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The evolution of parliamentary immunity and privilege is a fascinating subject that reflects the development and transformation of democratic governance. This article provides an overview of the historical progression and key aspects of parliamentary immunity and privilege, highlighting their significance in protecting legislative independence and fostering democratic debate. Parliamentary immunity gives a legal protection to the members of parliament from being held accountable or prosecuted for their speeches or actions in the course of their parliamentary duties. The idea of "parliamentary privilege" is another one that embraces the notion of "popular sovereignty," emphasising that lawmakers are the representatives of the will of the people. In many democracies, the scope of immunity has been refined to prevent abuse and maintain public trust. Additionally, courts have played a crucial role in interpreting and defining the limits of parliamentary privilege, striking a balance between the need for robust debate and accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing number of scholars who study race in the United States are calling on white Americans to advance racial equality by renouncing their "white privilege." Yet few academics have explicitly defined this term. Here I analyze how scholars who discuss the phenomenon use "white privilege" in their work. In so doing, I argue that examining racial injustice through the lens of white privilege not only fails to subvert racial inequality in the United States but also helps maintain it. It does so by reinforcing racial stereotypes and undermining cross-racial worker solidarity and calls for universal public goods, both of which are necessary to advance the interests of most nonwhite Americans. By analyzing the most common invocations of "white privilege," I ultimately find that white privilege discourse provides a pseudo-progressive smokescreen that protects the laws, policies, and economic and political interests that perpetuate racial inequality in the United States today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For centuries, parliamentary privilege has stood as a bar against judicial review over the internal affairs of Parliament. The literature surrounding parliamentary privilege has mostly been about the scope of the privilege; few have discussed if the existence of the privilege itself is justified. This article undertakes that task, by examining parliamentary privilege as a defence against judicial review. Three propositions will be made. First, in the context of judicial review, parliamentary privilege is defined by the outer limits of the principle of exclusive cognisance. Article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1689 adds nothing. Second, parliamentary privilege as it relates to judicial review is incompatible with the two prevailing models of the separation of powers. Third, six arguments that may be made in favour of parliamentary privilege will be refuted. Accordingly, parliamentary privilege should no longer provide a defence towards judicial review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses about the 65th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference hosted by the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the House of Commons of Canada. Topics discussed include the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic upon the marginalized groups of the society; the independence of the legislatures from the Executive and the Judiciary, and the parliamentary privileges, which are the main tools available to Parliamentarians to fulfill their roles and discharge their duties. .

Are members of Congress or the President immune from defamation suits? Officially, the law provides for no such immunity. However, a line of cases interpreting the Federal Tort Claims Act and the Westfall Act threaten to create such an immunity for all elected officials. In such a world, powerless people can be defamed by the most powerful officials in the country without any recourse in the court system to preserve their reputations. Journalist E. Jean Carroll discovered the potential for such an immunity when she brought a defamation suit against President Donald Trump after he denied her allegations of rape and accused her of lying to sell her new book. The Department of Justice intervened on the President’s behalf, certifying that he was acting within the scope of employment when he denied Carroll’s allegations. In October 2020, Judge Lewis Kaplan denied the Attorney General’s certification, allowing the case to proceed. As the Biden administration pursues an appeal, Judge Kaplan’s decision looks less like a victory for defamed parties and more like an open question. Thus, although it highlights the potential injustices of the Westfall Act, Judge Kaplan’s decision does little to fix the issue. This Note proposes a solution in the form of a legislative amendment, which would create a list of exceptions where elected officials cannot use the Westfall Act, so that they would no longer be allowed to defame at will. The amendment would retain protections for lower-level employees while opening elected officials up to suit only in the most specific of cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Status-seeking behavior, the pursuit of a higher position on an international social hierarchy as perceived and defined by members of a community, has received considerable attention in recent years. Yet, much of what this recent literature calls status-seeking is difficult to distinguish from something else: the pursuit of fairness. We disentangle status-seeking from fairness-seeking by identifying where a pure status-seeking and a fairness-seeking argument diverge—in the degree to which state actors demand exclusive rights and privileges. Survey experiments of the Russian public concerning the country's membership in the G8 as well as a case study of Germany's behavior in the first Moroccan crisis provide strong support for our "biased fairness" account. Derived from the behavioral economics and psychology literature, it maintains that leaders demand entitlements that match their status and find any such denial as less fair than an equivalent discrepancy for other countries. However, once assured of what they deserve, they do not demonstrate any tendency to exclude others, the hallmark of the status motivation. Convergent evidence at multiple levels of analysis, country contexts, and widely different time periods gives strong indications that fairness concerns are driving much of what is attributed to status-seeking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-colonial Africa has been caught in military coups and civil wars. Incumbent leaders have refused to step down and hand over power post-elections or amended the constitution to not get voted out of power. In this context, three main challenges to democracy in Africa are military coups, lack of free and fair elections and illegal constitutional amendments to entrench de facto monarchy. To combat this, the Malabo Protocol, which introduces criminal jurisdiction of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights, criminalises unconstitutional change of government ('UCG'). The article outlines the progression of UCG from a violation of the democracy and rule of law principles under the African Charter to a prosecutable crime under the Malabo Protocol and analyses the difficulties an actual prosecution will face on account of vague definition, lack of international recognition and the major roadblock due to Heads of State immunity under the Protocol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In almost the whole world, distrust of political institutions delegitimizes their representation, leaving us without a shelter that protects us in the name of common interest (Gouvêa & Castelo Branco, 2020). The rupture in the relationship between the rulers and the ruled makes this conflict even more profound, with devastating consequences that arise from the inability to deal with the multiple crises that are being decanted and mapped in the internal political system. Democratic recession4 contributes to the boiling of politicians who do not take constitutional ideals seriously, who do not see constitutions as a source of constraints to their powers, and instead use the constitution and legal rules to self-perpetuate, to legitimize arbitrary government and to ensure who will be re-elected as many times as possible. Populisms and populist movements represent the instrumental degradation of the power structures of democratic systems. In a recent published survey, we found that populisms (Gouvêa & Castelo Branco, 2020) have a conceptualinstrumental nature and can be defined as democratic illiberalism5 with variable properties6. They represent a certain type of ideology, discourse, strategy, mobilization and political action in the specific cultural and political context. They decant themselves through formal and/or informal movements directly or indirectly in the democratic system by a charismatic leader who represents and leads an anti-establishment force resting their beliefs in moral and ethical institutions in order to consolidate and legitimize a populist political regime under the mantle of popular sovereignty and democracy. To subvert democracy, you have to become democratic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the "gag rule", a parliamentary device that from 1836 to 1844 barred the US House of Representatives from receiving petitions concerning the abolition of slavery. In the mid-1830s, the gag rule emerged as a partisan strategy to keep slavery off the congressional agenda, amid growing abolitionist agitation in the North. Very quickly, however, the strategy backfired, as the gag rule was framed successfully as a mechanism that encroached on white northerners' rights of petition. By 1844, popular pressure had become so great that many northern Democrats, an important bloc of prior gag rule supporters, yielded to electoral pressure, broke party ranks, and voted to rescind the rule, thereby sealing its fate. More generally, the politics of the gag rule provide an interesting causal-inference case study of the interplay between social movement development and congressional politics before the Civil War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When New Zealand's Parliament legislates to the effect that law on some particular matter may only be enacted using a mandated procedure, can the New Zealand judiciary enforce this provision against a future Parliament that fails to comply with it? Following the Supreme Court's recent refusal to conclusively decide this question, we examine why it still remains controversial in New Zealand. We first set the issue in a wider constitutional framework, explaining how such judicial enforcement requires considering the nature of parliamentary sovereignty and the role of the courts in defining this. The way in which the matter has been addressed over time in New Zealand and elsewhere—the pendulum swing of constitutional understandings, to use the Supreme Court's term—is then outlined. We draw on this analysis to examine why the Supreme Court felt unable to resolve the particular question of enforceability, while also raising an as-yet unexamined question as to how such enforcement implicates the statutorily guaranteed parliamentary privilege of non-interference in the internal affairs of the House. We conclude that because it is unlikely this issue will come before the courts again in the near term, continued uncertainty over the law in this area is set to continue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualified immunity shields government officials from lawsuits alleging they violated a person's constitutional rights. Under the doctrine, if an official can show his actions did not violate clearly established law, then he is protected from liability. But though its purpose purports to protect officials who make tough choices in close calls, its function proceeds more harshly. Despite decades of criticism, qualified immunity has only become a sturdier defense under the Supreme Court's direction. The Court has steadily heightened a plaintiff's burden to demonstrate clearly established law, as well as hinted at narrowing the playing field of where clearly established law may originate. This Recent Development highlights a 2018 excessive force case out of the Fourth Circuit that illustrates these very problems; a young girl's personal autonomy was violated, but the officer's actions were nonetheless protected by qualified immunity. Despite the result, this case illustrates where a path forward could be taken that would counter qualified immunity's one-two punch in excessive force claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid the extensive literature on the Stalinist dictatorship during the 1930s and the postwar period, the gap in scholarship on the Soviet leadership during the war years is particularly noticeable. This article fills that gap. Stalin’s war cabinet is characterised according to several criteria: first, the formal status of members of the leadership; second, the system of delegating authority; third, the functioning and competency of the structure of collective leadership; and fourth, Stalin’s loyalty to his top associates and the degree of their political immunity. The article demonstrates that the war years saw a relative ‘normalisation’ of the dictatorship. These important changes influenced the subsequent development of the Stalinist system of power and the evolution of Soviet authoritarianism after the dictator’s death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the highlights at the First Session of the 42nd Parliament of Canada's House of Commons for the period of March 28 to June 21, 2018. Topics discussed include motions to concur in the main estimates for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2019, amendment of the Canada Transportation Act and other transportation-related laws and rules on procedure, points of order and privilege.

The article discusses the highlights of Canada's President of the National Assembly's speech about the arrest of a member of the assembly by Quebec's anti-corruption unit (UPAC) and the principles and conclusions of the directive he issued on the case, delivered at the 35th Canadian Presiding Officers' Conference in January 2018. Topics discussed include the parliamentarians' rights and privileges in the context of police work and separation of the powers of the state.

The objective of the study is to benchmark the average life expectancy rates of the elected leaders of selected countries vis-à-vis life expectancy rates of the general population of the world and highlight any inequalities. Subsequently, the research focuses on identifying area based life expectancy inequality, if any, amongst the elected leaders selected for the study. Retrospective analysis of mortality rates in elected leaders was done to construct life table. Historical life data of 231 elected leaders from 11 countries were obtained to calculate an average life expectancy and the same was compared with the average life expectancy of the general population of the world. To analyse geographic inequalities between the elected leaders of different countries, Social Index of Inequality (SII) method was adopted. To construct the SII, Global Competitiveness Index was used as benchmark to derive the least and the most deprived countries along with the calculated life expectancy. Elected leaders from eleven countries - China, India, USA, Germany, UK, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Finland, Indonesia and Brazil - were selected for the purpose of this study. These eleven countries factor for ~50% of the world population and would be fair representation of the other countries as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information about the law concerning parliamentary privilege as well as highlights the practical constraints in relying upon parliamentary material in judicial review and other public law proceedings. Other information related to Article 9 of the Bill of Rights and Admissibility and parliamentary materials in litigation is presented.

The article offers information about the law concerning parliamentary privilege as well as highlights the practical constraints in relying upon parliamentary material in judicial review and other public law proceedings. Other information related to Article 9 of the Bill of Rights and Admissibility and parliamentary materials in litigation is presented.

The article focuses on the social and political aspect of privilege. It notes the social significance of perspective on the privilege and its impact to the consciousness of the people towards politics, and notes the disparities of privileges among social groups. Also discussed is the ethical aspect of privileges and how political institutions utilize privileges.

The article offers information on seminar organized by the Canadian Study of Parliament Group in March 31, 2017 on the relationship between parliament and agents of parliament and features several parliament officials such as Mary Dawson, Jack Stillborn and John G. Williams. Topics discussed include need to maintain the parliamentary privilege, officers need public support to succeed in their role and need to keep them accountable by civil society, political parties and the independent media.

The boundaries of parliamentary privilege as it affects the criminal law are uncertain. Recent events suggest that where a Member of Parliament is suspected of a criminal offence, parliamentary privilege can prevent a prosecution or can restrict the evidence which can be relied on in any trial. This article argues that parliamentary privilege should be codified so that its effect on the criminal law is certain and is restricted to the minimum necessary to prevent interference with parliamentary freedom of speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

President Al Bashir has avoided the International Criminal Court ("ICC") for seven years and has been able to travel to both states that are party to the Rome Statute and states that are not without any consequences. The existence of customary international law immunities makes it difficult for the ICC to be able to discharge its duties without the cooperation of states parties. The silence of the Security Council and its failure to clarify Security Council Resolution 1593 (2005) on whether the resolution indeed removes Sudan's immunities in order for President Al Bashir to be arrested and surrendered to the ICC. equally makes the ICC's job difficult. This article examines whether there is a justification for South Africa's failure to abide by its obligations under the Rome Statute when it did not secure and arrest President Al Bashir. This will be done against the backdrop of the ICC decisions or. the obligations of states parties to the Rome Statute to cooperate. The article also analyzes the South African High Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal judgments with regard to South Africa's domestic and international obligations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the nuances of bilateral security agreements and status of force agreements in Afghanistan. Many contain legal restrictions that complicate the ability of Long War contractors to provide advice and security during international missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically reviews the extant literature on social group representation and clarifies the advantages of intersectionality theory for studying political representation. It argues that the merit of intersectionality theory can be found in its ontology of power. Intersectionality theory is founded on a relational conception of political power that locates the constitution of power relations within social interactions, such as political representation. As such, intersectionality theory pushes scholarship beyond studying representation inequalities – that are linked to presumably stable societal positions – to also consider the ways in which political representation (re)creates positions of privilege and disadvantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article turns to Spinoza to shed new light on what Roberto Esposito, among others, has diagnosed as modernity’s “immunitary dialectic,” whereby juridical-political measures taken to safeguard or immunize individual and collective life threaten to debase and even destroy the life in question. I argue that Spinoza’s treatment of the “freedom to philosophize” offers a window onto the plural politics of immunity – that is, the institutions and practices that convert the power to preserve life into tendentially dominative and emancipatory forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study develops and examines the concept of hegemonic religion and its relationship with democracy. A religion is hegemonic not only when the state grants that religion exclusive material and political privileges and benefits, but also when the religion is a core element of national identity and citizenship. We empirically examine the link between hegemonic religion and democracy using the Religion and State round 2 (RAS2), Polity, and CIRI datasets. We specifically use religious education policy, financing of religion, and religiously based laws as measures of the extent of religious hegemony in a state. We find that the presence of these religiously hegemonic traits, especially in combination, is strongly associated with a lack of democracy. However, it is possible for democracies to have some hegemonic features but not all of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on applications of parliamentary privileges among parliamentary members of Australia. Topics discussed include provision of liability through parliamentary privileges among members with legislatures over criminal offense for legislative duties, attainment of freedom of speech under parliamentary privilege for management of parliament proceedings, and information regarding breach of privilege by member of parliament that leads to contempt of immunity.

The article reports the decision of the High Court of South Africa, Gauteng Division in the case "Southern Africa Litigation Centre v. Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development." It reports that the court held that South Africa's commitment to the International Criminal Court the Host Agreement, and that this agreement did not provide Omar al-Bashir, President of Sudan, immunity from South Africa's prosecutorial power.

The article examines the the necessity for international organizations (IOs) to implement dispute resolution mechanisms as a prerequisite to seeking immunity. Topics discussed include United Nation's (UN) obligations to provide a dispute resolution mechanism for victims of the cholera outbreak in Haiti; UN violation of treaty obligations to provide victims with a mechanism for redress; and requirement of a dispute resolution mechanism.

Is the Idealist conception of positive freedom doomed as politically dangerous? Decidedly yes, Berlin famously argues. The danger lies with manipulating positive freedom into a political tool of tyranny, coercing individuals to be free. The vehicle of manipulation is a conception of a divided self that underpins positive freedom. For, Berlin argues, conceptions of freedom derive directly from views of what constitutes a self. He cites the British Idealists as evidence for his criticism. The case for Green’s immunity to Berlin’s criticism is now well established. Bosanquet, in particular, however, is a sitting duck to Berlin’s fire. Berlin’s fire, however, misses its target. Not only is Bosanquet immune to Berlin’s criticism, but Berlin’s criticism obscures the extent to which Bosanquet shares Berlin’s worry about the danger of concentrated political power. Moreover, Bosanquet institutionalizes positive freedom into a bulwark against political tyranny in a fashion that Berlin’s wholesale criticism of positive freedom forecloses. Bosanquet’s true self is equipped to resist being coerced to be free. Indeed, Berlin’s divided self ill-describes Bosanquet’s conception of self which being, instead, complex/dynamic/integrated, is at once spontaneous/energetic and habitual/automatic. Moreover, whereas he recognizes with Bosanquet that positive freedom is not merely an internal condition of the true self, but takes shape in society, Berlin’s holistic interpretation of the organic metaphor of society means that he sees only the “dark” side of that connection. Consequently, he misses the affirmative link, the “bright” side, that Bosanquet, employing a relational interpretation of the organic metaphor, forges between positive freedom and social institutions. Ultimately, engaging Berlin and Bosanquet unveils the complexity of political theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on need for the contemporary Europe to understand and meet the problems of citizens and establish loyal co-operation of the states. Topics discussed include importance of unity of law, the unity of institutions, the unity of the market; problem of rise in institutional populism being destructive for the unity of the market; and role of parliamentary control in European politics.

The debate about socio-economic inequalities and class has become increasingly important in mainstream academic and political debates. This article shows that during the late 2000s class analysis was rediscovered in Romania both as an analytical category and as a category of practice. The evidence suggests that this was the result of two converging processes: the deepening crisis of Western capitalism after 2008 and the country's increasingly transnational networks of young scholars, journalists, and civil society actors. Although a steady and focused interest in class analysis is a novelty in Romania's academia, media, and political life and has the potential to change the political conversation in the future, so far the social fields where this analysis is practiced have remained relatively marginal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article look at the inability of international and domestic courts in recognizing the head of state immunity for jus cogens crimes. Topics discussed include various immunity categories such as state, functional and personal immunity; the jus cogens exception to immunity; and the reasoning of the Arrest Warrants.

The article discusses papal infallibility in relation to the reasons why the Catholic Church's Pope needs the services of lawyers to protect him from litigation, and it mentions head of state immunity against private civil claims under international law and the efforts to hold the Pope liable for civil torts in the U.S. Legal representation for the Pope is examined, along with lawsuits against Vatican City and the relationships between Catholics, the Catholic Church, and the law in America.

Immunity is an exemption conferred on a person in order to protect him from litigation or persecution. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 as amended accords immunity to the president, vice-president, governors and deputy governors only. The import of this constitutional conferment is that no civil or criminal proceedings should be instituted against them while in office. This singular feature of the immunity clause emphasizes the functional necessity of the immunity which the constitution canvasses for these political office holders. A trial relating to any crime committed by any of them can commence after their tenure in office expires. This raises the issues that evidence against them might have been destroyed, prosecution witnesses may die before the trial commences and changes in the law can enable them to evade justice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses issues related to gag rule and funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) worldwide. An overview on the U.S. overseas programs that promote reproductive health and family planning which has been criticized by policymakers who are anti-family planning and antiabortion, is provided. Also mentioned is the restrictions for counterproductive cycle which are under legislative negotiations depending on the political party.

The early Stuart parliaments witnessed a dramatic expansion in the exercise and scope of parliamentary privilege. What had once been essentially a mechanism for avoiding disruption to parliamentary business came, instead, to be seen as a personal benefit for members, or even a political weapon for use against the crown. While such developments occurred in both Houses, it was the Lords which normally led the way, continually pushing the boundaries of privilege as part of a general reassertion of its rights and status. While the Commons also proved capable of innovation in this field, it is the Lords which emerges from this survey as the more assertive of the two Houses, better organised and much more effective in exploiting the advantages that parliamentary privilege now provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]