitutional Courts of the European Commission for Democracy through Law. The paper ends with a reflection on Schmitt considerations on the Guardians of Constitutions.","PeriodicalId":41321,"journal":{"name":"ICL Journal-Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90672090","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}