(Un)Governing Assembly: A Manifesto for Voluntary Notification

Legal requirements for organizing an assembly often require the submission of prior notification or an application for a permit. But why is the act of assembling with others—one foundational to social and political life (and generally constitutionally protected)—routinely subject to mandatory procedural regulation? This chapter explores why human rights law appears to have so readily conceded the legitimacy of these anticipatory forms of regulatory control. Echoing C. Edwin Baker’s clarion call to fundamentally ‘rethink the issue’, it presents a manifesto for jettisoning mandatory notification requirements in favour of voluntary schemes. Far from ushering in a chaotic system that would render the state incapable of satisfying its obligations to protect the different rights engaged, voluntary notification systems can achieve the purported gains of mandatory requirements while preserving the agency of the assembled people and helping restore some intelligibility to a muddled area of international human rights law.