Briefing note – Positive obligations and the Bill of Rights Bill

The Bill of Rights Bill contains some provisions that are theatrical and legally meaningless, but it also contains provisions that will harm the protection of human rights. One of the more harmful provisions is Clause 5 on positive obligations. The changes could affect those seeking an independent effective investigation into the deaths of family members, victims of domestic violence, child neglect, human trafficking, and victims of crime, among many others

Notes on a Bicentennial Constitution: Part I, Processes of Change

With the approach of the Bill of Rights bicentennial, this paper takes the cause for celebration as an equally important occasion for critique. This work argues that the most distinguishing aspects of our Constitution are not the Bill of Rights, federalism, and separation of powers, but rather the availability of judicial review, the political insulation of federal judges, and the limited mechanisms available for constitutional change

The Bill of Rights and the Emerging Democracies

Today, the influence of the US Bill of Rights can be traced through its remote offspring, including the Helsinki Agreement, the German Basic Law, the post-war French constitutions, and the European Convention on Human Rights. These documents have influenced recent developments in the emerging democracies of eastern and central Europe

Strengthening the Bill of Rights

This article was presented as a Victoria University of Wellington Centennial Lecture during Law Festival week in 1999.  The author critically examines two aspects of the current operational structure of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990—the subordination of the Bill of Rights to all enactments (section 4) and the issue of "positive vets" of proposed legislation by the Attorney-General (section 7). The author identifies them as weaknesses, and makes suggestions as to possible improvements.&nbsp

Speech: The Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights is a much more fortuitous addition to the Constitution than many people imagine. The tired delegates at Philadelphia were unable to make the final effort to frame a bill of rights, and their failure nearly caused the collapse of ratification. When the First Congress met, James Madison took responsibility for making the new government live up to the implied pledge made during ratification to provide a partial list, drawn from the historic rights on English subjects. Not all Madison\u27s proposed amendments were adopted however. The work of adumbrating the full scope of liberty under the Constitution goes on

Speech: The Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights is a much more fortuitous addition to the Constitution than many people imagine. The tired delegates at Philadelphia were unable to make the final effort to frame a bill of rights, and their failure nearly caused the collapse of ratification. When the First Congress met, James Madison took responsibility for making the new government live up to the implied pledge made during ratification to provide a partial list, drawn from the historic rights on English subjects. Not all Madison\u27s proposed amendments were adopted however. The work of adumbrating the full scope of liberty under the Constitution goes on

The Contested Right of Public Meeting in England from the Bill of Rights to the Public Order Acts

© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal Historical Society. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/The 'right of public meeting' has historically been a key demand of extra-parliamentary political movements in England. This paper examines how public assembly came to be perceived as a legally protected right, and how national and local authorities debated and policed political meetings. Whereas previous histories have suggested that a 'liberal governance' dominated urban government during the nineteenth century, this paper offers an alternative framework for understanding the relationship between people and the state. It points to rights paradoxes, whereby the right of free passage and to 'air and recreation' often conflicted with the demand for the right of political meeting in challenges to use of public spaces. Local authorities sought to defend the rights of property against political movements by using the common law offences of obstruction and 'nuisance'. By the first half of the twentieth century, new threats of militant tactics and racial harassment by political groups necessitated specific public order legislation. Though twentieth-century legislation sought to protect certain types of assembly and protest marches, the implementation and policing of public order was spatially discriminatory, and the right of public meeting was left unresolved.Peer reviewe