Public Holidays

The constitutional regulation of public holidays in a comparative constitutional context remains under analysed. However, public holidays have a significant role in developing constitutional and national identity. This paper argues that public holidays concern the expressive power of a state to symbolically recognise certain historical events, public values, and cultural and religious communities. Accordingly, we argue that the symbolic recognition of a public holiday by the state can result expressive harms. As such, this paper will argue that public holidays are regulated by constitutions in order to mitigate and regulate against expressive harms.

To illustrate this finding, this paper examines two broad conceptual categories. The first category demonstrates how religious holidays recognised by the state are regulated by secularism provisions within constitutions. This category involves a study of the United States (US), the European Transnational Legal Order (EU), France, and India. This study demonstrates that religious holidays are regulated by Courts in order to ensure consistency with constitution principles of secularism. The second category examined by this paper examines the impact of public holidays in New Zealand and Australia on constitutional inclusivity, particularly for Indigenous communities.