The Hughes Court

The Hughes Court: From Progressivism to Pluralism, 1930 to 1941 describes the closing of one era in constitutional jurisprudence and the opening of another. This comprehensive study of the Supreme Court from 1930 to 1941 – when Charles Evans Hughes was Chief Justice – shows how nearly all justices, even the most conservative, accepted the broad premises of a Progressive theory of government and the Constitution. The Progressive view gradually increased its hold throughout the decade, but at its end, interest group pluralism began to influence the law. By 1941, constitutional and public law was discernibly different from what it had been in 1930, but there was no sharp or instantaneous Constitutional Revolution in 1937 despite claims to the contrary. This study supports its conclusions by examining the Court's work in constitutional law, administrative law, the law of justiciability, civil rights and civil liberties, and statutory interpretation.

Islamic Constitutionalism: Social Movement and the Framework of the Indonesian Constitution

The main purpose of this article is to discuss Islamic constitutionalism in the context of Indonesian social movements. Constitutionalism is part of the study of constitutional law when the discussion focuses on the concept of limiting the power of the government. Using historical and sociological approaches, this article examines socio-political circumstances in Muslim society and their relationship to the spirit of constitutionalism in Indonesia. Indonesia does not explicitly name any particular religion in its Constitution, even though most of its population is Muslim. After a series of constitutional reforms over 1999– 2002, there was no formalization of Islam in the Constitution. Two important academic questions arise when dealing with this phenomenon. First, to what extent are Indonesia’s religious social movements involved in constructing the narrative of constitutionalism? Second, how do the spirit of constitutionalism and Islam play a role in strengthening Indonesia’s Constitution? This article notes that some Muslims in Indonesia have been striving to build a narrative of Islamic constitutionalism through social movements since the nation’s pre- independence era. Nevertheless, this Islamic constitutionalism has not resulted in the formalization of an Islamic constitution in Indonesia due to several factors: the historical roots of the nation’s establishment, the pluralist stance of Indonesia’s mainstream civil Islamic movements, and the presence of the Pancasila as the state ideology. This article also reveals that Indonesia’s Muslim majority and religious authorities play a role in building the spirit of constitutionalism; however, the formalization of a specific religion as the basis of the constitution has never been realized in Indonesia.

The Long Arc of Legality

The Long Arc of Legality breaks the current deadlock in philosophy of law between legal positivism and natural law by showing that any understanding of law as a matter of authority must account for the interaction of enacted law with fundamental principles of legality. This interaction conditions law's content so that officials have the moral resources to answer the legal subject's question, 'But, how can that be law for me?' David Dyzenhaus brings Thomas Hobbes and Hans Kelsen into a dialogue with H. L. A. Hart, showing that philosophy of law must work with the idea of legitimate authority and its basis in the social contract. He argues that the legality of international law and constitutional law are integral to the main tasks of philosophy of law, and that legal theory must attend both to the politics of legal space and to the way in which law provides us with a 'public conscience'.

Alternative forms of judicial review

The invention in the late twentieth century of what I call weak-form systems of judicial review provides us with the chance to see in a new light some traditional debates within U.S. constitutional law and theory, which are predicated on the fact that the United States has strong-form judicial review. Strong- and weak-form systems operate on the level of constitutional design, in the sense that their characteristics are specified in constitutional documents or in deep-rooted constitutional traditions. After sketching the differences between strong- and weak-form systems, I turn to design features that operate at the next lower level. Here legislatures or courts specify whether their enactments or decisions will receive strong- or weak-form treatment. I examine examples of legislative allocations of issues to strong- and weak-form review and identify some practical and conceptual problems with such allocations. Then I examine judicial allocations — of the courts’ own decisions — to Strong- or weak-form categories. Here I consider Thayerian judicial review and what Professor Dan Coenen has called semisubstantive doctrines as examples of judicial choices to give their decisions weak-form effects. My conclusion is that these allocation strategies reproduce within strong- and weakform systems the issues that arise on the level of constitutional design. Weak-form systems and allocation may seem to alleviate some difficultiesassociated with strong-form systems in constitutional democracies. My analysis suggests that those difficulties may persist even when alternatives to strong-form judicial review are adopted.

Ukrainian Constitutional Court: Attacks and Backlash

This article intends to analyze Ukraine’s Constitutional Court in the light of the tolerance interval theory and the backlash thesis, through a case study, which is, the decision issued on October 27, 2020, that held unconstitutional part of the powers of the National Agency for the Corruption Prevention (NAPC). Three comorbidities — particular conditions that weaken the court and render it vulnerable to attacks — in the Ukrainian system are presented: Ukrainian democracy, autocracies tendencies in the presidency, and lack of public confidence in the judicial system. Through the adoption of a Comparative Constitutional Law approach, an index measuring the impact of the ruling is developed and calculated, allowing a comparison of the consequences to other notable controversial rulings in the world. After discussing the findings, the article concludes with some reflections and predictions on the longevity of the Ukrainian Constitutional Court.

The Definition of Sovereign: Comparative Analysis of J. Austin's and C. Schmitt's Concepts

The purpose of this research article is to compare the concepts of John Austin and Carl Schmitt on the definition of sovereign - finding the similarities and differences between them. The article analyzes the constitutional law of such states as the Russian Federation and the Vatican City State as a practical application of the results of comparing the concepts of determining the sovereign. In the analysis of the constitutional law of the Russian Federation, the results of the study of the concept of John Austin are used, and in the analysis of the constitutional law of the Vatican City State, the results of the study of the concept of Carl Schmitt are used. The subject of research, the definition of sovereign, is one of the most important topics of Theory of State and Law, therefore, everything stated in the article contributes to the development of understanding of statehood and legal systems and opens new opportunities for study and discussion in the scientific world.

The concept and structure of activities in the field of organizing and holding elections to government bodies in the theory of constitutional law

The article aims to study the concept and structure of activities in the field of the organization and holding of elections to governing bodies in the theory of constitutional law. The main method was the analysis of systems that allows to study the system of activities in this field. The latter can be represented by different structures depending on the stage of their cognition as an object or their internal processes. In addition, the article used the historical method, deduction, induction, etc. It is concluded that the system of activities in the field of the organization and holding of elections to the governing bodies is a unit of their properties and integral elements, order and their interaction, as well as stable connections between them, based on the principles of preservation or invariance, which are organized as appropriate relations between the structural elements themselves and their external environment, that is, the sphere of the organization and conduct of elections to the governing bodies.

TO THE QUESTION OF THE REALIZATION OF CITIZEN'S RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE INFORMATIZATION PROCESS

The relevance of the article is determined by the strategic purpose of constitutional law to provide adequate answers to emerging issues in the sphere of ensuring the rights and freedoms of man and citizen in the process of informatization of society. The article is devoted to the analysis of changes in the spread of information technology in the modern world. Analyzing the newest generation of rights, called in modern Russian jurisprudence digital (information) rights, the author focuses on topical issues of their provision and draws conclusions about the possibilities and prospects for improving the legal regulation of digital legal (information) relations of citizens.