scholarly journals Referencing International Human Rights Law In Indonesian Constitutional Adjudication

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 249
Author(s):  
Bisariyadi Bisariyadi

The power of the Indonesian Constitutional Court to review laws is a constitutional adjudication process. It is a forum to resolve constitutional issues where a citizen can challenge Law that has injured his rights. The Court's reasoning provides audiences with the debates for its deliberation. Audiences may find reference to the international human rights law. It is an interesting practice. However, there is no studies yet about the information on the statistic of the Court made reference to international human rights law. As such, this study aims to identify reference to international human rights law in the Court's decision on judicial review cases from 2003 to 2016. Additionally, this study also aims to answer the question of what underlies the Court to made reference to international human rights law. As many studies show, the objective of Constitutional Court's references to the international human rights law is to strengthen constitutional rights protection. Nonetheless, the Court did not pay any interests to the global agenda of transnational constitutionalism or a convergence of rights and legal pluralism. The article is divided into 5 (five) sections, commencing with the introduction. The second part discusses the status of international human rights law in Indonesia. As the third presents information on Court's decision which cited international human rights law. Then, the fourth presents typical function of the decision that made reference to international human rights law. It concluded that the practice of referring to international law demonstrates the open attitude of Indonesian constitutional justices to the universal nature of fundamental rights.

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 242-262
Author(s):  
Islam Ibrahim Chiha

Abstract This article examines the status of international human rights law in the Egyptian legal system and investigates how Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) uses international and foreign law in its constitutional interpretation of fundamental rights and freedoms. I argue that integrating international human rights law into the jurisprudence of the SCC is imperative both for protecting the rights and freedoms of Egyptian people and for resolving potential conflicts between national law and international law. I rely on cases covering rights to marriage, development, education and equality (especially for persons with disabilities).


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Kirby

This article examines the decision in Al-Kateb v Godwin (2004) 219 CLR 562. It revisits the suggested ‘heresy‘ that international human rights law may influence the interpretation of the Australian Constitution and other legal texts. Accessing universal human rights law, including in constitutional adjudication, was endorsed in the Bangalore Principles on the Domestic Application of International Human Rights Norms 1988. The author suggests that interpreting statutory language in this way is not dissimilar to the common-law principle of interpreting statutes so as to uphold basic rights. But should an analogous approach be permissible in deciding the meaning of constitutional language? Although arguably invoked by the majority of the High Court in Mabo v Queensland [No 2] (1992) 175 CLR 1, in the context of declaring the common-law, so far this approach has not been accepted for constitutional elaboration in Australia. But should this be so in the age of global problems and internationalism?


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-286
Author(s):  
Ignatius Yordan Nugraha

Abstract The goal of this article is to explore the clash between international human rights law and a legal pluralist framework in the case of the noken system and also to investigate potential solutions to the clash. Elections in Indonesia are generally founded on the principle of direct, universal, free, secret, honest and fair voting. There is a notable exception in the Province of Papua, where tribes in the Central Mountains area are following the noken system. Under this system, votes are allocated to the candidate(s) based on the decision of the big man or the consensus of the tribe. The Indonesian Constitutional Court has accepted this practice as reflecting the customs of the local population. However, this form of voting seems to be contrary to the right to vote under international human rights law, since article 25(b) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights stipulates that elections shall be held genuinely by universal suffrage and secret ballot to guarantee the free will of the electors. Consequently, the case of the noken system in Papua reflects an uneasy clash between a legal pluralist approach and universal human rights.


2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faisal Bhabha

Thank you for the opportunity to address the very timely topic of international human rights law from the Canadian perspective. As my title suggests, my analysis of this topic sits at the intersection of law and politics, as so much of international law necessarily does. I will proceed in three parts. First, I will provide a sketch of the political context, drawing from recent events and trends, to describe a conflicted official government approach to international human rights. Next, I will examine the formal legal status of international human rights law in Canada, drawing selectively from key Supreme Court of Canada decisions. This will be far from a comprehensive account. Finally, I will discuss the recent adoption of the newest international human rights treaty, the disability convention, and discuss calls to promote access to justice at the international level for breaches of Convention norms domestically. Notwithstanding important efforts to advance the status of international human rights law in Canada, my overall observation is that, in both law and politics, the Canadian approach to international human rights is predominantly inward looking.


Author(s):  
Melanie Studer ◽  
Kurt Pärli

In Switzerland, the participation in certain work programmes is an eligibility criterion to social assistance benefits and the constitutionally granted right to the financial means required for a decent standard of living. This chapter examines whether the implementation of these programmes is in accordance with fundamental rights and more precisely, whether they respect the normative framework elaborated in Chapter 4. As will be shown, the right to financial assistance when in need has close links to human dignity. Therefore, the evaluation of the mentioned work programmes against the human rights background leads to some critical conclusions on their compatibility with international human rights law in general and human dignity in particular. Especially, the authors argue that the Swiss Federal Supreme Court’s case law lacks a comprehensive approach for the evaluation of human rights infringements in this context.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 924-939
Author(s):  
Pierre Thielbörger

AbstractWhile the “essence” of EU fundamental rights has received much attention following the CJEU’s Schrems decision, the concept of “essence” remains much less examined in international human rights law. Nonetheless, a concept of “essence” for human rights can also be found in international law. This Article discusses different aspects of the “essence” concept in international human rights law, namely non-derogability, non-restrictability, and minimum core, in three steps. First, the Article looks at civil political rights and socioeconomic rights separately and identifies two different approaches to the concept of essence for each of the two categories: While for civil and political rights the concept of essence is mainly linked to the notions of non-derogability and non-restrictability, for socioeconomic rights, the concept refers mainly to the states’ obligation to guarantee an essential level of protection independent of their resource limitations. Second, the Article continues by reading the two approaches together and identifies certain elements of an overarching “essence” concept. Finally, the Article discusses the relationship between the CJEU’s “essence” jurisprudence and the related concepts in international law and concludes with two theses: First, international law deserves more attention when reflecting on the EU’s concept of essence. It equally employs concepts of “essence” and also informs the development and interpretation of EU law. Second, when engaging with the question of whether the EU law should draw lessons from its international counterpart on the notion of “essence,” one must contemplate drawbacks for EU law that the concept has presented for international law.


2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 296-304
Author(s):  
Grigory Vaypan

This contribution discusses the recent Dubovets case before both the European Court of Human Rights and the Russian Constitutional Court, and its implications for the changing design of Russian property law as increasingly shaped by international human rights law and good governance principles. Communicated in December 2016, the application in Dubovets v. Russia continues the line of the European Court’s cases against Russia on the protection of good faith private owners of real estate against property claims by the government. Prompted by this case law, the Russian Constitutional Court in its Judgment of 22 June 2017 No 16-P struck down Article 302 of the Russian Civil Code as unconstitutional insofar as it entitled the government to reclaim possession of state property that had been previously alienated due to the government’s own negligence. This judgment manifests the increasing interdependence between private and public law – of classical property law, on the one hand, and international human rights law and good governance principles, on the other hand. It also contributes to ongoing evolution in the understanding of the state’s property rights in Russia: from the superior status of public property in Soviet times – to formal equality between public and private property rights in the landmark legal instruments of the 1990s – and now to the growing need for special protection of individual property rights vis-à-vis the state, in light of the latter’s double role as both the largest owner and the (quite unrestrained) regulator.


2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 677-702 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Kodzo Paaku Kludze

Particularly in developing nations, the movement has been toward the articulation of elaborate provisions in constitutions which guarantee the basic human and peoples' rights of the citizenry. In many cases these are reflections of the immediate past history of the young nations which were strewn with ugly spectacles of dictatorships on their path to democracy. The history of Ghana is unfortunately an illustrative example. The Ghana Independence Constitution of 1957—a very brief document—was brief to a fault and bereft of any provision for human rights. It is clear that the experience of years of abuse of human, political, and civil rights in Ghana explains many of the current constitutional guarantees of basic rights spelt out in the 1992 Constitution in order to protect citizens against future abuses.In the past, treaty obligations under municipal laws of Ghana were such that even ratification of human rights treaties did not directly confer enforceable legal rights in the domestic courts of Ghana and implementing legislation was necessary to make a treaty right justiciable. In the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, as well as others, are entrenched as constitutional provisions, are to be interpreted as such, and enforceable under the laws of Ghana. To the extent that drafters of the Ghana Constitution relied on the principles of the international human rights law enshrined in treaties and declarations, there are many similarities between the domestic law and some principles of international human rights law.


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