What’s New in Comparative Law

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—Amir Cahane, PhD student, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

—Carolina Gomide de Araujo, Master’s student, University of São Paulo

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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. Brazil’s Supreme Court Convicts first rioter who stormed capital in January 8th to 17 years in prison
2. Supreme Court of India to re-examine 1998 verdict that granted politicians immunity in bribe-for-vote
3. Israeli Knesset Speaker suggests setting up a ‘constitutional court’ to bypass judicial oversight by the Israeli Supreme Court
4. A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court of India will hear a batch of cases challenging reserved politcal positions for Scheduled Castes(SCs) and Scheduled Tribes(STs) in the lower house of India’s Parliament and State Legislative Assemblies
5. New York Supreme Court ruled that the New York State Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government violates the State Constitution due to its statutorily prescribed independence.

In the News

1. Nigeria’s presidential election result challenged at Supreme Court. Nigeria’s two main opposition leaders on Tuesday (Sep 19) filed separate appeals at the Supreme Court challenging a tribunal ruling that earlier this month upheld President Bola Tinubu’s victory in a disputed February election.
2. The Supreme Court temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that would restrict the Biden administration’s contact with social media companies.
3. UK’s Online Safety Bill finally passed by parliament
4. Moldovan Constitutional Court Bans Fugitive Oligarch’s Party from Polls
5. Kenya Supreme Court upheld decision ordering the government to register the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (NGLHRC) as an NGO.

New Scholarship

1. Maja Sahadžić, Marjan Kos, Jaka Kukavica, Jakob Gašperin Wischhoff, Julian Scholtes. Accommodating Diversity in Multilevel Constitutional Orders. Legal Mechanisms of Divergence and Convergence (offering insights into the legal mechanisms adopted in multilevel constitutional orders to accommodate the tension between contrasting interests of diversity and unity and the converging or diverging effects they may have on the functioning of multilevel constitutional order by focusing on the European experience but also drawing insights from other jurisdictions)
2. Araujo, Carolina. Digital Constitutional Courts (seeking to understand how the Brazilian Supreme Court is using technology in its decision-making process)
3. Mygatt-Tauber, Alan, Our Extraterritorial Constitution: A Theory Proposed (providing a new test for courts to use to determine when to apply the Constitution to a claim)
4. Roznai, Yaniv and Dixon, Rosalind and Landau, David, Judicial Reform or Abusive Constitutionalism in Israel (suggesting that comparative constitutional understandings point to the centrality of three key sets of norms as part of the “democratic minimum core”)
5. Sandro, Paolo, The Making of Constitutional Democracy: From Creation to Application of Law (considering the relevance of distinguishing between law-creation and law-application and how this transcends the boundaries of jurisprudential enquiry; arguing that such a distinction is also a crucial component of political theory)
6. Fatima Osman, Siddharth Peter de Souza, Custom (Oxford Constitutional Law) (seeking to unpack how custom is treated in constitutions, both in terms of accommodating different community, religious, and ethnic foundations, as well as providing an architecture within which it can be governed)
7. Gábor Halmai, Is There a ‘Constitutional Moment’ in Israel and Hungary? (addressing the concept of ‘constitutional moment’ in contemporary Israel and in Hungary)

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. CfP:  The Heidelberg Journal of International Law (HJIL) invites proposals for focus sections or papers which address new topics, challenges, methods, and approaches for research in public international law, European Union law, or comparative public law. Call for Focus Sections and Papers.
2. CfP: The Journal of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict invites authors to submit papers to be published in the 1st issue of 2024. This issue’s topical focus is on Transitional Justice.
3. CfP: The CHAIN project invite you to contribute to our interdisciplinary international conference on ‘Public Governance and Emerging Technologies: Values, Trust, and Compliance by Design’ on 11-12 January 2024, in Utrecht, The Netherlands.
4. CfP: The European Journal of Legal Studies invites early career scholars to submit short format contributions (New Voices) and anncounces its New Voices Prize for the academic year 2023/24.
5. CfP: International Conference on Constitutional Communities, KU Leuven, Belgium.

Elsewhere Online

1. Gary Fields and Adriana Gomez Licon,  A Supreme Court redistricting ruling gave hope to Black voters. They’re still waiting for new maps (September 18, 2023)
2. David Shortell ‘The Amazon is speaking for itself’: Brazil President Lula puts climate and inequality at the center of UN address (September 19, 2023)
3. Asif Shahzad, Pakistan’s top court proceedings shown live on TV for first time (September 18, 2023)
4. Rafsi Albar, Justice-on-Demand at the Indonesian Constitutional Court? (September 12, 2023)
5. Benjamin Nurkić, Kovačević v. Bosnia and Herzegovina: the complete guidelines for the constitutional reform in B&H, (September 12, 2023)