Echoing the global vision of the Faculty, the Comparative Public Law Research Forum at CUHK LAW engages with global scholarship on comparative public law.
The aims of the Forum are threefold: knowledge, theory, and practice. The Forum aims to generate substantive knowledge about comparative public law; to engage in debates on important comparative public law issues and theories; and to provide a reference resource on public law and constitutional issues for government, law-makers, judges and other practitioners.
The Forum will pursue these aims through the following activities: research, teaching, consultancy, and academic exchange and collaboration.
This project seeks to explore and explain how and why the idea of unconstitutional constitutional amendment informs diverse political activities (e.g. political debate, discourse, and mobilization) through diverse forums (e.g. legislative, judicial, and popular) by diverse social and political actors (e.g. judges, politicians, lawyers, scholars, activists, political parties, and social movement actors) in both formal and informal constitutional amendment process in Asia. This project features 10 case studies across Asia: East Asia (China, Japan, Taiwan), Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam), and South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan).
This project involves the symposium to be held by the Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law in November 2020.
The outcomes of the project will be published as an edited volume in the Routledge Series in Comparative Constitutional Change.
This project brought together a diverse group of scholars to discuss how polities in the Asia-Pacific region respond to the global spread of ideas and institutions of constitutionalism, and why they respond in a certain way.
As a part of this project, the Symposium on “Global Constitutionalism: Asia-Pacific Perspectives” hosted by the CUHK Law was held on 28 – 29 March 2019. The Symposium featured the keynote speaker, Professor Cheryl Saunders, Laureate Professor Emeritus at Melbourne Law School and President Emeritus of the International Association of Constitutional Law. Participants explored the interrelated global, transnational, and local aspects of constitution-making, judicial review, and scholarly discourse in different jurisdictions in Asia-Pacific.
This project also involved two panels in the 8th Asian Constitutional Forum held in Hanoi on 6-7 Dec 2019.
The Symposium proceeds will be published in the journal Global Constitutionalism by Cambridge University Press.
This project brought together a diverse group of scholars to discuss the phenomenon of judges who, within their particular institutional and political settings, were able to transform their constitutional systems. Towering judges from the following jurisdictions were examined: Hong Kong, India, Nepal, Singapore, South Africa, Hungary, Vietnam, Chile, Israel, the United States, Canada and Australia. The project considered, among others, these issues: (1) Why do we tend to find towering figure judges in moments of constitutional and democratic change in some countries and not in others; (2) how effective are towering figure judges in promoting democratic consolidation and in effectuating constitutional change; (3) can we find examples of towering figure judges that have had a detrimental effect on democratic change, either by using the wrong tactics, producing political backlash, or by actively promoting reactionary or anti-liberal ideas; (4) what kind of legacy do towering figure judges leave, and do their achievements carry on to a second generation of judges.
The project culminated in a conference took place on 25-26 January 2019 at the CUHK LAW Graduate Law Centre. The conference opened with a Keynote Address from the Hon. Mr. Justice Kemal Bokhary, Non-Permanent Judge of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal. His remarks are available here.
The project also featured a joint I-CONnect/IACL-AIDC blog symposium on “Towering Judges.”
The outcomes of this project will be published in a forthcoming edited volume by Cambridge University Press entitled “Towering Judges: A Comparative Study of Constitutional Judges”.
Books
Journal Articles
Book Chapters
Other Publications
2024
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2020
2019