In recent years, the emerging field of comparative constitutional law has been swept by a new approach with a scientific allure known as the Large-N approach. The methodology of this approach requires flattening the world of constitutional law by reducing the meaning of constitutional determinations into countable data. One of the difficulties in resisting this trend is that while many constitutional scholars have offered accounts that do not flatten the world of constitutional law, their methodology remains unarticulated and rarely discussed. Paul Kahn is one of the few scholars who offered an account of how to conduct non-doctrinal research of constitutional law. This Article aims to distil several principles of Kahn’s methodology, discuss its limitations, and demonstrate why it is superior to the Large-N approach. To achieve these goals, I chose to focus on three books on the German constitutional system that are based on dissertations written at Yale University, where Kahn teaches. Based on my discussion of these three books, I argue that Kahn’s methodology offers an approach which I dub the “Rich Picture” approach (or Rich-P). The Rich-P approach exposes that participants in a constitutional discourses understand constitutional materials, such as constitutional documents or judicial opinions, through a conceptual array that varies between legal orders. Without acknowledging the conceptual “eyeglasses” we wear when investigating constitutional determinations, measurements of the entire world of constitutionalism may lead to catchy soundbites and tweets, but to conclusions that are misleading at best.

Among the many human rights and corruption concerns surrounding the Qatar 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup, two ultimately rose to the fore: labor and LGBTQ+ rights. A careful look at Qatar’s response to these issues reveals a sharp and provocative contrast. Though the World Cup organizers and the Qatari Government generally resisted Western criticism of its LGBTQ+ laws and practices, both bodies adopted systemic labor reforms. To the extent these reforms remain in place several years after the event, they can be said to constitute a human rights legacy. This Article explores one angle from which to understand this contrast. It distinguishes between principles, which are deeply rooted in a country’s political, cultural, or religious belief system, and practices, which find their support in convenience, profit, and the self-interest of entrenched powers but which lack a deeper cultural, philosophical, or religious grounding. It further argues that sexual morality is best understood in the context of Qatari law and culture as a principle, while the labor abuses are mere practices. This distinction helps explain the disparate levels of reform and legacy: to the extent human rights violations are rooted in principles, the likelihood of reform and therefore of legacy is relatively low; where these violations are rooted merely in practices, the likelihood may be substantially higher. This distinction can also help to predict how future host countries/cities will respond to the human rights standards that megasport governing bodies increasingly enforce.

Happiness and well-being are now explicitly enshrined in a myriad of national constitutions. As of 2022, the terms “happiness” and “well-being” form part of the constitutional lexicon of more than 20 and 110 states respectively. These “happiness provisions” epitomize the phenomenon of the “constitutionalization of happiness,” which denotes the process of elevating happiness to the constitutional echelon, thereby bearing discernible legal and political implications. An audit of all happiness provisions reveals that they boil down to three categories—happiness as a national objective, happiness as a policy paradigm, and the pursuit of happiness as a human right. The meaning and jurisprudential landscape of happiness provisions within a specific constitutional framework is molded by, on top of the semantic and structural configuration, a dynamic interplay among three factors, which include the indigenous and socio-cultural conception of happiness of that state, interpretations put forward by judges and other constitutional actors, and transnational influences such as the migration of constitutional ideas and jurisprudence. This article draws upon an extensive array of case studies, covering among others Bhutan, Bolivia, Ecuador, Japan, Korea, and Nigeria, to illustrate the breadth and diversity that enliven the universe of happiness provisions.

In analyzing the mission of the European Court of Human Rights, it is common to distinguish between what is akin to “individual justice” and what is more akin to “constitutional justice.” The way in which the Court combines the two depends on its “judicial policy.” In this contribution, we will examine how the “systemic” nature of the violations complained of affects the “judicial policy.”

The international economic order is undergoing significant change. Most recently, key countries have been seeking to increase their level of economic security, including through increased industrial subsidies. Regulating subsidies is controversial, but undisciplined subsidy payments could be harmful for the healthy functioning of markets and balanced development among nations. In this regard, the GATT-WTO has regulated subsidies, but it has not been fully functional in recent years, and reform efforts do not appear to be bearing fruit soon. Therefore, in parallel with WTO reform efforts, reliance on other approaches, such as discipline through free trade agreements (FTAs), should be considered. Disciplining subsidies through FTAs is inherently difficult, given the cross-border nature of subsidies on the one hand and the geographical limitations of the FTA’s scope of application on the other. In recent years, however, such disciplines in FTAs have begun to appear, starting with EU FTAs. Thus, this article explores the possibilities and limitations of the discipline of subsidies through FTAs, using Japan’s FTAs as a case study, to approach the path to international control of subsidies. Accordingly, this article first reviews the range of related issues and developments, including characteristics of subsidies, the rationale for subsidy discipline in trade agreements, recent challenges to multilateral subsidy discipline, the current status of subsidy discipline through FTAs, and the background of subsidy discipline in EU FTAs. The article then identifies the WTO-plus elements that are distinct to subsidy disciplines in EU FTAs and discusses their implications. Through these, it highlights the perspectives needed when considering subsidy discipline through FTAs, examines Japan’s FTAs in light of these perspectives, and presents the findings and implications thereof. Considerations are given to Japan’s FTA/trade policy as a background for its subsidy discipline through FTAs, the current status and characteristics of subsidy disciplines in Japan’s FTAs, the Agreement Between the European Union and Japan for an Economic Partnership’s (JPN-EU) subsidy-related provisions as drastic change, the effects on the Asia-Pacific region, and future prospects.

The most eye-catching effect of digitalization on the law of enforcement jurisdiction is the fading into irrelevance of territoriality. Insofar as the “physical” location of digital data—on a server—may be entirely fortuitous and may in fact not be known by the territorial state, it appears unreasonable for that state to invoke its territorial sovereignty as a shield against another state’s claims over such data. To prevent a jurisdictional free-for-all, however, it is key that the exercise of extraterritorial enforcement jurisdiction in cyberspace becomes subject to a stringent test weighting all relevant connections and interests in concrete cases. Introducing such a weighting test means that extraterritorial enforcement jurisdiction is no longer governed by binary rules (allowed and not allowed), but becomes a matter of degree, requiring a granular, contextual assessment. It remains the case that such a flexible attitude towards extraterritorial enforcement jurisdiction is not universally shared, and that relevant state practice and expert opinion in favor of the “un-territoriality of data” has a particular Western slant.

What can the cultural study of law tell us about the European Union (EU)? How can we study the European political imagination? This paper demonstrates that the European political imagination is both composite and multifaceted. It is structured not merely by EU law but also by the constitutional orders of the EU Member States. A cultural analysis of European law must therefore include the constitutional worldviews of the Member States. In the political imagination of most of the Member States, “Europe” plays an important symbolic role. Yet since the Member States are shaped by different ‘varieties of constitutionalism’, the meaning ascribed to “Europe” is not uniform. The study of the constitutional worldviews of the Member States, however, should not come at the expense of studying the European political imagination sustained by EU institutions. This political imagination is currently undergoing a transformation. EU authority is increasingly legitimized by appealing to the “the people of Europe” and there are calls for “European sovereignty.” This emerging European political imagination transcends the dominant view of the literature where Europe is understood as a space of “post-sovereignty.”

There is general agreement that in Italy the establishment of a judicial council ensured an overall higher degree of independence. Nevertheless, this self-governance template was criticized for propping up an accountability imbalance and a certain degree of inefficiency. In order to understand this assessment, this article delves into the relevance of informal rules and practices in the operation of the Italian judicial council. More specifically, it focuses on the activities relating to appointments of court presidents and professional assessment. Based on this analysis, it makes some observations on the factors shaping informal practices and questions their impact on judicial values and the quality of Italian democracy. I argue that informal institutions have amplified the corporatist character of the Italian judiciary, but it would be wrong to portray them in negative terms only, because the operation of the Italian judicial council and judicial system also benefits from a healthy dose of informality, which allows for enduring legitimacy in a polarized society.

One year ago, the Qatar World Cup was in full swing, and Qatar was omnipresent in our public and private spheres. For many, the Qatar 2022 World Cup will forever be intimately connected with the plight of migrant workers. This Article dives into the confluence of spectacle, counter-marketing, international—labor and human rights—law, and local reforms, which came together in the long decade which followed FIFA’s fateful decision in December 2010 to give the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. It starts by situating the FIFA World Cup 2022 within Qatar’s drive for soft power and nation branding, before turning to re-counting how the 2022 World Cup was “ambushed” in the name of Qatar’s migrant workers and their rights, putting the issue on the global agenda and triggering the involvement of the ILO. Thereafter, the Article discusses the effects of this ambush counter-marketing by engaging with the labor reforms introduced by the Qatari government, while highlighting their limits in terms of scope and implementation. The Article concludes with a general discussion on the blind spots and shortcomings of the turn to counter-marketing as a strategy to vindicate international human rights or labor rights.

This Article explores the manner in which, faced with the rule of law crisis generated by the 2017–2019 national legislative reforms, the Romanian judicial associations, organized as NGOs, have fulfilled their declared purpose of safeguarding judicial independence. By relying on effective communication tactics—including international networking and lobbying or informal discussions with high-level EU representatives—coupled with a strategic use of preliminary references, they have shed light on some of the most sensitive elements of the Romanian context, garnering both internal and international support in the process. In particular, by taking advantage of the CJEU’s increased willingness to engage with questions concerning the rule of law and the organization of the national judicial systems, the Romanian judicial associations have managed to design strategies capable of triggering preliminary rulings on the most heated and politically charged questions concerning the judiciary. This Article seeks to highlight the specific features and informal elements of such strategies.

The systemic equivalence test constitutes an important tool in European Human Rights Law: It is used in order to structure the different systems of protection that apply in a common space and to common addressees. More precisely, where there is “systemic” equivalence between different legal orders protecting fundamental rights, a presumption of compatibility of concrete legal acts is applied. While this technique is very useful in the context of a multi-layered legal landscape, this systemic approach currently seems to be very poorly conceptualized by the various judicial instances calling upon it. This may entail risks for the protection of fundamental rights in Europe, as certain acts may benefit from a presumption of conformity even though they are adopted by legal systems that do not have the qualities required to benefit from it. This article critically assesses this technique, and provides avenues for improvement of its use.

The Article explores the transformations triggered by digitalization in the domain of global trade law and seeks to evaluate the nature and the effects of the unfolding legal adaptation in this field of international law. For this purpose, the Article starts by mapping the sweeping effects of digitalization on trade and trade policies. It then turns to the current regulatory framework for digital trade—first, by sketching the state of affairs in the multilateral forum of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and second, by analyzing the more deliberate regulatory responses to the challenge of digitalization formulated in free trade agreements (FTAs), with a particular focus on some more recent advanced models of digital trade regulation. The Article finally seeks to contextualize and assess the impact of the existing legal framework and its adequacy for the contemporary data-driven economy, pointing also at some current deficiencies and potential setbacks going forward.

Recent years have seen a proliferation of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in developed and developing countries. Developed in Europe in its modern shape, most SEZs are located outside the continent today, notably in the developing world, where SEZs form part of these countries’ export-oriented growth policy tools and overall economic development. At a period of growing unilateralism and the return of the State as an economic actor, this contribution seeks to tackle the rise of SEZ laws in the global south, with a particular focus on Africa. It will scrutinize the reasons for their establishment, the measures chosen to promote them, and the international ramifications in these respective regions and broadly on the global plane, notably at the WTO. With the entry into force of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement, African countries face challenges of multi-layered SEZ governance, which this contribution intends to address. These challenges also extend to the cross-regional trade agreements these countries conclude, individually and as a bloc. Since SEZs are often assimilated with a category of subsidies and are discriminatory trade measures, this contribution, in essence, investigates the extent to which current trade rules at multilateral and regional levels address these controversial aspects of SEZs.

The present article seeks to identify the particular culture that undergirds the practice of EU law, by drawing from Paul Kahn’s Cultural Analysis of Law. It will do so by extracting from his work certain models for understanding the imaginative life of a political community, most importantly those of the rule of law and of political action, which in Kahn’s observation of American realities stand in competition to one another. This will lead us, first, to consider the particular place held by European integration, as a messianic project of collective transformation. While this might seem to structure the practice of EU law in a way that is consistent with Kahn’s description of political action, such a view, we will then submit, does not consider the particular place of law in the EU’s legal culture, as the very substance in which the European order appears incarnated, and which provides the impetus for much of its development. To account for these two dimensions in the political imaginary of the EU, it is argued that, unlike Kahn’s description of the American context, the rule of law and political action do not stand in tension with one another. Instead, the practice of EU law operates under an idiosyncratic frame of experience, which can be usefully associated to Robert Cover’s notion of “lawful messianism,” and which synthesizes key aspects of Kahn’s account of the rule of law and political action. Finally, to illustrate the operation of just that culture of lawful messianism and its persistence to this day, the article turns to the place of the rule of law as a “foundational value” of the European legal system and recent developments around this particular norm of EU law.

The aim of this paper is not to relitigate Qatar’s human rights record but to assess the effectiveness of its labor reforms: the principal concern is dispute resolution and enforceability. While Qatar instituted a broad suite of labor law reforms in the years preceding the World Cup, questions remain about whether they have improved access to justice for migrant workers. More attention needs to be given to the dispute settlement system established by Law No. 13 of 2017 to assess if new legal norms translate into enforceable rights. It is argued that the labor dispute system has largely failed by not taking into account the circumstances that define the employer-employee relationship in Qatar, especially the stark imbalance in power. While reforms might endure at the level of formal law, the dispute system will fail to deliver genuine justice to workers unless it is refashioned.