The Project ‘Activating the Village Courts’

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Berger
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
State Courts ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Local Justice ◽  
The World ◽  
International Donor ◽  
Donor Agencies ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Eu

International donor agencies have only recently started again to turn towards non-state courts as potential sites for the promotion of human rights and the rule of law. This chapter analyses this turn by focusing on one project aimed at activating village courts in Bangladesh. The project is the largest donor-sponsored intervention in non-state justice systems anywhere in the world today. The chapter reconstructs the genesis of the project. It thereby not only reveals strong parallels between the contemporary project and its colonial predecessor but also shows how the contemporary project with the village courts emerged in recursive processes of translation between international bureaucrats and Bangladeshi legal experts. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the different ways in which the EU, UNDP, and local NGOs make sense of the village courts as institutions of the rule of law, democratic governance, and local justice.

The Village Courts in Bangladesh

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Berger
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Colonial Administration ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
Local Institution ◽  
International Donor ◽  
Donor Agencies ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
The Village

This chapter embeds contemporary translations of ‘the rule of law’ in their historical trajectory. It reveals how the introduction of village courts by the colonial administration at the dawn of the twentieth century and current efforts by international donor agencies to activate these village courts follow strikingly similar logics. The village courts are therefore neither an exclusively global imposition nor an ostensibly local institution; instead, they have emerged in complex processes of translation in which the global and the local have become inseparably intertwined. Having reconstructed this historical trajectory, the chapter also provides a brief overview of Bangladesh’s recent political history and maps the country’s contemporary legal landscape.

Russia and EU Countries: Partnership for Modernization

2013 ◽  
pp. 54-61
Author(s):  
T. Romanova ◽  
E. Pavlova
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
New Classification ◽  
Member States ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Normative Power ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
The World ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Eu

The article examines how the normative power, which the EU puts forward as an ideological basis of its actions in the world, manifests itself in the national partnerships for modernization between Russia and EU member states. The authors demonstrate the influence of the EU’s normativity on its approach to modernization as well as the difference in the positions of its member countries. It is concluded that there is no unity in the EU’s approach to democracy, human rights and the rule of law, and the new classification of EU member states, which is based on their readiness to act in accordance with the Union’s concept of normative power, is offered.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Berger
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
State Court ◽  
Translation Research ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Rural Bangladesh ◽  
Theoretical Account ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
International Donor ◽  
Donor Agencies

This chapter introduces the book’s central arguments as well as the theoretical account of norm translation that is developed through the in-depth analysis of contemporary donor-sponsored projects with village courts in rural Bangladesh. It opens with brief ethnographic accounts of a non-state court session and a courtyard meeting through which international donor agencies seek to promote transnational notions of the rule of law in rural Bangladesh. The chapter then outlines the overall argument of the book and its contributions to existing scholarship on the diffusion of norms and ideas as well as to research on non-state justice institutions and the rule of law. Subsequently, the chapter introduces Bangladesh’s recent political history, delineates the methodological approach, and reflects on the challenges of doing translation research. In conclusion, it outlines the overall structure of the book and summarizes the key arguments advanced in its individual chapters.

Europe

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The World ◽  
Foreign And Security Policy ◽  
The One ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
The Eu

In the years before the Covid-19 crisis confronted the world with unprecedented challenges, the EU showed two sides of itself: On the one hand, it gave cause for hope, having overcome several crises and presenting itself to the world as a defender of multilateralism and a stronghold of democracy. On the other hand, however, its weaknesses remained visible: its lack of coherence in foreign and security policy; its insufficient influence in its neighbouring regions; and its internal contradictions with regard to upholding the rule of law among its member states. The essays gathered here offer a review of two years of EU politics. With contributions by Laurent Baechler, Anna Dimitrova, Mohamed Ane, Sebastian Franzkowiak, András Inotai, Gabriel N. Toggenburg, Arnaud Leconte, Kyriakos Revelas, Hartmut Marhold, Jean-Claude Vérez, Jean-Marie Rousseau, Susann Heinecke, Florent Marciacq, Tobias Flessenkemper, Magda Stumvoll, Marta-Claudia Cliza, Laura-Cristiana Spataru-Negura, Claude Nigoul, Pinar Selek, Yvan Gastaut.

The World after the Termination of Intra-EU BIT S

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 196-211
Author(s):  
Nikos Lavranos
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Member States ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
Investment Protection ◽  
The World ◽  
Lower Standard ◽  
European Investment ◽  
The Eu

This article examines the potential consequences of the termination agreement recently signed by 23 EU Member States, which will soon terminate the existing intra- EU BIT S of the signatory Member States. The author concludes that the retroactive application of the termination agreement to disputes that have been initiated before this termination agreement enters into force is a serious violation of the Rule of Law. He also finds that the Facilitator procedure offered by the termination agreement is not a suitable tool to settle any ongoing intra- EU BIT disputes. In light of the significant shortcomings in the judicial legal systems of many EU Member States, the author calls for the adoption of an EU Investment Protection Regulation as well as the creation of a European Investment Court. Finally, despite the fact that the termination agreement is not intended to apply to intra- EU ECT disputes, the author expects that the fallout of the Achmea judgment will lead to substantial “reforms” of the ECT in due course. All these developments will inevitably lead to a lower standard of investment and investor protection within the EU.

The Case of Ayesha, Muslim ‘Courts’, and the Rule of Law: Some ethnographic lessons for legal theory

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 940-985 ◽  
Author(s):  
JEFFREY A. REDDING
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
State Courts ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Direct Control ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Established Firm

AbstractThis paper aims to challenge the disparagement of non-state Islamic systems of law that has established firm roots in contemporary rule of law ideology and practice around the world, from India to Ontario. In this respect, rule of law ideology has tended to ignore actual mechanics and procedures of law, not only in legal venues outside the state's direct control, but also in the state's courts themselves. With respect to non-state legal venues—and especially non-state Islamic legal venues—such ideology understands and describes the practices and procedures that it finds in these non-state venues as crude and underdeveloped at best, and illiberal and in violation of the rule of law at worst. While other scholarly work has vividly demonstrated the various transformations and mutations that any state's ‘ideal legal procedure’ experiences as it is put into real-world practice by a state's courts and judges, this paper makes a converse move. Using a case-study focused on the circumstances and experiences of an Indian Muslim woman, ‘Ayesha’, who recently used a Delhi dar ul qaza to exercise her Islamic divorce rights in India, this paper demonstrates how a non-state Islamic legal venue behaves in ways which are highly evocative of rule of law ideology's idealization of state courts and how they (should) operate procedurally. In doing so, this paper provides evidence for Partha Chatterjee's thesis as to how elite and subaltern domains—understood here to be embodied in both state and non-state legal venues, respectively—are products of ‘mutually conditioned historicities’. In this case, the focus is on the state's conditioning of the non-state. As a result, rule of law ideology's state-oriented critique of the (Islamic) non-state is mistaken because, as this paper demonstrates, the non-state is produced in conversation with the state; one cannot critique the one (non-state) domain without realizing how that critique implicates the other (state) domain.

scholarly journals “The Rule of Law Mechanism” and the Hungarian and Polish Resistance: European Law Against National Identity?

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 49-67
Author(s):  
Christoph J. Schewe ◽  
◽  
Thomas Blome ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Economic Recovery ◽  
Adoption Process ◽  
European Law ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Member States ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
The World ◽  
The Eu

Similarly to the rest of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has also hit the European Union (EU) severely. In order to foster the process of the economic recovery of EU Member States, the EU Member States agreed on a financial aid package combined with a regulation – the conditionality mechanism – that provided for financial sanctions in the event of a breach of the rule of law. Given that the positions of Poland and Hungary in the adoption process of this regulation caused a controversy, this article examines general questions on the rule of law, the regulation and the background to the controversy.

scholarly journals A Populist Monster and the future of Constitutional Democracy

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Andraž Teršek
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
Council Of Europe ◽  
Constitutional Courts ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Eu

Abstract The central objective of the post-socialist European countries which are also Member States of the EU and Council of Europe, as proclaimed and enshrined in their constitutions before their official independence, is the establishment of a democracy based on the rule of law and effective legal protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms. In this article the author explains what, in his opinion, is the main problem and why these goals are still not sufficiently achieved: the ruthless simplification of the understanding of the social function and functioning of constitutional courts, which is narrow, rigid and holistically focused primarily or exclusively on the question of whether the judges of these courts are “left or right” in purely daily-political sense, and consequently, whether constitutional court decisions are taken (described, understood) as either “left or right” in purely and shallow daily-party-political sense/manner. With nothing else between and no other foundation. The author describes such rhetoric, this kind of superficial labeling/marking, such an approach towards constitutional law-making as a matter of unbearable and unthinking simplicity, and introduces the term A Populist Monster. The reasons that have led to the problem of this kind of populism and its devastating effects on the quality and development of constitutional democracy and the rule of law are analyzed clearly and critically.

scholarly journals Rights and Powers in the European Union: Towards a Charter that is Fully Applicable to the Member States?

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Aida TORRES PÉREZ
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Member States ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Rights Protection ◽  
Scope Of Application ◽  
Judicial Protection ◽  
Eu Fundamental Rights ◽  
The Eu

Abstract This contribution will tackle a central question for the architecture of fundamental rights protection in the EU: can we envision a Charter that fully applies to the Member States, even beyond the limits of its scope of application? To improve our understanding of the boundaries of the Charter and the potential for further expansion, I will examine the legal avenues through which the CJEU has extended the scope of application of EU fundamental rights in fields of state powers. While the latent pull of citizenship towards a more expansive application of the Charter has not been fully realized, the principle of effective judicial protection (Article 19(1) TEU) has recently shown potential for protection under EU law beyond the boundaries of the Charter. As will be argued, effective judicial protection may well become a doorway for full application of the Charter to the Member States. While such an outcome might currently seem politically unsound, I contend that a progressive case-by-case expansion of the applicability of the Charter to the Member States would be welcome from the standpoint of a robust notion of the rule of law in the EU.

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