UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Jud Mathews, professor of law at Penn State Law in University Park, presented at an international conference this fall organized by the Center for Constitutional Studies (CCS), a research center created by Mexico’s Supreme Court of Justice (Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación, SCJN).
The virtual conference brought together around 20,000 legal scholars and students from across the globe to share research and explore topics under the theme, "Conversatorio Internacional sobre el Test de Proporcionalidad," or, "International Conversation on the Proportionality Test." Guest speakers and presenters included scholars from across Latin America, the United States and Europe.
“This conference showed how it is possible to use technology to do something really exciting,” Mathews said. “Far more people were able to participate than would have been able to at a typical in-person conference, and simultaneous translation in Zoom made it possible for us to communicate freely even while speaking different languages.”
Proportionality review is a tool constitution courts use to adjudicate constitutional rights cases. Courts run a challenged law through a series of prescribed tests that are designed to answer one question: does the challenged law go farther than it should, causing unjustifiable harm to people’s rights?
“In recent decades, dozens of constitutional courts around the world have begun using proportionality review,” Mathews said. “And so conferences like this one are important because they represent a place where legal studies and the real world intersect, where the scholarly exchange of ideas can inform the decision making of legal institutions — such as the SCJN.”
Mathews’ presentation, titled “Proportionality: Unanswered Questions,” examined three different lines of conversation about proportionality that have developed over the past 15 years: a philosophical conversation about the justification of proportionality; a doctrinal conversation about particular techniques; and a political conversation about how proportionality impacts courts’ independence and authority. In his presentation, Mathews suggested that, in the years ahead, more courts might face tough challenges in the face of rising populism and political polarization and shared thoughts on how proportionality courts can weather these challenges.
In addition to being a professor of law at Penn State Law in University Park, Mathews is also an affiliate professor with the Penn State School of International Affairs. He is currently a visiting researcher at Humboldt University of Berlin for the 2021-22 academic year.