Madhav Khosla’s brilliant book, India’s Founding Moment, is self-consciously a work on the history of ideas. Nonetheless, the subtitle of India’s Founding Moment—The Constitution of a Most Surprising Democracy—implies that Khosla draws a connection between the ideas that shaped the creation of constitutional democracy in India and its endurance. In this review, I pose the question of whether the design of the Constitution can be a source of constitutional resilience against the rising threat of authoritarianism and Hindu majoritarianism.

Throughout the world, research ethics committees are relied on to prevent unethical research and protect research subjects. Given that reliance, the composition of committees and the manner in which decisions are arrived at by committee members is of critical importance. There have been Instances in which an inadequate review process has resulted in serious harm to research subjects. Deficient committee review was identified as one of the factors In a study in New Zealand which resulted in the suffering and death (...) of many women diagnosed with carcinoma in situ. (shrink)

The judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada in the Quebec Secession Reference has produced a torrent of public commentary. Given the fundamental issues about the relationship between law and politics raised by the judgment, what is remarkable is that that commentary has remained almost entirely in a pragmatic perspective, which asks how positive politics entered into the motivations and justifications of the Court, and looks at the results in terms of their political consequences, without deep or sustained reflection on (...) the ultimate grounds for the role the Court took upon itself, or on the normative sources of its reasoning. In this article, we explore the Quebec Secession Reference through the lens of constitutional theory. In particular, we highlight three unconventional aspects of the Court’s reasoning: (a) the supplementation of the written constitution through an explicit process of amendment-like interpretation to craft a new legal framework governing the secession of a province from Canada, (b) the vesting by the Court of substantial, if not exclusive responsibility for interpreting the constitutional rules on secession in particular situations or contexts with political organs, not the courts, and (c) the ascent by the court to abstract normativity, in articulating a normative vision of the Canadian constitutional order, whence it derived the legal framework governing secession. In addition to drawing attention to these unusual aspects of the judgment, we articulate the theoretical justifications that both explain and justify those features of the judgment, and identify issues for future discussion. (shrink)

The migration of constitutional ideas across jurisdictions is one of the central features of contemporary constitutional practice. The increasing use of comparative jurisprudence in interpreting constitutions is one example of this. In this 2007 book, leading figures in the study of comparative constitutionalism and comparative constitutional politics from North America, Europe and Australia discuss the dynamic processes whereby constitutional systems influence each other. They explore basic methodological questions which have thus far received little attention, and examine the complex relationship between (...) national and supranational constitutionalism - an issue of considerable contemporary interest in Europe. The migration of constitutional ideas is discussed from a variety of methodological perspectives - comparative law, comparative politics, and cultural studies of law - and contributors draw on case-studies from a wide variety of jurisdictions: Australia, Hungary, India, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada. (shrink)

Medical research with children has been the subject of ongoing debate. The reason for controversy is clear. As with research on adults, one must strike a balance between two goals – promoting the health of children through advances in scientific knowledge and protecting child research subjects from exploitation and harm. However, because of their age and relative immaturity, children cannot protect their own interests as well as adult subjects can. Yet as they progress toward adulthood, increasing care must be taken (...) to involve children in decisions that affect them, even to the extent of allowing them to make choices that may have serious and long-term consequences. (shrink)