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Tagged: constitution

Protestors in yellow shirts photographed through a shattered window.

Judicial Power and Democratic Erosion: The Procedural–Substantive Dilemma of Democracy in the Brazilian Supreme Court

By Julia Wand-del-Rey Cani. This post contributes to understanding how Brazil’s Supreme Court (STF) has comprehended its democratic role, particularly during the Bolsonaro era, and argues that there is a tension between substantive democratic defense and procedural consistency. More broadly, it distinguishes between constitutional courts balancing democratic substance and democratic procedure, with the aim of answering the following question: to what extent should judicial self-regulation be constrained during periods of democratic erosion?

Breaking Bias: Training Judges to Challenge Gender Stereotypes in Courts

By Beate Streicher. As part of her re:constitution project, Beate Streicher investigated the impact of stereotypes related to gender identity and expression, sex characteristics and sexual orientation on judicial proceedings and decisions and identified key challenges and good practices related to judicial training on this topic. To provide practical recommendations, she examined the guidance of international monitoring bodies, responsible for monitoring the implementation of the Istanbul Convention, combined with insights from elite interviews with eight experts (six identifying as female and two as male) involved in Council of Europe (CoE) cooperation projects dealing with the topic and the respective courses from the Human Rights Education for Legal Professionals (HELP) Programme, including the HELP course on WAJ, violence against women and gender equality and gender mainstreaming.

An Essay on Rule-of-Law Culture and Constitutional Resilience

By Théo Fournier. This essay argues that rule-of-law culture could be an avenue of research to address the issue of constitutional resilience of liberal democratic regimes, i.e. the capacity of liberal constitution to resist the passage of time and to remain legitimate in the eyes of the citizenry.