31 March 2021
Consent to Govern
One of the biggest difficulties associated with understanding the constitutional position of the monarch in the United Kingdom has to do with the fact that they are simultaneously three things: the head of an institution, a symbol and a person with private interests. All three of these aspects have combined in recent revelations surrounding the constitutional requirement of Queen’s (or Royal) Consent, revelations that cast considerable doubt on the place of that practice in the contemporary constitutional landscape. Continue reading >>
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18 March 2021
The “Pablo Hasél Case”
In Spain, the recent conviction of the rapper Pablo Hasél for ‘crimes of expression’ has aroused intense public debate. He defamed members of the Spanish royal family, which is an aggravated offence under the Spanish Penal Code, as compared to defamation of any other member of the public. The reasoning of Hasél’s sentence is, on several points, hardly compatible with the case law of the European Court of Human Rights in terms of freedom of expression. It is, in fact, an overzealous application of an already problematic offence, variations of which the ECHR has already condemned. Continue reading >>
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