What’s New in Comparative Public Law

–Mohamed Abdelaal, Alexandria University (Egypt)

In this weekly feature, I-CONnect publishes a curated reading list of developments in comparative 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 comparative public law blogosphere.

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

Developments in Constitutional Courts

1. Senegalese leader Macky Sall submitted a proposal on presidential term limits to the country’s Constitutional Council.
2. The Constitutional Court of Central African Republic invalidated the first round of parliamentary elections.
3. A Delaware Superior Court judge certified questions to the Delaware Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the state’s death penalty.
4. Mexico’s Supreme Court struck down a same-sex marriage ban.
5. Venezuela’s Constitutional Court ruled that a declaration of economic emergency in the country is constitutional.
6. A judge of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana declared a portion of Louisiana’s abortion law unconstitutional.

In the News

1. Nepal’s parliament voted to approve constitutional amendments in a bid to resolve a months-long dispute with ethnic minority protesters demanding more political representation.
2. Malaysia’s attorney general cleared the country’s prime minister of corruption charges.
3. French Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira resigned over disagreement with the country’s president on a law to strip convicted terrorists of citizenship.
4. Thailand published a draft of its twentieth constitution.
5. China’s lawmakers are drafting a law that is likely to restrict the work of NGOs.

New Scholarship

1. Lionel Smith, What is Left of the Non-Delegation Principle?, in Current Issues in Succession Law, B. Häcker and C. Mitchell (eds.) (forthcoming 2016) (addressing whether case law allows a testator to delegate will-making power)
2. Shucheng Wang, Reconciling Hong Kong’s Final Authority on Judicial Review with the Central Authorities in China: A Perspective from ‘One Country, Two Systems’, 27(2) Public Law Review (forthcoming 2016) (examining the nature of Hong Kong’s final authority on judicial review)
3. Santiago Legarre, New Trends in Latin American Constitutionalism: An Overview, 4(1) Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law (2016) (offering remarks on constitutionalism and the rule of law in Latin America)
4. Myrna Pérez, Election Integrity Measures, with a Pro-Voter Bent, Brennan Center for Justice (2016) (arguing for sensible election regulations that protect integrity and make it easy to vote)
5. Laura Carlson, Academic Freedom and Rights to University Teaching Materials: A Comparison of Swedish, American and German Approaches (2016) (exploring the issue of the ownership of teaching materials from a comparative law perspective)

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. Registration is now open for the summer course on “Constitution Building in Africa” at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, onJuly 11-22, 2016. The course will feature distinguished faculty including Omar Hamadi, Babacar Kante, Christina Murray, H. Kwasi Prempeh, Jill Cottrell and Yash Ghai. More information is available here. The course description is as follows: History has seen several waves of constitution-building in the 20th century with an unparalleled boom starting in the 1990s after the fall of the Berlin wall. And while experts recently announced the end of this boom in new constitutions after the Cold War, the world is witnessing another wave of constitution-building, this time predominately in Africa. This burst of activity has given rise to a range of new ideas about the nature and purpose of constitutions and constitution-making, constitutional solutions to contemporary problems, and the proper role of international actors. The two-week research course intends to tackle complex societal, political and legal problems in constitution-building from an interdisciplinary perspective, informed by field experience. We seek to combine different disciplines (mostly comparative law and political science) and perspectives (comparative governmental systems; electoral systems; decentralization; human rights; comparative constitutional law; good governance; etc) to offer new insights on a classic subject of the highest academic and practical relevance.
2. The Harvard Journal of Law & Gender welcomes unsolicited manuscripts and comments on issues relating to gender and the law, feminist jurisprudence, and social equality.
3. Consortium for Social Research on Turkey (CSRT) in collaboration with Center for Policy and Research on Turkey (Research Turkey) and the Student Collective of Turkey at the New School invites paper submissions for a full-day conference on constitutional politics in Turkey to be held at the New School for Social Research, New York, on March 4, 2016.
4. Organizers have issued a call for papers for the international criminal justice stream at the Socio-Legal Studies Association Annual Conference at Lancaster University to be held on April 5-7, 2016.
5. The “Temporalities, Law & Security” stream is soliciting paper and panel submissions for a conference on “‘New’ Legal Temporalities? Discipline and Resistance Across Domains of Time,” at the University of Kent on September 8-10, 2016.
6. Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, Cardozo Law School, and the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) welcome applications for the third annual Roundtable on Empirical Methods in Intellectual Property that will take place in Washington, D.C. at the USPTO on April 29-30, 2016.

Elsewhere Online

1. Tomasz Tadeusz Koncewicz, “2004 EU Accession” as a Founding Moment? Of lost opportunities, alienating constitutionalism and vigilant courts, Verfassungsblog
2. Mulela Margaret Munalula, The 2016 Constitution of Zambia: elusive search for a people driven process, ConstitutionNet
3. Jacob Gershman, AM Roundup: Parole Rights for Juvenile Killers, Wall Street Journal Law Blog
4. Marc Degirolami, Comparing Traditionalism and Originalism, Liberty Law Blog
5. Glenn C. Smith, In Deciding DAPA Dispute, Will the Justices Reach Constitutional Questions?, Jurist
6. Gerard Magliocca, William Crosskey’s Unconventional Ideas, Concurring Opinions
7. Satang Nabaneh, Banning female circumcision in The Gambia through legislative change: The next steps, AfricLaw