Horizontal Rights: An Institutional Perspective: Book Panel and Discussion
Tuesday 4 June 2024
CCCS proudly convened a panel discussion of Gautam Bhatia’s book Horizontal Rights: An Institutional Approach (2023). This discussion was led by CCCS academics, Professor Farrah Ahmed, Associate Professor Scott Stephenson, Professor Cheryl Saunders and Professor Adrienne Stone, with a response from the author.
This book provides a new conceptual model for considering constitutional rights from a comparative perspective. A prestigious club bars women from standing for executive positions. A homeowner refuses to rent their house to a person on grounds of their race. Each of these real-life cases involves the exercise of private power, which deprives individuals of their rights. Can these individuals invoke the Constitution in response?
Horizontal Rights: An Institutional Approach brings a fresh perspective to these age-old, yet fraught issues. This book argues that constitutional scholarship and doctrine, across jurisdictions, has proceeded from an inarticulate premise called ‘default verticality.’
Departing from default verticality and its assumptions, this book argues that constitutional rights should apply horizontally between private parties where the existence of an economic, social, or cultural institution creates a difference in power between the parties, and allows one to violate the rights of the other. This promises to be an exciting new contribution to the global conversation around constitutional rights and private power.
About the panel
Gautam Bhatia is a constitutional lawyer and scholar of comparative constitutional law from Delhi, India. In addition to this book, he is the author of Offend, Shock, or Disturb: Freedom of Speech under the Indian Constitution (2015), The Transformative Constitution: A Radical Biography in Nine Acts (2019), and the science fiction books The Wall (2020) and The Horizon (2021).
Farrah Ahmed is a Professor at Melbourne Law School. Her research spans legal theory, constitutional law, administrative law and family law. Her work including on judicial review, citizenship, secularism, religious freedom and social rights, has been published in the Modern Law Review, the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, the Cambridge Law Journal and the International Journal of Constitutional Law. Her book Religious Freedom under the Personal Law System was published by Oxford University Press.
Scott Stephenson is an Associate Professor at Melbourne Law School. His research focuses on topics of Australian and comparative constitutional law and theory, including federalism, models of rights protection, the separation of powers, and the use of comparative materials. His book From Dialogue to Disagreement in Comparative Rights Constitutionalism, was awarded the Holt Prize in 2015. He has published in a number of leading Australian, Irish, UK, US and international journals, including the American Journal of Comparative Law, Dublin University Law Journal, Federal Law Review, International Journal of Constitutional Law, Melbourne University Law Review, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies and Sydney Law Review.
Cheryl Saunders is a Laureate Professor Emeritus. She teaches in both the JD and the MLM and is the founding Director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies. She has specialist interests in Australian and comparative public law, including comparative constitutional law and method, intergovernmental relations and constitutional design and change.
In addition to her research and teaching activities, Cheryl Saunders is active in public debate on constitutional matters in Australia and internationally. From 1991, as deputy chair of the Australian Constitutional Centenary Foundation, she was closely involved in its pioneering work to encourage public understanding of the Constitution. She has had some involvement in aspects of constitutional design in other countries, including Fiji, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, East Timor, Iraq and Nepal. She is a senior technical advisor to the Constitution Building program of International IDEA.
Adrienne Stone is a Melbourne Laureate Professor and Director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies. She researches in the areas of constitutional law and constitutional theory, freedom of expression and academic freedom and has taught constitutional law at Melbourne Law School since 2007. Among her recent publications, she is the author (with Carolyn Evans) of Open Minds: Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech (2021). With Cheryl Saunders AO she is editor of the Oxford Handbook on the Australian Constitution (2018) and with Frederick Schauer, she is editor of the Oxford Handbook on Freedom of Speech (2021). She is a founding General Editor of Comparative Constitutional Studies.