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This ARC Discovery Project aims to explain and evaluate constitutional populism,Ìýas evidenced by the global trend of ‘populist’ parties coming to power by challenging traditional regimes. The project will examine the legal and constitutional aims of these populist regimesÌý²¹²Ô»åÌýthe institutional solutions they adopt. It will explore whether they respect the forms of democracy, or just pay lip service to the principles of the rule of law and constitutionalism, while working to subvert such principles. The project will analyse what ‘new populists’ do with power once they have it, what the consequences are for a global view of democracy,Ìýand how Australia’s geopolitical engagement with such regimes may be affected.

Members

Adam Czarnota, Associate Professor 

, Professor

Professor °Â´ÇÂ᳦¾±±ð³¦³óÌý³§²¹»å³Ü°ù²õ°ì¾±Ìý(University of Sydney)

Legal education is part of the social process of reproduction. It is goal-oriented, modelling actors ready to play its professional roles. Transmission of knowledge is a value-oriented action, aiming to model perception of reality. This process aims to neutralise,Ìýand therefore legitimise reality, in which future legal practitioners will operate. The official (overt) curricula need to be coordinated with the so-called ‘hidden curricula’. The notion of a hidden curriculum is based on the premise that the means of achieving the official goal of an educational process are as important as the goal itself and its justification.

The hidden curriculum in lawyers’ training guarantees the effectiveness of education, but is counterproductive in terms of its usefulness. Such training contradicts its official as well as political and philosophical claims. Thus, lawyers’ training, whose aim is to ‘shape’ socially desirable competencies, becomes dysfunctional and often achieves the opposite results.

In light of these problems, the project aims to present the basic problems of legal education against the background of political changes in Central Eastern Europe after 1989.

Member

Adam Czarnota, Associate Professor 

This project combines political science and legal-doctrinal research methods to study the politico-legal dynamics of constitutional judicial review, particularly in new democracies. The project assumes that systems of constitutional judicial review draw on and influence societal ideas about the relationship between law and politics. Under certain conditions, these ideas can stabilise in the form of comprehensive legitimating ideologies about the appropriate law/politics relationship. This project draws on comparative historical analysis (CHA) from political science to examine these processes. It also seeks to reflect on contemporary debates within comparative constitutional law and politics about the feasibility of integrating law and social science.    

Member

, Professor 

The rule of law is perhaps regarded as the central legal value. However, conventional accounts of it have two pervasive limitations. First, while the idea is too important to reject or ignore – as thrown around in contemporary discussions – it is too confusing. If it is to be revived, it needs to be re-imagined. Secondly, it is too often regarded as a fundamentally legal ideal, to be approached in terms of lawyers’ understandings of the workings of legal orders.  

The argument of this project is that while the rule of law is indeed a legal ideal, it is equally a political and social ideal. Any attempt to achieve it must understand these political and social conditions, dimensions and consequences of the rule of law. It, therefore, needs to draw on insights that go well beyond those found in legal scholarship. It needs to reach out to disciplines that focus on society and politics, not to mention philosophy – since it is an ideal we're talking about – particularly political and social philosophy.

Member

, Professor