In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Author: David Fontana

11 Jun

[David Fontana is a Professor at George Washington University School of Law] Mark Tushnet has written another interesting paper, yet again combining his background in American and comparative constitutional law.  Tushnet argues—with some qualifications—that there are major structural pressures leading to the globalization of a genre of provisions of domestic constitutional law.  Tushnet’s paper is shorter, so there are many claims...

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02 Apr

Is government in opposition a welcome addition to our separation of powers choices? There are a series of issues to be considered. First of all, it responds to the problem that all systems of government have—-presidential, semi-presidential and parliamentary—-the problem of the very successful politician and eventual unconstrained democratic leader. If a political figure or political party is very popular,...

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31 Mar

Imagine it is Wednesday morning, November 5, 2008, the morning after the American presidential election. After months of attacks on the Democratic Presidential nominee, Barack Obama, for being weak on terrorism, Republican Presidential nominee John McCain has not only won the presidential election, but against all odds the Republican Party has taken control of the House of Representatives and...

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29 Mar

One thing that I have long wondered about is why certain legal offices within the federal government become more political than other offices. Why, for instance, has the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice become more political, or so it seems, than the Office of Legal Advisor in the Department of State? Why have Inspector Generals...

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28 Mar

The series of wonderful posts on this blog about the Supreme Court’s decision in Medellin--and the energy and extent of coverage of the case even beyond this blog--remind me of an impression I have long had about legal scholarship in the United States compared to many other countries. I am reminded of something similar to what the famous sociologist...

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28 Mar

Thank you to Roger for extending my stay guest blogging, so I could step aside for a few days for all of the interesting posts on Medellin. At the request of several readers, I will re-post my first post (which had the misfortune of being posted right before Medellin was decided), and then later today add another post on...

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25 Mar

As Roger said in his introduction, and as I mentioned, much of my scholarship focuses on this field of comparative constitutional law. By comparative constitutional law, of course, I mean the domestic constitutional law of other countries (this might perhaps also include the constitutional law produced by more transnational institutions like the European Court of Human Rights, although this...

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25 Mar

Thank you to Roger for his very kind welcome and introduction, and thank you for the invitation to blog on Opinio Juris! This is my first time blogging, or for that matter doing really anything on the Internet, so I apologize in advance for any technical or other glitches. I plan to spend my week on this blog discussing a range...

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