I·CONnect

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

I-CONnect is pleased to share a special 35% discount code for our readers interested in a new book entitled Constitutional Reform of National Legislatures: Bicameralism under Pressure (Edward Elgar, 2019), edited by Richard Albert (Texas), Antonia Baraggia (Milan), and Cristina Fasone (LUISS).

To order this book at the discount rate, enter code RALB35 at checkout here.

Here is the book’s description:

What makes bicameral reform so difficult? Why choose bicameralism over unicameralism? What are the constitutional values of bicameralism? This innovative book addresses these questions and many more from comparative, doctrinal, empirical, historical and theoretical perspectives.

Featuring contributions from leading and emerging scholars in the field, this book provides a timely account of the tensions between bicameralism and its reform, demonstrating for the first time how this relates to the protection of liberal democracy and the rule of law. Contributors analyse the pressures that contemporary constitutional politics exert on bicameralism in an array of countries and legal systems, including the complex relationships between the EU and national second chambers.

And here are the contents of the volume:

Foreword

Bicameralism in an Age of Populism
Meg Russell

Introduction

1. The Challenge of Reforming Bicameralism
Richard Albert, Antonia Baraggia and Cristina Fasone

Part I–Theories and Challenges to Bicameralism: Multi-tiered Government Systems and the EU

2. Bicameralism. Multiple Theoretical Roots in Diverging Practices
Maria Romaniello

3. ‘Visible’ and ‘Invisible’ Second Chambers in Unitary States. ‘Territorialising’ National Legislatures in Italy and the United Kingdom
Barbara Guastaferro

4. How Does the European Union Challenge Bicameralism? Lessons from the Italian Case
Pietro Faraguna

5. The Scrutiny of EU Documents in Bicameral System. Opportunity or Weakness?
Wouter Wolfs and Caterina Cigala

6. The House of Lords faces up to Brexit
Peter Leyland

7. Bicameralism in Multi-tiered Systems
Patricia Popelier

Part II–Challenging Unicameralism

8. The Shadow of Bicameralism in a Unicameral State: Dispersed Functional Bicameralism in Bulgaria?
Mihail Vatsov and Polina Vakleva

9. Defending Bicameralism and Equalizing Powers: the Case of Peru
Diego Serra

10. The Failed Referendum to Abolish the Ireland’s Senate: Rejecting Unicameralism in a Small and Relatively Homogenous Country
David Kenny

11. Unicameralism and “Masked” Bicameralism
Cristina Fasone

Part III–Reforming or Abolishing the Upper House?

12. The Sénat Français of the Fifth Republic: The Permanent Paradox
Priscilla Jensel Monge

13. The Future of Poland’s Second Chamber: Is the Senate Still Needed?
Katarzyna Granat

14. Reshaping the National Council of the Republic of Slovenia
Dušan Štrus

15. Bicameralism(s) in the Age of Ethnicity: Prospects for Reform of Legislatures in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Nedim Kulenović

16. Bicameralism As a Normative Choice In the Tension Between Its Reform and Its Passing
Giovanni Piccirilli

Conclusion

What Are We To Make of Bicameralism in the Twentieth-First Century? The Reform Trap
Cristina Fasone

–Nausica Palazzo, Lecturer in Public Law, Bocconi University

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. UK Supreme Court is to rule next week on Parliament shutdown.
2. The Court of Justice of the EU started hearing Apple and Ireland’s appeal against the EU Commission’s 14 billion tax bill.
3. Romania’s Constitutional Court ruled that the President of the Republic must accept the nominations of interim ministers by PM Dancila, as within the PM’s prerogatives.
4. Turkey Constitutional Court ruled that the broadcast ban on news related to the criminal investigation against former ministers violates freedom of press.
5. The Constitutional Court of Thailand dismissed a constitutional challenge against the PM for his failure to recite the full oath, especially the sentence whereby he commits himself to abide by the constitution.
6. The Nelson Mandela Foundation lodged a constitutional complaint against AfriForum’s “provocative” tweet of an apartheid flag, whose display constitutes hate speech following last week’s Equality Court’s decision.
7. The Constitutional Court of Jordan ruled that a contract entered by a national company and Israel does not require parliamentary approval.
8. The Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that parents cannot use corporal punishment at home.
9. Zimbabwe’s law on the functioning of the Constitutional Court, implementing the 2013 constitution, goes into effect.
10. The President of Albania explains to the Venice Commission the reasons for the 18 months long inactivity of the Constitutional Court.

In the News

1. Turkey, Russia and Iran announced that an agreement on the committee that will rewrite Syria’s constitution was reached.
2. Algeria’s interim president called the presidential elections with a view to overcoming the political crisis.
3. The ICC prosecutor appealed the ICC’s decision to acquit former Ivory Coast president, accused of starting a civil war after losing the elections. Notice of appeal here.
4. An Armenian court rejects former President Kocharian’s motion to end pretrial detention.
5. Former Italy’s PM Renzi formed a breakaway party, thereby potentially engendering the stability of the new coalition government.
6. Liberia’s President endorses a war crimes court to investigate the crimes committed during Liberia’s civil wars.
7. The US sued Snowden for breaking non-disclosure agreement with CIA and NSA when writing his book.
8. New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern introduced a bill to strengthen the nation’s gun laws, after the Christchurch attacks.
9. A US same-sex couple sued the US State Department for treating them as “unmarried” thereby denying their child, born in Canada through surrogacy, US citizenship.

New Scholarship

1. Antonina Bakardjieva Engelbrekt, Xavier Groussot, The Future of Europe: Political and Legal Integration Beyond Brexit (Hart Publishing, 2019) (addressing the institutional challenges ahead for the European Union, with a special focus on rule of law and security)
2. Alysia Blackham, Miriam Kullmann, Ania Zbyszewska, Theorising Labour Law in a Changing World: Towards Inclusive Labour Law (Hart Publishing, 2019) (providing a more inclusive theory of labor law by bringing together various disciplines, including industrial relations, political economy, gender studies and regulatory theory)
3. Ingrid V. Eagly, The Movement to Decriminalize Border Crossing, 61 Boston College Law Review (forthcoming) (exploring the growing resistance to border criminalization in the United States and the proposed reforms that would reconstitute border crossing as a civil violation of immigration law)
4. Laura M. Henderson, The Promise and Peril of Designing a Radical Democratic Populism, in Ingeborg van der Geest, Henrike Jansen & Bart van Klink (eds.), Vox Populi: Populism as a Rhetorical and Democratic Challenge (Edgar Elgar, forthcoming) (analyzing radical democracy’s turn to a populist rhetorical strategy, and what populist politics should do to be compatible with radical democracy)
5. Andras Jakab, What Can Constitutional Law Do Against the Erosion of Democracy and the Rule of Law? On the Interconnectedness of the Protection of Democracy and the Rule of Law Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law & International Law (MPIL) Research Paper No. 2019-15. (presenting a list of tips and tricks on how to stop the populist tide through constitutional law)
6. Zachary Kramer, Outsiders: Why Difference is the Future of Civil Rights (Oxford University Press, 2019) (advancing two proposals to align civil rights law to increasingly individualized forms of discrimination)
7. Lorne Neudorf, Separating Powers through the Constitution: A Comparison of India and Australia (2019) (examining the separation of powers in India and Australia to better understand the idea of separating powers more generally, especially in relation to how it takes shape and operates in different legal systems)
8. Lewis D. Sargentich, Liberal Legality: A Unified Theory of our Law (Cambridge University Press, 2019) (exploring what rule-based law and policy-based law have in common and proposing a novel conception of the rule of law based on a commitment to what the Author calls “liberal legality”)

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. The Constitution Unit set up a Working Group on unification referendums on the Island of Ireland examining how any future referendum on Northern Ireland’s status would be conducted. The members of the Working Group are keen to hear from anyone with views on the matters they are examining.
2. UCD Sutherland School of Law is seeking one post-doctoral fellow and six PhD students for a forthcoming European Research Council-funded project on the socio-political factors leading to populism in selected case studies. The deadline for the post-doc position is September 27, 2019. The deadline for PhD positions Oct. 1, 2019.
3. Emory University School of Law seeks to fill a named professorship in international law beginning in the 2020-2021 academic year. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis.
4. European University Institute seeks to hire a Director for its School of Transnational Governance (deadline for receipt of applications: October 30, 2019) and chairs in transnational governance (deadline for receipt of applications: October 28, 2019).
5. The Touro College, Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center is seeking applicants for two tenure-track appointments to its full-time faculty starting in August 2020. Subject areas of particular interest include Constitutional Law, Evidence, Property, and Torts. The application must be submitted here.
6. The Common Market Law Review invites scholars to attend the conference “A Cultural and Identity-related Shift in European Union Law?”, to be held on October 11, 2019 in Paris. The conference program can be found here.
7. The Federalist Society launched this year’s Article I Initiative Writing Contest on the on Nondelegation Doctrine in the United States. The contest is open to individuals under age 40. Entries must be received on or before Monday, January 7, 2020.
8. The editor of the book “Personal Data Protection and Legal Developments in the European Union” (Maria Tzanou) issued a call for chapters. The book will be published by IGI Global, an international publisher of progressive academic research. The deadline to submit chapter proposals is October 18, 2019.

Elsewhere Online

1. Brian Christopher Jones, Panel Numbers: From “Court Packing” to “Institution Building”, UK Constitutional Law Blog
2. Sepideh Afshar, Bill 21: Impractical on paper and in practice, The McGill Tribune
3. Supreme Court challenge over Boris Johnson’s suspension of parliament, Channel 4 News on Youtube
4. Mike Eckel, Change the Russian Constitution? Might Be a Good Idea, Says Putin Confidant, Radio Free Europe
5. Erik Røsæg, Maritime rescue operations in the Mediterranean, PluriCourts Blog
6. Makena Kelly, Facebook’s ‘Supreme Court’ can overrule Zuckerberg, per new charter, The Verge
7. Tom Hals, Kristina Cooke, Explainer: U.S. enacts sweeping new asylum bar following Supreme Court decision, Reuters
8. Kees Sterk, Frans van Dijk, Protecting the Independence of National Councils of the Judiciary on the EU Level, Verfassungsblog
9. Tomiwa Ilori, A human rights approach to internet taxes in Africa, AfricLaw
10. Alexandra Tomaselli & L. Mariana Olvera Colin, What’s next to preserve the linguistic richness of Indigenous Peoples?, Völkerrechtsblog
11. Andrea McArdle, The Fair Housing Act in the Trump Era: A Proposed Agency Rule Will Seriously Dilute Disparate-Impact Liability, OxHRH Blog
12. Estera Flieger, The populist rewriting of Polish history is a warning to us all, The Guardian
13. Maria Chr. Alvanou, 9/11 Trials Will Shape Global Terrorism, Jurist

—Gaurav Mukherjee, S.J.D. Candidate in Comparative Constitutional Law, Central European University, Budapest

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 European Court of Human Rights issued notice to the government of Poland on the basis of a complaint brought by an applicant company about the appointment of one judge in particular to the Constitutional Court which examined its case, and is now the second application to be communicated to the Government of Poland raising an issue related to changes in the judiciary. Communication available here.
2. The Jammu and Kashmir People’s Conference filed a plea, one of many brought by political parties from the region, in the Supreme Court of India challenging the constitutionality of the Union Government’s abrogation of provisions in the Indian Constitution which guaranteed Jammu and Kashmir autonomy.
3. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Trump administration may enforce new rules that generally forbid asylum applications from migrants who have traveled through another country on their way to the United States without being denied asylum in that country. Order available here.
4. The First Division, Inner House, Court of Session of Scotland ruled that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament was unlawful. Judgment here.
5. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has made Zukisa Tshiqi and Steven Majiedt his first appointments to the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
6. The High Court of Kenya ruled that a high school in Nairobi had violated the petitioner’s constitutional right to freedom of religion by asking her to shave her dreadlocks, which she claimed was required by her Rastafarian faith.
7. The Constitutional Court of Zambia adjourned the hearing of an application by the Law Association of Zambia for an injunction to prevent Parliament from proceeding to receive submissions and debate a set of controversial amendments to the Constitution. 
8. The Supreme Court of India agreed to hear public interest litigation seeking directions to set up community kitchens in order to address reports of increasing deaths across the country on account of malnutrition.

In the News

1. The Equality Court of South Africa held that the gratuitous display of the country’s apartheid era flag constitutes, inter alia, ‘hate speech’ and ‘harassment’ as understood in the provisions of the Equality Act, 2000. Judgment here.
2. The Advocate General advised the Supreme Court of the Netherlands to uphold the Hague Court of Appeal’s 2015 decision in the Urgenda case where it concluded that by failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25% by end-2020, the Dutch government had acting unlawfully in contravention of its duty of care under Articles 2 and 8 of the ECHR. Commentary on the 2015 case can be found here.
3. The High Court of Belfast dismissed claims that a no-deal Brexit and the imposition of a hard border would damage the Northern Ireland peace process.
4. A judge of the Quebec Superior Court struck down a clause that required patients’ natural deaths to be “reasonably foreseeable” in a federal assisted-dying law the as unconstitutional.
5. The Lower House in Myanmar rejected a motion to sign the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) arguing that it might endanger national security.
6. The Parliament of Ukraine passed legislation that allows a sitting president to be impeached if they break the law.
7. The government in Zambia is set to go ahead with a set of changes to the constitution which, among others, could remove parliament’s oversight over debt.

New Scholarship

1. Ciara Fitzpatrick, Gráinne McKeever &Mark Simpson, Conditionality, discretion and TH Marshall’s ‘right to welfare’ 42(2) Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law 1 (2019) (using empirical findings to illustrate the lack of fulfilment of social rights in the UK).
2. Tarunabh Khaitan, Political insurance for the (relative) poor: How liberal constitutionalism could resist plutocracy, Global Constitutionalism (2019) (sketching the salience of gross economic inequality to modern constitutional and political theory and suggesting a set of legal and political constitutional measures to address it.)
3. Stephan Stohler, Reconstructing Rights: Courts, Parties, and Equality Rights in India, South Africa, and the United States (2019) (drawing on legislative debates, legal briefs, and judicial opinions from High Courts in India, South Africa, and the United States to develop a theory of the judicial role in equality cases).
4. Dragoljub Popovic, Comparative Government (2019) (providing a comparative study of decision-making mechanisms and lines of evolution, as well as parliamentary, presidential, semi-presidential, power sharing and supra-national level forms of government).
5. Massimo La Torre, Leone Niglia, and Mart Susi (eds.), The Quest for Rights: Ideal and Normative Dimensions (2019) (bringing together a group of scholars explore the salience of the work of Robert Alexy in areas like the use of proportionality in conflicts of rights and the normativity of human rights).
6. Maria Mousmouti, Designing Effective Legislation (2019) (advancing the idea that legislative effectiveness is the result of complex ‘mechanics’ in the conceptualization, design and drafting of four elements inherent in every law: purpose, content, context and result).
7. W. Gregory Voss, Obstacles to Transatlantic Harmonization of Data Privacy Law in Context, 2 Journal of Law, Technology and Policy (2019) (discussing the challenges in the creation of a harmonized data privacy law in the United States and Europe).
8. Alin Fumurescu, Compromise and the American Founding: The Quest for the People’s Two Bodies (2019) (discussing the analytic categories of the ‘people’ and ‘compromise’ as understood in seventeenth-century England and France, and providing an account of their salience during key moments of the founding of the United States.)
9. Roberto Gargarella, Review of Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq, How to Save a Constitutional Democracy, 44 Revista Derecho del Estado (2019) (reviewing and providing critical analysis of the volume by Ginsburg and Huq).
10. Maxime St-Hilaire et Joanna Baron, Introductory Essay: The Rule of Law as the Rule of Artificial Reason, 92 Supreme Court Law Review (2019) (reviews several theories of the rule of law, and drawing attention to the role of the legal profession, particularly judges, in sustaining the values of legality and the rule of law)

Call for Papers and Announcements

1. The Rehnquist Center at the University of Arizona invites abstracts the third annual National Conference of Constitutional Law Scholars on March 20-21, 2020 by emailing 1- or 2-page abstracts to Andrew Coan (acoan@email.arizona.edu) by 1 October 2019.
2. Democracy Reporting International invites scholars in the field of the rule of law in the EU to contribute to its pool of experts who can contribute to research and drafting analytical pieces on rule of law-related issues in EU members states.
3. The Hungarian Helsinki Committee released a report on the deteriorating rule of law situation in Hungary, with a focus on areas like the undermining of the independence of the judiciary and curbing of media freedoms.
4. The Faculty of Law McGill University invites applications for the 2020 O’Brien Graduate Fellowships.
5. The Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat in Muenchen invites applications for 15 LMU Research Fellowships for outstanding early career researchers.
6. The Centre for International Law at the National University of Singapore invites applications for a Research Associate to join its International Dispute and Resolution Programme.
7. The International Center for Law and Religion Studies at the Brigham Young Law School invites abstracts for a project (culminating in a workshop) titled Human Dignity and Human Rights – Christian Perspectives and Practices: A Focus on Constitutional and International Law.

Elsewhere Online

1. Tarunabh Khaitan, On Coups, Constitutional Shamelessness, and Lingchi, UK Constitutional Law Blog
2. Aziz Huq, Judicial Norms and Judicial Capacity, Balkinization
3. Nic Cheeseman, Lungu erodes Zambia’s democracy, Mail & Guardian
4. Timothy Endicott, Don’t Panic, UK Constitutional Law Blog
5. V. Venkatesan, Petitions challenging abrogation of Article 370: Apex court on test, Frontline
6. James C. Hathaway, Acquiescing in Refoulement, Verfassungsblog
7. Paul Craig, Prorogation: Three Assumptions, Oxford Human Rights Hub Blog
8. Alan Greene, Miller 2, Non-justiciability and the Danger of Legal Black Holes, UK Constitutional Law Blog
9. Corey Robin, Clarence Thomas’s Radical Vision of Race, The New Yorker
10. Gautam Bhatia, The Absentee Constitutional Court, The Hindu
11. Ibrahim AL-bakri Nyei, Liberia’s long-awaited constitutional referendum: Debate on alternatives to by-elections, ConstitutionNet
12. Cem Tecimer, Recognizing Court-Packing, Verfassungsblog
13. Franny Rabkin, Why Justice Stevan Majiedt aspires to be like Pius Langa, Mail & Guardian
14. Kriszta Kovács and Gábor Attila Tóth, The Age of Constitutional Barbarism, Verfassungsblog
15. Simona Florescu, The importance of time in child protection decisions; a commentary on Haddad v Spain, Strasbourg Observers
16. Garrett Epps, The Supreme Court Is Not Well. And the People Know It, The Atlantic
17. Robert Hazell and Nabila Roukhamieh-Mckinna, In defence of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, The Constitution Unit
18. David R. Cameron, After passage of Benn bill and Johnson’s sixth defeat, House of Commons is prorogued, Yale MacMillan Centre
19. Han-Ru Zhou, Ford and Irwin Toy 30 Years Later: A Conversation with Justice de Montigny, Constitutional Forum