I·CONnect

–Mohamed Abdelaal, Assistant Professor, Alexandria University Faculty 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 Guatemala rejected two requests for annulment submitted by the executive branch.
2. India’s Supreme Court ruled that women can no longer be barred from entering one of the holiest temples in the country.
3. The International Court of Justice ruled that Bolivia cannot force Chile to grant it access to a portion of the Pacific Ocean.
4. The Spanish Supreme Court upheld a prison conviction against the former International Monetary Fund chief and deputy prime minister of Spain.
5. The Court of Appeal of Quebec ruled that religious dress is to be allowed in the courtroom.
6. The U.S. Supreme Court started to hear arguments in a case regarding whether state and local government employers with less than 20 employees are exempt from the restrictions imposed by the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.
7. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that refusal to run anti-terrorist bus ad is unconstitutional.

In the News

1. In Mexico, Lawmakers submitted a constitutional reform bill for consideration.
2. Former Namibian presidents called for a referendum to amend the Constitution.
3. The Libyan House of Representatives passed a new constitution referendum law.
4. The British Prime Minister announced that new visa restrictions are to be considered.
5. The U.S. administration began implementing new policy regarding denying entry visa to unmarried, same-sex partners of foreign diplomats and employees of the UN.

New Scholarship

1. Oğuz Kaan Pehlivan, Confronting Cyberespionage Under International Law (Routledge 2018) (addressing domestic and international legal tools appropriate to adopt in cases of cyberespionage incidents)
2. Leila Nadya Sadat, Seeking Accountability for the Unlawful Use of Force (Cambridge Univ. Press 2018) (examining the many systems and accountability frameworks which have developed since the Second World War and suggesting new avenues for enhancing accountability structure)
3. Tom Sparks, Protection of Animals through Human Rights: The Case-Law of the European Court of Human Rights, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law & International Law (MPIL) Research Paper No. 2018-21 (discussing the potential of a human rights framework to contribute to the growth and development of global animal law)
4. Thomas H. Lee, The Law of Nations and the Judicial Branch, 106 Georgetown Law Journal (2018) (explaining what the law of nations meant at the time the United States was established and how it interacted with the original U.S. Constitution)
5. Charles Ngwena, “What is Africanness?” Contesting nativism in race, culture and sexualities (Pretoria University Law Press (PULP), 2018) (offering an alternative liberating and decentred understanding of Africa as the land of diverse identifications)
6. Joanna N. Erdman and Brooke R. Johnson Jr., Access to knowledge and the Global Abortion Policies Database, 142 International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics (2018) (arguing how the newly launched Global Abortion Policies Database could help in providing transparency and accountability)
7. Melissa Upreti and Jihan Jacob, The Philippines rolls back advances in postabortion care policy, 142 International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics (2018) (discussing the Philippian postabortion care policy that rolls back crucial safeguards aimed at protecting women who seek medical treatment for postabortion complications from discrimination and abuse)
8. Alyson Zureick, Amber Khan, Angeline Chen and Astrid Reyes, Physicians’ Challenges under El Salvador’s Criminal Abortion Prohibition, 143 International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics 143 (2018) (providing a crucial analysis to Salvador’s criminal abortion law)

Call for Papers and Announcements

1. The Boston College Law School, with support from the Institute for Liberal Arts Submissions are invited from faculty and graduate students for a two-day conference on “Amending America’s Unwritten Constitution,” a timely subject of importance in history, law and politics. Interested scholars should email a CV and abstract no longer than 750 words by November 15, 2018 to tdo@law.utexas.edu on the understanding that the abstract will form the basis of the pre-conference draft to be submitted by April 15, 2019
2. The student chapter of the American Constitution Society at Barry University School of Law and Texas A&M University School of Law are hosting the Fourth Annual Constitutional Law Scholars Forum at the Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law Campus on March 1, 2019.
3. The Wijnhaven Campus of Leiden University invites submissions for a conference under the theme of Global Human Rights at Risk? Challenges, Prospects, and Reforms to be held on June 6-7, 2019.
4. The Jindal Global Law Review (JGLR) is inviting papers for a special issue on Women and Law in South Asia.
5. The Indian Constitutional Law Review welcomes submissions for its new volume.
6. The Católica Law Review has issued a call for submissions for its new volume.
7. The University of Oxford Faculty of Law is seeking a Programme Research Officer who will be responsible for day-to-day management of the Swiss Re-EJF Research Programme on Civil Justice Systems at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies.
8. The Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, advertises one or more positions as Assistant Professor of Law or a closely related research areas.

Elsewhere Online

1. Elisha Kunene, Fill The Court: South Africa’s Constitutional Court and its continuity crisis, DailyMavrick
2. Martín Tanaka, The Drive to Reform Peru’s Judicial and Political System: Opportunistic and Incompatible?, ConstitutionNet
3. Macedonia Referendum: What’s in a Name?, The New York Times
4. M. Trunji, The process of drafting the 1960 Somali Constitution: A short note, ConstitutionNet
5. Ming-Sung Kuo, The Two Faces of Constituent Power, IJCAL
6. Michael Hein, A Constitutional Ban on Same-sex Marriage: Romania is About to Entrench its Homophobic Worldview, Constitution Making & Constitutional Change
7. Scott Bomboy, A tale of two crosses at the Supreme Court, Constitution Daily

–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 Supreme Court of India gave women access to Kerala’s Sabarimala Temple.
2. The Supreme Court of Romania ruled that same-sex couples have the same equal rights to a private and family life as heterosexual couples, only a week before a referendum on prohibiting same-sex marriage is due to be held n October 6-7.
3. The Supreme Court of India ruled that adultery is no longer a crime but can remain a ground for divorce.
4. The Supreme Court of South Africa allowed the private use of marijuana, upholding a lower court’s ruling that found the criminalization of cannabis was unconstitutional.
5. A federal U.S. judge stroke down Kentucky’s abortion restriction.

In the News

1. The European Union sued the State of Poland in the EU’s high court for undermining independence of courts.
2. Mexican lawmakers submitted a bill to reform presidential term referendum.
3. Japan’s Prime Minister has been reelected and hopes to revise the Constitution.
4. Italy passes a decree that will make deporting migrants easier.
5. Bangladesh will consider amending law seen curbing free speech.

New Scholarship

1. Pierre-Emmanuel Dupont, Contested Sovereignty over Land Territory and Maritime Zones in Stress Testing The Law and The Sea, Koninklijke Brill, Nv (2018) (exploring legal issues implicating situations where the issue of maritime entitlement arises with respect to coastal territory over which sovereignty is uncertain or disputed)’
2. Seth F. Kreimer, Still Living After fifty years : A Census of Judicial Review Under the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1968, Rutgers Law Review, Vol. 71, 2019 forthcoming (exploring the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s exercise of judicial review under the 1968 Pennsylvania’s Constitution)
3. Mohamed A. Arafa, A Question to the President of the United States, Donald Trump : Is It a Travel Ban, or a Muslim Ban, or a Travel Muslim Ban ? 5 Revista de Investigações Constitucionais (Journal of Constitutional Research) 2 (Curitiba, Brasil) (Fall 2018) (analysing the constitutionality of Donald Trump’s “travel ban”)
4. Clare Ryan, Europe’s Moral Margin : Parental Aspirations and the European Court of Human Rights, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, Vol. 56, 2018 (challenging the way in which the European Court of Human Rights deploys its doctrine of the “margin of appreciation” in order to defer to sensitive moral and ethical decisions taken by domestic institutions)
5. Lorne Neudorf, Reassessing the Constitutional Foundation of Delegated Legislation in Canada, Dalhousie Law Journal (Forthcoming 2018) (examining the constitutional implications of delegated legislation in Canada and proposing reforms to better safeguard the constitutional role of Parliament).

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. The Centre for the Study of European Contract Law of the University of Amsterdam is offering a PhD position in the field of private law (including private international law). Interested parties can formulate their own research proposal which has to be submitted before 1 October 2018. More information can be found here.
2. Columbia Law School, Georgetown University Law School, Stanford Law School, UCLA School of Law, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Southern California Center for Law, History, and Culture invite submissions for the thirteenth meeting of the Law and Humanities Junior Scholars Workshop, to be held at Penn Law School in Philadelphia, PA, on June 2 and 3, 2019.
3. The ERC project on The Rules of Interpretation of Customary International Law (TRICI-Law project)and the ESIL Interest Group on the Theory and Philosophy of International Law have issued a call for papers for a conference on “The Theory and Philosophy of Customary International Law and Its Interpretation,” which will take place May 24-25, 2019, at the University of Groningen.
4. The Arab Association of Constitutional Law and International IDEA, with the support of the University of Legal and Political Sciences of Tunisia call for papers for the fourth edition of the Arab Association’s Constitutional Academy that will take place in Tunis, Tunisia, from 26 November to 07 December 2017
5. The Boston College Law School, with support from the Institute for Liberal Arts Submissions are invited from faculty and graduate students for a two-day conference on “Amending America’s Unwritten Constitution,” a timely subject of importance in history, law and politics. Interested scholars should email a CV and abstract no longer than 750 words by November 15, 2018 to tdo@law.utexas.edu on the understanding that the abstract will form the basis of the pre-conference draft to be submitted by April 15, 2019
6. The Asian Law Conference calls for papers for its 16th conference that will take place on June 11-12, 2019 at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law.
7. Erasmus School of Law at Rotterdam University under the ERC project ‘Building EU Civil Justice’ calls for papers (poster format) for the conference on Challenge Accepted! Exploring Pathways to Civil Justice in Europe that will takes place on 19-20 November 2018 at Rotterdam University
8. Freie Universität Berlin and Friedrich Schiller University Jena will convene a workshop on the theme of Current Trends in Foreign Relations Lawon May 9-10, 2019.

Elsewhere Online

1. Brent Kendall and Jess Bravin, Supreme Court Opens New Term Without Ninth Justice in Place, The Wall Street Journal
2. A Year Later, Catalonia’s Secession Vote Scars Region, Spain, The New York Times
3. Oliver Garner, Can the United Kingdom unilaterally revolke its article 50 notification to withdraw from the EU ? Wightman v Secretary of State for Dexeu [2018] CSIH 62, European Law Blog
4. Colin Murray, Brexit and the « Constitutional Integrity » of the United Kingdom, UK Constitutional Law Association
5. René Uruena, Transplant Pains : What’s at Stake in Guatemala’s Consitutional Showdown ? Verfassungsblog

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

For two years now, I·CONnect has partnered with the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy to publish an annual Global Review of Constitutional Law. The Global Review offers a detailed but relatively brief overview of constitutional developments and cases around the world over the past calendar year. Thanks to the generosity of the Clough Center, directed by Professor Vlad Perju, we are able to make these reports available to the world for free.

The inaugural 2016 edition, featuring 44 jurisdictions, is available here (ISBN: 978-0-692-92516-4). Our 2017 edition grew to 61 jurisdictions, and is available here (ISBN: 978-0-692-15916-3).

Planning is now underway for the 2018 edition. We have confirmed that the following jurisdictions, listed below, will be covered. We welcome national reports from other jurisdictions. Please contact Simon Drugda by email at simondrugda [at] gmail.com if you would like to produce a report for an uncovered jurisdiction. Please include a weblink to your scholarly or professional profile. Reports for the 2018 edition will be due by February 15, 2019.

We give great thanks to our many distinguished country authors for producing their informative and insightful reports over the past two years, and we look forward to continuing this important initiative for many years to come.

Jurisdictions Confirmed for 2018 Global Review

Call for Papers

Traditional Concepts: New Perspectives, New Challenges
Prague, Czech Republic – 29 March 2019

International Conference on Traditional Concepts: New Perspectives, New Challenges

Faculty of Law, Charles University
Nám. Curieových 7
116 40 Prague 1
Czech Republic

Convened by

Eszter Bodnár
Miluše Kindlová
David Kosař
Jana Ondřejková

The three arguably most important pillars of liberal democracy include: (1) the rule of the people – associated with the majority principle but also with the principle of time-limited government; (2) constitutionalism (especially separation of powers and the independent judiciary) and (3) liberty of an individual and of the society at large as one of the fundamental principles enabling the plurality of life paths. All three pillars can hold, to some extent, different meanings in different societies but their combination and mutual connections provide certain guarantee that those meanings will not deconstruct liberal democracy in a political community as such. However, if any of these pillars significantly changes or weakens, the degree of this guarantee may considerably decrease or even disappear. That such important changes have occurred, was already pointed out during discussions at the successful inaugural conference of the Central and Eastern European Regional Chapter of the International Society of Public Law (ICON-S CEE) in Budapest in April 2018, which addressed the topic ‘The Power of Public Law in the 21^st Century’.

This call for papers aims to follow up our discussions on that topic and aspires to attract scholars reflecting on new perspectives upon traditional concepts built into liberal democracy and on challenges these concepts face in contemporary Europe, including its Central and Eastern countries.

We welcome submissions from scholars of all levels – from senior scholars to doctoral students (especially from the Central and Eastern European region) – on one or more of the following subjects.

1. The people, national identity and citizenship in the age of globalization and regionalization
2. The separation of powers and the role of individual constitutional organs at the national, EU and international level
3. Liberty in the public and private space – new challenges, guarantees and limits

How to Participate

Interested scholars are asked to submit an abstract no longer than 500 words by 15 November 2018 by using this form. Only members of the ICON-S CEE chapter (please find further information here) or other chapters of ICON-S can submit applications. A Conference Selection Committee will choose abstracts and notify all scholars no later than 15 December. Full drafts of papers will be due no later than 15 February 2019. Papers should be no longer than 10,000 words (footnotes included).

Costs

There is no cost to participate at the Conference. Participants are responsible for securing their own funding for travel, lodging and other incidental expenses.

Questions

Please direct inquiries in connection with this Conference to the Organisers at ICONSCEE2019conference@gmail.com.

Sponsors

We are immensely grateful to the Faculty of Law of the Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic) for supporting this Conference.

About the organizing institutions

The initiative to create an International Society of Public Law emerged from the Editorial Board of I·CON – the International Journal of Constitutional Law. The Society was officially launched at an Inaugural Conference to take place in Florence, Italy, on June 26-28, 2014.

The successful format of the Inaugural Conference has been replicated in the Annual meetings, held in New York (2015), Berlin (2016), Copenhagen (2017) and Hong-Kong (2018).

Such events both favoured the growth of the Society – which counts over 1.000 active members – and the establishment of regional and national chapters. ICON-S invites all interested scholars and practitioners – from both law and the social sciences – to formally become Members of the new society. The Society will hold its 2019 Annual Conference on July 1-3, 2019 in Santiago de Chile. The ICON-S Central and Eastern European Chapter was established in April 2018 in Budapest. Its mission is to promote the values of ICON-S, and, in particular, the commitment to an interdisciplinary approach to public law that engages constitutional, European, administrative and international law scholars and practitioners so as to better understand global and transnational legal developments.

Charles University, Czech Republic, is one of the oldest European universities, founded in 1348. The Faculty of Law belongs to its original faculties and regularly features as one of the best rated law faculties in the Czech Republic. The faculty collaborates with a broad spectrum of foreign law schools and is involved in many research and educational projects on both national and international levels.

About the Conveners

Eszter Bodnár

Eszter Bodnár has been an assistant professor at the Faculty of Law of University Eötvös Loránd (ELTE) in Budapest, Hungary since 2013. She is also a faculty member in the Master of Electoral Policy and Administration program of Scoula Sant’Anna, Pisa. In the last years, she has been teaching and researching in Canada, Germany, France, the United States, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Italy, Romania, and Australia. She graduated as a lawyer and worked at the Department of Constitutional Law in the Hungarian Ministry of Justice, and in the Hungarian National Election Office. She obtained her PhD degree in constitutional law at ELTE in 2013 with her thesis on the fundamental right attributes and restrictions of the right to vote that was published in Hungarian (HVG-Orac, 2014). In the year 2017/18, she was a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Victoria, Canada. In November 2017, she was a Kathleen Fitzpatrick Visiting Fellow in Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Melbourne. Her research interest is in comparative constitutional law, international human rights, and European constitutional law. She is an inaugural co-chair of the ICON-S Central and Eastern European chapter.

Miluše Kindlová

Miluše Kindlová has been a senior lecturer at the Department of Constitutional Law at the Faculty of Law, Charles University in Prague, since 2007 and a legal assistant at the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic since 2017. Between 2012 and 2017 she was a junior member of the UNCE – Human Rights Research Centre at the Faculty of Law. Currently she participates in the research project ‘The Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic: The Guardian of the Constitution Above Politics, or in Politics?’ supported by the Czech Science Foundation. Her main research interests include issues of the separation of powers, human rights, citizenship and national identity.

David Kosař

David Kosař is the Director of the Judicial Studies Institute at Masaryk University Faculty of Law. He was awarded a European Research Council Starting Grant to investigate ‘The rise of judicial self-government and repercussions for separation of powers’ (2016-2021). His areas of research include various aspects of constitutional law and politics, judicial studies, transitional justice, human rights law, and constitutional theory. His latest book ‘Perils of Judicial Self-Government in Transitional Societies’ (CUP, 2016) was awarded the 2018 Canada Prize by the International Academy of Comparative Law for the best monograph in comparative law. His recent publications appeared in the American Journal of Intl. Law | Intl. Journal of Const. Law | European Const. Law Review | European Journal of Intl. Law | German Law Journal | Hague Journal of the Rule of Law | Utrecht Law Review. He is member of the Council of ICON-S and an inaugural co-chair of the ICON-S Central and Eastern European chapter.

Jana Ondřejková

Jana Ondřejková is a senior lecturer at the Department of Political Science and Sociology at the Faculty of Law, Charles University in Prague. Since 2012 she is a junior member of the UNCE – Human Rights Research Centre at the Faculty of Law. She earned her Ph.D. in legal theory in 2011. In 2015 and 2016 she coordinated students’ research projects and since 2017 she is a head of a research project entitled ‘The Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic: The Guardian of the Constitution Above Politics, or in Politics?’ supported by the Czech Science Foundation. Her research topics include the political context of judicial power, institutional aspects of EU constitutional law, constitutional pluralism and interrelations between law and politics in general.

–Lorenzo Casini and Rosalind Dixon, Co-Presidents, ICON-S

To the ICON-S Community:

The state of the Society is strong, and a major reason why is our active and engaged membership.

We are pleased to announce plans to continue renewing the Society’s Council with an infusion of new members directly elected by our membership. The 2018 ICON-S Council elections will follow our inaugural elections held last year in 2017, when the Society’s membership elected eight (8) new Council members.

This year we will invite the membership to elect six (6) new Council members, each to serve a three-year non-renewable term.

The 2018 ICON-S Council elections will proceed in two phases: first, nomination; and second, election.

We are writing now to invite you to nominate suitable candidates for Council membership. Membership on the Council is a position of high distinction, entailing responsibility for the intellectual guidance of the Society, advising the Executive Committee, and representing the interests of the membership.

More information about the Society’s governing bodies, including the existing membership of the Council can be viewed here: https://icon-society.org/governance.

Nominations should be submitted via email to ICON-S at the following email address no later than October 25, 2018, 10pm GMT: icons@icon-society.org.

Nominations should include the nominee’s name, academic title, institutional affiliation, history of participation in and involvement with ICON-S, and a weblink to a CV or profile. Self-nominations are welcome.

Nominations will be reviewed by the Executive Committee by November 5, 2018, and the names selected will then be submitted to the entire membership of the Society for electronic voting.

Elections will be held online from December 1, 2018 to December 11, 2018, following the same electoral procedure used in 2017:

1. Voting will open to the entire ICON-S membership on December 1, 2018 at 12pm GMT and will close on December 11, 2018 at 10pm GMT.
2. Each member of the Society may vote only once for up to six (6) of the candidates on the list of candidates.
3. To promote regional diversity consistent with the Society’s mission to be open to all, each member may vote for up to but no more than two (2) candidates from institutions based in the same country.
4. To promote balanced gender composition consistent with the Society’s recognition of the importance of diversity—a principle approved by the Executive Committee and Council at the 2016 annual meeting—each member may vote for up to but no more than three (3) candidates of each gender.
5. Any vote inconsistent with any of these conditions will be void.
6. Following the voting period, the list of successful candidates will be approved by the Society’s Executive Committee, and the results will be announced shortly thereafter.

We thank you for your enthusiastic support of the Society, and we look forward to continuing to build the Society consistent with our mission.