13 April 2021
The United Kingdom on Race
The United Kingdom’s Commission on Ethnic and Racial Disparities, has recently published a report, which has been widely discredited since its launch by charities, education unions, academics and politicians. Using the UK’s progressive track record of legal provisions on racial discrimination, the report moves to obscure racism’s systemic aspects. There is a profound disconnect between the theory of the UK’s legal protections against racism and the lived reality of race in Britain, which reveals race as an important and persistent determinant of social experience. Continue reading >>
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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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25 March 2021
„Hier ist Netflix mit der Tagesschau“
Aktuelle Diskussionen zur Reform des Rundfunkrechts in Großbritannien ziehen in Betracht, öffentlich-rechtliche Inhalte alternativ über private Streamingdienste zu verbreiten. Auch in Deutschland sind Grundsatzfragen zur Zukunft des öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunks ungeklärt und auch radikale Veränderungen denkbar. Politisch erzwungene, strukturelle Änderungen werden wahrscheinlicher, je länger sich die aktuelle Entwicklung der relevanten Marktanteile bei ARD und ZDF fortsetzt. Doch es stellt sich die Frage, ob und inwieweit auch in Deutschland eine Regelung nach dem Britischen Vorschlag (verfassungs-)rechtlich überhaupt möglich ist. Continue reading >>17 March 2021
“Yes, you can… but only if you’re quiet”
The UK is undertaking changes to its ‘law of protest’, which have the capacity drastically to re-orientate the relationship between citizen and state in favour of the latter. The draft Bill takes little or no account of the important role protest plays in a free society and coincides with police officers forcefully breaking up a peaceful vigil to mark the murder of Sarah Everard last week. These images highlight how unbalanced, unnecessary and unprincipled the changes are – many of its planned changes seek to plug non-existent gaps. Continue reading >>
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