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Writers on the constitutional aspect of the Vichy régime in France have now shifted the focus of their attention. In the beginning they were concerned almost exclusively with the study of how far the Constitutional Law of July 10, 1940, did or did not square with the constitution of the Third Republic. Later publications broached the question as to whether, assuming the legitimacy of the Constitutional Law of July 10, 1940, Marshal Pétain's government, by its actions under the cover of that Enabling Act, had remained within the scope of the authority conferred by that measure. Pierre Tissier, the author of the most comprehensive published study of the Vichy régime, argues that for a correct construction of the Enabling Act the ratification "by the nation" of the new constitution must be considered as a condition precedent, in the technical meaning of that term, rather than as a condition subsequent. He further points out that since this refers to a temporary change of the constitution, as well as to a permanent one, the pretended and self-styled "constitutional acts" of Marshal Pétain, even though he himself ascribed to them only an interim character, were merely "so many coups de force." According to the same author, a comparison between the powers delegated to the Marshal by the National Assembly of Vichy and the use he made of them leads to the conclusion that his government "betrayed its own solemn engagements." Tissier charges the Marshal also with an "abuse of power." Similarly, another French author of a pertinent monograph makes the emphatic statement that the constitutional acts of the Pétain régime, "despite their name, were really abuses of power," since the mandate conferred by the National Assembly "was not—despite all that has been reported—a blank check," and the conditions for putting into effect any constitutional act have so far not been met.

The article gives an overview of arguments of supporters and opponents of the Law, which binds nonprofit organisations that raise finances from a foreign source and are engaged in politics to submit an application for them to be entered into the register of nonprofit organisations performing functions of a foreign agent. The article contains information on how the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation processes complaints that concern specific provisions of the said Law. It also presents the analysis of the Constitutional Court Decree dated 8 April, 2014 № 10-П, by which the Court in fact only admits inadequacy of the administrative fines the Law specifies for avoidance of such registration. The author also draws attention to a number of ambiguous judgments and conclusions contained in the Act under analysis.

Chief Justice John Roberts surprised practically everyone by supplying the swing vote to uphold the constitutionality of the requirement in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA or Obamacare) that Americans buy health insurance. The reasoning of his decision is equally surprising. He resorted to semantic gamesmanship and suspect logic to find the law constitutional. The artifice of his opinion confirms that he was driven by a desire to reach a result, however suspect the reasoning, that he thought would protect both the Supreme Court and himself from charges of political partisanship. Roberts's decision is the latest in a series of rule-bending steps that have been taken to enact and then defend PPACA. The Democratic leadership in Congress entered into tawdry deals and employed procedural shortcuts to ram PPACA through in 2010. Obamacare bureaucratizes and politicizes the health care system. It gives the government broad authority to control the health insurance and health care delivery systems. Adapted from the source document.

Die Monografie sucht die rechtswissenschaftlichen, ökonomischen und gesellschaftlich-politischen steuerlichen Rechtfertigungslehren systematisierend zusammenzufassen und zu bewerten. Ausgehend vom Maßstab des Grundgesetzes sollen auf der Grundlage einer erneuerten steuerlichen Rechtfertigung Grund und Grenzen der Besteuerung herausgearbeitet sowie für die Steuergesetzgebung und Anwendung des Steuerrechts greifbar gemacht werden. Im Mittelpunkt stehen dabei die eigentumsrechtlichen Schranken der Belastung des Steuerbürgers. Durch die Verknüpfung der Freiheitsrechte mit dem Gleichheitssatz sollen schließlich neue Ansätze für eine sachgerechte Lastenverteilung gewonnen werden. Die Untersuchung will die verfassungsrechtlichen Anforderungen an die steuerlichen Lasten auch mit Blick auf das Erhebungsverfahren konkretisieren und rechtspolitische Argumentationsansätze bieten.

New data on highway stops and searches from across the country have spawned renewed debate over racial profiling on the roads. The new data reveal consistently disproportionate searches of minority motorists, but, very often, an equal or lower general success rate – or "hit rate" – associated with those searches. Economists are developing new models of racial profiling to test whether the data are consistent with policing efficiency or racial prejudice, and argue that equal hit rates reflect that the police are maximizing the success rate of their searches. Civil liberties advocates are scrutinizing the same data and, in most cases, reaching opposite conclusions. They argue that equal hit rates merely reflect similar offending patterns by race and thus that the disproportionate searches are racially biased. Meanwhile many constitutional commentators decry racial profiling on the highways as "plainly unconstitutional," while courts draw technical legal distinctions to easily dispose of civil suits alleging racial profiling on the roads. The debate over racial profiling on the highways is becoming increasingly empirical, technical, and engaged. It is also focusing increasingly on the issue of policing efficiency. The problem is, the debate is asking the wrong question and tracking the wrong statistic. The key question is not whether racial profiling maximizes the success rate of searches, and the key statistic is not the comparative hit rate by race associated with those searches. Instead, the key question for purposes of the empirical, policy, and constitutional analyses is: What are the conditions under which it is justifiable to use race in policing? The key statistics, it turns out, are the comparative elasticities of offending to policing and the relative offending rates of the different racial groups. When we pose the right question properly, it becomes clear that both sides of the debate have it wrong: the use of race in police searches is neither plainly unconstitutional nor simply efficient. Racial profiling on the highways can be justified as an effective law enforcement tool or, from a constitutional perspective, as a narrowly tailored policing technique that promotes a compelling governmental interest in law enforcement if the following three conditions are satisfied: (1) racial profiling has a long-term negative effect on the profiled crime, (2) while increasing the efficient allocation of police resources, (3) without producing a ratchet effect on the profiled population. These three specific conditions will only be satisfied in certain identifiable situations of comparative elasticity and offending as between racial groups. Under these narrow conditions, race can constitutionally be used in policing to advance a traditional law enforcement interest in combating crime. There may be other non-law enforcement interests that warrant using race in policing as well. There may be a compelling interest in having a prison population that reflects more accurately the demographic distribution of the offending population, or even of the population as a whole. There may be a compelling interest in combating crimes committed against historically disadvantaged groups. But with regard to the traditional law enforcement interest of fighting crime, race can only properly be used under these three narrow conditions. Race in this criminal justice context should not be treated differently than in other contexts, such as education or employment. If racial profiling satisfies the three narrow conditions, then opposition to racial profiling should be based on the grounds of affirmative action: because of this country's institutional history of racism, or in order to achieve a more balanced carceral population, or for other compelling reasons, the police should endeavor to minimize the minority representation in prison by profiling white offenders. Conversely, if racial profiling does not satisfy any one of the three conditions, then racial profiling should be conditioned on compensating innocent minority motorists who are searched for wasting their time, for diminishing their dignity, and for inflicting emotional harm. If one of the conditions is not satisfied, innocent minority motorists are being used for other purposes – for example, to increase search success rates regardless of a ratchet effect – and they should be compensated for the taking. As an empirical matter, it is fair to speculate, drawing reasonable inferences from other data sources, that minority motorists may have slightly lower elasticity of offending to policing because of diminished job opportunities and other market alternatives, and slightly higher offending rates because of drug trafficking patterns. As a result, racial profiling on the roadways may increase the overall costs to society, including the amount of profiled crime, and likely produces a ratchet effect on the profiled population, resulting in a greater disproportion of minority arrests or negative contacts with the police over and above any possibly higher offending rate. This is going to have significant repercussions on minority motorists: it is likely to more unevenly distribute criminal records, supervision, and post-punitive collateral consequences, and to significantly boost the public perception that minorities are drug users and drug dealers. Racial profiling on the highways, accordingly, is poor crime policy and, because of the ratchet effect, is not narrowly tailored to the governmental interest in law enforcement. Given that no federal or state agency has attempted to establish the three narrow conditions under which race could properly be considered in policing, the practice of racial profiling on the highways should be considered presently unconstitutional. The important point is, however, that racial profiling on the highways is presently unacceptable not because of any per se constitutional bar on using race in police searches, but rather because of the mathematics of criminal profiling. The central problems with racial profiling – possible adverse long-term effects on the profiled crime and probable ratchet effect – are problems about criminal profiling in general, not about race. The same problems may infect any type of criminal profiling, whether of minorities for drug possession, of the wealthy for tax evasion, of single mothers for welfare fraud, or of white males for domestic terrorism or serial murder. To be sure, the ratchet effect is most disturbing when it plays on race, as well as gender, social or family status, class, or wealth. The ratchet effect violates a core principle of punishment theory, namely that anyone who is committing the same crime should face the same likelihood of being caught, and that race, gender, class, or status should not affect that equation. But both the ratchet effect and the long-term effect on the profiled crime are phenomena that may undermine any scheme of criminal profiling. In this sense, the debates over racial profiling on the highways should make us reexamine our views on the larger question of criminal profiling more generally.

Private disputes and the public interest in international law / Vaughan Lowe -- The International Court of Justice and environmental disputes / Malgosia Fitzmaurice -- Complaint and grievance mechanisms in international dispute settlement / Duncan French and Richard Kirkham -- Stuck in the middle with you? Alternative approaches to realising accountability for human rights violations by business / Sorcha Macleod -- Practice and procedure of dispute settlement in individual communication cases within the Human Rights Committee and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women : congruence or conflict? / Sandy Ghandhi -- Trends in dispute settlement in the law of the sea : towards the increasing availability of compulsory means / Robin Churchill -- The WTO dispute settlement mechanism as a new technique for settling disputes in international law / Surya P. Subedi -- Legal means of dispute settlement in the field of collective security : the quasi-judicial powers of the Security Council / Nigel D. White and Matthew Saul -- Non-compliance procedures and dispute resolution mechanisms under international environmental agreements / Karen N. Scott -- The Antarctic Treaty after 50 years / James Crawford -- Cross-border family mediation / Kisch Beevers -- Aspects of the African Court of Justice and human rights / Gino J. Naldi -- The EU, the ECHR and the effective protection of human rights for individuals / Tawhida Ahmed -- The European Court of Justice as a constitutional court : implications for the EU and international legal orders / Paul James Cardwell.

As a matter of both tax policy and constitutional law, it is time to apportion state personal income taxes to eliminate the double taxation of dual residents. Individuals who, for income tax purposes, are residents are two or more states should be taxed along the lines recently proposed by Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton for "snowbirds": As to income with respect to which a state has source jurisdiction, that state should tax such income. As to income which two or more states tax only on the basis of residence, such states should apportion, based on the dual resident's relative presence in each state of residence. This apportioned approach would eliminate the double taxation of dual residents' income and would comport better with modern patterns of residence and mobility. While Minnesota's legislature did not adopt the Dayton proposal, that proposal should provoke reconsideration of the conventional understanding of personal residence for state income tax purposes. The traditional understanding can cause double taxation when an individual is deemed to be a resident of two or more states, each entitled to tax this dual resident's entire income. As a matter of tax policy and constitutional law, the formula advanced by Governor Dayton for Minnesota snowbirds is the proper way to tax all dual residents. As to income with respect to which a state has source jurisdiction because the income arises within the state's geographic boundaries, that state should tax that income, whether or not the taxpayer is a resident of such state. As to income with respect to which two or more states have only residence-based jurisdiction to tax, the states of residence should tax on a proportionate basis, based on the part of the year the dual resident spends in each state. In practice, the income apportioned between states of residence under this approach will typically be dual residents' intangible investment income such as dividends and interest. To eliminate double residence-based taxation of such income, the Dayton formula should, both as a matter of tax policy and of constitutional law, apply to all individuals who are, for tax purposes, residents of two or more states. The Dayton proposal highlights the obsolescence of current tax policy and constitutional norms for states' personal income taxation of residents, norms fashioned for an earlier era. It is time to shift from the traditional personal income tax regime with its increasing possibilities of double residence-based taxation to a system which recognizes multiple states of residence and apportions personal income tax authority among them as to items which are not geographically sourced to the taxing state.

The article is a comparative study of legal regulation on non-profits in the Russian Federation by federal law, including the Constitution, federal statutes, decrees of the President of the Russian Federation, resolutions of the Government and Constitutional Court rulings in connection with certain international legal acts dealing with the right to association, and by the law of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. The main stages of the development of the law on non-profits both at the federal level and at the level of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, as well as the main trends in the development of non-profit law in modern Russia, are explored.

International law enjoys a considerable space in Malawi's domestic law as evidenced in several constitutional provisions that allow the application of international law in Malawi. While several constitutional provisions allow the application of international law in domestic law, the process of how international law forms part of the domestic law is provided under section 211 of the constitution of Malawi where it provides for instances of the direct and indirect application of treaties and CIL in Malawi's domestic law. This dissertation discusses the relationship between international law and domestic law in Malawi by analysing how the process of domesticating and applying international law in Malawi affects the development or growth of domestic law. Therefore, this dissertation answers the question of; to what extent is the process of domesticating and applying international law in Malawi affects the development of domestic law. To fully grasp the effects of domesticating and applying international law in Malawi, this dissertation will discuss the role and application of treaties and CIL in domestic law. It will be discussed that while some monist elements can be seen in the constitution, but the constitutional order and the courts agree that Malawi is predominantly a dualist state. The presence of the monist and dualist elements is an indication that changes in international law are likely to affect changes in domestic law through either the process of legislation by parliament interpretation of the law by courts. As a dualist state, the general position is that whenever a conflict arises between international law and domestic law, domestic law prevails. However, the courts as interpreters of the law in Malawi have taken a different approach of applying international law to the extent that they have consistently interpreted the law in a manner that avoids a conflict between international law and domestic law. It will be argued that the reason why the courts have developed a principle of avoiding a conflict between international law and domestic law is that the court as an arm of government is part of the government's efforts to fulfill its international obligations. Therefore, any attempt to invalidate such obligations in domestic law would be viewed that the government of Malawi is fighting itself. Therefore, whether the processes of transforming or incorporating international law into Malawi's domestic law is done through legislation or interpretation of the law by courts, it equally affects or influences changes or development of the domestic law in Malawi because whether it is legislation or courts decision, they are all binding law domestically.

The aim of this research is analize Article 1 number 17 of Act No. 7 of 2017 concerning General Elections on the General Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) as an election supervisory agency oriented towards monitoring the 'validity of the people's voice' and despite gaining strong legitimacy based on existing regulations. However, Bawaslu has several obstacles, including the issue of the enigma of Bawaslu's authority to give decisions related to the post-constitutional election decision from the Constitutional Court. This research methods was legal research using a conceptual approach and legislation based on three types of legal materials, namely primary legal materials, secondary legal materials, and non-legal materials. The results of this legal research show that when viewed from the aspect of structure, substance, and legal culture; the expansion of Bawaslu's authority has the potential to make Bawaslu less than optimal as well as to create overlapping powers between law enforcers; therefore, the aspects of professionalism and leadership must support it. In addition, the purification of the authority of Bawaslu is essential to optimize the duties and authorities of Bawaslu so that Bawaslu does not need to focus on expanding its authority.

Having been governed by Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the last ten years, India will hold elections in the following weeks. We use this moment as an opportunity to reflect upon the last decade and assess how the Hindu nationalists have impacted Indian constitutionalism. To do so, we have asked legal scholars and practitioners to reflect upon the developments in particular areas of Indian constitutional law over the last decade. This blog post will provide an introduction to the symposium.

The authors of this contribution explain the Portuguese system of actio popularis: according to the authors the most favourable of all with regard to locus standi in environmental matters. They argue that the dichotomy between public and private environmental damage underlying the construction of the right of access to justice is not an accurate representation of the real life social relations concerning the environment. This is where the concept of diffuse interests, adopted in Portuguese constitutional law comes in.