Volume 12, Issue 4 -

In some countries, courts protect constitutional rights by ordering broad institutional reforms and overseeing those reforms. These broad orders are known as structural remedies, and they are currently part of the judicial practice of the United States, India, and Colombia. Structural remedies pose a problem of democratic legitimacy in that courts substitute for legislatures or administrators. This paper argues that structural remedies are democratically legitimate as long as they are used as a last resort and are aimed at addressing a specific institutional pathology within the legislature or the bureaucracy. Drawing from the experience of the United States, India, and Colombia, the paper distinguishes counter-legislative from counter-bureaucratic remedies in order to show that the democratic concerns raised may vary depending on the affected institution. The paper argues that structural remedies are legitimate if they are capable of correcting a pathology in the legislative or administrative process. With respect to legislatures, structural remedies should aim at improving the representative or the deliberative quality of legislative decisions. In the case of bureaucracies, they should aim at improving the subordination of agencies to the political process, their responsiveness to citizens’ concerns, and the expertise with which their tasks are carried out.

This article unveils Italy’s exceptionalism in recognising and protecting same-sex couples by adopting a three-dimension analysis: constitutional, comparative and supranational. It maintains that, compared to other countries whose courts were sympathetic with the legal claims raised by lesbian and gay people, Italy’s Constitutional Court adopted a totally different approach, reinforcing the heteronormativity of marriage in a way that delayed all efforts to pass a law on same-sex registered partnerships. The Constitutional Court, in particular, interpreted the Constitution, the experience of other nations and supranational law according to heteronormativity, an example that is unique in the comparative context. As an illustration, this article addresses the case Bernaroli vs Ministry of the Interior . In Bernaroli , a male-to-female transgender person wanted to remain married to her wife notwithstanding the transition. The case ignited a heated debate among scholars and questioned the courts’ opinions as to the human rights dynamics surrounding same-sex marriage and, more importantly, about the current role of heteronormativity in marriage law. This article concludes that the legal existence of Bernaroli’s marriage represents a constant challenge to the status quo and highlights the permanent crisis of heteronormativity. After the Austrian Constitutional Court’s recent ruling that declared the law on same-sex domestic partnership to be discriminatory, heteronormativity’s defence became even more untenable, making Italy’s a true exception in the continent’s legal landscape.

Using the Mexican experience in the centralization of public security, this paper proposes federalism as a model of a vertical control of powers and, more importantly, a way of promoting self-governance, citizen participation and, through them, local security. We argue that while federalism as an organizational model of the State does not guarantee self-governance or citizen participation, it can help promote them and through their enhancement, improve security at the community level. Since 2006, the Mexican government has implemented a security strategy that has increasingly centralized public security decisions. The strategy relies on the deployment of federal security forces (Army, Navy and Federal Police) across the country, to replace or support state and local police. The results have been mostly negative. On one hand, there has been an exacerbation of violence in the country, including many incidents in which violence was used disproportionately or illegally by state officials against civilians. On the other, the use of federal forces has undermined the federalist regime which serves as a check on the exercise of power by federal authorities, thus undermining state and local institutional capacities. The lessons from the Mexican case can be useful for other federal systems responding to organized crime.