Category Archives: Public Law

Engagement of Swiss Courts with International Law

International Law, Public Law

Switzerland is usually seen as a country friendly to international law: it is home to many of the world’s international organisations, is active in peace-building around the world, and, not least, acts as depository and is party to a large number of international treaties. However, in recent times, its respect for international law, and for the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), has been called into question. So, what is Switzerland’s relationship with international law? And specifically, what is the role of domestic courts in the application of international law? These are the questions explored in the paper entitled ‘Engagement of Swiss Courts with International Law’ that I co-authored with Prof. Eva Maria Belser in the book ‘The Engagement of Domestic Courts with International Law’, edited by André Nollkaemper, Yuval Shany, Antonios Tzanakopoulos, and Eleni Methymaki, published in May 2024 by Oxford University Press.

Power-Sharing in Malaysia: Coalition Politics and the Social Contract

Public Law

The book of which my chapter forms part is entitled ‘Power-Sharing in the Global South: Patterns, Practices and Potential’, and the book in turn forms part of an original series entitled ‘Federalism and Internal Conflict’, published by Palgrave, and edited by two well-known experts on federalism, Soren Keil and Eva Maria Belser, both of Fribourg University’s Institute of Federalism. The series is inspired by the work of Arendt Lijphart.

Methodological Proposals for a Pluralist Institutional Approach to Constitutional Interpretation

Comparative Law, Public Law

What methodological implications should follow if we are to adopt a truly pluralist institutional approach to studying constitutional interpretation? This is the question we sought to address in our award-winning article ‘What would a pluralist institutional approach to constitutional interpretation look like? Some methodological implications’ published in the International Journal of Constitutional Law (I-CON). In this article, we first advanced the argument that there is a need to take on a broader pluralist perspective when studying constitutional interpretation.