Constitutional Doings Roundup

Some recent goings-on in the world of constitutional scholarship:

Constitutional borrowing is an interesting topic that has created a large body of research on models of constitutionalism and the development and operation of constitutional democracy worldwide. Much of this work focuses on the status of the US Constitution as borrowed. The questions whether this is a good thing and whether the US Constitution retains its hegemonic status have recently been asked by David Law and Mila Versteeg. A blogged summary of their work can be found here, and the abstract of their article here.

Occupy Wall Street, and the parallel developments around the country are creating a number of constitutionally significant effects: in addition to the demonstrations themselves, there have been mass arrests and a flurry of class action lawsuits regarding those arrests. The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund is a key organization involved in these actions, and was using Twitter to locate arrestees. On October 7, 2011, the PCJF had its Twitter account suspended. You can read this story here. In addition, the Constitutional Law Prof Blog has a useful entry regarding the Occupy Wall Street protests and the First Amendment.

The UK recently implemented the Tribunals, Courts, and Enforcement Act (2007), which has altered the ways that tribunals and courts relate as institutions. Two notable legal scholars, Mark Elliot at Cambridge University and Robert Thomas at the University of Manchester, offer a useful analysis of the relations and changes wrought here.

An interesting discussion on the Doctrine of Necessity, from Henri de Bracton in 13^th century England to its current employment in Nepal can be found here.

Finally, SCOTUSBlog has reported that the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals will take up 41%, a “staggering percentage,” of the Supreme Court’s docket this term. The American Bar Association Journal’s reporting of the news can be found here. This percentage is higher than usual, but it seems to me to be expectable, given the territorial remit of the 9^th Circuit. What do you think?

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