What’s New in Public Law

–Mohamed Abdelaal, Assistant Professor, Alexandria University Faculty of Law

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 Guatemala rejected two requests for annulment submitted by the executive branch.
2. India’s Supreme Court ruled that women can no longer be barred from entering one of the holiest temples in the country.
3. The International Court of Justice ruled that Bolivia cannot force Chile to grant it access to a portion of the Pacific Ocean.
4. The Spanish Supreme Court upheld a prison conviction against the former International Monetary Fund chief and deputy prime minister of Spain.
5. The Court of Appeal of Quebec ruled that religious dress is to be allowed in the courtroom.
6. The U.S. Supreme Court started to hear arguments in a case regarding whether state and local government employers with less than 20 employees are exempt from the restrictions imposed by the Age Discrimination in Employment Act.
7. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that refusal to run anti-terrorist bus ad is unconstitutional.

In the News

1. In Mexico, Lawmakers submitted a constitutional reform bill for consideration.
2. Former Namibian presidents called for a referendum to amend the Constitution.
3. The Libyan House of Representatives passed a new constitution referendum law.
4. The British Prime Minister announced that new visa restrictions are to be considered.
5. The U.S. administration began implementing new policy regarding denying entry visa to unmarried, same-sex partners of foreign diplomats and employees of the UN.

New Scholarship

1. Oğuz Kaan Pehlivan, Confronting Cyberespionage Under International Law (Routledge 2018) (addressing domestic and international legal tools appropriate to adopt in cases of cyberespionage incidents)
2. Leila Nadya Sadat, Seeking Accountability for the Unlawful Use of Force (Cambridge Univ. Press 2018) (examining the many systems and accountability frameworks which have developed since the Second World War and suggesting new avenues for enhancing accountability structure)
3. Tom Sparks, Protection of Animals through Human Rights: The Case-Law of the European Court of Human Rights, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law & International Law (MPIL) Research Paper No. 2018-21 (discussing the potential of a human rights framework to contribute to the growth and development of global animal law)
4. Thomas H. Lee, The Law of Nations and the Judicial Branch, 106 Georgetown Law Journal (2018) (explaining what the law of nations meant at the time the United States was established and how it interacted with the original U.S. Constitution)
5. Charles Ngwena, “What is Africanness?” Contesting nativism in race, culture and sexualities (Pretoria University Law Press (PULP), 2018) (offering an alternative liberating and decentred understanding of Africa as the land of diverse identifications)
6. Joanna N. Erdman and Brooke R. Johnson Jr., Access to knowledge and the Global Abortion Policies Database, 142 International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics (2018) (arguing how the newly launched Global Abortion Policies Database could help in providing transparency and accountability)
7. Melissa Upreti and Jihan Jacob, The Philippines rolls back advances in postabortion care policy, 142 International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics (2018) (discussing the Philippian postabortion care policy that rolls back crucial safeguards aimed at protecting women who seek medical treatment for postabortion complications from discrimination and abuse)
8. Alyson Zureick, Amber Khan, Angeline Chen and Astrid Reyes, Physicians’ Challenges under El Salvador’s Criminal Abortion Prohibition, 143 International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics 143 (2018) (providing a crucial analysis to Salvador’s criminal abortion law)

Call for Papers and Announcements

1. The Boston College Law School, with support from the Institute for Liberal Arts Submissions are invited from faculty and graduate students for a two-day conference on “Amending America’s Unwritten Constitution,” a timely subject of importance in history, law and politics. Interested scholars should email a CV and abstract no longer than 750 words by November 15, 2018 to tdo@law.utexas.edu on the understanding that the abstract will form the basis of the pre-conference draft to be submitted by April 15, 2019
2. The student chapter of the American Constitution Society at Barry University School of Law and Texas A&M University School of Law are hosting the Fourth Annual Constitutional Law Scholars Forum at the Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law Campus on March 1, 2019.
3. The Wijnhaven Campus of Leiden University invites submissions for a conference under the theme of Global Human Rights at Risk? Challenges, Prospects, and Reforms to be held on June 6-7, 2019.
4. The Jindal Global Law Review (JGLR) is inviting papers for a special issue on Women and Law in South Asia.
5. The Indian Constitutional Law Review welcomes submissions for its new volume.
6. The Católica Law Review has issued a call for submissions for its new volume.
7. The University of Oxford Faculty of Law is seeking a Programme Research Officer who will be responsible for day-to-day management of the Swiss Re-EJF Research Programme on Civil Justice Systems at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies.
8. The Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, advertises one or more positions as Assistant Professor of Law or a closely related research areas.

Elsewhere Online

1. Elisha Kunene, Fill The Court: South Africa’s Constitutional Court and its continuity crisis, DailyMavrick
2. Martín Tanaka, The Drive to Reform Peru’s Judicial and Political System: Opportunistic and Incompatible?, ConstitutionNet
3. Macedonia Referendum: What’s in a Name?, The New York Times
4. M. Trunji, The process of drafting the 1960 Somali Constitution: A short note, ConstitutionNet
5. Ming-Sung Kuo, The Two Faces of Constituent Power, IJCAL
6. Michael Hein, A Constitutional Ban on Same-sex Marriage: Romania is About to Entrench its Homophobic Worldview, Constitution Making & Constitutional Change
7. Scott Bomboy, A tale of two crosses at the Supreme Court, Constitution Daily