Distinguishing Limitation on Constitutional Rights from Their Suspension: A Comment on the CUD Case

Suspension of and limitation on fundamental rights and freedoms are justified violations of constitutional rights. Temporary suspension of some fundamental rights and freedoms can be made on the ground of a state of emergency. Since most constitutional rights are not absolute, they can be limited on basis of national security, public safety, public moral, public order, public health, and similar grounds. Although both suspension and limitation should comply with the requirements of necessity and proportionality, they are completely different in their conception and application. However, the Council of Constitutional Inquiry failed to distinguish suspension of constitutional rights from their limitation in CUD v Prime Minister Meles Zenawi Asres. The Council mistakenly held that declaration of the Prime Minister constituted limitation on right of assembly, demonstration and petition. Given its nature and the short period for which it lasted, the declaration should have appropriately held to constitute suspension of those rights.Keywords: derogation, fundamental rights and freedoms, limitation, state of emergenc

All animals are equal: the relationship between the Cummings row and public trust in democracy

The UK public voluntarily agreed to give up fundamental rights and liberties in the fight against COVID-19 on the assumption that this suspension applied to everyone – in other words, that governance remained democratic, writes Dimitris Skleparis. This is why Dominic Cummings’s lockdown breach has stirred a heated debate and this is why the government’s handling of the situation has already reduced public trust in democracy

Professional Reintegration of a Police Officer Convicted to a Suspended Custodial Sentence

Present paper aims at considering the professional reintegration of a police officer discharged from the law enforcement forces due to a conviction with conditional suspension of the custodial punishment. The debated issues follow the criminal and criminal procedure law reform in Romania, during 2013-2016, reform which resulted in a legislative void and a non-unitary and uncorrelated interpretation of the old legislation. The academic and practical significance of this endeavor consists in analyzing a transitional situation due to the failure of the legislator that remained unregulated and is likely to lead to a non-unitary interpretation and consequently to the flagrant damaging of the fundamental rights of police officers. Without wishing to be an exhaustive initiative, the present paper represents a review that highlights the doctrinal and jurisprudential implications of a conviction with conditional suspension of the custodial sentence, upon labor relations of the police officers

La expulsión de estudiantes y el derecho a la instrucción en la jurisprudencia del Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos

This paper analyses the relation between the fundamental right to education, as described in article 2 of Protocol No. 1 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and suspension from school, a disciplinary action that may entail a long estrangement from the place where formal education occurs. It also considers some different attitudes towards the way education and punishment relate and sets out the reasons that lead to a long suspension according to the Spanish education law and the Spanish and the European Court of Human Rights case-law. Finally, it cites the cases in which the European Court of Human Rights has considered suspension from school a disproportionate measure and thereupon at odds with this fundamental right to education.Este artículo analiza la relación entre el derecho fundamental a la instrucción, descrito en el artículo 2 del Protocolo n.º 1 del Convenio Europeo de Derechos Humanos, y la expulsión, una medida correctora del comportamiento irregular de los escolares que puede suponer un largo apartamiento del lugar donde se produce la instrucción reglada. También presenta algunas perspectivas sobre los vínculos entre la instrucción y el castigo, se vale de la norma educativa y de la jurisprudencia española y de la del Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos para describir las razones que mueven a expulsiones prolongadas y, finalmente, expone los casos en las que el Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos ha considerado la expulsión una medida desproporcionada y, por tanto, susceptible de resultar incompatible con este derecho fundamental

Measuring progress towards the application of freedom of association and collective bargaining rights: A tabular presentation of the findings of the ILO supervisory system

This document is part of a digital collection provided by the Martin P. Catherwood Library, ILR School, Cornell University, pertaining to the effects of globalization on the workplace worldwide. Special emphasis is placed on labor rights, working conditions, labor market changes, and union organizing.ILO_MeasuringProgressTowardApplicationofFreedomofAssociation_CollectiveBargainingRights.pdf: 636 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Federal Habeas in the Information Age

One would be hard-pressed to identify a more extolled, and storied, aspect of the Anglo-American legal tradition than the writ of habeas corpus. Tracing its lineage back to the Magna Carta, the Great Writ was so revered by the Framers of the U.S Constitution that they expressly prohibited its suspension except in times of extreme governmental distress. Writing in 1868, Chief Justice Salmon Chase characterized habeas as the most important human right in the Constitution, the \u27\u27best and only sufficient defense of personal freedom. Justice Brennan, writing almost one hundred years later, observed that the history of habeas is inextricably intertwined with the growth of fundamental rights of personal liberty

Fundamental Norms, International Law, and the Extraterritorial Constitution

This Article argues that the functional test articulated in Boumediene v. Bush, which determines whether the Constitution\u27s Suspension Clause applies to executive detention abroad, is in considerable tension with the fundamental norms jurisprudence that underlies and pervades the Court\u27s opinion. Drawing on Supreme Court precedent and lower court jurisprudence regarding the extraterritorial application of constitutional rights, as well as comparative and historical practice-including the intent of the Framers-the Article seeks to reintegrate the fundamental norms strands of the Boumediene opinion into its functional test, and thus to normatively ground the opinion. It does so by arguing that the functional test for extraterritorial application of habeas rights should be informed by international law, a consideration that the Bounediene decision omitted from its analysis. The Article concludes that utilizing international law\u27s substantive, fundamental, nonderogable norms to help determine whether constitutional protections apply abroad would both allay the Court\u27s practical concerns and ground the Court\u27s test in the important normative principles that in fact underlie its Boumediene opinion. Applied to the habeas context, this analysis suggests that detainees held by the United States military for a prolonged period of time at a military base or other secure facility without being afforded adequate due process are constitutionally entitled to habeas review to assert claims that they are civilians and not enemy combatants

Love thy neighbour? Coronavirus politics and their impact on EU freedoms and rule of law in the Schengen Area. CEPS Paper in Liberty and Security in Europe No. 2020-04, April 2020

Restrictions on international and intra-EU traffic of persons have been at the heart of the political responses to the coronavirus pandemic. Border controls and suspensions of entry and exist have been presented as key policy priorities to prevent the spread of the virus in the EU. These measures pose however fundamental questions as to the raison d’être of the Union, and the foundations of the Single Market, the Schengen system and European citizenship. They are also profoundly intrusive regarding the fundamental rights of individuals and in many cases derogate domestic and EU rule of law checks and balances over executive decisions. This Paper examines the legality of cross-border mobility restrictions introduced in the name of COVID-19. It provides an in-depth typology and comprehensive assessment of measures including the reintroduction of internal border controls, restrictions of specific international traffic modes and intra-EU and international ‘travel bans’. Many of these have been adopted in combination with declarations of a ‘state of emergency’

Boumediene v. Bush: Another Chapter in the Court’s Jurisprudence on Civil Liberties at Guantanamo Bay

A recent surge in the usage of instant messaging (IM) applications on mobile devices has brought the energy efficiency of these applications into focus of attention. Although IM applications are changing the message communication landscape, this work illustrates that the current versions of IM applications differ vastly in energy consumption when using the third generation (3G) cellular communication. This paper shows the interdependency between energy consumption and IM data patterns in this context. We analyse the user interaction pattern using a IM dataset, consisting of 1043370 messages collected from 51 mobile users. Based on the usage characteristics, we propose a message bundling technique that aggregates consecutive messages over time, reducing the energy consumption with a trade-off against latency. The results show that message bundling can save up to 43% in energy consumption while still maintaining the conversation function. Finally, the energy cost of a common functionality used in IM applications that informs that the user is currently typing a response, so called typing notification, is evaluated showing an energy increase ranging from 40-104%