Podcasts about comparative constitutional law

Following the increased attacks in Germany, that were partly suspected to have an Islamist backgorund, many are asking themselves whether these incidents favor the narrative of far-right parties such as the AfD. Dr Liz Hicks is a lecturer in Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Melbourne. With SBS German, she spoke about what led to the "shift to the right" at the last federal election and what impact it will have. - Nach den vermehrten Anschlägen und Amokfahrten in Deutschland, bei denen teilweise islamistische Motive vermutet werden, stellen sich viele die Frage, ob diese Vorfälle das Narrativ rechtsextremer Parteien wie der AfD begünstigen. Dr Liz Hicks ist Dozentin für Vergleichendes Verfassungsrecht an der University of Melbourne. Im Interview erklärt sie, was bei der vergangenen Bundestagswahl zu dem Rechtsruck geführt hat und was dies für Auswirkungen haben wird.

In this episode of "Consider the Constitution," Dr. Katie Crawford-Lackey interviews Dr. Mila Versteeg, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, about modern democratic governance and the role of constitutions. They discuss the differences between the U.S. Constitution and those of other countries, the importance of citizens in enforcing constitutional rights, and the challenges of maintaining fidelity to the Constitution in hyperpartisan environments. Dr. Versteeg emphasizes the significance of citizen engagement in safeguarding democracy.

Constitutional Crisis Hotline co-host Julie Suk argues in a new book that misogyny is the overempowerment of men and the collective overentitlement of society to women's forbearance, pain, and sacrifices for the common good. Misogyny not woman-hatred alone; it is the legal structure that enables that hatred and extracts benefits to society at women's expense. In this conversation, occurring in the moment that Donald Trump was finally indicted for concealing his hush-money payments to a porn actress, and a federal judge in Texas invalidated abortion pills, Deb Tuerkheimer and Julie Suk explore how this reframing of misogyny sheds light on abortion bans, and how women in U.S. history and around the world today have sought constitutional changes to reset male entitlement and power. Deborah Tuerkheimer Class of 1967 James B. Haddad Professor of Law at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. Professor Tuerkeheimer is a former prosecutor and leading expert on the law of sexual assault. She is the author of the landmark book Credible: Why We Doubt Accusers and Protect Abusers (2021) and co-author of the textbook Feminist Jurisprudence: Cases and Materials.  Read Julie C. Suk's book, After Misogyny: How the Law Fails Women and What to Do about It (2023).  

While it might ordinarily be assumed that judges who sit on constitutional courts will be local citizens, in the islands of the Pacific, more than three-quarters of judges are foreign. This is book about that unique phenomenon, but a phenomenon that has global implications. Foreign Judges in the Pacific (Hart, 2021) is a comprehensive study which brings together original empirical research, together with legal analysis and constitutional theory, and traces the impact and influence of foreign judging on nine states Pacific states: Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.  Dr Anna Dziedzic's is a cutting-edge and pertinent contribution to constitutional law and jurisprudence. This work brings unique analysis of concepts such as cultural understanding, transnational knowledge sharing, and the importance of nationality in the task of judging. What really drew me to the book and kept me engaged in the work was not just the depth and richness of the study, but that practice of foreign judging in these under-studied Pacific does matter, and has broad lessons for all scholars, policy makers and lawyers who practice and research in all areas of constitutional law. There is a lot to be learnt from this study, and the quality of its analysis will arguably be found to be without parallel.  Dr Anna Dziedzic is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Laureate Program in Comparative Constitutional Law at Melbourne Law School. She researches comparative constitutional law and judicial studies, with a particular focus on the Pacific region. Jane Richards is a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong. You can find her on twitter where she follows all things related to human rights and Hong Kong politics @JaneRichardsHK    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

While it might ordinarily be assumed that judges who sit on constitutional courts will be local citizens, in the islands of the Pacific, more than three-quarters of judges are foreign. This is book about that unique phenomenon, but a phenomenon that has global implications. Foreign Judges in the Pacific (Hart, 2021) is a comprehensive study which brings together original empirical research, together with legal analysis and constitutional theory, and traces the impact and influence of foreign judging on nine states Pacific states: Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.  Dr Anna Dziedzic's is a cutting-edge and pertinent contribution to constitutional law and jurisprudence. This work brings unique analysis of concepts such as cultural understanding, transnational knowledge sharing, and the importance of nationality in the task of judging. What really drew me to the book and kept me engaged in the work was not just the depth and richness of the study, but that practice of foreign judging in these under-studied Pacific does matter, and has broad lessons for all scholars, policy makers and lawyers who practice and research in all areas of constitutional law. There is a lot to be learnt from this study, and the quality of its analysis will arguably be found to be without parallel.  Dr Anna Dziedzic is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Laureate Program in Comparative Constitutional Law at Melbourne Law School. She researches comparative constitutional law and judicial studies, with a particular focus on the Pacific region. Jane Richards is a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong. You can find her on twitter where she follows all things related to human rights and Hong Kong politics @JaneRichardsHK    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

While it might ordinarily be assumed that judges who sit on constitutional courts will be local citizens, in the islands of the Pacific, more than three-quarters of judges are foreign. This is book about that unique phenomenon, but a phenomenon that has global implications. Foreign Judges in the Pacific (Hart, 2021) is a comprehensive study which brings together original empirical research, together with legal analysis and constitutional theory, and traces the impact and influence of foreign judging on nine states Pacific states: Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.  Dr Anna Dziedzic's study is a cutting-edge and pertinent contribution to constitutional law and jurisprudence. This work brings unique analysis of concepts such as cultural understanding, transnational knowledge sharing, and the importance of nationality in the task of judging. What really drew me to the book and kept me engaged in the work was not just the depth and richness of the study, but that practice of foreign judging in these under-studied Pacific does matter, and has broad lessons for all scholars, policy makers and lawyers who practice and research in all areas of constitutional law. There is a lot to be learnt from this study, and the quality of its analysis will arguably be found to be without parallel.  Dr Anna Dziedzic is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Laureate Program in Comparative Constitutional Law at Melbourne Law School. She researches comparative constitutional law and judicial studies, with a particular focus on the Pacific region. Jane Richards is a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong. You can find her on twitter where she follows all things related to human rights and Hong Kong politics @JaneRichardsHK    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

When a constitution reaches a crisis, should amendments be made to address it?  That's what happens in many constitutional democracies around the world, but the United States has not had a constitutional amendment for thirty years. Article V of the U.S. Constitution, requiring two thirds of both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the states to amend it, makes our constitution nearly impossible to change in the twenty-first century. In Episode 5 on Article V, Constitutional Crisis Hotline explores alternative amendment processes from other constitutional democracies as well as the history of amending and failing to amend) the U.S. Constitution.Zachary Elkins is Associate Professor of Government at the University of Texas-Austin.  Professor Elkins' research focuses on issues of democracy, institutional reform, research methods, and national identity. He is co-author of The Endurance of National Constitutions, and is working on a new book,Steal this Constitution: The Drift and Mastery of Constitutional Design. Professor Elkins co-directs both the Comparative Constitutions Project, a NSF-funded initiative to understand the causes and consequences of constitutional choices, and the website Constitute, which provides resources and analysis for constitutional drafters in new democracies. Jill Lepore is David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at the New Yorker Magazine, where she writes about American history, law, literature, and politics. She is the author of many award-winning books, including the international bestseller, These Truths: A History of the United States(2018). Her latest book is IF THEN: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future,, longlisted for the National Book Award. She is currently working on a study of the history of attempts to amend the U.S. Constitution, and is the director of the Amend Project. Discussed in this episode: Jill Lepore's recent essay, “The United States' Unamendable Constitution,” The New Yorker, Oct. 26, 2022Law professors' draft of a new amendment rule for the United States, Article VIII of The Democracy Constitution, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, June 2021 (and Julie's justification of it, in “Opening the Paths of Constitutional Change”)

In this show, we are looking at the phenomenon of using foreign judges in Pacific states in light of the constitutional crisis currently faced by the Pacific state of Kiribati, which has sprung from the suspension of a number of foreign judges in recent weeks by the Kiribati government. We will be looking at the Kiribati crisis and international responses to it, and will delve more broadly into the practice of using foreign – or non-citizen – judges and whether and how the nationality of the judges on a domestic court matters.We are joined by an expert in this field, Dr Anna Dziedzic. Anna is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Laureate Program in Comparative Constitutional Law at Melbourne Law School. She researches comparative constitutional law and judicial studies, with a particular focus on the Pacific region.Anna holds a PhD from Melbourne Law School, an MA in Human Rights from University College London and a Bachelor of Arts and Law from the Australian National University. She is the author of ‘Foreign Judges in the Pacific' and co-editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Foreign Judges on Domestic Courts, a global comparative study of foreign judging.

In this episode of the Liberal Europe Podcast, Leszek Jażdżewski (Fundacja Liberté!) welcomes Gabor Halmai, Professor and the Chair of Comparative Constitutional Law and the Director of Graduate Studies at the Law Department at the European University Institute. They talk about the rule of law, EU funds, and the socio-political situation in Poland and Hungary. This podcast is produced by the European Liberal Forum in collaboration with Movimento Liberal Social and Fundacja Liberté!, with the financial support of the European Parliament. Neither the European Parliament nor the European Liberal Forum are responsible for the content or for any use that be made of it.

​Kavina talks to Professor Julie Suk from the Fordham School of Law about the jurisprudence of quotas and the evolving discourse surrounding its consequences transnationally.

Guests featured in this episode: Renata Uitz, is the co-editor of  Handbook of Illiberalism, who has contributed two chapters to it as well. Renata is also professor of Comparative Constitutional Law at the Central European University, Vienna, as well as the co-director of its Democracy Institute in Budapest.Helena Rosenblatt is a professor of history, French, and political theory at the Graduate Center of The City University of New York, and the author of both Liberal Values: Benjamin Constant and the Politics of Religion andThe Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century. Helena has also submitted an article on “The History of Illiberalism” in the Routledge Handbook of Illiberalism (2022).  Glossary What was the Reign of Terror? (pg. 2 of the transcript or 00:7:58)The Reign of Terror (June 1793 – July 1794) was a period in the French revolution characterized by brutal repression. The Terror originated with a centralized political regime that suspended most of the democratic achievements of the revolution, and intended to pursue the revolution on social matters. Its stated aim was to destroy internal enemies and conspirators and to chase the external enemies from French territory.The Terror as such started on September 5, 1793 and, as the Reign of Terror, lasted until the summer of 1794, taking the lives of anywhere between 18,000 to 40,000 people (estimates vary widely). Thousands would die by means of the guillotine, including many of the greatest lights of the revolution, like Georges Danton.. The deaths can be explained in part by the sense of emergency that gripped the revolutionary leadership as the country teetered on the brink of civil war. Source Who was John Stuart Mill? (pg. 3 of the transcript or 00:12:19)John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher, economist, and exponent of utilitarianism. He was prominent as a publicist in the reforming age of the 19th century, and remains of lasting interest as a logician and an ethical theorist.The influence that his works exercised upon contemporary English thought can scarcely be overestimated, nor can there be any doubt about the value of the liberal and inquiring spirit with which he handled the great questions of his time. Beyond that, however, there has been considerable difference of opinion about the enduring merits of his philosophy. Source Who was Alexis de Tocqueville? (pg. 3 of the transcript or 00:12:27)Alexis de Tocqueville, French sociologist, political scientist, historian, and politician, best known for Democracy in America (1835–40). Tocqueville traveled to the United States in 1831 to study its prisons and returned with a wealth of broader observations that he codified in “Democracy in America”, one of the most influential books of the 19th century. With its trenchant observations on equality and individualism, Tocqueville's work remains a valuable explanation of America to Europeans and of Americans to themselves. Tocqueville's works shaped 19th-century discussions of liberalism and equality, and were rediscovered in the 20th century as sociologists debated the causes and cures of tyranny. Source What does cancel culture mean? (pg. 6 of the transcript or 00:32:27)Cancel culture refers to the popular practice of withdrawing support for (canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. Cancel culture is generally discussed as being performed on social media in the form of group shaming. Source Democracy in Question?  is brought to you by:• Central European University: CEU• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD• The Podcast Company: Novel

Professor James T. Gathii, Wing-Tat Lee Chair in International Law and Professor of Law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, gives a talk for the Oxford Public International Law seminar series. This talk will present the findings of an empirical study that sought to establish two primary data points. First, the nationalities of the lawyers who argued cases before the International Court of Justice between 1998 and 2019. Second, the share of time lawyers from different countries had audience before the Court. The assumption underlying this study was that the more diverse the set of nationals who appear before the Court, the more international it is and vice versa. To find out the share of time lawyers from different countries had audience before the Court, the lawyers were divided into two groups. Those with the nationality of member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, (OECD), were categorized as originating in or based in Western States. Those with non-OECD nationality were designated as originating or based in non-Western States. After presenting the findings of the empirical study, the talk will advance several hypothesis to account for the results. James T. Gathii is the Wing-Tat Lee Chair in International Law and Professor of Law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law since July 2012. He is a graduate of the University of Nairobi, Kenya, and Harvard Law School. He sits on the board of editors of the American Journal of International Law, the Journal of African Law and the Journal of International Trade Law and Policy, among others. He is co-editor in Chief of the African Journal of International Economic Law. He was the Grotius Lecturer at the 2020 American Society of International Law Virtual Annual Meeting. His research and teaching interests are in Public International Law, International Trade Law, Third World Approaches to International Law, (TWAIL), Comparative Constitutional Law and Human Rights. Professor Gathii served an Independent Expert of the Working Group on Extractive Industries, Environment, and Human Rights Violations in Africa formed by the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights between 2012 to 2020. He is also an expert member of the Working Group on Agricultural Land Investment Contracts of the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law, (UNIDRIOT), the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and the International Fund for Agriculture (IFAD). He has sat as an arbitrator in two international commercial arbitrations hosted by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague. He is a founding member of the TWAIL network. He is an elected member of the International Academy of International Law. He has consulted for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, (OHCHR), and the Economic Commission for Africa, (ECA), among others. Professor Gathii is a founding Editor of Afronomicslaw.org, the blog on international economic law issues relating to Africa and Global South. His books include African Regional Trade Agreements as Legal Regimes (Cambridge University Press, 2011, Paperback 2013); War, Commerce and International Law (Oxford University Press, 2010); and The Contested Empowerment of Kenya's Judiciary, 2010-2015: A Historical Institutional Analysis, (Sheria Publishing House, 2016). His latest edited book is The Performance of Africa's International Courts: Using Litigation for Political, Legal, and Social Change, (Oxford University Press in 2020). In addition to his books, Professor Gathii has authored over 90 articles and book chapters. __ The PIL Discussion Group hosts a weekly speaker event and is a key focal point for PIL@Oxford. Due to the current public health emergency, the PIL Discussion Group series will be held remotely for Hilary 2021. Speakers include distinguished international law practitioners, academics, and legal advisers from around the world. Topics involve contemporary and challenging issues in international law.

Kumaravadivel Guruparan gives a talk as part of the Oxford Transitional Justice Research (OTJR) Seminar Series. In 2015, Sri Lankan witnessed regime change that removed President Mahinda Rajapaksa from power. Mahinda Rajapaksa was the President who led the war against the LTTE to its finish in 2009, a war in which thousands of Tamil civilians were killed. The regime change in 2015 was characterised by many of its supporters as a change that would deliver transitional justice. The new regime also employed the language of transitional justice, particularly in the UN Human Rights Council, in its attempt to divert calls for international accountability and justice for crimes committed during the war. The regime was short lived and fell in 2019 returning another Rajapaksa, Gotabaya Rajapakasa the war-time Defence Secretary as President. This talk will seek to explore the politics of identifying the regime change in 2015 as a transitional moment in Sri Lanka. As a general proposition, it will problematise using 'regime change' as an indicator for transition in deeply divided societies. It will argue that a Transitional Justice narrative that is aligned to the liberal peace tradition is bound to fail given that it fails to engage with the structural issues that inhibit democratic change. It will further argue that misplaced optimism generated by such thinly conceived transitional justice efforts may in fact hurt victims and survivors. Dr Kumaravadivel Guruparan served as an academic attached to the Department of Law, University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka between 2010 and 2020 serving as Senior Lecturer at the time of resignation. He served as Head of the Department between January 2017 and November 2019. He is also a practicing attorney and has appeared as lead counsel in a number of cases relating to post-war human rights issues in Northern Sri Lanka including in cases relating to the right to memory, the rights of families of the disappeared and post-war land issues. He is a Co-founder of the Tamil Civil Society Forum and Founder Chair of the Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research, based in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. He holds an LL.B (Hons) from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, a BCL from Balliol College, University of Oxford and a PhD from University College London in Public International Law and Comparative Constitutional Law. He was awarded the Chevening Scholarship in 2010 and the Commonwealth Scholarship in 2013. Guruparan was at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights as a Research Visitor between October 2020 and January 2021.

"A constitutional right of protection of a right of freedom of expression frames a right of political discussion and public discourse that supports democracy." Then how can different democracies define this right differently? In many democracies the lines around speech are drawn differently — in the US they are drawn to protect hate speech but not child pornography, political speech but not defamation. In other democracies, denial of the Holocaust or incitement of racial hatred is not protected by the state. I spoke with Adrienne Stone, one of the world's experts on these different approaches to speech as a social good. Dr. Stone is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor and Director of Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies at the University of Melbourne in Australia.  With Cheryl Saunders AO she is the editor of the Oxford Handbook on the Australian Constitution and with Frederick Schauer (who has been a guest on Think About It), she is the editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook on Freedom of Speech. She has published widely in international journals on topics related to speech, constitutionalism, and democracy, including:  The Comparative Constitutional Law of Freedom of Expression;  Constitutions, Gender and Freedom of Expression: The Legal Regulation of Pornography; Freedom of Speech and Defamation: Developments in the Common Law World;  'Insult and Emotion, Calumny and Invective': Twenty Years of Freedom of Political Communication I asked Dr. Stone, being quite serious, whether Australians feel muzzled and deprived of their fundamental rights because certain types of hate speech are not protected in Australia - and how to make sense of these different approaches to the problems posed by incendiary speech. 

Stu Halpern, senior adviser to the provost, speaks with Dr. Michel Rosenfeld, University Professor of Law and Comparative Democracy; Justice Sydney L. Robins Professor of Human Rights; and Director of the Program on Global and Comparative Constitutional Theory at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. They discuss “The Conscience Wars: Rethinking the Balance Between Religion, Identity and Equality,” a book co-edited by Rosenfeld and Susanna Mancini, the Chair of Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Bologna School of Law. The book comes out of their observation about the “profound change over time in how conscience claims are used to claim exemptions from the law.”

Timothy K. Kuhner is Fulbright Senior Scholar and Visiting Professor at the University of Barcelona. In July 2018 he will join the University of Auckland Faculty of Law. The author of the critically acclaimed book, Capitalism v. Democracy (Stanford University Press 2014), co-editor of Democracy by the People (Cambridge University Press 2018), and a noted public speaker, Kuhner is a leading academic critic of plutocracy and kleptocracy. He does research in Political Finance, Corruption, Comparative Constitutional Law, Elections, Public Opinion and Voting Behavior, Representation and Electoral Systems and Political Theory.

This week's episode is all about the United Kingdom leaving the European Union. With me for a second time is Aalt Willem Heringa - an expert in his field. If you haven't listened to our episode on constitutions yet, you might want to do that first. Aalt Willem is Full Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law at Maastricht University and recently started a research blog platform called Law Blogs Maastricht. We talk about: the court rulings on Brexit, the concept of sovereignty, a Scottish independence, Gorden Brown's federalism idea, the upcoming negotiations, and much more.

Federico Fabbrini is Assistant Professor of European & Comparative Constitutional Law at Tilburg Law School in the Netherlands. In his new book, entitled Fundamental Rights in Europe: Challenges and Transformations in Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2014), Fabbrini analyses the constitutional implications of the highly complex European architecture for the protection of fundamental rights and the interactions between the various European human rights standards. By innovatively comparing this architecture with the United States Federal System, the book advances an analytical model that systematically explains the dynamics at play within the European multilevel human rights architecture. The book however also goes beyond simple theory and tests the model of challenges and transformations by examining four very interesting and extremely relevant case studies. In the end, a ‘neo-federal' theory is proposed that is able to frame the dilemmas of ‘identity, equality, and supremacy' behind this multilevel architecture in Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Federico Fabbrini is Assistant Professor of European & Comparative Constitutional Law at Tilburg Law School in the Netherlands. In his new book, entitled Fundamental Rights in Europe: Challenges and Transformations in Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2014), Fabbrini analyses the constitutional implications of the highly complex European architecture for the protection of fundamental rights and the interactions between the various European human rights standards. By innovatively comparing this architecture with the United States Federal System, the book advances an analytical model that systematically explains the dynamics at play within the European multilevel human rights architecture. The book however also goes beyond simple theory and tests the model of challenges and transformations by examining four very interesting and extremely relevant case studies. In the end, a ‘neo-federal’ theory is proposed that is able to frame the dilemmas of ‘identity, equality, and supremacy’ behind this multilevel architecture in Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Federico Fabbrini is Assistant Professor of European & Comparative Constitutional Law at Tilburg Law School in the Netherlands. In his new book, entitled Fundamental Rights in Europe: Challenges and Transformations in Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2014), Fabbrini analyses the constitutional implications of the highly complex European architecture for the protection of fundamental rights and the interactions between the various European human rights standards. By innovatively comparing this architecture with the United States Federal System, the book advances an analytical model that systematically explains the dynamics at play within the European multilevel human rights architecture. The book however also goes beyond simple theory and tests the model of challenges and transformations by examining four very interesting and extremely relevant case studies. In the end, a ‘neo-federal’ theory is proposed that is able to frame the dilemmas of ‘identity, equality, and supremacy’ behind this multilevel architecture in Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Federico Fabbrini is Assistant Professor of European & Comparative Constitutional Law at Tilburg Law School in the Netherlands. In his new book, entitled Fundamental Rights in Europe: Challenges and Transformations in Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2014), Fabbrini analyses the constitutional implications of the highly complex European architecture for the protection of fundamental rights and the interactions between the various European human rights standards. By innovatively comparing this architecture with the United States Federal System, the book advances an analytical model that systematically explains the dynamics at play within the European multilevel human rights architecture. The book however also goes beyond simple theory and tests the model of challenges and transformations by examining four very interesting and extremely relevant case studies. In the end, a ‘neo-federal' theory is proposed that is able to frame the dilemmas of ‘identity, equality, and supremacy' behind this multilevel architecture in Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Federico Fabbrini is Assistant Professor of European & Comparative Constitutional Law at Tilburg Law School in the Netherlands. In his new book, entitled Fundamental Rights in Europe: Challenges and Transformations in Comparative Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2014), Fabbrini analyses the constitutional implications of the highly complex European architecture for the protection of fundamental rights and the interactions between the various European human rights standards. By innovatively comparing this architecture with the United States Federal System, the book advances an analytical model that systematically explains the dynamics at play within the European multilevel human rights architecture. The book however also goes beyond simple theory and tests the model of challenges and transformations by examining four very interesting and extremely relevant case studies. In the end, a ‘neo-federal’ theory is proposed that is able to frame the dilemmas of ‘identity, equality, and supremacy’ behind this multilevel architecture in Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

BIO: James Thuo Gathii is the Governor Pataki Chair of International Commercial Law at Albany Law School, where he has been on the faculty since 2001. Professor Gathii received his LL.B. from the University of Nairobi and his LL.M. and S.J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya. He has consulted for the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission. His research and expertise is in the areas of public international law, international economic law, international intellectual property and trade law as well as on issues of constitutionalism, good governance and legal reform as they relate to the third world and sub-Saharan Africa in particular. Professor Gathii teaches Business Organizations, Public International Law, International Trade, International Business Transactions, Comparative Constitutional Law and International Organizations. Professor Gathii has published over forty articles and book chapters, including in the Michigan Law Review and the University of Illinois Law Review. He is one of the leading voices on Third World Approaches to International Law. He is a member of the International Law Association’s Study Committee on the Meaning of War.

BIO: James Thuo Gathii is the Governor Pataki Chair of International Commercial Law at Albany Law School, where he has been on the faculty since 2001. Professor Gathii received his LL.B. from the University of Nairobi and his LL.M. and S.J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya. He has consulted for the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission. His research and expertise is in the areas of public international law, international economic law, international intellectual property and trade law as well as on issues of constitutionalism, good governance and legal reform as they relate to the third world and sub-Saharan Africa in particular. Professor Gathii teaches Business Organizations, Public International Law, International Trade, International Business Transactions, Comparative Constitutional Law and International Organizations. Professor Gathii has published over forty articles and book chapters, including in the Michigan Law Review and the University of Illinois Law Review. He is one of the leading voices on Third World Approaches to International Law. He is a member of the International Law Association’s Study Committee on the Meaning of War.