Another grim entry in Canada’s ongoing human rights crisis ⬇️

This morning on ConservativeHome, Richard Ekins argues that Strasbourg’s absurd climate ruling will see environmental policy annexed by the courts. conservativehome.com/2024/04/12/ric…

This misses why many critics object. They object precisely because the biggest impact is behind the scenes, with policy makers trying hard to conform to the demands of HRA/Strasbourg jurisprudence. If one thinks that doctrine is bad, this level of obedience will be troublesome.

'The European Court of Human Rights has outdone itself, inventing new obligations on member states in relation to climate change and proclaiming a new power to superintend environmental policy across Europe.'

Professor Richard Ekins.

conservativehome.com/2024/04/12/ric…

Incisive and critical commentary from Prof Richard Ekins of the European Court of Human Rights decision in KlimaSeniorinnen, where the Court strained Article 8 to impose new obligations on member states in relation to climate change ⬇️ conservativehome.com/2024/04/12/ric…

In case of interest, I've uploaded a draft paper entitled 'Soldier, Revolutionary, Statesman, Lawgiver: An Essay on the Constitutional Thought of Éamon de Valera'.
Its for a conference organized by University of Notre Dame on Great Christian Jurists in Irish history.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

Always great to get the hard copy. Thanks again to the great editors at Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 🇺🇸 for their stellar work on such a bumper volume.

Kálman isn’t on Twitter, but he’s a superb guy and scholar. Go and buy this great comparative constitutional law work on constitutional review in Western Europe ⬇️

Sean Lemass: “But you can’t put the Papal Encyclical’s into the Constitution”
De Valera: 👀

Thoughts very much with Article 8 today, which is doing some extremely heavy lifting….

Possibly fun fact:

Ireland has had 19 heads of government since the First Dáil declared independence in 1919

(counting Cathal Brugha as short lived President of Dáil Ministry/Michael Collins as Head of Provisional Gov).

About 26% of them fought in the 1916 Easter Rising.

Article 8 marches on!

On tonight’s show, I spoke to law lecturer Michael Foran about the problems with Scotland’s new hate crime law.

The exit poll for today's local elections to provincial parliaments finds that, nationally, PiS won the largest vote share (33.7%) ahead of KO (31.9%)

They were followed by Third Way (13.5%), Confederation (7.5%) and The Left (6.8%)

Via Wirtualna Polska: bit.ly/43OtLcx

So much in a few lines….Ernest Hemingway eat your heart out

Taoiseach Éamon de Valera speaking in 1940 on the topic of political authority. His Aristotelian-Thomistic commitments really come through here, as they do in the 1937 Constitution.

Dawkins' cultural Christianity is at sharp odds with his intellectual atheism. But this gulf between abstract idealism and instinctual tribalism is well-explained by the gulf in his own thought between rationalist humanism, and evolutionary psychology 🧵
thecritic.co.uk/cultural-chris…

We were very grateful for David Wolfson for his great foreword and thoughts on such a critical constitutional issue.

‘Delighted’. Genuinely cannot fathom this mindset. A public square denuded of worship and blessings seems singularly undelightful to me.

God reward the many priests who sought to serve the common good by blessing the planes - on their most exhausting day - in past years.

Apropos discussions of Irish unification and non-sequiturs, here’s one: De Valera’s ‘External Association’ idea could yet be a template for (one) way to accommodate unionist identity, creating a new Association of Ireland, U.K., and the Commonwealth, with the King as its head.