A Ministry of Truth in Singapore? Reflections on the Anti-Fake News Bill
On 1 April, the government of Singapore introduced the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Bill. Often referred to as the Singaporean anti-fake news law, it is expected to be enacted...
View ArticleOffence Intended – Virgin Mary With a Rainbow Halo as Freedom of Expression
The news that a 51-year-old activist, Ms Elżbieta Podleśna, was detained and interrogated by Polish authorities shocked the public in Poland. She was interrogated for five hours, had her car and home...
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Producing Legal History
Iustitia negavit moratus est iustitia is a famous legal maxim meaning that “justice delayed is justice denied”. It goes without saying that it represents a universal truth. When I was researching on...
View ArticleFrance Criminalises Research on Judges
In March, France made a controversial move and became the first country in the world to explicitly ban research on individual judicial behaviour. It is now a criminal offence to ‘evaluate, analyse,...
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Stand with Wojciech Sadurski: his freedom of expression is (y)ours
In May of this year, we published an open letter in support of Professor Wojciech Sadurski, against whom the Polish ruling party and its allies brought several legal proceedings to silence his robust...
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Supporting Wojciech Sadurski in a Warsaw Courtroom
Photos: Twitter Last week one of us, together with Gráinne de Burca, again put the spotlight on PiS and allies suing Wojciech Sadurski over some highly critical tweets. It led to a tremendous show of...
View ArticleWhy We Have Sued the Hungarian Parliament
European heads of governments have various bad habits when it comes to speaking with the media. Some of them answer at press conferences only to those who have previously put themselves on the ‘magic...
View Article"Gelenkte Demokratie" und der Protest der Gelenkten
Seinen Wahlzettel fotografieren ist in den meisten Ländern Europas verboten. In Deutschland darf man in der Wahlkabine generell nicht fotografieren (§ 56). Schließlich gehört zu den Kennzeichen einer...
View ArticleDon’t Call a Spade a Shovel
The crisis that we are currently living through highlights, again, the dangers of fake news but also the dangers of trying to regulate it: fake news tried to sow confusion about causes of (purportedly...
View ArticleHomosexuality as a Form of Expression
Numerous courts have dealt with the question whether the sexual identity of an individual enjoys constitutional protection as freedom of expression. Recently, Singapore’s Supreme Court has rejected...
View ArticleIn Search for an Antidote
In early January 2020, the Chinese doctor Li Wenliang became the first victim of what would soon become a global censorship pandemic. After warning colleagues about a mysterious SARS-like disease in...
View ArticleStay Away from Using your Constitutional Rights
The Academics for Peace Petition is a petition signed by over 2,200 academics in and outside Turkey in 2016. It became, however, more than a simple petition. This collection of signatures put in...
View ArticleThe Spanish Constitutional Court on the Path of Self-Destruction
Recently, the Spanish Constitutional Court has published one more decision in application of the new reform of the Law on Constitutional Court which increased its powers for the execution of its own...
View ArticleUkraine’s Ban on Russian Social Media: On The Edge Between National Security...
Ukrainian President Viktor Poroshenko recently issued a Presidential Decree imposing a ban on popular Russian social media sites VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, search engine Yandex and email service...
View ArticleIst Breitbart News ein Kunstprojekt?
In gewisser Weise scheint die Esra-Entscheidung zehn Jahre nach ihrer Verkündung schon aus einer anderen Zeit zu stammen. Die Problemlage, der sich das Bundesverfassungsgericht hier zu stellen hatte,...
View ArticleInhalt und Schranken der Kunstfreiheit
Der Beschluss des Ersten Senats des Bundesverfassungsgerichts vom 13. Juni 2007 betreffend den Roman Esra von Maxim Biller ist die zur Zeit letzte grundlegende Entscheidung des...
View ArticleCriticizing the new President of the Polish Constitutional Court: A Crime...
L’état c’est moi. Thus said France’s Louis XIV, and thus seems to think of herself Julia Przyłębska – since the 2016 “coup” against the Constitutional Court in Poland, she is the President of that...
View ArticleIs the Crime in the Eye of the Beholder?
In February 2017, in a decision which was quickly translated into English, the French constitutional council ruled as unconstitutional a law that prohibited the usual consultation of terrorist...
View ArticleThe Plaintiff who turned into a Prosecutor
Readers of this blog are familiar with how the Polish government, led by the Law and Justice party (PiS) and the institutions it controls, is trying to silence Professor Wojciech Sadurski in a...
View ArticleAcademic Freedom, the Republic and “Islamo-Leftism”
The government in France is currently reforming the organization of the university system. On 28 October and in response to the killing of history teacher Samuel Paty, the Senate has introduced a new,...
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