Constitution Digest

News and announcements from the Comparative Constitutions Project

March 26, 2015

Indian Supreme Court upholds freedom of speech online. India’s top court struck down Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, which made “offensive messages” online illegal. The court cited concern that the legislative language was too broad, and could be used to infringe upon the right to freedom of speech as enshrined in the constitution.
Ireland to vote on same-sex marriage referendum in May. Ireland’s Minister for Justice published the text of the upcoming Referendum for Marriage Equality, which proposes to amend the Constitution by adding a section that states: “Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.”
Sierra Leone President fires VP without parliamentary approval. President Ernest Bai Koroma removed his Vice President Samuel Sam-Sumana after Sam-Sumana was banned from the ruling political party and sought asylum at the US Embassy in Sierra Leone. President Koroma defended his unilateral action by citing a constitutional provision that a Vice President must be a member of a political party, but critics believe that the action was unconstitutional.

From the Comparative Constitutions Project

CCP co-director releases new report on UK constitution. James Melton, Senior Lecturer at University College London and CCP co-director, has released a new report, “To Codify or Not to Codify: Lessons from Consolidating the United Kingdom’s Constitutional Statutes,” which finds that codification of the UK’s constitution is not essential. Read more or view the full report.
New paper uses Constitute to analyze environmental rights. University of North Florida Assistant Professor, Joshua C. Gellers, used Constitute to help build his dataset on the expansion of constitutional environmental rights for his recent publication, “Explaining the emergence of constitutional environmental rights: a global quantitative analysis.” Dr. Gellers calls Constitute an “incredible research tool… [that] is both critically important and visually stunning.”
For more news, visit our partners at ConstitutionNet.
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