What’s New in Comparative Public Law

–Margaret Lan Xiao, Washington University in St. Louis

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. Three newly appointed judges of Jordan’s Constitutional Court were sworn in before King Abdullah II.
2. Albania’s Democratic Party challenged the constitutionality of a law establishing the Bureau of Investigation.
3. Colombia’s Constitutional Court ruled that special prisons built specifically for members of indigenous communities are necessary so as to not violate their rights as a protected group.
4. The Guatemalan Constitutional Court temporarily suspended the recent selection of around 200 judges as well as their swearing in next week.
5. The Constitutional Court of Azerbaijan and the Constitutional Chamber of the Kyrgyz Supreme Court have signed a memorandum on cooperation in Baku.

In the News

1. Turkey: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that the parliament will make legal arrangements to bring an end to the violence in the country’s streets.
2. Greece: Prime Minister Antonis Samaras narrowly won a parliamentary confidence vote.
3. Canada: Parliament voted to authorize air strikes targeting ISIS terrorism in Iraq.
4. Thailand: Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha ruled out lifting martial law in the country despite calls by tourism bodies to scrap the measure.
5. Singapore: Senior Minister of State for Law and Education, Indranee Rajah, ended a four-day working visit to Myanmar.

New Scholarship

1. Cheng-Yi Huang & David S. Law, Proportionality Review of Administrative Action in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China, Research Handbook in Comparative Law and Regulation (Francesca Bignami & David Zaring eds., Edward Elgar: 2015 Forthcoming) (analyzing various patterns of proportionality review of administrative action in East Asia and offering four potential explanations)
2. Jennifer M. Piscopo, Rights, Equality, and Democracy: The Shift from Quotas to Parity in Latin America, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies Research Paper, 2014 (examining several Latin American countries’ recent parity shifts, parity supporters’ strategic measures in obtaining their desired goals, and the positive role played by courts in this process)
3. Ole Frithjof Norheim & Bruce M. Wilson, Health Rights Litigation and Access to Medicines: Priority Classification of Successful Cases from Costa Rica’s Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, Health and Human Rights 2014, 16/2 (examining a set of randomly selected cases concerning access to medicines brought to Costa Rica’s Supreme Court in 2008 and asserting that it cannot be concluded that litigation led to more fairness in access to medications)
4. Suzie Navot, Constitutional Reasoning in the Israeli Supreme Court, András Jakab, Arthur Dyevre and Giulio Itzcovich (eds), Comparative Constitutional Reasoning, Cambridge University Press, Forthcoming (analyzing several types of arguments in constitutional reasoning developed by the Israeli Supreme Court, including the use of precedents, foreign law, and judicial rhetoric)
5. Richard Rose, EU Enlargement Policy & UK Interests, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office Competences Review of Enlargement 2014 (arguing that British policy toward the further enlargement of the European Union is based on a misleading understanding of the phenomenon of countries seeking European Union entry)
6. Matej Avbelj, Crises and Perspectives in Building a European Nation – The Case of Slovenia, Forthcoming in, Peter Jambrek, Nation’s transitions: social and legal issues of Slovenia’s transitions: 1945-2015, (Slovenia 1945-2015). 1st ed. (exploring why Slovenia’s transition from a communist state to a constitutional liberal democracy remains unfinished and offering suggestions for changes and reforms)

Elsewhere Online

1. Steven Denney, Surprise! South Korea’s Legislature Is Actually Doing Its Job, The Diplomat
2. David Barrett, Britain has largest legal aid budget in Europe, says report, The Telegraph
3. Joe Palazzolo, Liberty Reserve Founder Extradited to U.S. From Spain, The Wall Street Journal Law Blog
4. Ben Child, China bans actors with a history of drug use from film or TV roles, The Guardian
5. Mort Halperin & Molly Hofsommer, Japan Wrongly Blames U.S. For Repressive Japanese Secrecy Law, The Huffington Post
6. Stephanie Bodoni, EU Seeks to Curb Google Control of Right to Be Forgotten, Bloomberg Business Week
7. Lyle Denniston, Constitution Check: Is the Supreme Court changing its mind on same-sex marriage?, Constitution Daily
8. Alison Sacriponte, Federal judge rules police tactic used in Ferguson protests unconstitutional, Jurist

Calls for Papers

1. The World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists has issued a call for papers for its Fourth Worldwide Congress to be held on June 24-26, 2015 at McGill University’s Faculty of Law.
2. The University of Missouri Law Review has issued a call for proposals for a symposium titled “Policing, Protesting, and Perceptions: A Critical Examination of the Events in Ferguson” to be held on February 27, 2015.
3. The Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression and the Information Society Project at Yale Law School have issued a call for papers for the third annual Freedom of Expression Scholars Conference to be held on May 2-3, 2015 at Yale Law School.
4. The University of the District of Columbia Law Review has issued a call for papers for a symposium titled “Not All Controversies End in Court: Checking the Balance in Alternative Dispute Resolution” to be held on March 27, 2015.
5. The European Society of International Law has issued a call for proposals for its annual conference to be held on September 10-12, 2015 in Oslo, Norway.