The Rwenzori Mountains, a Paleoproterzoic crustal shear belt crossing the Albertine rift system

This contribution discusses the development of the Paleoproterozoic Buganda-Toro belt in the Rwenzori mountains and its influence on the western part of the East African Rift System in Uganda. The Buganda-Toro belt is composed of several thick-skinned nappes consisting of Archaean Gneisses and Palaeoproterozoic cover units that are thrusted northwards. The high Rwenzori mountains are located in the frontal unit of this belt with retrograde greenschist facies gneisses towards the north, which are unconformably overlain by metasediments and amphibolites. Towards the south the metasediments are overthrust by the next migmatitic gneiss unit that belongs to a crustal scale nappe. The southwards dipping metasedimentary and volcanic sequence in the high Rwenzori mountains shows an inverse metamorphic grade with greenschist facies conditions in the north and amphibolite facies conditions in the south. Early D1 deformation structures are overgrown by cordierite, which in turn grows into D2 deformation, representing the major northwards directed thrusting event. We argue that the inverse metamorphic gradient develops because higher grade rocks are exhumed in the footwall of a crustal scale nappe whereas the exhumation decreases towards the north away from the nappe leading to a decrease in metamorphic grade. The D2 deformation event is followed by a D3 E-W compression, a D4 with the development of steep shear zones with a NNE-SSW and SSE-NNW trend including the large Nyamwamba shear followed by a local D5 retrograde event and D6 brittle inverse faulting. The Paleoproterozoic Buganda-Toro belt is relatively stiff and crosses the NNE-SSW running rift system exactly at the node where the highest peaks of the Rwenzori mountains are situated and where the lake George rift terminates towards the north. Orientation of brittle and ductile fabrics show some similarities indicating that the cross-cutting Buganda-Toro belt influenced rift propagation and brittle fault development within the Rwenzori mountain and that this stiff belt may form part of the reason why the Rwenzori mountains are relatively high within the rift. Keywords: East African Rift, Basement, Buganda Toro, Inverse Metamorphic Gradient, Microtectonics, Rwenzori mountain

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The Legitimacy and Effectiveness of Law & Governance in a World of Multilevel Jurisdiction

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Digitalisering brengt negatieve gevolgen voor het machtsevenwicht binnen de trias politica met zich mee: vooral het bestuur profiteert; de rechter en de wetgever blijven achter. Door zelf ook digitale technologie te gebruiken, meer ondersteuning van digitaliseringsexperts te organiseren en digitalisering beter te reguleren kunnen de niet-bestuurlijke ambten van de overheid hun been wellicht nog bijtrekken.The Legitimacy and Effectiveness of Law & Governance in a World of Multilevel Jurisdiction

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Recently, Buffalo Law Review published Richard Albert’s article on “quasi-constitutional amendments.” These are, in Albert’s words, “sub-constitutional changes that do not possess the same legal status as a constitutional amendment, that are formally susceptible to statutory repeal or revision, but that may achieve constitutional status over time as a result of their subject-matter.” In this essay, I respond to Albert’s illustration and understanding of this of this phenomenon. The central point I make concerns Albert’s insistence on quasi-constitutional amendments being the result of a “self-conscious” effort to circumvent “onerous rules of formal amendment” in order to alter the operation of a set of existing norms in the constitution. I argue that a truly comprehensive theory of quasi-constitutional amendments – or of the broader phenomenon of informal constitutional change - is also able to account for constitutional change that is caused by facts not accompanied by a (demonstrable) intent or awareness of the change on the part of constitutional actors. Recognizing such change, which I refer to as “silent constitutional change,” has implications for the way we should describe processes of constitutional development and explain why constitutional change does not always come about through the “front door” of a formal constitutional amendment procedure.The Legitimacy and Effectiveness of Law & Governance in a World of Multilevel Jurisdiction

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The Legitimacy and Effectiveness of Law & Governance in a World of Multilevel Jurisdiction

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The Legitimacy and Effectiveness of Law & Governance in a World of Multilevel Jurisdiction

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Trias Europea: de verhoudingen tussen de overheidsmachten in de EU en de lidstaten in een bewegend constitutioneel landscha

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