I·CONnect

—Simon Drugda, PhD Candidate at the University of Copenhagen

In this weekly feature, I-CONnect publishes a curated reading list of developments in public law. “Developments” may include a selection of links to news, high court decisions, new or recent scholarly books and articles, and blog posts from around the public law blogosphere.

To submit relevant developments for our weekly feature on “What’s New in Public Law,” please email contact.iconnect@gmail.com.

Developments in Constitutional Courts

1. The Caribbean Court of Justice found that the appointment of Justice James Patterson as the Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission almost two years ago was unconstitutional.
2. The Caribbean Court of Justice confirmed the validity of a no-confidence motion against the ruling party in Guyana.
3. The European Court of Justice found that a German law instituting a highway toll violated European Union law because the law discriminated based on nationality.
4. The Constitutional Court of Ukraine ruled that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s move to dissolve the Parliament was constitutional.
5. The Constitutional Court of Ecuador ruled against a request to require community consultations for a planned mining project.
6. The US Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision in favour of a ban on uranium mining in Virginia.
7. The US Supreme Court ruled against the Virginia House of Delegates in a racial gerrymandering case.
8. The US Supreme Court ruled that a public access television provider is not a state actor.
9. The US Supreme Court ruled that a Mississippi prosecutor unconstitutionally excluded black jurors from a murder trial.
10. The US Supreme Court upheld the federal government’s authority under a 2006 law to require thousands of sex offenders to register with authorities in the states where they live.
11. The Constitutional Court of Russia ruled that local authorities may not ban public events by simply citing lack of security plan from organizers.

In the News

1. Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the EU, Evgeni Tanchev advised the Court to rule that the new retirement rules for Polish judges are contrary to EU law.
2. The Union Parliament’s Charter Amendment Committee of Myanmar completed reviewing the entire Constitution for possible amendments and will send a report to the Parliament.
3. The New York state legislature passed a bill prohibiting citizens of the state from refusing vaccinations on religious grounds.
4. Indian Prime Minister proposed constitutional amendments to hold simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and state assemblies.
5. The President of Mexico proposed holding a recall referendum on his presidency on March 21, 2021, at the latest.
6. Pakistan will establish a system of 1,016 special courts dedicated to addressing gender-based violence.
7. The Court of Appeals of the United Kingdom found that the government in 2016 illegally sold arms to Saudi Arabia.
8. The date for a referendum on whether or not to extend the vote in presidential elections to Irish citizens living abroad was set for October.
9. The Supreme Court of Colorado found that an initiative to repeal the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (“TABOR”) is a single subject that can be voted on in one referendum.

New Scholarship

1. Tom Ginsburg, Mark D Rosen, and Georg Vanberg (eds), Constitutions in Times of Financial Crisis (2019) (assessing the ability of constitutional orders all over the world to cope with financial crises, and the demands for emergency powers that typically accompany them)
2. Bui Ngoc Son, Economic Constitution of the Developing World, Law and Development Review (introducing a direct concept of the economic constitution with reference to developing countries)
3. Bruce Ackerman, Revolutionary Constitutions: Charismatic Leadership and the Rule of Law (2019) (offering insights into the origins, successes, and threats to revolutionary constitutionalism in case studies of India, South Africa, Italy, France, Poland, Burma, Israel, Iran, and the US)
4. Sanford Levinson and Jack M Balkin, Democracy and Dysfunction (2019) (uncovering the underlying causes of the current crisis of American political life and their meaning for democracy)
5. Neliana Rodean, ‘We, the People’ Entitlement Within Constitutional Change (2019) (examining the “we the people” claims in constitutional change)
6. Ling Li, Political-Legal Order and the Curious Double Character of China’s Courts, 6 Asian Journal of Law and Society (2019) (providing an analytical account of how politics and law in China are organically integrated into the institutional architecture of courts as designed by the Chinese Communist Party)
7. Simon Butt, Judicial Reasoning and Review in the Indonesian Supreme Court, 6 Asian Journal of Law and Society (2019) (describing and criticizing the judicial reasoning of Indonesia’s Supreme Court, through the lens of the Court’s reviews of subnational laws during 2011–17)
8. Cedric Jenart and Mathieu Leloup, Separation of Powers and Alternative Dispute Resolution before the European Court of Human Rights, European Constitutional Law Review (2019) (examining how alternative dispute resolution procedures before the ECtHR impact the separation of powers principle in the contracting states of the Council of Europe)
9. Alec Stone Sweet and Jud Mathews, Proportionality Balancing and Constitutional Governance A Comparative and Global Approach (2019) (examining the law and politics of rights protection in democracies, and in human rights regimes in Europe, the Americas, and Africa)
10. Philip Alston and Nikki Reisch (eds), Tax, Inequality, and Human Rights (2019) (showing how structural biases in the tax regime impact human rights)
11. Arghya Sengupta, Independence and Accountability of the Higher Indian Judiciary (2019) (examining who the judges of the Supreme Court of India are, how they are appointed, transferred and removed, and what they do after retirement)
12. Vito Breda (ed), Legal Transplants in East Asia and Oceania (2019) (providing an overview of methodologies that are conducive to a successful legal transplant in East Asia and Oceania)
13. Abdurrachman Satrio, A Battle Between Two Populists: The 2019 Presidential Election and the Resurgence of Indonesia’s Authoritarian Constitutional Tradition, 19 Australian Journal of Asian Law (2019) (examining the emergence of two major populist candidates with authoritarian tendencies in presidential elections in a country once hailed as the most stable democracy in Southeast Asia)

Call for Papers and Announcements

1. The University of Perugia invites panels and paper proposals for the 2019 Critical Legal Conference that will take place on September 12-14, 2019. The deadline for submission of abstracts is July 15, 2019.
2. The Gujarat National Law University Law and Society Review (GLSR) invites submissions for its second volume in 2019. The deadline for submissions is August 4, 2019.
3. RECONNECT organizes a webinar on “Poland’s Constitutional Breakdown,” a new book by Wojciech Sadurski, to be held on June 25, 2019. You can register for the webinar at this link.
4. Yale Law School invites submissions from PhD candidates and recent graduates from doctoral programs for its Ninth Annual Doctoral Scholarship Conference to be held on November 8-9, 2019. The workshop has four thematic workshops: 1) International Law; 2) Law and Philosophy; 3) Network Theory, Law and Policy; and 4) Public Law and Institutional Design: Assemblies, Executives, Courts, Agencies. The deadline for submissions of abstracts is July 8, 2019.
5. The Law Faculty at Lund University invites applications for the position of a professor in international law and human rights. The deadline for applications is September 12, 2019.
6. The International Journal of Law in Context and the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies (CSLS) at the University of Oxford jointly invite early career scholars to participate in a workshop to be held in Oxford, on September 17-18, 2019. The purpose of this international to support junior researchers in developing research projects and preparing their publications for submission to scholarly journals in the field of socio-legal studies. The deadline for applications is 10 July 2019.
7. The Centre for Advanced Studies in Biomedical Innovation Law (CeBIL), at the Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen invites applications for two doctoral candidates. The closing date for applications is July 15, 2019.

Elsewhere Online

1. Martin Husovec, Why There Is No Due Process Online?, Balkinization
2. Ann Southworth, The Power of Constitutional Frames, Balkinization
3. Noah Feldman, Congress’s Weakness on Tariffs Is Its Own Fault, Bloomberg Opinion
4. David R Cameron, Tory MPs narrow choice of new party leader to Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, Yale MacMillan Center
5. Shubhangi Agarwalla, Decisional Autonomy as Central to Privacy: Reproductive Rights in India, IACL-AIDC Blog
6. Arushi Gupta, Notes from a Foreign Field – Carpenter v USA and Rethinking the Third-Party Doctrine in the Digital Age, Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy
7. Wessel Reijers, How to Make the Perfect Citizen?, Verfassungsblog
8. Albert Chen, A Commentary on the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation (Amendment) Bill 2019, HKU Legal Scholarship Blog
9. Pierre de Vos, A brilliant court victory for LGBT people in Botswana lays the ground for further legal activism, Constitutionally Speaking
10. Tony Wright, Joni Lovenduski, Andrew Gamble and Albert Weale, Rethinking democracy: is our democracy fit for purpose?, The Constitution Unit

Richard Albert (Texas), Tom Ginsburg (Chicago), and David Landau (Florida State) invite friends of I-CONnect to our happy hour at the ICON-S 2019 Annual Conference in Santiago.

All are welcome on Sunday, June 30, from 6:30pm to 8:30pm at Quitral, located within walking distance from the conference venue at this address: Jose Victorino Lastarria 70 – Local 4 – Paseo Lastarria.

Attendees will benefit from a discount of 15 percent off all food and beverages, thanks to the kind help of our colleague Sergio Verdugo (Universidad del Desarrollo).

The I-CONnect editors look forward to seeing you there!

—Richard Albert, William Stamps Farish Professor in Law and Professor of Government, The University of Texas at Austin

In “Five Questions” here at I-CONnect, we invite a public law scholar to answer five questions about her research.

This edition of “Five Questions” features a short video interview with Patricia García Majado, a doctoral candidate in constitutional law at Oviedo University and a Research Fellow at the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities. She has completed research stays at the University of Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne (2017) and at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg (2018). Asked to identify one of her publications to be shared with I-CONnect readers, she chose “40 años de legislación de urgencia,” available for download here.

To nominate someone for a future edition of “Five Questions,” please email contact.iconnect@gmail.com.

–Angélique Devaux, Cheuvreux Notaires, Paris, France, Diplômée notaire, LL.M. Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law

In this weekly feature, I-CONnect publishes a curated reading list of developments in public law. “Developments” may include a selection of links to news, high court decisions, new or recent scholarly books and articles, and blog posts from around the public law blogosphere.

To submit relevant developments for our weekly feature on “What’s New in Public Law,” please email contact.iconnect@gmail.com.

Developments in Constitutional Courts

1. The Constitutional Court of Ecuador approved same-sex marriage in a close 5-4 decision.
2. The Federal Supreme Court of Brazil voted to criminalize homophobic discrimination.
3. The Supreme Court of Israel allowed a Jewish settler organization to lease three church properties in Jerusalem’s Old City.
4. The Constitutional Court of Indonesia hears an appeal in a case to annul presidential election, while protesters gather before the Court building despite a police ban.
5. The European Court of Human Rights published a guide on Article 1 of the Convention’s First Protocol, the protection of property.
6. The Constitutional Court of Spain blocked a Catalan politician from leaving jail to collect his credentials for the European Parliament, to which he was elected on May 26.

In the News

1. The Supreme Court of Kentucky invalidated a constitutional amendment that granted constitutional rights for victims.
2. The Supreme Court of Washington ruled against a florist who refused to provide flowers to a same-sex wedding.
3. The Supreme Court of Alaska ruled unconstitutional the state’s sex offender registry law.
4. The High Court in Botswana found laws criminalizing homosexuality unconstitutional.
5. Moldova has a new Government.
6. The referendum on constitutional amendments on local elections in Ghana will take place on December 29.
7. The Governor of Illinois signed legislation ensuring women’s right to abortion.
8. The Parliament of Albania passed a motion criticizing President Ilir Meta’s decision to cancel municipal elections as unconstitutional.
9. Hong Kong government announced suspension of the controversial extradition bill.

New Scholarship

1. Stefan Voigt, Taking the Rule of Law Seriously – How the EU Could Foster Its Own Values, (2019) (developing a proposal to improve the rule of law in Europe)
2. Giovanni De Gregorio, From Constitutional Freedoms to the Power of the Platforms: Protecting Fundamental Rights Online in the Algorithmic Society, 11 European Journal of Legal Studies (2019) (examining how online platforms affect fundamental rights and proposing solutions to limit the influence of such private powers from a constitutional law perspective)
3. Ana Micaela Alterio, Reactive vs. Structural approach: A public law response to populism, 8 Global constitutionalism (2019) (assessing answers to populism by using the new Latin American Constitutionalism as an example)
4. Federico Fabbrini and Oreste Pollicino, Constitutional Identity in Italy: Institutional Disagreements at a Time of Political Change, in Christian Calliess and Gerhard van der Schyff, Constitutional Identity in a Europe of Multilevel Constitutionalism (forthcoming 2019) (examining the notion of constitutional identity in Italy through the analysis of the discourse and practice of the two key constitutional bodies, the President of the Republic and the Constitutional Court)
5. Francisco Pereira Coutinho and Nuno Piçarra, Portugal: The Impact of European Integration and the Economic Crisis on the Identity of the Constitution, in Anneli Albi and Samo Bardutzky (eds.) National Constitutions in European and Global Governance: Democracy, Rights, the Rule of Law (2019) (analyzing the Portuguese Constitution in light of the European Union)

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. The University of Würzburg invites submissions for an exploratory workshop on “Constitutions of Value,” to be held on December 12-13, 2019. The deadline for abstracts is July 12, 2019.
2. The Law Faculty of Humboldt University Berlin invites applications for a Postdoc position and PhD positions in the new research group established to study “Dynamic Integration – Law in-between Harmonization and Plurality in Europe” (DynamInt).
3. The Maastricht University and the University of Liverpool Research and Development Fund invite submissions for a workshop on “Judicial and extra-judicial challenges in the EU multi-and-cross-level administrative framework,” to be held on July 8-9, 2019 in Brussels.
4. The University of Ottawa invites submissions for its conference on the theme “Public Law: Rights, Duties and Powers,” to be held on June 17-19, 2020 in Ottawa. The deadline for submission of abstracts is September 2, 2019.
5. Loyola University Chicago School of Law invites submissions for its 13th Annual Symposium on Health Law and Policy to be held in Chicago, Illinois on November 15, 2019. The deadline for submission of abstracts is July 1, 2019.
6. The Board of Editors of Trade, Law and Development invites original, unpublished manuscripts for publication in the Winter 2019 Issue of the Journal (Vol. 11, No. 2) in the form of Articles, Notes, Comments and Book Reviews.
7. The European Implementation Network, a hub of European civil society aimed at increasing the timely and effective implementation of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, has launched a call for contributions to create a handbook on the domestic advocacy for implementation of Strasbourg Court judgments.

Elsewhere Online

1. Linda Greenhouse, Who cares about Supreme Court’s legitimacy? The New York Times
2. Idris Fassassi, France: The Yellow vests, the right to Protest and the Conseil Constitutionnel, ConstitutionNet
3. David R. Cameron, Boris Johnson far ahead of others in first ballot of Conservative leadership race, Yale MacMillan Center
4. Johannes Graf von Luckner, German Prosecutors are insufficiently independent to issue European arrest warrants, European Law Blog
5. Richard Ekins, Constitutional lessons from America, the UK Constitutional Law Association
6. Michael Kenny, The English Question – from the margins to the mainstream? Center on Constitutional Change