Wedding Cakes and Muslims: Religious Freedom and Politics in contemporary American legal practice

This paper offers a critical examination of two recent American Supreme Court verdicts, Masterpiece Cake Shop v Colorado Civil Rights Commission and Trump v Hawaii. In Masterpiece the Court ruled against the state of Colorado on grounds that religious bias on the part of state officials undermines government’s authority to enforce a policy that might otherwise be constitutional. In Trump the Court ruled in favor of an executive order severely restricting immigration from seven countries, five of which are Muslim majority. Both verdicts raise important issues concerning fairness and religious freedom. After examining some of the central legal issues in these verdicts I offer a critical assessment of the legal arguments, focusing on how political value judgments played a crucial role in determining the legal outcomes

The Perpetual Invasion : Past as Prologue in Constitutional Immigration Law

Donald Trump ascended to the presidency largely on the promise to protect the American people—their physical and financial security, their culture and language, even the integrity of their electoral system—against an invading foreign menace. Only extraordinary defensive measures, including “extreme vetting” of would-be immigrants, a ban on Muslims entering the United States, and a 2,000-mile-long wall along the nation’s southern border could repel the encroaching hordes. If candidate Trump’s scapegoating of unauthorized migrants and refugees was disarmingly effective, it was also eerily familiar to those of us who study the history of immigration law and policy. Indeed, the trope of an immigrant “invasion” has long been a rhetorical mainstay of American political discourse. Much less well understood, however, is the extent to which the invasion trope has also shaped the federal government’s vast, extra-constitutional, and largely unrestrained authority to exclude or expel noncitizens from the United States. This Article describes the origin of that authority in the nativist movements of the late-nineteenth century, including both the virulent anti-Chinese crusade that culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the decades-long and ultimately successful campaign to severely curtail the immigration of “new” Europeans from Southern and Eastern Europe. The legacy of this history endures to the present, as the Supreme Court continues to account for its broad deference to the political branches on immigration matters in terms of an inextricable connection between immigration regulation and the conduct of national security. This Article concludes by considering whether President Trump’s unusually candid (unusual, at least, during the last half-century) deployment of the invasion trope might have an edifying effect on the Supreme Court in Trump v. Hawaii, the travel ban case, as the justices contemplate the implications of deferring to a President whose campaign-season political demagoguery has now mutated to official United States policy

The impact of the China-Australia free trade agreement on Australian job opportunities, wages and conditions

Introduction Significant controversy surrounds the impact of the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA) in a number of areas. This report focuses on two of these areas by examining the ChAFTA’s provisions on labour mobility. The first area of controversy is whether the ChAFTA will enable Chinese workers to replace local workers in the Australian labour market. This question hinges upon whether the Australian Government can impose labour market testing to determine whether a genuine skills shortage exists in the local labour market. Without labour market testing there is no regulatory mechanism to ensure that local job opportunities are protected. The second area of controversy is whether the ChAFTA allows for, or will result in, Chinese workers receiving poorer wages and conditions than local workers in the Australian labour market. This report is structured in two parts. Part One considers the three provisions in the ChAFTA that provide the opportunity for Chinese workers to access the Australian labour market. The labour mobility clauses in Chapter 10 and the two memorandums concerning large-scale infrastructure development projects and the annual entry of working holiday makers each facilitate this opportunity. This report identifies each of these entry pathways into the Australian labour market and examines how they will operate in practice. Part One of the report makes a number of findings. Firstly, the report finds the ChAFTA greatly increases the access of Chinese workers to the Australian labour market. The report recommends the Australian Government use its enabling legislation to clarify that labour market testing will apply to certain categories of Chinese workers. In particular, there needs to be labour market testing in a manner that is consistent with Australia’s 457 visa program, before employers can access Chinese workers who are ‘contractual service suppliers’ or ‘installers and servicers’. Without labour market testing, there is no regulatory mechanism to prevent an employer from preferencing a Chinese worker over a local worker for these two categories. Secondly, the report also finds that there needs to be greater protection to ensure Chinese workers are not used as a way of undercutting local wages and conditions. This can be done by making it a requirement that Chinese workers be paid the applicable market salary rate and not merely the award rate for their occupational category. The market salary rate can be determined through taking into account the current major employing collective agreement registered by the Fair Work Commission in the sector and/or region, ABS average salary rate data and the Department of Employment’s Job Outlook data. Thirdly, the report finds that the current regulatory framework for Investment Facilitation Arrangements (IFAs) requires reform in order to ensure it is a legislated framework that mandates labour market testing, market salary rates and the achievement of greater public accountability and transparency around IFAs

The socio-political bases of willingness to join environmental NGOs in China: a study in social cohesion

This article examines willingness to join China’s emerging green movement through an analysis of data from the China General Social Survey of 2006. A question asked about environmental NGO membership shows that whilst only one per cent of respondents claim to be members of an environmental NGO, more than three fifths say they would like to join one in future if there is an opportunity, slightly less than one fifth reject the idea, and the remainder are don’t knows. The paper tests explanations of willingness to join based on instrumentality, ideology, social identity and social capital networks. It finds that instrumental considerations dominate, although ideology, identity and networks contribute incrementally. The conclusion considers the usefulness of willingness to join as an indicator of social cohesion within the framework of a wider effort to evaluate social quality

Immigration as Commerce: A New Look at the Federal Immigration Power and the Constitution

The relationship of immigration law to the Constitution has long been incoherent. One result is that there is little clarity on the appropriate standard of review for constitutional violations when aspects of immigration law and policy are challenged in the federal courts. This Article advances the Commerce Clause as the anchor of a new understanding of the link between the government\u27s immigration power and the Constitution. Despite the extensive early history of the Foreign Commerce Clause as the presumed source of the immigration power, it plays almost no role in immigration jurisprudence today, and few scholars have seriously considered its suitability for that role. More strikingly, none have explored the Interstate Commerce Clause as an appropriate source of the immigration power, one that could open the door to a normalization of constitutional analysis in the immigration context. The Article argues that both the Foreign and the Interstate Commerce Clauses should be understood to undergird the contemporary immigration power, and suggests that acknowledging immigration’s relationship to the Commerce Clause clears a path to more routine constitutional review of immigration law and policy

Overview of the Evolution of China's Central Bank and Monetary Policy: Correlation to the European Union

As an innovator in the financial system, China was the first to use paper currency. Eventually the form of currency was held responsible for devastating inflation and was abandoned during the Ming Dynasty. Going forward in time, uprisings and discontent have emphasized the importance of controlling inflation. The central bank is pivotal in issuing monetary policy to control inflation and to maintain financial stability as the government transforms itself from a planned economy to a mixed market economy. The transforming economy is moving toward a free market system through series of economic reforms. The correlation between China’s structure and the European Union’s structure provides opportunities for further study to determine next steps for both.China; central bank; monetary policy; inflation; economy