What’s New in Public Law

—Monica Cappelletti, School of Law and Government, Dublin City University (DCU), Ireland

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 Federal Constitutional Court of Germany confirmed the constitutionality of the ban on strike action for civil servants.
2. The Turkish Constitutional Court rejected Peoples’ Democratic Party’s (HDP) imprisoned presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtaş’s request for release.
3. The Constitutional Court of Kosovo announced the ruling on the legality of the government’s decision to increase the salaries for its staff.
4. The Constitutional Court of Colombia ordered the State of New Granada to provide health care to Venezuelans who are in that country due to the crisis afflicting the country.
5. The Supreme Court of Canada confirmed that the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal does not have the jurisdiction to consider whether Canadian laws are discriminatory.
6. The US Supreme Court invalidated the Minnesota ban on voter political apparel.
7. The South African Constitutional Court declared that the provision of the Criminal Procedure Act, which did not allow all victims of sexual abuse to lay criminal charges 20 years after the incident occurred, was unconstitutional and invalid.

In the News

1. The Polish President proposed 15 questions for a constitutional referendum.
2. The German MPs accused the government of blocking Anis Amri investigation.
3. The Austrian Government decided to shut down seven mosques and expel imams.
4. The Irish Government gave the approval for a referendum on removal of blasphemy offence from the Constitution.
5. The Irish Government decided to introduce the abortion bill in early July.
6. The Irish Government announced it will appeal to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights over the court’s refusal to revise its 1978 judgment on the “Hooded Men” last March.
7. The Greek and the Macedonian Presidents agreed on the new name of the former Yugoslav Republic that would be Republic of North Macedonia.
8. The Greek Parliament debates no-confidence motion in government after the agreement with Macedonia regarding the new name.
9. The UK Government published amendments to EU withdrawal bill.
10. The President of Ukraine confirmed that the Constitutional Commission is finalizing the draft constitutional amendments on Ukraine accession to EU and NATO.
11. The Communications and Multimedia Minister of Malaysia proposed to include the right to access the internet in the Federal Constitution.
12. The South Korean Government integrates the “First Public Blockchain Platform”.
13. The Australian Government responded to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
14. The President of Madagascar announced that a new government has been appointed after a court ruling which required a “consensus” administration to resolve a crisis sparked by electoral reform.
15. The Chinese Government made RFID chips mandatory in cars to track citizens.

New Scholarship

1. Richard Albert, Malkhaz Nakashidze & Tarik Olcay, The Formalist Resistance to Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments, 70 Hastings Law Journal (forthcoming 2019) (explaining the formalist foundations of the rejection of the doctrine of unconstitutional constitutional amendment)
2. Martin Belov, Global Constitutionalism and Its Challenges to Westphalian Constitutional Law (2018) (assessing the structural and functional transformations in the Westphalian constitutional tradition produced by the emergence of supranational and global constitutionalism).
3. Benjamin L Berger & Richard Moon, Religion and the Exercise of Public Authority (2018) (exposing the assumptions about legal and political life that underlie the concept of state neutrality and reveals its limits as a governing ideal).
4. The British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) completed a study for the Business Network on addressing conflicts between international human rights standards and national laws.
5. Eddie Bruce-Jones, Race in the Shadow of Law. State Violence in Contemporary Europe (2018) (analyzing the European legal responses to institutional racism).
6. Alessandro Ferrari and James Toronto (eds.), Religions and Constitutional Transitions in the Muslim Mediterranean. The Pluralistic Moment (2018) (investigating the role of Islam and religious freedom in the constitutional transitions of six North African and Middle Eastern countries, namely Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, and Palestine).
7. Petra Gümplová, Popular sovereignty over natural resources: A critical reappraisal of Leif Wenar’s Blood Oil from the perspective of international law and justice, (2018) 7(2) Global Constitutionalism (discussing the concept of popular sovereignty over natural resources and its possible applicability to a broader account of natural resource justice based on a moral interpretation of international law).
8. Robert Schütze and Stephen Tierney (eds.), United Kingdom and The Federal Idea (2018) (This collection looks at federalism from the perspective of constitutional law, taking the United Kingdom as a case study)
9. Marta Simoncini, Administrative Regulation Beyond the Non-Delegation Doctrine. A Study on EU Agencies (2018) (investigating the crucial question about the legitimacy of the ever-increasing role of agencies in the enforcement of EU law).
10. Paul Yowell, Constitutional Rights and Constitutional Design. Moral and Empirical Reasoning in Judicial Review (2018), (analyzing how decisions courts in constitutional rights cases make pervade our political life and touch on our most basic interests and values).
11. Diego Werneck Arguelhes and Leandro Molhano Ribeiro, ‘The Court, it is I’? Individual judicial powers in the Brazilian Supreme Court and their implications for constitutional theory, (2018) 7(2) Global Constitutionalism (exploring critically the collective decision-making as an ‘institutional fact’ regarding the Brazilian Supreme Court case).

Call for Papers and Announcements

1. The Arab Association of Constitutional Law is recruiting a new executive director. The application deadline is 9 July 2018.
2. The Journal of Commonwealth Law and the Common Law Group at the Université de Montréal, will host a conference entitled, Adjudicating Human Rights in Administrative Agencies and invites submissions of abstract. The deadline is 1 August 2018.
3. The European Journal of Legal Studies (EJLS) welcomes articles for the Autumn 2018 Issue. The deadline is 15 July 2018.
4. The European Journal of Legal Studies (EJLS) announces two young scholar prizes for the academic year 2018/2019: the annual ‘EJLS New Voices Prize’ and the best ‘EJLS (Young Scholars) General Article’. All articles by young scholars accepted for publishing with EJLS in Autumn 2018 and Spring 2019 Issues are entering for the competition.
5. The National Law University Jodhpur (NLUJ) Law Review welcomes submissions of long articles, short articles and notes and comments for the Second Issue.
6. The Jamia Law Journal invites original, unpublished manuscripts from all academicians, judges, and legal professionals from India and abroad. The deadline is 1 July 2018.

Elsewhere Online

1. Anna Dziedzic, Foreign Judges on Constitutional Courts, Blog of the IACL, AIDC.
2. Melanie Fink and Kristof Gombeer, The Aquarius incident: navigating the turbulent waters of international law, EJIL: Talk!
3. Gábor Halmai, The Hungarian Constitutional Court betrays Academic Freedom and Freedom of Association, Verfassungsblog
4. Nyi Nyi Kyaw, Myanmar’s Constitutional Reform Process: A pragmatic prioritization of process over substantive reform?, Constitutionnet
5. Lila Margalit, Room for Optimism? Israeli Supreme Court Presses for Implementation of Ruling on Inmates’ Right to Personal Space, Lawfare Blog.
6. Nidhal Mekki, Local elections in Tunisia: Implementing the constitution and reinforcing the transition, Constitutionnet.
7. Michael Sánchez Rydelski and Cath Howdle, Brexit: Some conceptual clarifications concerning EFTA and the EEA, EU Analysis Blog.
8. Stijn Smismans, Brexit and EU27 citizens’ rights: a proposal for a Protocol, EU Analysis Blog.
9. Maxime St-Hilaire has a series of eight posts on the recent Henderson judgment in Canada: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, and a special entry on a re-imagined judgment in the case (in French).
10. Tomasz Tadeusz Koncewicz, Dusting off the Old Precedent – Why the Commission Must Stick to the Art. 7 Procedure Against Poland, Verfassungsblog.
11. Joelle Grogan, Suffering from Withdrawal – Controversy in the UK EU (Withdrawal) Bill, Verfassungsblog.