In most countries Parliamentary immunity protects lawmakers from civil or criminal charges while in office, and it shields them from prosecution for their political speech or political actions. This paper presents the first empirical analysis in the literature of the impact of Parliamentary...

This article introduces a novel database that measures governments' compliance with national constitutions. It combines information on de jure constitutional rules with data on their de facto implementation. The individual compliance indicators can be grouped into four categories that we...

Madhav Khosla's brilliant book, India's Founding Moment , is self-consciously a work on the history of ideas. Nonetheless, the subtitle of India's Founding Moment — The Constitution of a Most Surprising Democracy —implies that Khosla draws a connection between the ideas that shaped the...

Constitutional loyalty, the importance ascribed to complying with constitutional rules, is difficult to measure across countries due to differences in context, history, and culture. We overcome this challenge by exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic as an ideal setting in which societies around the...

Since the time of the Protestant reformation, Western societies typically consider themselves not to be governed by divine law but based on a social contract. While all rules governing a society are part of this social contract, a country's written constitution is a central and possibly the most...

This article introduces a novel database that measures governments’ compliance with national constitutions. It combines information on de jure constitutional rules with data on their de facto implementation. The individual compliance indicators can be grouped into four categories that we...

Is it possible to know how institutionally stable a country is, how corrupt its rulers are, what is the expectation and standard of living of its inhabitants, how dynamic and complex is its economy, all this, just by identifying and counting certain words in its constitution? We tried to...

The paper examines from a legal perspective the economic policy measures adopted by the institutions of the European Union (EU) to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, and explores their implications for the constitutional architecture of Economic & Monetary Union (EMU). The article maps the...

In this paper, we study the impact of altruism on an interaction between a samaritan and a recipient/parasite in the frame of Buchanan's samaritan's dilemma (1975). We show that, as soon as altruism reaches a certain threshold, the equilibrium of the game corresponds to the situation Buchanan...

Proposals of wealth taxation — as a mechanism to combat economic inequality and raise revenue for welfare programs — have dominated recent political debate. Despite extensive academic commentary, questions surrounding the constitutionality of a wealth tax remain unresolved. Previous...

The state market interventions in the German banking sector of the last decade seem to have contradicted the European Economic Constitution in the Treaty of Lisbon by the increasing interventionism of the German state and the European Union. The first step of this study is to theoretically...

In contrast to the prevailing scholarly approach, my theoretical and empirical work on “Secession and the Prevalence of Both Militant Democracy and Eternity Clauses Worldwide” published in the Cardozo Law Review in 2018 suggests that the overwhelming majority of world constitutions,...

This document is a working draft of a student Note that will be submitted to peer-reviewed academic journals analyzing potential constitutional challenges to Michigan’s Sex Offenders Registration Act (“MSORA”). The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Does #1–5 v. Snyder and the...

The keynote address to the Open Source/Open Society Conference, delivered on 22 August 2016. The address introduces Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Dr Andrew Butler’s new book, A Constitution for Aotearoa New Zealand, and discusses the shortcomings of New Zealand’s unwritten constitution

Over the past three decades, the Supreme Court has led a historicist revolution in equity jurisprudence. In a series of decisions known as the “new equity” cases, the Court has sought to limit federal equitable remedies to the forms of relief typically issued by the English Court of Chancery...

This Article examines the theoretical and doctrinal origins and consequences of a potentially game-changing approach to processing claims brought under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Since 1990, and the decision in Employment Division v. Smith, the Court has read that Clause...

The purpose of this paper is to carry out an initial analysis of the constitutional aspects that have an impact and are based on competition law and policy in Argentina. Within this framework, we briefly analyse the different antitrust laws that governed our country during the last century. Then...

Regional economic integration can be pursued either through an Intergovernmental or supranational approach. The economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was established by the founding Treaty of 1975 (the ECOWAS Treaty) to promote economic cooperation within the region.It is against...

In a series of recent cases, the High Court has adopted the position that constitutional freedoms operate as direct limits on legislative power only, and do not directly constrain the exercise of statutory executive powers. In this article, we analyse and critique the rationales for, and...

This article explores the structure, management and institutional design of commissions in Australia and unpacks how these institutions operate within the Australian political landscape. Part 1 looks at the structure of Australian electoral commissions and how they maintain structural...

This article introduces a novel database that measures governments’ compliance with national constitutions. It combines information on de jure constitutional rules with data on their de facto implementation. The individual compliance indicators can be grouped into four categories that we...

James Buchanan was a fervent advocate of a non-discriminatory politics. However, he. translated his views on constitutional political economy into (de jure) constitutional design in an insufficiently thoughtful way. Simply writing non-discriminatory politics into a Constitution is unlikely to...

This admittedly somewhat polemical essay addresses the surprisingly complex issue of how our Constitution does/should treat non-citizens (both legal and illegal) with respect to their involvement in/impact upon our political systems, both federal and state. The recent U.S. Supreme Court case of...

In most countries Parliamentary immunity protects lawmakers from civil or criminal charges while in office, and it shields them from prosecution for their political speech or political actions. This paper presents the first empirical analysis in the literature of the impact of Parliamentary...

Do citizens legislate different tax policies than parliaments? We provide quasi-experimental evidence for causal effects of direct democracy. Town meetings (popular assemblies) replace local councils in small German municipalities below a specific population threshold. Difference-in-differences,...

Do citizens legislate different tax policies than parliaments? We provide quasi-experimental evidence for causal effects of direct democracy. Town meetings (popular assemblies) replace local councils in small German municipalities below a specific population threshold. Difference-in-differences,...

In May 2020, for the first time in its history, the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) of Germany declared Union acts as being ultra vires. According to the FCC, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) had acted beyond their mandates because they did...

Globalisation has provoked a deep transformation in international law, political affairs and governance with contradictory consequences. It has stimulated the cosmopolitan project of global constitutionalism, transnational integration and the unification of democratic standards. However, it also...

It has become increasingly difficult to unite all member states behind policies that some of them consider desirable or necessary to further EU integration. Differentiated integration may be a solution for this, but also may complicate decision-making. This by raising national constitutional...

This paper seeks to analyze the basis of Retrospective legislation in India focusing specifically on the area of Tax law and seeks to unearth the rich case law on the subject and the sort of constitutional checks placed upon it. The paper will first introduce the concept of retrospective tax and...

The Swedish policy response to covid-19 stands out as exceptional in international comparisons. The approach adopted is fundamentally determined by the Swedish constitution. Three articles of the constitution are central for this explanation. The first one guarantees the freedom of movement for...

Hard cases present a dilemma at the heart of constitutional law. Courts have a duty to decide them—to vindicate rights, to clarify law—but doing so leads to errors (judges do not know the “right answer”) and strains the credibility of courts as impartial decision makers. Theories of...

This reply, written for a symposium in (2020) 11 Jurisprudence on Legislated Rights: Securing Human Rights Through Legislation (Cambridge University Press 2018, pb 2019), engages with the careful, constructive, and critical challenges of Timothy Endicott, Dimitris Tsarapatsanis, and Lael Weis....