Volume 13, Issue 2 -

This article discusses the idea of international human rights law as ‘constitutional law’. It applies the French concept of Le contrôle de conventionnalité des lois , to demonstrate the constitutional potentials of international human rights law in the domestic sphere. In most monist constitutional systems based on the French civilian model, international law takes precedence over acts of parliament and other domestic legislation. Due in part to that hierarchy, conventionnalité permits the courts to review domestic law for compatibility with international law. From that perspective, international human rights norms can be said to have assumed a ‘para-constitutional’ function. Using two case studies from francophone Africa, this article argues that conventionnalité has the potential to play a significant role in the domestic implementation of international human rights and ultimately contributing to a more comprehensive domestic human rights regime.

The notion of urban autonomy is increasingly significant in a global era where city governments are playing an ever-growing role in development, as well as in domestic and international politics. While extending significantly beyond legal configurations of local government powers and functions, urban autonomy is importantly shaped, enabled and protected by constitutional and legal provisions. This is so especially where urban governance happens in a resource-strapped and often politically volatile environment. This article considers the extent to which formal constitutional structures, and their justiciability, enable and channel urban autonomy in the developing world, with a focus on the constitutionally ensconced powers and functional authority of cities in South Africa. Through an overview of relevant constitutional and statutory provisions and of court decisions upholding urban autonomy in intergovernmental disputes, the article illustrates that South African cities have been served well by a constitutional framework emphasising cooperative governance and developmental local government, as well as by the justiciable entrenchment of local government’s executive, legislative and administrative authority.

Split into two parts, the Empirical Paper Series on Secession and Constitutionalism explores the relationship between constitutionalism and secession. While the second part of the article will examine the constitutional arrangement towards secession that prevailed in the states that had a region secede since 1900, this first part discusses the relationship between indivisibility and secession clauses in current constitutions and the prevalence of secessionist movements worldwide. Virtually all consequentialist claims contained in existing scholarship concerning the relationship between constitutionalism and secession fall within either one of two doctrinal creeds. Whereas the Indivisibilist School asserts that indivisibility clauses best prevent secessionism and that secession clauses necessarily prompt this phenomenon, the Secessionist School maintains that prohibiting secession is counter-effective and that recognising it as a right can help defuse secessionism by avoiding confrontational tactics. These claims are assessed on the basis on the Cohesion Dataset, the first-ever census of all constitutional arrangements regarding secession currently operative throughout the world. Contrarily to what existing doctrinal claims would suggest, the relationship between these various constitutional arrangements and secessionism is not linear, but rather U-shaped: both indivisibility and secession clauses are significantly associated with more secessionist activity than average. It is in fact constitutions where secession is neither permitted nor prohibited that are correlated with the least secessionist activity.

This paper describes new legislation relating to citizenship of the Czech Republic, namely Act No 186/2013 Coll, and shows how wide the gap is between the law and the applicants’ expectations. It is based on an analysis of more than 1,600 naturalisation decisions from 2013–2016. This analysis made it possible to draw the conclusion that the decisive aspects for naturalisation are different from those perceived as important by the applicants themselves. The acquisition of Czech citizenship is not, in practice, conditional to making any extraordinary contribution or to a higher level of integration. The stipulated condition for naturalisation in the Czech Republic is the absence of any obstacle defined by the law. One of these possible obstacles is the conclusion that the applicant poses a risk to state security. Recently, there seems to be a trend, where particular attention is devoted to this criterion reflecting the actual fear of society.