In 2014, the constitutional law topic for the International Congress of Comparative Law was “Social and Economic Rights as Fundamental Rights.” This national report on the American system, which responds to the extensive questionnaire circulated to the national reporters, analyzes the...

The work provides an overview of the progressive recognition of rights to individuals in Western Europe from the late Middle Ages to the era of the Revolutions, then accounts for the XIXth century attempts to lay down bills of rights that were only effective after WWII. The paper illustrates the...

This article illustrates how the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) reversed its jurisprudence on adoption by single homosexual individuals, and describes the consequences of this decision within the French legal system

Increasingly, courts around the world are recognising the importance of redressing state violations of constitutional rights with monetary compensation. In countries where tort liability in private law remains underdeveloped, such as Bangladesh, compensation in public law becomes the only viable...

Fundamental rights have been serving different functions in the copyright case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Most notably, the Court has confirmed time and again that fundamental rights have indirect horizontal effects, asserting that the copyright acquis must be...

Once a technology protected by patents is locked into a standard and investment is made in the standard-compliant product, working around the technology or switching to an alternative one will become far from possible for technology implementers. Such situation may result in an increase in the...

In many countries legal aid is an indispensable tool in order to ensure that everybody has access to the judicial system. In Europe, despite the pride of place that is rightly given to the European Convention on Human Rights, Human Rights guarantees are found also within EU law. EU human rights...

In Bush v. Gore (2000), the U.S. Supreme Court stopped Florida's recount process as a violation of the Equal Protection clause, resulting in a victory for Texas Governor George W. Bush. The Court's legal reasoning did not deter the public's sense that our right to vote - at least in the sense of...