The lessons learned from private colonization experiments in the 1830s drove Brazilian lawmakers back to the drawing board to devise policies that could both promote private colonization schemes and keep them under the government’s purview. A reinstated executive seized the reins of colonization as the royal household enthusiastically founded model colonies spearheaded by the young emperor and his sister. A small group of palatial figures, or áulicos, close to the emperor made this possible from key appointments including in the reactivated Council of State, which oversaw ad hoc colonization petitions. In parliament, the slow but steady evolution of land law bills further contributed to the Brazilian government’s resolve to exercise regulatory muscle. This process came to a head with the debacle of the Delrue contract – a colono-provisioning deal with a French firm that went sour when the Brazilian government discovered numerous irregularities in the payments claimed by Delrue. Ironically, the Delrue scandal empowered Vergueiro & Co., a São Paulo-based firm that would become a leading colono distributor within a decade, demonstrating that the colonization irradiated from Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo, and not the other way around.

This chapter will focus on the manner in which non-judicial actors engage in constitutional guardianship, using the Netherlands as a case study. Article 120 of the Dutch Constitution explicitly prohibits courts from examining the constitutionality of Acts of Parliament. Accordingly, it has fallen to other institutions to ensure that constitutional rules and values are duly taken into account, especially when new legislation is under consideration. The chapter will focus in particular on the role that governments and civil servants play in verifying a bill’s constitutional conformity during the drafting stage; on the Council of State, which is tasked with providing non-partisan advice to the government on new bills; and on how Parliament itself goes about confronting constitutional issues during legislative debates. The Dutch experience shows that it is possible to successfully ensure constitutional supremacy even when judges are not available to act as ultimate protectors of the national constitution.

This chapter traces the spread and evolution of proportionality in French public law. I argue that the most important advances in French judicial review have occurred without recourse to proportionality terminology. And where this terminology finally spread in case law, it has not brought about radical changes to judicial methods. In reality, proportionality has been much more useful in the analysis and the reconstruction of judicial practice than in the justification of judicial decisions. Contrary to the dominant view, which traces the first applications of proportionality back to the 1930s, the chapter shows that proportionality language emerged in expropriation case law during the 1970s. Soon, the concept of proportionality in the legal literature was detached from the actual application of proportionality as a norm or principle. In the context of constitutionalisation of the legal order, proportionality was recognised as a constitutional principle and was transferred as a method for the adjudication of constitutional rights. However, a survey of the relevant practice reveals a peculiar French version of proportionality analysis.

An administrative code and a national framework of administrative courts was established under the 1997 Constitution but the origins of the contemporary system of administrative justice in Thailand go back to well over a century earlier. This essay will consider the relationship between the emergence of a relatively centralised state in the nineteenth century and the provision of an identifiable system of administrative law in Thailand. It will be argued that the episodic development of administrative justice can be related to a range of diverse elements including: the initial foundation of the Council of State during the reign King Rama V; an interest in European law and legal systems; the recognition of a principle of legality under the influence of Pridi Banomyong as part of a transition from absolute to monarchy to constitutional monarchy; the impact of the Council of State Act of 1933, which led to the establishment of a Petitioning Council under the Thai Council of State to handle grievances and provide remedies for Thai citizens.

This chapter on Belgian constitutional identity consists of two parts. A first part explores the views of Belgium’s supreme judicial institutions on the relation between the Belgian Constitution – in particular its ‘identity’ – and EU law. It is shown that the courts’ views diverge. Whereas the Cour de Cassation fully complies with EU orthodoxy, the Constitutional Court’s acceptance of the primacy of EU law is based on a constitutional provision and is subject to the proviso that EU law comply with Belgium’s national identity and fundamental constitutional values. The Council of State, for its part, seems to vacillate between these two positions. In a second part, the focus shifts to the meaning of the twin concepts of national and constitutional identity in Belgian law. Those concepts being new to the Belgian legal order, their content is still shrouded in mystery. This contribution makes an attempt to lay bare their meaning by delving into Belgian constitutional history.