The supremacy of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) has been the basic norm in Vietnam’s constitution since 1980. While it was not changed in the final constitutional amendments in 2013, this grundnorm was seriously debated during the constitutional reform process between 2010-2013, thus indicating a shift in the constitutional dialogue in Vietnam. This article traces the history of this basic norm throughout constitutional amendments of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) and assesses how the basic norm has become increasingly contested. Contestations over this basic norm have played out markedly over the recent constitutional reform process. The discursive power in these contestations has shaken the rationality-based legitimacy of this basic norm to its root. The continuing dominance of this norm depends to a large extent on how the Vietnamese party-state’s practical policy-making and policy implementation initiatives address the increasing tension between the supremacy of the CPV and other principles in the constitution.

This article analyzes the constitutional debate on and development of human rights in Vietnam throughout five constitutions from 1946 to 2013, as well as the prospects and challenges in promoting human rights in Vietnam during and after the development of its 2013 Constitution. It begins with an investigation and discussion of the human rights provisions from the 1946 Constitution to the 1992 Constitution – a period where the socialist human rights tradition was established in Vietnam. It follows with an analysis of the debates on the new human rights and citizens’ rights provisions in the 1992 Constitution, where a new concept of natural human rights emerged. The article continues to explore how the struggle and debates surrounding the competing conception of rights – socialist and positivist on one hand and natural law-based on the other – come into play in shaping the 2013 Constitution. It then proceeds to evaluate the potential challenges involved in the implementation of these rights in the coming years. The authors argue that the development of constitutional human rights in Vietnam is still limited by ideological barriers. It also faces substantial practical challenges owing to, inter alia, the absence of provisions for the immediate implementation of such rights as well as legal mechanisms for the protection of constitutional rights, such as a constitutional review system.

This article analyzes the socio-economic and political contexts behind the 2013 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (2013 Constitution), in which demands for deeper institutional reform emerged in Vietnam, and explains the constitutional discourse within Vietnam as to its economic order. Diverse forces and platforms within Vietnam’s party-state and beyond have contributed to the exchange of ideas and values on the economic order. As a result of this public discourse, the provisions on the economic order of the 2013 Constitution are ideological compromises, reflecting the contradicting views within the party-state and society in Vietnam on the role of the market, private property, and the freedom to conduct business. The 2013 Constitution has taken a step towards a free market economy by recognizing the decisive role of the market in the national economy. It emphasizes the importance of the private sector and promises that it will be treated fairly among all other economic sectors. From this perspective, the 2013 Constitution contains the seeds of future political and legal guarantees which could protect individual liberties. However, in line with the socialist ideology adopted by its predecessors, the 2013 Constitution reaffirms the dominance of the public sector and the leading role of state-owned enterprises, and preserves the ambiguous “ownership of the entire Vietnamese people of land and natural resources”. Due to this ambiguity, the 2013 Constitution fails to lay down the foundations for far-reaching comprehensive institutional reforms that Vietnam urgently requires.

In 2012–2013, the people of Vietnam participated in a lengthy process of public consultation to amend the constitution and land law. This article analyzes the approach that party leaders took during the 2013 constitutional consultation and law-making period as the leaders responded to submissions calling for radical reforms of constitutional and legal arrangements of land ownership. This analysis will provide insights into how, if at all, the discussion in 2012–2013 was different from previous discussions in relation to reforming the constitutional and legal arrangements of land ownership in Vietnam. The article argues that despite unprecedented consultation and discussion, party leaders did not intend to make substantive changes to land ownership.

The people’s procuracy is a transplanted Soviet-style institution in Vietnam, which currently exercises the public prosecution function along with the supervision of judicial activities. Debates about the procuracy’s role and function started as early as when the 1992 Constitution of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (1992 Constitution) was drafted and they were facilitated by the judicial reform policies. In the process of revising the 1992 Constitution, heated debates on the procuracy continued. The subject of these debates included almost every fundamental aspect of the procuracy such as its institutional location, functions, duties, organization, and operation. This article reviews the constitutional debates concerning the procuracy between 2011 and 2013. It analyzes and compares the developments of the debates in this period with those that had occurred in the past, highlighting, in particular, key issues that remain unresolved. It argues that the controversy surrounding the procuracy reflects the legal and political complexities in Vietnam, especially the lack of agreement on institutional issues such as the rule of law, socialist legality, and control of powers.

Two recent Hong Kong cases have highlighted the developing dissonance between family law norms in Hong Kong and other jurisdictions. The first entailed a challenge to the Hong Kong Director of Immigration’s refusal to recognize an overseas same-sex civil partnership as analogous to marriage. The second concerned a parental order for a child born overseas as a result of a surrogacy arrangement to an unmarried commissioning couple. These two cases challenged a specific conceptualization of the family in Hong Kong law: a preference for a heterosexual, married couple as the basis for the family unit. However, other common law jurisdictions would recognize the applicants’ claims to family status, as do international human rights principles. This article explores the scope and intersection of Hong Kong’s family law values, its private international law obligations, and the potential for invoking the public policy exception in these cases. In doing so, it tests the extent to which Hong Kong law’s conceptualization of the “Ideal Family” can be legitimately imposed to oust the claims of the “Other Family” to legal recognition.

Despite expanding the definition of rape under the Indian Penal Code to include non-penile-vaginal acts of penetration, the said definition continues to conform to a gender-specific notion of rape, based on a predetermined characterization of the victim-perpetrator framework on the basis of their genders. Herein, I will critique this idea of gender specificity in Indian rape law on the grounds that it reinforces a binary notion of gender, and results in gross underinclusion. Instead, it is more appropriate to adopt a human-rights-based approach in defining the offence of rape, and negate the role of gender in identifying the victims and perpetrators of an act of rape. The argument is pillared on a state’s obligation to not discriminate on the basis of sex, the recognition of transgender rights, and an assessment of the common grounds for opposing gender neutrality in Indian rape law.