The present report will focus on the controversial issue of businesses using cheaper labour force coming from East European countries which joined the EU in 2004. Just before Christmas the Court finally ruled on two long-awaited cases concerning unions’ right to take collective action for the protection of their members’ interests. The Viking (Case C-438/05 [...]

According to the Argentine National Constitution, the Argentine Nation adopts the federal republican representative form of government. The Judicial Power of the Nation is vested in a Supreme Court and in such lower courts as Congress may constitute in the territory of the Nation. The President appoints Justices of the Supreme Court, but the consent [...]

1. Introduction The drafters of the South African Constitution were a rather ambitious lot and envisaged that the new Bill of Rights would play a major role in the transformation of the country and of its laws. It is often said that the South African Constitution – adopted in 1996 – is a transformative Constitution [...]

2007 will be a year to remember in the history of the Spanish Constitutional Court. Not because of the last amendment of its regulatory law, which has changed the individual appeal process for the protection of fundamental rights and is supposed to put an end to the huge number of pending cases, but because of [...]

Introduction The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Commission) was established in 1987, one year after the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Charter) came into force. It holds the mandate to promote and protect human rights in Africa pending the full functioning of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights [...]

In the last six months the High Court of Australia has decided two cases with very significant implications for the rights of persons of whom many in the community would be happily dismissive – suspected terrorists and convicted prisoners. In the first case, the High Court has essentially upheld the validity of the Commonwealth’s scheme [...]

This week’s dismissal by Pakistan’s Supreme Court of a final challenge to President Pervez Musharraf’s re-election hardly came as a surprise. The court, recently packed with judges loyal to General Musharraf, had already dismissed five other challenges to his victory in last month’s presidential election. In the short time since November 3, General Musharraf has [...]

The Chilean legal system lacks stare decisis. According to article 3 of the Chilean Civil Code, legal decisions have binding force only on the specific cases for which they were written. On this basis, Chilean legal scholars have built the “legal decision narrow force” theory—depriving even the rationale behind decisions any legal force. This thesis [...]

On July 13, 2007, the Supreme Court of Japan held in two cases that consumer-loan companies return not only excessive payments of unlawful interest to borrowers but also to pay the statutory interest that accrued from the excessive payments, because the consumer-loan companies were found to be bad faith beneficiaries of unjust enrichment. Japanese courts [...]

The Constitutional Court of Kenya has come under international spotlight after a petition challenging the constitutionality of the trial of Jesus Christ was thrown on its laps late in August, 2007. This unique petition and number of decisions through which Kenya’s highest court, the Court of Appeal, has broken new jurisprudential ground, comprise this second [...]