Week V: 06/27/2022 - 07/01/2022
This week, I continue to write case summaries, perform side research, and edit videos from the comfort of my dorm in Washington, D.C. With case summaries, I began to draft case summaries around litigation in Australia and South Korea because I became more curious about litigation in established democracies in the Asia-Pacific.
The Australian case law addressed issues such as party identification, foreign agent laws, and Australian Election Commission (AEC) practices. I cannot overstate my gratitude to the High Court of Australia for summarizing dozens of pages of opinion into one digestible summary. I do not think my Australian summaries would be as strong without those summaries.
Furthermore, I could not help but feel envious of Australians because they opted to have a parliamentary democracy which is, in my humble opinion, a superior form of democracy to our presidential republic. Instead of worrying about one person having significant control over executive functions or foreign policy, those policies are held in check by a party or coalition apparatus. Perhaps many of our most pressing social and economic issues in the United States would have already been sorted out by parliamentary vote.
The jurisprudence in South Korea dealt with issues of accessibility and voter privacy laws. Unlike courts in other non-anglophonic countries, the Constitutional Court of South Korea has translated their decisions into English. I found this practice to be particularly helpful because I did not have to rely on the translation function in the Microsoft Word program. Perhaps courts in non-anglophonic countries will understand the value of an official English translation fo their cases.
Aside from drafting new summaries, I edited older summaries around jurisprudence in Colombia, the United States, and Zambia. Some of these summaries are close to finalized, and I cannot wait to share these summaries.
Outside of case summaries, I performed some auxillary research on anglophonic countries and the Middle East and North Africa as well as other regions, but given the importance of these projects, I cannot disclose any more details on these projects. However, I can disclose that continued to edit video interviews with election-related officials from the United States and Indonesia. In addition, I have started to edit a video interview with a judge from Albania.
electionjudgments.org/en/