The Constitutional Court of Taiwan (Court) has been the subject of extensive research in the field of comparative judicial politics, recognized for its protection of civil rights and curtailment of Taiwan’s authoritarian government in the 1990s. However, the literature does not continue its examination of the Court into the 21st-century, and little is known about the Court’s ongoing role within the new democratic government of Taiwan. My research fills this gap in the literature by examining the activity of the Constitutional Court over the last two decades and its engagement with constitutional questions. What role has the Court played in the new, democratic polity of Taiwan? Has the Court progressively developed the body of constitutional law in Taiwan, or has it adjudicated conservatively over political and individual rights issues? To examine these questions, I analyze a number of cases from 1985-2017, coding Court decisions to determine the subject, frequency, and trend of its decisions. I also draw from existing literature to investigate these cases’ context and significance. Preliminary findings suggest that the Court has exercised judicial restraint when faced with constitutional questions involving salient political questions or institutional government powers, and deferred to other state bodies in fear of damaging its own legitimacy. In contrast, the Court has actively developed the constitution in individual rights issues and expanded civil liberties. My findings suggest that constitutional courts in new democracies cannot be categorized simply as either activist or constrained. Instead, judges selectively address constitutional questions and issue judgments that strike a balance between restraint and activism to strengthen their legitimacy.

In its early history, the Russian Constitutional Court played a key role in the maintenance of democracy. Within two years of its creation in 1991, the Court was shut down by President Yeltsin after displaying a willingness to challenge presidential power. The current Court reemerged in 1994, acutely aware that its legitimacy is tied to its relationship with not only the executive branch, but also the legislature and society. This project examines how courts in de-democratizing states balance legitimacy and judicial power. Scholars concur on the importance of case selection in this process, noting that courts’ choices between individual rights, separation of powers, and federalism cases can impact their success and legitimacy in new democracies. However, there is much less consensus over when and how these cases might impact the legitimacy of courts in hybrid regimes. To answer these questions, I analyze trends in both the case selection of the Russian Constitutional Court and the outcomes of its decisions. I draw on briefs published by the Council of Europe and full texts of translated decisions to assemble a database of the Court’s decisions from 1996 to 2019. I also examine interviews and speeches by judges and government officials to better understand the executive branch’s policy preferences and the Court’s perception of its own power. By using the Russian Constitutional Court as a model for courts in backsliding democracies, I hope to clarify distinctions and similarities in the behaviors of high courts in authoritarian and democratic states.

In 2016, the Ukrainian Constitutional Court (UCC) went through internal institutional reform where the court amended the constitution to grant additional review powers and changed the procedure for the appointment of judges. These institutional changes were essential for the court to gain independence and legitimacy. This research paper examines how and why these institutional reforms impacted participation in the Ukrainian judicial system. I hypothesize that these reforms expanded societal access to the court which increased participation, accountability and enforcement of constitutional rights. To examine these questions, this analysis engages in a case law analysis of judgments of the UCC between 1997 and 2019. I mainly focus on the judicial review by individual and assess how the court has ruled in these cases. In this research, I expand our understandings of democratic participation to include society engaging with the judicial branch and bringing constitutional rights claims. Preliminary findings suggest that these new institutional reforms will broaden access to the UCC, which will increase participation within the Ukrainian judicial system. Implications of the research arise around the history of corruption and a legacy of distrust towards the Ukrainian government, and the possibility of a new avenue of democratic participation that may enhance and expand societal trust in government.

Courts are a critical institution in democratic societies. Yet their role of protecting minority voices and clarifying executive and legislative power, forever place these institutions in a legitimacy crisis. Place this court in a transitioning democracy and the challenges of balancing political and societal interests are even greater. The Hungarian Constitutional Court (HCC) is my experiment. During the first period of the HCC (1990-1998), the Court relied heavily on activist constitutional interpretation and the use of abstract review through actio popularis participation in order to create legitimacy as a new institution and as a protector of the new Hungarian democracy. Through the following period, 1998-2010, the Court became much more moderate and the use of actio popularis decreased steadily. The purpose of this study is to test how changes in the HCC's methods of constitutional interpretation and access to the HCC affected the legitimacy and power of the HCC and how that legitimacy and power connects to the protection of a new democracy. To answer these questions, I engage in a historical analysis examining the criticism of the court during the first twenty years of the HCC, including an in-depth analysis of cases that use activist or text-based interpretation constitution and their negative impact on the HCC's legitimacy. I also construct a data set of the trends in the use of actio popularis within the court and an analysis of its effect of different levels of access on the Court's perceived legitimacy. Preliminary findings suggest that inconsistencies with the methods of constitutional interpretation used by the Court and decreased access to the HCC have decreased the Court's legitimacy to the point that the Court is no longer a powerful institution and no longer able to protect Hungarian democracy.

Legal theorists have studied the advantage third party actors have in courts due to their powerful social and political presence. Third parties are interveners outside of the defendant and plaintiff that can provide comparative research, expertise, or assert a political opinion on a case. This study examines if, how, and why third parties affect international court decisions by expanding the development and protection of rights. I hypothesize that the presence and participation of third parties can lead to an expansion in the scope of treaty rights and findings of a violation. To examine these questions, I utilize the European Court of Human Rights Database (ECHRdb), focusing on cases including third party interveners in a single area of law, Article 8 (right to private and family life) between 1984 and 2014. The analysis codes interpret the types of organizations participating, and the ways in which the decisions expand or redefine convention rights. The preliminary findings of this research explicate the increase of particpation by third parties in international courts over time and how their presence can impact court jurisdiction. The results of this study are relevant for scholars and practitioners concerned with the growing role of the third party interveners in international legal processes and the impact of their actions on rights development and protection. 

The responsibility of the European Court of Human Rights [ECtHR] is to supervise the enforcement of the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Convention on Human Rights is an international convention to protect human rights and political freedoms in Europe. Among the cases that the ECtHR decides are legal framings of women’s rights as human rights. Although the literature on women’s rights in a human rights context is of abundance in the academy, there is a gap in understanding what an international judicial body like the ECtHR does for women’s rights. The purpose of this study is to fill this academic chasm by analyzing if, how, and why decisions made on cases involving violence against women either expand or narrow women’s rights on a global scale. I hypothesize that when the ECtHR decides cases on violence against women, there is a positive relationship between the actions of the ECtHR and the narrowing of women’s rights. To do this, I employ an original data set of compiled case law on violence against women rulings from the ECtHR from 1997-2019. Preliminary findings suggest a dominant understanding that there is a positive relationship between rulings on violence against women and the narrowing of women’s rights. These findings introduce the question of whether the ECtHR exercises a gendered legal consciousness, bringing us to a more robust understanding of how human rights law might overlook violations that disparately impact women.

With rapid technological advances, robots, unmanned vehicles, and other artificial intelligence (hereby referred to as AI) – simulation of human behavior on a computer - entities proliferate into everyday lives. Increasingly, the military is using AI to put troops out of harm’s way; however, a question of criminal liability arises when certain weapons and drones could cause damage on a grand scale, at a distance, and with higher propensity. Who is to be held responsible for the potentially widespread war offenses of these automated systems when there is not necessarily someone controlling those systems on the ground: the manufacturer, the programmer, or the AI entity itself? While questions of such caliber have fanned the flames of widespread opposition to autonomous weapons, the purpose of this study is to determine ways for adjudicating them as used in war scenes instead of banning them, and to that end, this project turns towards International Laws (specifically Criminal Law) and explores the precedence set by past trialed cases to establish an understanding of responsibility as attached to certain individuals in mass violations. It further moves on to examine the types of adjudicated crimes and review statistical data surrounding the summoning of each of International Criminal Law’s provisions in individual cases as to develop a definition of prosecutable criteria in terms of weapons and destruction in order to find an outlet with jurisdiction to assess the admissibility of autonomous weapons. Preliminary findings bolster a greater demand for the International Criminal Court (that prosecutes grand scale murder and war crimes) as a candidate for trying individuals for AI-related violations. With the presence of such institution’s already well-defined regulations that can be expanded to encompass criminal liability for unlawful use of AI, this paper comes to the conclusion that fully autonomous weapons could be indeed of positive consequences.

Recognition of LGBTIQ+ rights has expanded rapidly over the last few decades, yet remain contentious in many countries. Debates over the religious, moral and political stakes of acknowledging these human rights have persisted on a global scale. The purpose of this study is to understand how international legal systems are responsive to LGBTIQ+ legal claims. This is done through examining LGBTIQ+ rights complaint cases before the United Nations (UN) treaty-based bodies to analyze the degree to which LGBTIQ+ rights have expanded in scope and what factors impacted this expansion. The UN complaints procedures allow individuals or groups to assert claims and challenge the denial of rights by the State outside of their own national court systems. While committee decisions are not binding, they can be valuable advocacy tools that can empower domestic actors, validate claims of rights, and provide guidance for State action. The extent to which complaints processes are being used to assert the rights of LGBTIQ+ people has not yet been comprehensively examined. This paper will review decisions and state party reports published in the UN Jurisprudence Database and Treaty Body Database to consider how rights and politics have influenced treaty body verdicts, and then conclude that while broad language and increased political traction can lead to expansions of rights, narrow phrasing and controversial issues, such as family life, can restrict treaty body decision-making. Although the focus of this paper is on LGBTIQ+ rights, this study provides a general framework for utilizing complaint cases to analyze how specific human rights have progressed at the UN.