What’s New in Public Law

–Kushagr Bakshi, SJD Candidate (University of Michigan) and Sarthak Gupta, Judicial Law Clerk (Supreme Court of India)

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 iconnecteditors@gmail.com.

Developments in Constitutional Courts

1. The Indian Supreme Court struck down the Indian Army’s policy reserving more JAG posts for men and capping women’s appointments, directing gender-neutral recruitment based on a common merit list and ordering the induction of the petitioner who was denied selection despite higher merit.
2. The Portuguese Constitutional Court struck down parts of a new immigration law, ruling that restrictions on family reunification and limits on appeals violated constitutional rights under Articles 36 and 20 of the Portuguese Constitution.
3. The UK High Court dismissed the Wikimedia Foundation’s challenge to the Online Safety Act, finding no sufficient grounds to contest duties imposed on sites like Wikipedia and clarifying that Ofcom and the government must still protect Wikipedia’s operations.
4. The Kosovo Constitutional Court ordered the Assembly to elect a new speaker within 30 days via open vote, limiting any candidate to three nominations, after months of deadlock since the February 2025 elections.

In the News

1. The Texas Senate passed a contested redistricting map (S.B. No. 4) 19-2, potentially adding five Republican seats in the U.S. House if approved by both chambers and signed by Governor Greg Abbott.
2. The US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) can access sensitive federal data of millions of Americans, overturning a prior temporary injunction.
3. The UK Ministry of Justice announced that, under the Labor Government’s “Plan for Change,” foreign nationals convicted in court will face immediate deportation, excluding those serving life sentences.
4. The ICC unsealed an arrest warrant for a Libyan militia officer accused of war crimes, including murder, torture, and outrages upon personal dignity, committed during a non-international armed conflict.
5. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to block a Mississippi law requiring social media users to verify their age and minors to have parental consent, rejecting a request by industry group NetChoice, which argues the law violates free speech rights.
6. Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa led a march against the Constitutional Court’s suspension of parts of new security laws, drawing criticism for allegedly pressuring the judiciary and undermining its independence.
7. Thai PM Paetongtarn Shinawatra will call five expert witnesses on August 21 to defend herself in a Constitutional Court case over a leaked audio with Cambodian leader Hun Sen, with a verdict due August 29 amid fears of another constitutional crisis.

New Scholarship

1. Or Bassok, The Gods of the Constitution, in From Kant to Kelsen: Democracy, Education, Peace (Francesco Di Donato, Sara Lagi, Flavio Silvestrini eds., Napoli, E.S., forthcoming) (arguing that Kelsen’s reliance on the story of Jesus’s trial was aimed to offer not only an explanation for rejecting eternity clauses but also for objecting to secular religions).
2. Sherif Girgis, The Abuses of History in Constitutional Interpretation University of Pennsylvania Law Review Volume No. 173 (critiquing Jack Balkin’s Memory and Authority for blurring description and prescription in its account of history’s role in constitutional law, contrasting Balkin’s “living originalism” with thick originalism and probing the underlying visions of constitutional purpose that shape this debate).
3. Michael Velchik, Law As A Function Of Time, New York University Journal of Law & Liberty Volume No. 8 (arguing that even within originalism, laws can and sometimes must change in application over time, using constitutional examples and a mathematical framework, drawing on set theory, to explain explicit and implicit time-dependent legal variations).
4. Dr Khalid Wasim, and others, Identity, Dispossession and Resilience of the SubAltern: A Study of Marginalised Communities in Kashmir, Routledge, 2025 (examining marginality and ‘othering’ of subaltern groups in Kashmir based on caste, ethnicity, language, or citizenship, exploring identity formation and belonging of communities such as Pashtuns, Sheikhs, Hanjis, and Tibetan Kashmiri Muslims; combines theoretical debates on identity and dispossession with empirical cases on caste, ethnicity, nationalism, and resilience).
5. Sagnik Dutta and Suruchi Mazumdar, Our data, ourselves: Participation, justice, and alternative futures of data sovereignty in India, in Big Data & Society, 2025 (examining how Indian civil society actors and digital rights activists resist data colonialism by advancing grassroots, accountability-focused notions of data sovereignty that challenge state-centric and neocolonial approaches).
6. Arifur Rahman, Birangonas, Gender and Transitional Justice in Bangladesh, International Journal of Transitional Justice (examining the postconflict treatment of women who survived sexual violence during the 1971 war through a critical feminist lens, highlighting how legal and societal responses remain shaped by gender stereotypes and prejudices).
7. Dennis Wieboldt III, Ideas With(out) Consequences?: The Natural Law Institute and the Making of Conservative Constitutionalism During the Cold War, 1947-51 in the Law and History Review (examining conservative constitutional interpretive theories prior to originalism to uncover the use of natural law by conservative scholars).
8. Rory Gillis, Federalism and Vertical Tax Competition, The American Journal of Comparative Law (comparing historical trajectory of the division of shared tax bases in the U.S., Switzerland, Canada and Australia to argue that vertical tax competition has a centralizing tendency).

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. The International Association of Water Law (AIDA) invites abstracts for the 2026 World Water Law Congress on “Water Law and Governance in Times of Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss,” to be held 24–26 June 2026 at the University of Oslo, Norway. Abstracts are due 31 October 2025 (portal opens 1 September 2025).
2. The Centre for Constitutions in Context will host its Inaugural Lecture, “Context in Comparative Constitutional Law,” by Jill Cottrell Ghai on 16 September 2025 at 2 pm BST via MS Teams. Register via Eventbrite.
3. The Future of Free Speech, with Örebro University and supported by the Swedish Postcode Lottery Foundation, invites participation in a roundtable on “Generative AI and Freedom of Expression: Challenges and Policy Pathways” on 1 December 2025 in Örebro, Sweden, as part of a two-year project examining censorship practices and policy solutions grounded in international human rights law. [See here]
4. Oxford Dharma Conference 2025 invites papers on the intersections of Dharma, conceived as ethics, law, justice, ritual, and social norms, with law, economics, civilisation, and social leadership. Deadline for abstracts is August 15, 2025; notifications of acceptance by August 20, 2025; final papers due by September 10, 2025. Details are here.
5. The interdisciplinary DFG-funded network Law in the Anthropocene invites submissions for a workshop on ‘Reconsidering Legal Subjectivity in and Through the Anthropocene’ to be held on November 27-28, 2025. Abstracts are due by August 31, 2025. More details can be found here.

Elsewhere Online

1. Joseph Marko, A Fallen Curtain and Open Questions,  (Verfassungsblog, 11 August 2025)
2. Lorenzo Acconciamessa, The Notion of “Shared Responsibility” and its Radical Impact on the Relationships Between the ECHR and the Domestic Authorities, (Strasbourg Observers, 12 August 2025)
3. Itamar Mann, Occupation as Euphemism (Verfassungsblog, 12 August 2025)
4. Niyati Pandey and Anamika Shukla, Conceptualising Data Commodification & Legal Categorisation in The Indian Legal System (Vidhi Center for Legal Policy, 12 August 2025)
5. Amy Howe, Will the Supreme Court revisit its ruling on same-sex marriage? (SCOTUS Blog, 13 August 2025)
6. Vijay K. Tiwari and Kalpana Kannabiran, Divyang, ‘Sitaare Zameen Par’ and the constitutional lives of the disabled, (SCO Observer, 14 August 2025)
7. Cathi Albertyn, Weaponising Gender in South Africa’s Chief Justice Appointment (Verfassungsblog, 14 August 2025)
8. Gokul and Adithi, The Truth and Nothing But the Truth? The Constitutional Ghost of J&K’s Truth & Reconciliation Commission (Law and Other Things, 10 August 2025)
9. Ephraim Mkali Banda, Malawi’s Constitution protects the vice president from presidential dismissal (Malawi 24, 14 August, 2025)
10. Clifford Ando, The Crisis of the University Started Long Before Trump (Compact, August 14, 2025)