The Constitutional Court of Korea (CCK) has engaged with foreign law and practices in two distinct manners. While the CCK has interacted with foreign constitutional adjudicatory organs outside the courtroom, it has also developed comparative law practices inside the courtroom. This article aims to examine the interaction between the CCK's two modes of foreign engagement. The chronological inquiry, substantiated by the interviews with former and current legal practitioners of the CCK, demonstrates the gap between the CCK's two modes of foreign engagement. The CCK's evolving extrajudicial activities have provided the repositories of information adequate for the deliberation of individual cases. However, the CCK's rigid structure for comparative law practices, which was established in its initial years to learn from traditionally influential jurisdictions, restricts these repositories from being fully utilised inside the courtroom. The CCK's failure to fully incorporate its developments in its extrajudicial activities into comparative law practices disallows the CCK to grasp an evolving picture of foreign constitutional adjudicatory organs.

Electoral administration in Indonesia is complex. The Electoral Commission (Komisi Pemilihan Umum) is responsible for planning and running five-yearly elections for one national and two regional legislatures, and one additional national regional representative body, as well as direct presidential, gubernatorial, mayoral and regent elections. Because candidates and parties often have significant financial stakes in their outcome, these elections are hotly contested and the results quite commonly disputed, including in Indonesia's Constitutional Court (Mahkamah Konstitusi). Electoral contestants often point to mistakes in administration and vote counting, which appear to be natural consequences of the great logistical challenges these elections present. For example, on 17 April, 2019, well over 150 million citizens attended one of over 800,000 polling stations to vote for candidates to fill 19,817 legislative seats in national and subnational parliaments. Many of these elections are said to be marred by attempts by candidates and their parties to gain illegal advantage, whether through misuse of incumbency or vote buying. There is also said to be much potential for corruption amongst electoral administrators themselves in registering candidates, verifying parties, procuring equipment for polling stations, and counting and tallying votes on election day. Given the potential of mistakes and illegality to jeopardise the legitimacy of election results, lawmakers in Indonesia have created multi-layered oversight mechanisms to oversee the planning and running of the elections by the Electoral Commission, as well as to oversee the Election Supervisory Board (Bawaslu, Badan Pengawas Pemilihan Umum) itself, which is charged with supervising that Commission. This article examines the work and performance of these institutions, and the Electoral Administration Honour Council (DKPP, or Dewan Kehormatan Penyelenggara Pemilu), which hears allegations of breaches by the Commission and the Board.

The passage of the Charity Law signals the beginning of a new era in the legal regulation of charities in China. Its provisions reflect the increasing autonomy of charitable actors in exercising their management rights and the reduced control of the government over the use of charity resources. The shift of the state's attitude towards its relationship with the charitable sector brings new insights into the governance of charities in China. This article highlights the public-private law hybrid nature of the new legislative arrangement for charities and outlines the policy dynamics underlying its operation and development. It argues that the hybrid nature of the Charity Law was intentionally created by legislators, and the design of the governance framework for charities should therefore be responsive to this new legislative arrangement. Following on this reasoning, the article explores the implications that analysis of the hybrid nature of the Charity Law has for the governance of charities in China. It identifies the parties relevant to charity governance, the way in which they interact, and the governance principles that can be applied to charities.

The 2008 Constitution of the Union of Myanmar establishes the framework for a ‘discipline-flourishing’ constitutional democracy in which the Tatmadaw, the Burmese military, retains a significant degree of power. Under this Constitution, the Union Election Commission (UEC) is vested with significant authority to supervise elections, regulate political parties and electoral campaigns, register voters, suspend elections, and to make conclusive determinations in electoral disputes. Between 2010 and 2020, the UEC oversaw three consecutive general elections and three by-elections. Following a term under the former military leadership, the country's major democratic opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won a resounding victory in the 2015 elections. In the years that followed, civilian-military relations were a source of tension, as the NLD attempted to reform the executive and legislative roles for the military guaranteed by the Constitution. These tensions became in particular tangible during the 2020 elections, which the NLD again won in a landslide victory. The military alleged the election was marred by fraud while the UEC rejected this allegation. On 1 February 2021, hours before the new parliament was to convene, the Tatmadaw staged a coup d’état. This article reviews the UEC in its constitutional and political context. It identifies its institutional features, significant points in its brief history, and the impact of UEC leadership as a contributing factor in fostering confidence in the electoral process.

The undisputed success of Sri Lanka's first Election Commission (2015–2020) was the conduct of free and fair elections, that is to say, electoral management. I argue in this article that, by design and in practice, it was unable to or failed to advance electoral integrity that is urgently required for the health of Sri Lanka's constitutional democracy. At critical points when electoral integrity and constitutional democracy were threatened, it was the Court, the traditional institutional check on the Executive and the Legislature, that prevented its further erosion. The Commission, therefore, was an institutional innovation that addressed symptoms of Sri Lanka's ailing constitutional democracy but not its root causes. The Commission has been a necessary but insufficient fix for the electoral pathologies of Sri Lanka's constitutional democracy. Its ‘guarantor’ function, as I illustrate in this article, is narrowly conceived, perceived and lived out.

This article explores the structure, management and institutional design of commissions in Australia and unpacks how these institutions operate within the Australian political landscape. Part 1 looks at the structure of Australian electoral commissions and how they maintain structural independence. Part 2 seeks to better understand Australian electoral institutions, through an examination of how they have manoeuvred administrative and political challenges and emergencies when they have arisen. Finally, Part 3 employs a neo-institutionalist lens to focus on the internal and external dynamics that assist or hinder the operation of commissions in Australia and how legitimacy and institutional trust can be created, maintained and harmed by electoral agencies in the Australian context.

In August 2017, responding to a petition from the losing candidate in the presidential election held days before, the Supreme Court of Kenya declared the results of the election null and void. Dramatic in itself, the decision stands in surprising contrast to the same Court's decision to uphold the 2013 election results following a similar petition. Beyond the different outcomes in 2013 and 2017, the Court's jurisprudential approach to the two petitions was markedly different. The Court showed significant deference to the Independent Elections and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) in 2013, and did not seriously interrogate its conclusion that the election had been free and fair. In 2017, however, the Court scrutinised the IEBC's process and paid close attention to the reasons it gave for declaring the result free and fair. This article considers the difference in the Court's approach in two ways. First, from a prescriptive perspective, it suggests when it is appropriate for courts to closely scrutinise the work of elections management boards and other ‘fourth branch’ institutions protecting democracy (IPDs). The article argues that where an IPD performs a function that is constitutive of rights, courts should be prepared to intervene. By contrast, where an IPD performs a function that is regulative of already constituted rights, courts of review should act with deference. On this basis, the article concludes that the Court should have engaged in a deeper review of the IEBC's 2013 decision. Second, from a descriptive perspective, the article suggests that the difference between the Court's 2013 and 2017 approaches can be explained by waning levels of public trust in the IEBC alongside growing levels of public confidence in the judiciary.