Alex Schwartz on The Changing Concepts of the Constitution (OJSL forthcoming)

"The Changing Concepts of the Constitution"
Alex Schwartz
Accepted for publication, forthcoming in Oxford Journal of Legal Studies
Date Written: October 29, 2021

Abstract: There have been several important formal changes to the United Kingdom’s constitution over the past few decades, including devolution to Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales; the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights in domestic law; and the creation of a new Supreme Court. This article is about the informal semantic changes that may have accompanied these formal changes. It focuses on several central concepts: parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of law, the separation of powers, devolution, and human rights. Using a recently developed machine learning method to analyse a massive corpus of parliamentary debate, the article gauges the extent to which these concepts have become more (or less) related to the meaning of the United Kingdom’s constitution in parliamentary discourse. Ultimately, the analysis supports some important theoretical expectations about the changing nature of the constitution, including the claim that parliamentary sovereignty is now a less significant concept for the meaning of the constitution than it once was.

RGC Awards $4.6 Million in Research Funding to HKU Law 2019/20

Congratulations to our 8 colleagues who were successful in the 2019-2020 round of research grant funding by Hong Kong's Research Grants Council (RGC).  For the first time, two colleagues (Johannes Chan and Frank He) were successful in obtaining the Humanities and Social Sciences Prestigious Fellowship (HSSPF), which provides recipients with the time and funding to pursue research in place of teaching and administrative duties over the course of 12 months.  Five General Research Fund (GRF) projects were funded to study money laundering offending in Hong Kong, law reform implications of disruptive technologies for finance, enforcement of the arbitral awards under the Belt and Road Initiative, elites and judicial power in the age of populism, and the establishment of British admiralty law in Hong Kong 1861 to 1943.  An Early Career Scheme (ECS) project was funded to study political community and the legal status of established states.  The details of the new funded projects are as follows:

HSSPF

• Johannes Chan, Constitutional Review and Judicial Independence underOne Country, Two Systems: Convergence or Divergence?, $508,949
• Frank He, Gendered Divorce Litigation in China, $494,000

GRF

• Simon Young, An Empirical Study of Money Laundering Offending in Hong Kong, $719,984
• Giuliano Castellano, Creating Credit: Law Reforms, Policy Tensions, and Disruptive Technologies, $686,476
• Weixia Gu, Enforcement of Arbitral Awards under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI): Regional Harmonization of the Public Policy in Context of the BRI Asia, $449,000
• Alex Schwartz, Court Curbing: Elites and Judicial Power in the Age of Populism, $685,320
• Felix Chan, The Establishment and Administration of British Admiralty law in Hong Kong and Other Treaty Ports under the Treaty of Nanking: 1861-1943, $574,000

ECS

• Alex Green, Political Community and the Legal Status of Established States, $455,520

Alex Schwartz on Judicial Power and Consociational Federation: The Bosnian Example (Federal Law Review)

"Judicial Power and Consociational Federation: The Bosnian Example"

Alex Schwartz

Federal Law Review
2018, v. 46 n. 4, pp. 631-644

Abstract: 

An influential theory, sometimes called the ‘fragmentation hypothesis’, proposes that divided political systems will tend to empower courts because they make it more difficult for political elites to coordinate court-curbing retaliation. Another influential perspective proposes that federal systems are conducive to judicial empowerment because they create a demand for the authoritative adjudication of jurisdictional boundaries and/or they facilitate judicial supremacy over constitutional meaning. If both of these theories are correct, we might expect consociational (ie, power sharing) federations to be especially hospitable to the emergence of powerful courts. With reference to the example of Bosnia-Herzegovina, this article questions this conclusion; it is theorized here that core features of consociational federation will tend to undermine the growth and maintenance of judicial power.

New Issues: SSRN Legal Studies Research Paper Series (HKU)

UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG FACULTY OF LAW LEGAL STUDIES RESEARCH PAPER SERIES

Vol. 8, No. 1: Feb 8, 2018
Vol. 8, No. 2: Feb 14, 2018

DOUGLAS W. ARNER, EDITOR

SIMON N. M. YOUNG, EDITOR

Vol. 8 No. 1: Feb 8, 2018

1. International Judges on Constitutional Courts
    Alex Schwartz, The University of Hong Kong - Faculty of Law

2. Misconceptions of Interest Benchmark Misconduct
   Paul Lejot, The University of Hong Kong - Faculty of Law
   
3. Strategic Public Shaming: Evidence from Chinese Antitrust
   Angela Huyue Zhang, The University of Hong Kong - Faculty of Law, King's College London
   
4. Alternatives to Liberal Constitutional Democrac
   David S. Law, Washington University in St. Louis - School of Law, The University of Hong      Kong - Faculty of Law, Washington University in St. Louis - Department of Political Science

Vol. 8 No. 2: Feb 14, 2018

1. The Biographical Core of Law: Privacy, Personhood, and the Bounds of Obligation
   Marcelo Thompson, The University of Hong Kong - Faculty of Law

2. What Do the Panama Papers Teach Us About the Administrative Law of Corporate Governance Reform in Hong Kong?
   Bryane Michael, University of Oxford
   Say Hak Goo, The University of Hong Kong - Faculty of Law

3. Hard Corporate Governance Law in a Soft Law Jurisdiction
   Bryane Michael, University of Oxford
   Say Hak Goo, The University of Hong Kong - Faculty of Law

4. The Value of the Corporate Governance Canon on Chinese Companies
   Bryane Michael, University of Oxford
   Say Hak Goo, The University of Hong Kong - Faculty of Law

Alex Schwartz on International Judges on Constitutional Courts: Cautionary Evidence from Post-Conflict Bosnia (Law & Social Inquiry)

"International Judges on Constitutional Courts: Cautionary Evidence from Post-Conflict Bosnia"
Alex Schwartz
Law & Social Inquiry
November 2017

Abstract: Hybrid constitutional courts are associated with deeply divided and post-conflict contexts where the impartiality of the domestic judiciary is suspect. Such courts enlist international (i.e., foreign) judges to create an ostensibly neutral counterbalance to the presumed political biases of local judges. This mixed-methods case study of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina questions the value of these hybrid courts. Contrary to what might be expected, the results of multidimensional scaling indicate that Bosnia's foreign judges have not provided a reliable counterbalance to apparent ethno-national divisions on the Court. Furthermore, qualitative analysis suggests that the foreign judges have contributed to several strategic mistakes that have probably harmed the Court's tenuous authority. It is also suggested that the presence of international judges on constitutional courts may actually discourage the kind of strategic behavior that is needed to build and sustain judicial power, particularly in deeply divided and post-conflict contexts.

Two New Scholars Join HKU Faculty of Law, Further Strengthening Research in Competition Law and Constitutional Law

Welcome to Dr Angela Zhang (张湖月) and Dr Alex Schwartz who have recently joined our Faculty as Associate Professor and Assistant Professor, respectively.  In 2017-2018, Dr Zhang will be teaching Introduction to Chinese Law (LLB/LLM/JD) and Competition Law and Policy in China (LLM), and Dr Schwartz will be teaching Business Associations (LLB), Guided Research (LLB) and Dissertation (JD).

    Dr Zhang's research focuses on applying economic analysis to the study of transnational legal issues. Specifically, she seeks to explore how institutional factors drive the legal outcomes affecting global businesses. She is currently working on two empirical projects: one on the clash between antitrust and China and the other on the behaviour of EU judges. Though on leave, Dr Zhang retains her appointment as Senior Lecturer in competition law and trade at King’s College London. 

     Dr Zhang's work has been published by academic journals including Stanford Journal of International Law, University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, Cornell International Law Journal and Journal of Competition Law and Economics. In 2014, she received the Concurrence Antitrust Writing Award for her study on bureaucratic politics in Chinese antitrust law. In 2015, her work on EU judges was chosen to be presented at the Stanford International Junior Faculty Forum. Angela is also frequently invited to speak at antitrust conferences in the United States, Europe and Asia. Her research has attracted media inquiries from The Economist, The New York Times and Reuters, and she regularly contributes op-eds to the popular press. 

     Before joining academia, she practiced bankruptcy law at Debevoise & Plimpton in New York and antitrust law at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in Brussels. She also has practice experience in Beijing, Hong Kong and London. She was admitted to the New York bar in 2009. 

     Dr Zhang received her LLB from Peking University in 2004 and her JSD (2011), JD (2008) and LLM (2006) from the University of Chicago Law School. While at Chicago, she wrote her doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Judge Richard A Posner.

Dr Schwartz’s research is focused on courts and judicial behaviour, particularly in the context of deeply divided and transitional polities. He was previously Lecturer in Law at Queen’s University Belfast, where he was also an Associate Fellow of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice. Before that, Dr Schwartz was a Banting Fellow with the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University (Canada), a visiting scholar at the Centre for the Study of Social Justice (Oxford) and a postdoctoral fellow with the Canada Research Chair in Quebec and Canadian Studies at L'Université du Québec à Montréal. Dr Schwartz has published articles in Law & Society Review, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Ratio Juris, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, and Government and Opposition and he is co-editor of Rights in Divided Societies (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2012). In addition to research on courts and judicial behaviour, Dr. Schwartz has a broad and eclectic interest in empirical legal studies and welcomes collaboration on quantitatively oriented projects in all areas of law.