VRÜ Verfassung und Recht in Übersee

In 2005, the Indian government passed the Right to Information or RTI Act, which is hailed for inaugurating an era of open, accountable and truly postcolonial democracy. This article focuses on how the RTI law is being both implemented and subverted...

Right to Information (RTI) laws are commonly seen as key elements of participatory democracies because they allow citizens to hold public officials accountable for their actions. Nevertheless, these laws can be ambiguous since, while creating...

The Aboriginal Peoples of Australia have been demanding a form of constitutional recognition for many years. Whereas some other indigenous peoples in countries such as New Zealand, the USA and Canada have been partners to a ‘treaty’ at the time...

Since 2012, same-sex marriage has been legal in Brazil. This, however, was accomplished without the participation of any political branch: the only lawmaking actor involved was the Supreme Court. In existing studies on the judicialization of...

In May 2017, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights delivered its first indigenous rights case dealing with the expulsion of the Ogiek from their ancestral lands in the Kenyan Mau forest. The article highlights the judgement’s most...

Looking at self-determination in contemporary Europe, one finds self-determination lumped together with the question of a possible right to remedial secession, either passionately defended or fervently rejected. Lumping self-determination and...

The aim of this article is to place the African Union’s (AU) membership admission approach within the context of the aspiration to deepen regional integration efforts in Africa. Put in more specific terms, to what extent should values such as...

Presidential impeachment is a mechanism used to protect democracy from system-threatening malpractice by an incumbent, which is a phenomenon that is occurring increasingly often in young presidential democracies around the world. This article...

The independence of Timor-Leste in 2002 resulted in the creation of a new legal system, which had to navigate a difficult transition from the legal systems inherited from the former Portuguese, Indonesian and United Nations administrations to a new...

Secondary law-making by international organisations is an increasingly important phenomenon, as it directly affects individuals and communities worldwide. However, the internal regulation does not always keep pace with the growing number of...

Over the past two decades, the adoption of genetically modified (GM) crops has been moderate in Africa with mainly four countries, namely South Africa, Burkina Faso, Egypt and Sudan that commercialize such crops. While South Africa is set on the...