Maria Cahill and Cinzia Ruggeri curated a symposium of seventeen blog posts offering short, accessible introductions to how freedom of association is protected in legal systems around the world.
Check it out here: Freedom of Association — IACL-IADC Blog,
The right to freedom of association can apply to associations as diverse as political parties, trade unions, religious organisations, sporting organisations, cultural associations, residents’ associations and charities. It can overlap with other rights such as the rights to freedom of expression, freedom of religion, and privacy. It is also explicitly or implicitly protected by many sub-fields of law, including labour law (although trade unions are often protected by distinct constitutional/treaty provisions and treated differently than other associations), charity law, and sports law.
Look out for the relationship between freedom of association and customary law in Nigeria; how freedom of association is protected in China; why membership of student societies is compulsory in Finland; how recent legislation in France in the context of environmental protests impacts on freedom of association there; the challenges of protecting freedom of association in the US and Australia in the absence of express constitutional protection; how Mexico has developed a conceptual framework for interpreting this right, and how the UN, the Inter-American system and the ECHR articulate the value of freedom of association from an international perspective.
Although there are certain common threads across the jurisdictions, it is not true to say that there is a strong consistency in how and why freedom of association is defended in legal systems and courts around the world. The purpose of this collection is to provide constitutional scholars everywhere with a flavour of the special features of this right in particular jurisdictions.
We believe that it is important for the legal community worldwide to understand this (often forgotten) fundamental right, and to do so in comparative perspective by sharing knowledge and experience of its workings in different social contexts. We are very grateful to the range of contributors who have participated in this network and produced this collection of rich and interesting posts. Some of them are well-established academics while others are early career academics and researchers, and all of them have participated generously, seriously and intelligently in this award-winning collaboration.
A collection of longer papers exploring how freedom of association is protected in these and other jurisdictions will soon be published in a double special issue of the European Journal of Comparative Law and Governance.