What’s New in Public Law

—Sandeep Suresh, Faculty Member, Jindal Global Law School

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 Constitutional Court of Germany upheld the constitutional validity of provisions regulating the 2011 population census which were challenged by city states of Hamburg and Berlin.
2. The Constitutional Court of Columbia upheld the legality of bullfighting and thus dashed the hopes of animal rights activists.
3. The Constitutional Court of South Africa legalized the private use of marijuana.
4. The Constitutional Court of Turkey held that taking up prostitution as a profession is against human dignity in a case where a woman had challenged a brothel’s decision not to admit her.
5. The Constitutional Court of Romania gave approval to conduct a referendum that may render same-sex marriages illegal by redefining ‘family’ under the Constitution.

In the News

1. The President of India gave assent to an ordinance criminalizing triple talaq with a maximum punishment of three years.
2. A district court in Dallas, Texas directed the county to reform bail system which violates constitutional rights by imposing pre-set bail bond amounts without considering the financial capacity of each inmate.
3. Hungary refused to withdraw its controversial anti-migration law despite the infringement procedures initiated by the European Commission.
4. Justice Ranjan Gogoi has been appointed as India’s next Chief Justice and will assume the role on October 3, 2018.
5. The President of Ireland officially repealed the 8th constitutional amendment that had banned abortions following the referendum vote in May 2018.

New Scholarship

1. Cedric Jenart, The Binding Nature and Enforceability of Hybrid Global Administrative Bodies’ Norms Within the National Legal Order: The Case Study of WADA, 24 (3) European Public Law (2018) (explaining different methods through which soft law norms can be made binding within nation states after they are drafted by hybrid global administrative bodies).
2. Jorge Contesse, Resisting the Inter-American Human Rights System, Yale Journal of International Law (Forthcoming 2018) (examining instances of resistance towards inter-American human rights law and proposing a revision of methods of compliance with human rights law).
3. Nausica Palazzo, The Free Movement of Same-sex Spouses in the European Union: What Comes Next?, Michigan Journal of International  Law Online (2018) (analyzing the impact of the Court of Justice of the European Union’s recent decision on the free movement of a same-sex couples in the Union).
4. Rosalind Dixon, Constitutional Design Deferred, UNSW Law Research Paper No. 18-63. (September 2018) (exploring the rise of a new type of constitutional deferral by formulating specific constitutional provisions that directly conflict with one another, thereby requiring courts or legislators to make substantive choices resolving the conflict).
5. Tamir Moustafa,Constituting Religion: Islam, Liberal Rights, and the Malaysian State (Cambridge University Press 2018) (examining the ‘judicialization of religion’ and the radiating effects of courts on popular legal and religious consciousness).
6. Tom Ruys and Emre Turkut, Turkey’s Post-Coup ‘Purification Process’: Collective Dismissals of Public Servants under the European Convention on Human Rights, 18 (3) Human Rights Law Review (2018) (arguing that the Turkish ‘purge’ of more than 130,000 public servants in the aftermath of July 15 attempted coup cannot be reconciled with the state’s obligations under the ECHR).
7. Athanasios Psygkas, The Hydraulics of Constitutional Claims, University of Toronto Law Journal (forthcoming 2018) (arguing how multiple actors play a role in raising and resolving constitutional claims by specifically looking at legalization of same sex marriages in United States, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Ireland).

Call for Papers and Announcements

1. Papers on US and comparative law subjects are invited for a free conference on “Amending America’s Unwritten Constitution” to be held at Boston College on May 16-17, 2019, featuring roundtable discussions moderated by Vik Amar (Illinois), Mark Graber (Maryland), Sandy Levinson (Texas), Miriam Seifter (Wisconsin), Frederick Schauer (Virginia), Carolyn Shapiro (Chicago-Kent), Mark Tushnet (Harvard) and Emily Zackin (Johns Hopkins).
2. Sciences Po and Queen Mary University London are jointly organizing a seminar on ‘Interrogating the Right to Privacy and the Limits of Surveillance on September 26, 2018 in Paris, France. Interested participants must register at the earliest.
3. The University of Adelaide Law School and Amity University Law School are inviting papers for the international conference on ‘comparing and contrasting Constitutional Models of India and Australia’ to be held on February 14-15, 2019 in Noida, India. Interested scholars must submit their paper abstracts to international conference2019@gmail.com by October 10, 2018.
4. The Irish Journal of European Law is currently calling for submissions for its 2018 volume. The deadline is September 28, 2018.
5. The American Constitution Society is calling for paper submissions on topics relating to public law for a workshop within the AALS Annual Meeting to be held on January 3, 2019 in Los Angeles, USA. Interested junior scholars must submit papers by October 19, 2018 to juniorscholarsworkshop@acslaw.org.
6. The Theory and Practice of Legislation is inviting paper proposals for its special issue on ‘relationship between regulation and legislation’. Interested scholars must submit paper proposals by October 1, 2018.

Elsewhere Online

1. David R. Cameron, EU deploys Article 7 against Poland & Hungary for democratic backsliding, Yale MacMillan Center
2. George F. Will, The Supreme Court was America’s least damaged institution — until now, The Washington Post
3. Benedict Douglas, The Fundamental Tension Underlying the UK Constitution, UK Constitutional Law Association Blog
4. Moses Mugugunyeki, Land rights: Women left in the cold, The Standard
5. Adeel Hussain, Mango Scented Sovereignty: Pakistan’s Chief Justice Saqib Nisar and Baba-justice, Verfassungsblog
6. Katyayani Sinha, Non-violent speech and the violent State: Understanding ‘Sedition’ in India, The Leaflet
7. Chris Piggott-Mckellar, Dancing with Dicey: A Century of Flexible State Constitutions, AUSPUBLAW