Control through Intervention
In October 2020, the director of the Musée d’Histoire de Nantes announced the postponement of an upcoming exhibition on Mongol history and culture. The exhibition was supposed to be the result of a...
View ArticleThe Rise of a Dissuasive Democracy in France
On November 24, 2020 the French National Assembly adopted the Global Security Act (GSA, loi relative à la sécurité globale) by a wide margin (388 for, 104 cons). The bill entrenches the cooperation...
View ArticleDoes Twitter trump Trump?
Some of the biggest social media platforms recently decided to suspend the accounts of former US President Donald Trump. Even though such bans are not unprecedented (see a list by Jillian C. York), the...
View ArticleIntimidation through Litigation
Last week, legal proceedings were initiated against a Polish writer as well as a couple of high school students for allegedly insulting Polish President Andrzej Duda. These proceedings are just the...
View ArticleA Nation (Un)Dignified
The recent jurisprudence of Hungarian apex courts based on changes inserted into the Hungarian Fundamental Law of 2011 and the provisions of the 2013 Civil Code on “violating the dignity of the...
View ArticleA Ghost that Haunts European Democracies
On 29 April 2021, as per the inquiry run by the justice of the peace court of the Mediterranean province of Isparta, a 14-year-old Turkish citizen from the poverty-stricken eastern province of Hakkari...
View ArticleFighting Platforms and the People, not the Pandemic
It is not usually a good sign that you are asked to write a follow-up to a Verfassungsblog post. In late February, we described the travails of Twitter in India, which largely bowed to government...
View ArticleFrom Russia with Love
On 18 November 2020, we wrote a blogpost on the new chapter of the Government’s crusade against LGBTQI persons in Hungary. We argued that the amendments to the Fundamental Law paved the way for more...
View ArticleModernising the United Kingdom’s Official Secrecy Laws
In the United Kingdom, proposals to reform official secrecy laws could have damaging implications for journalistic expression, whistleblowing and government transparency. Some allege that journalism...
View ArticleFacebook suspends accounts of German Covid-19-deniers
On September 16th 2021, Facebook suspended more than 150 German “Pages and Groups operated by individuals associated with the Querdenken movement in Germany” because of “coordinated social harm” (the...
View ArticleWhy don’t they just stop stopping the internet?
India is infamous for being the internet shutdown capital of the world, accounting for over two times as many internet suspensions as the rest of the world combined! This is a country with an estimated...
View ArticleThe Impact of 9/11 on Freedom of Expression in the United States
This online symposium seeks to consider what impact, globally, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 had on freedom of expression and media liberty. The underlying hypothesis of the symposium...
View ArticleThe legacy of the War on Terror in the Philippines
“Without facts, you can’t have the truth; without the truth, you can’t have trust. Without any of these, democracy as we know it is dead.” – Maria Ressa, 2021 Nobel peace prize laureate. Twenty years...
View ArticleConstitutional Battles beyond China’s Regulation of Online Terrorist Speech
The Chinese government’s suppression of Internet speech is almost legendary. It has waxed with critiques and curses. It has met with opposition at home and abroad. It has generated attention, research,...
View Article‘An assault on the constitution’
On a cold and snowy January night, an army contingent cordoned off a house in a sleepy village in Kashmir, the northernmost Himalayan territory embroiled in decades of conflict. The house belonged to...
View ArticleTerrorism law and the erosion of free speech in the UK
The response to the 9/11 attacks, along with the attacks in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005, resulted in the curtailment of a range of liberties. In the years that followed, various statutes were...
View ArticleSpeaking up in Beijing or not?
A week before the start of the Beijing Winter Olympics, members of its Organizing Committee were already warning participants (be they athletes or else) against ‘any behaviour or speech that is against...
View Article9/11 on Turkish Shores
Neither 9/11 nor its aftershocks resulted in a dramatic shift in the Turkish public sphere. However, the coup attempt of 2016 provoked government measures to rapidly shrink the public sphere. In this...
View ArticleKeeping Politics Out
Costa Rican gymnast Luciana Alvarado had found a way to protest at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games without being punished. At the end of the 18-year old’s floor routine, Alvarado kneeled on the mat and...
View ArticleThe Re-Emergence of the Athlete Activist
Sport and politics have always had an uneasy relationship. Whilst most sports bodies, including the International Olympic Committee (IOC), claim to be apolitical or politically neutral, sport is...
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