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Sionaidh Douglas Scott - 18th June 2018
Last week, the EU Withdrawal Bill returned to the Commons, so MPs could scrutinise and vote on amendments made to it by the House of Lords. The Bill survived its passage in the House of Commons last year relatively intact, with only one amendment carried against the Government. Things were different, however, in the Lords, […]
Stephanie Tai - 28th March 2018
China’s National People’s Congress recently passed a constitutional change to remove the two-term presidential term limit with a 99.8% passing rate. Whilst the official reason for the removal is to ensure that Xi can keep his trinity leadership, as Xi’s tenure as military chairman and secretary general of the Communist Party is unlimited, this announcement […]
Ndjodi Ndeunyema - 23rd March 2018
In the last week of February 2018, Africa’s principal human and peoples’ rights judicial organ, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, commenced its 48th session at its seat in Arusha, Tanzania. Having started its operations in 2008 when its interim rules were finalised, the African Court is a relatively young institution when compared […]
Dominic Burbidge and Thomas Raji - 22nd March 2018
Kenya’s 2010 constitution replaced the country’s centralised governance structure with one of the world’s most radical experiments in devolution. Yet to look at current commentary of Kenya’s political crisis is to see a debate that has remained stuck in the past. The 2010 constitution devolved 14 key government functions to the county level, with each […]
Mfundo Salukazana - 14th March 2018
Discussions over the contours of the separation of powers principle in South Africa continue to smoulder. During President Jacob Zuma’s term, this dialogue was in overdrive mode. Recently, in Economic Freedom Fighters v Speaker of the National Assembly, and a few months before President Zuma resigned as president of South Africa, three opposition political parties […]
Maja Beisenherz - 12th March 2018
Given the political and constitutional history of the 18th and 19th centuries, universal suffrage and free and fair elections are a hard won freedom in Germany. Currently, Article 38 of the Basic Law of 1949 (Grundgesetz) states that ‘Members of the German Bundestag shall be elected in general, direct, free, equal and secret elections. They shall […]
Kira Allmann - 9th March 2018
At the beginning of January, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El Sisi declared a three-month extension of a country-wide state of emergency that has been in effect since April 2017 in response to bombings at two Coptic churches. The extension was unremarkable in many ways. Egypt has existed under conditions of a de facto or de […]
Ugochukwu Ezeh - 22nd February 2018
As one of two holders of the inaugural Oxford Human Rights Hub Travelling Research Fellowship, I have had the valuable opportunity to work in the Law Faculty at Rhodes University, South Africa. Ranking among South Africa’s oldest and most prestigious universities, Rhodes University is situated in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape Province of the country. […]
Paz Irarrázabal - 16th February 2018
By the time that the Chilean poet and educator, Gabriela Mistral, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945, women in her country were still disenfranchised in national elections. In Chile, as everywhere, women’s right to vote was the result of a long story of struggle. Since 1920 different women’s organizations campaigned to demand […]
Neetika Vishwanath - 14th February 2018
The Centre on the Death Penalty at National Law University, Delhi conducted an opinion study with 60 former Indian Supreme Court judges to understand their perspectives on India’s criminal justice system and the administration of the death penalty. The resulting report, Matters of Judgment, offers an insight into judicial thought processes on the death penalty […]
Dominic O'Sullivan - 10th February 2018
New Zealand celebrated its national day this week. Unlike Canada Day which marks the anniversary of the Canadian federation, or Australia Day which marks the anniversary of the establishment of a British penal colony, Waitangi Day (6 February) is the anniversary of an enduring political accommodation between the British Crown and the Maori people. National […]
Alison Young - 5th February 2018
The previous three posts examined the reasons for retaining the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights in UK law after Brexit, focusing on its broader, more modern protection of rights, the better remedy it provides, and the way that preserving the Charter would provide for a clearer protection of rights which were enacted in a more […]