What’s New in Public Law

—Chiara Graziani, PhD Student in Comparative Constitutional Law, University of Genoa (Italy)

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 Romanian Constitutional Court was asked to determine whether new rules on tenders introduced by the Romanian government restrict the right to appeal.
2. The Supreme Court of Brazil was asked by the government of Roraima to halt the entry of Venezuelan immigrants.
3. The Constitutional Court of Mali confirmed the results of presidential election, rejecting fraud allegations made by the opposition candidate.
4. The Supreme Court of India issued a notice to the government asking to clarify the reasons why Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath should not be prosecuted for allegedly giving hate speech some years ago.
5. The Supreme Court of Israel ruled that a policeman convicted for the murder of a Palestinian teenager deserves harsher punishment than nine months jail.
6. The Supreme Court of Russia held that message decoding data cannot be considered as information covered by secrecy of correspondence guaranteed by the Constitution.
7. The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany rejected a constitutional complaint against the prohibition of three associations.
8. The Constitutional Court of South Africa will rule on the right to protest, after an application by civil society organizations.
9. The Colombian Constitutional Court upheld the constitutionality of the Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz – a new Tribunal established to rule over crimes committed during Colombia’s conflict with the FARC – legitimizing the new court to proceed with its mandate.
10. The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed an appeal by the city of Burnaby against Trans Mountain pipeline.

In the News

1. Google will face lawsuit over allegations of illegally tracking movements of phone users, even when they use privacy settings to avoid it.
2. The European Commission announced that Greece has successfully concluded a three year European Stability Mechanism support programme.
3. Former CIA director threatened to file legal action against President Trump over stripped security clearance.
4. Germany reached an agreement with Greece according to which the former will be allowed to return asylum-seekers to the latter.
5. A U.S. federal court allowed a lawsuit denouncing alleged gerrymandering in Ohio to proceed.
6. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dismissed challenge to a Texas law allowing carry of handguns on university campuses.
7. The President of Afghanistan announced ceasefire of actions against the Taliban.
8. The President of Egypt ratified a new Internet control law.
9. In a 9/11 case, a Guantánamo military commission judge prevented the government from using a detainee’s statements made during FBI interrogations.
10. A federal appeals court ordered the Trump administration to implement chemical-safety rules introduced during the Obama presidency.
11. The West Virginia Senate passed rules on the impeachment trial of three state Supreme Court justices.
12. The U.S. deported a Nazi war crimes suspect to Germany after years of diplomatic wrangling.
13. The Supreme Court of Florida was asked to block a constitutional amendment prohibiting dog racing.
14. A former U.S. intelligence contractor was sentenced to prison for leaking information about Russian interference in U.S. elections.

New Scholarship

1. John Bell, Mark Elliot, Jason N.E. Varuhas, Philip Murray, Public Law Adjudication in Common Law Systems (2018) (gathering essays on a variety of topics related to adjudication on matters of public law in common law jurisdiction, such as the interaction between “process” and “substance” and the scope of judicial review)
2. Mark Elliot, Jack Williams, Alison L. Young (eds.), The UK Constitution after Miller. Brexit and Beyond (2018) (providing an analysis of the Miller judgment’s implications for the present UK constitution and its future evolution)
3. Carla Ferstman, Tony Gray (eds.), Contemporary Human Rights Challenges. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its Continuing Relevance (2018) (collecting essays of academics, practitioners and activists on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the most pressing challenges that contemporary age poses to it)
4. Massimo Fichera, The Foundations of the EU as a Polity (2018) (analyzing how EU constitutionalism evolved during the EU integration process and looking at recent events, as Brexit and the Eurozone crisis, from this perspective)
5. Andrew Gilbert, British Conservatism and the Legal Regulation of Intimate Relationships (2018) (examining the relationship between family law and conservatism in Britain and assessing to what extent the Conservative party’s view on intimate relationships influenced its approach to family law)
6. K. Greenawalt, Realms of Legal Interpretation. Core Elements and Critical Variations (2018) (focusing on courts’ decisional process and on how judges’ ideas and feelings influence the formulation of judgments)
7. Giovanni Gruni, The EU, World Trade Law and the Right to Food. Rethinking Free Trade Agreements with Developing Countries (2018) (examining WTO law and EU free trade agreements from the perspective of a human right to adequate food)
8. Christian Schaller, Strategic Surveillance and Extraterritorial Basic Rights Protection: German intelligence Law After Snowden 19 German Law Journal (2018) (focusing on German constitutional and statutory legal framework with regard to bulk surveillance and arguing in favor of replacing fragmented legislation with a uniform statutory regime of international communications)
9. Brett G. Scharffs, A. Maoz, A.I. Woolley (eds.), Religious Freedom and the Law (2018) (analyzing religious freedom from the perspectives of both freedom of religion and freedom from religion)
10. Arianna Vedaschi, Privacy and data protection versus national security in transnational flights: the EU-Canada PNR agreement 8 International Data Privacy Law (2018) (analyzing Opinion 1/15 of the European Court of Justice on the draft EU-Canada PNR agreement and assessing its implications)

Call for Papers and Announcements

1. The British Institute of International and Comparative Law invites applications for the October intake of research assistants. The deadline is August 31, 2018.
2. BYU Law Review seeks articles addressing the relationship between law and religion. Original articles must be sent no later than September 1, 2018.
3. The European Criminal Law Academy Network issued a call for papers for the Ph.D. seminar “The External Dimension of EU Criminal Justice Area”. Applications, including a CV, information on Ph.D. starting and envisaged end date and a description of the research subject, must be sent by September 5, 2018.
4. Melbourne Law Schools encourages submission of abstracts from Ph.D. students for the 11^th Melbourne Doctoral Forum on Legal Theory, to be held in Melbourne on December 4-5, 2018. The deadline for submission of abstracts is September 5, 2018.
5. The Innovation Center for Law and Technology at New York Law Schooland the Center on Law and Information Policy at Fordham University School of Law invite submissions of abstracts for papers to be presented during the Second Northeast Privacy Scholars Workshop, to be held at Fordham Law School on November 9, 2018. Abstracts must be submitted by September 7, 2018.
6. The Italian Chapter of ICON-S invites submissions for its inaugural conference, to be held in Rome on November 23-24, 2018. The deadline is September 14, 2018.
7. The i-Courts research center calls for submissions of paper proposals for the conference “Who Is Afraid of the International Criminal Court?”, to be held in Copenhagen on January 24-25, 2019. The deadline to send proposals is September 15, 2018.
8. The T.M.C. Asser Instituut invites submissions of abstracts to join a masterclass on empirical and socio-legal methods in international law, to be held in The Hague on November 20, 2018. Abstracts must be sent no later than September 17, 2018.
9. The University of Melbourne offers a fellowship to early career researchers in any field of law. The deadline to submit applications is September 20, 2018.
10. The German Law Journal invites proposals of special issues related on any topics in which the Journal’s readers may be interested. The deadline for submission is October 31, 2018.

Elsewhere Online

1. Catherine Barnard and Emilija Leinarte, EU/UK Dispute Resolution post-Brexit in the light of the White Paper, EU Law Analysis
2. Sarah Grant, Military Commission Judge Bars Government from Using Defendant’s Statements to FBI ‘Clean Teams’ in 9/11 Case, Lawfare
3. Catherine Haguenau-Moizard, The 2018 French Asylum and Immigration Act, Verfassungsblog
4. Jan Przerwa, The Pisciotti Case: How Can Free Movement Rights Impact EU Citizens Extradition to a Third Country?, European Law Blog
5. Jack Sheldon, Intergovernmental Relations and the English Question: Options for Reform, Constitution Unit
6. Anne Twomey, Australian Constitution May Disqualify High-ranking Member of Parliament, Constitutionnet