In the rise of authoritarian trends in Hungary and in Poland, public broadcasters play a crucial role in supporting the political forces in power. There are many examples which show how public broadcasters influence public opinion by selective coverage and distorted remit. While the problem of media plurality is often commented upon from the perspective of fundamental rights or the rule of law, another relevant perspective is that of internal market and economic law. The article analyses how can one make sure that the use of public funds to support State media does not lead to the distortion of citizens’ rights to be informed. The article argues that the current EU State Aid framework allows the balance of Member States’ prerogatives in respect to media freedom and content with the risk of EU-imposed censure. The article analyses the place of media pluralism in EU law and demonstrates that media pluralism has been integrated within the internal market framework, including an analysis of recent amendments to the Audiovisual Media Services Directive. Then, it focuses on the relationship between media pluralism, public service broadcasting and EU State aid law.

In this paper, I will examine the legal standards of gender persecution and the evolving descriptor gender apartheid as a way to describe the status of women in Afghanistan. The paper also examines other complementary forms of legal accountability procedures to vindicate Afghan women’s rights and hold perpetrators accountable under crimes against humanity. Although the current locus of the paper is focused on Afghan women, it has larger implications for all other crimes of gender persecution.

Tactical litigation is a reality of the adversarial litigation framework that is currently in place. However, there is a difference between the tactical litigation of choosing a forum which may have more favorable law or be more convenient and choosing a forum with the intent to drive the opposing party to failure. The latter has been the issue with some of the tactical litigation that has occurred under the European Union’s framework of lis pendens. While the Recast Brussels I Regulation has alleviated some of those issues, it has not addressed all of them. While some scholars have argued that these issues of lis pendens may be answered by introducing the common law doctrine of forum non conveniens to these proceedings, that is not the case. This Article explores the pitfalls of lis pendens and forum non conveniens and ultimately finds that forum non conveniens is unable to solve the issues lis pendens creates in tactical litigation. Furthermore, the Article finds that forum non conveniens, inherently and acting as it should, has its own problems which echo lis pendens’ own issues in the European Union. Furthermore, forum non conveniens is simply incompatible with the policies the European Union implemented with lis pendens. Ultimately, forum non conveniens is unable to answer the problems lis pendens has created and solutions must be found from within the European Union’s own civil system.

This article discusses a currently hypothetical, but increasingly more likely, situation where Article 7(2) TEU is activated against more than one backsliding Member State at the same time. To prevent the offending Member States from teaming up to block the sanction mechanism, an extension of the exclusion from voting in Article 354 TFEU beyond “the Member State in question” is likely to be considered by the CJEU. However, such a use of this mechanism is contrary to the effet utile of Article 7 TEU, if interpreted in the context of trust. This interdisciplinary study uses insights from trust theory to demonstrate that the outcome will inevitably be further distrust and fragmentation between the EU and its Member States. This is why Article 7(2) TEU is not meant to be (and ought not to be) used against more than one Member State at the same time in this manner. This impression is reinforced considering that the existing legal solutions for implementing the extension of the exclusion from voting under Article 354 TFEU violate general principles of EU law and will therefore cause further distrust and fragmentation.

In an international social rights debate disproportionately focused on English-speaking countries, redundant emphasis has been placed on justiciability. While constitutionalization does challenge stable relations between powers, especially in the post-colonial and developing world, solid insights for a workable interpretative method can be derived from continental Europe, where the difficulties typically associated with justiciability have long been settled. The constitutions of Italy, Germany, and Portugal take socioeconomic democracy seriously, tempering socialist claims and refuting libertarian stances, and have managed to spur a legitimate judicial increment of substantive equality. Through a threefold comparison, this paper describes the peculiarities of these fundamental texts across the spectrum of possible constitutional design choices, and draws from comparative constitutional caselaw to highlight a cross-national convergence on a set of interpretative standards. These blend together a strong safeguard of legislative discretion with justiciable minimal guarantees, and a value-assertive orientation of balancing coextensive with the integrationist function of constitutionalized social and economic rights.

This Article examines the criminal law defense of provocation in the U.S., which employs an objective reasonable person standard, as applied to recent Asian immigrants. It discusses approaches taken in other countries and describes the cultural defense. The Article concludes with different possibilities for a hypothetical Asian defendant who was provoked: Improving education about U.S. laws as a preventative measure, using expert cultural witnesses at trial, and taking the defendant’s characteristics into consideration during the sentencing stage.

The public trust doctrine holds promise as a tool for combatting international climate inaction. A global public trust in the Earth’s atmosphere may be a feasible avenue for generating international cooperation in this issue. The public trust doctrine is a viable and underutilized mechanism of understanding our collaborative obligations with respect to natural resources. This Article looks to the historical origins and current presentations of public trusts to extract features which indicate its effectiveness and appeal for modern climate change applications. Additionally, it presents two circumstances under which a global public trust in the atmosphere could eventually develop.

Germany’s content moderation law—NetzDG— is often the target of criticism in English-language scholarship as antithetical to Western notions of free speech and the First Amendment. The purpose of this Article is to encourage those engaged in the analysis of transatlantic content moderation schemes to consider how Germany’s self-ideation influences policy decisions. By considering what international relations scholars term ontological security, Germany’s aggressive forays into the content moderation space are better understood as an externalization of Germany’s ideation of itself, which rests upon an absolutist domestic moral and constitutional hierarchy based on the primacy of human dignity. Ultimately, this Article implores American scholars and lawmakers to consider the impact of this subconscious ideation when engaging with Germany and the European Union in an increasingly multi-polar cyberspace.

This Article uses various concepts of Husserlian phenomenology to explain the disparate opinion between the North American and Italian public in response to the prosecution and ultimate acquittal of Amanda Knox. This Article argues that the comparative difference in public opinion is due to an extensive shift in culture that is necessarily accompanied by a shift in spatial-temporal location. In this Article, the Husserlian concepts of intentionality, the Self, the Other-I, and empathy overlay the judicial opinions and media releases critical to shaping North American and Italian public perceptions of Amanda Knox. As applied, these Husserlian concepts function as interpretive lenses, providing the reader with a novel framework for analyzing the cause of interpretive difference across cultures.

The United States’ free speech regime, as codified in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, comes with obvious contrasts to Thailand’s ill-famed lèse–majesté law—Section 112 of the Thai Criminal Code—which prohibits defamation or even truthful degradation of the Thai King and Royal Family. Recent scholarship has focused on such differences and has largely depicted the two regimes as diametric opposites. When viewing the First Amendment and Thailand’s lèse–majesté law in temporal isolation, the recent scholarly consensus has significant merit. However, by analyzing the two regimes over time, similarities arise suggesting that both regimes represent each respective country’s attempt to accommodate competing and changing values present within the respective countries.