What’s New in Public Law

—Maja Sahadžić, Ph.D. Researcher, University of Antwerp

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 in Romania ruled that LGBTQ couples have the same family rights as heterosexual couples.
2. The Constitutional Court in Colombia rejected time limits on abortion.
3. The Constitutional Court in Malta, in a case of smuggling soap thinking it was cannabis, ruled the statement to police is inadmissible.
4. The Constitutional Court in Mali delayed the country’s parliamentary elections until 2019 by extending the mandate of MPs for six months.
5. The Constitutional Court in Romania partially admitted the notifications in connection with the draft law for the amendment of the Criminal Procedure Code of Romania.
6. The Constitutional Court in Colombia ruled that local communities cannot ban mining and other extractive projects through popular referendums.
7. The Constitutional Court in Cameroon rejected 18 petitions calling for a repeat of the recent presidential election.
8. The Constitutional Court in Peru declared unconstitutional the law forbidding the State from contracting state advertising with private media.
9. The Constitutional Court in Germany Constitutional Court approved strike ban for civil servants.
10. The Constitutional Court in Ukraine recognized the right of the Finance Ministry to receive personal information about pensions, bonuses, subsidies and other social payments.
11. The Constitutional Court in Israel overturned an appeals court ruling that agreed with the government’s decision to bar an American graduate student from entering the country over her alleged involvement in the boycott movement against the Jewish state.

In the News

1. The Parliament of South Korea confirmed three judges of the Constitutional Court after the nine-member panel’s month-long vacancy.
2. A former justice of the Romanian Constitutional Court argued that the emergency ordinance on the laws of justice is contrary to the Romanian Constitution.
3. The prosecutor general in Poland asked the Polish Constitutional court whether the EU Court has judicial supremacy over national tribunals on the interpretation of EU laws.
4. Bosnia and Herzegovina faces a fresh discrimination case before the European Court of Human Rights.
5. The Slovak Parliament Parliament approved a major amendment to the green energy support legislation.
6. The Health Minister of Malaysia confirmed he will not retract a contentious decision to ban smoking inside the Parliament building.
7. The Tasmania’s Parliament is set to push on raising the number of members in the lower house.
8. The Parliament of Macedonia is set to vote on the country’s name change ending the decades-long dispute with Greece.
9. The Turkish President Turkish submitted a motion to the parliament for the nation’s 2019 budget for the first time under the new presidential system.

New Scholarship

1. Patricia Popelier, Bicameralism in Belgium: the dismantlement of the Senate for the sake of multinational confederalism, Perspectives on Federalism (2018) (exploring how the dismantling of the Belgian Senate fits in the increasingly devolutionary nature of the Belgian state structure)
2. Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq, Democracy’s Near Misses, Journal of Democracy (2018) (developing the concept of a democratic near miss by considering the numerical metrics of democratic quality as a means of identifying near misses)
3. Matthew T. Stubbs, Eligibility of Dual Citizens: The Coming-of-Age of Section 44’, Law Society Bulletin (2018) (analyzing section 44 of the Australian Constitution and the issues associated to its application in terms of eligibility to be chosen to sit in the Commonwealth Parliament)
4. P. Y. Lo, Enforcing an Unfortunate, Unnecessary and ‘Unquestionably Binding’ NPCSC Interpretation: The Hong Kong Judiciary’s Deconstruction of Its Construction of the Basic Law, Hong Kong Law Journal (forthcoming 2018) (examining three cases by arguing that with the insistence of the appellate courts no attempt was made to apply the consistent interpretation of the values underlying Hong Kong’s common law-based legal system)
5. Jaclyn L. Neo & Ngoc Son Bui, Pluralist Constitutions in Southeast Asia (forthcoming 2019) (examining how constitutional orders in individual Southeast Asian countries respond to a range of ethnic, political, and legal plurality in the respective countries)
6. Zhang Taisu, The Development of Comparative Law in Modern China, in Mathias Reimann and Reinhard Zimmermann (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law (2nd ed.) (2018) (exploring the development of comparative law in modern China)
7. Mate Manoj, Constitutional Erosion and the Challenge to Secular Democracy in India, in Mark Graber, Sanford Levinson, Mark Tushnet (eds.), Constitutional Democracy in Crisis? (forthcoming 2018) (analyzing how the ongoing drift toward increasing religiosity in elections and governance poses a challenge to secular constitutional democracy in India)
8. Lee Marsons, Bifurcation, Unification, and Calibration: A Comparison of Indian and English Approaches to Proportionality, Indian Law Review (Forthcoming 2018) (exploring the relationship between proportionality and rationality review in England and India).

Call for Papers and Announcements

1. The Boston College Law School, with support from the Institute for Liberal Arts Submissions, invites 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 Institute for Comparative Federalism of Eurac Research, the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Innsbruck invite applications for the EURAC Winter School „Federalism and the Rule of Law“ on 4-15 February 2019 in Innsbruck and Bolzano. The deadline for submissions is 21 October 2018.
3. The Urban Law Center at Fordham Law School and University of New South Wales Law announce a call for participation in the “Sixth Annual International and Comparative Urban Law Conference” on 11-12 July 2019 in Sydney. The deadline for submissions is 10 January 2019.
4. The University of Illinois College of Law, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and the American Society of Comparative Law invite papers for the „Annual Comparative Law Work-in-Progress Workshop“ on 31 January-2 February March in Champaign. The deadline for submissions is 1 December 2018.
5. Asia’s Global Law School, the Faculty of Law of the National University of Singapore invite applications for Post-Doctoral Fellowship positions commencing in 2019-2020. The deadline for applications is 31 December 2018.
6. The University of Padua and Notre Dame Law School welcomes submissions for the conference “Disagreement and Constitutionalism” on 9-10 May 2019 in Treviso. The abstracts must be submitted no later than 30 November 2018.
7. Claremont McKenna College’s Program on Empirical Legal Studies announces the second annual “Empirical Legal Studies Replication Conference” on 26 April 2019 in Claremont. The deadline for proposals is 31 October 2018.
8. The Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy announces the international conference “Electoral Integrity and Constitutional Democracy in Latin America” on 1-2 November 2018 in Chestnut Hill. The deadline for registrations is 26 October 2018.
9. The Asian Law Institute and NUS Faculty of Law’s Centre for Asian Legal Studies announce the inaugural “Asian Law Junior Faculty Workshop” on 13 June 2019 in Singapore. The applications must be submitted no later than 12 November 2018.
10. The Law Review at University of Detroit Mercy School of Law invites proposals for the “2019 Detroit Mercy Law Review Symposium: Women and the Law” on 8 March 2019 in Detroit. The deadline for proposals is 9 November 2018.
11. The University of Melbourne Law School invites papers for the workshop “Cities in Federal Theory” on 20 June 2019 in Melbourne. The deadline for applications 1 November 2018.

 Elsewhere Online

1. Francesco Palermo, Perspectives on Comparative Federalism, 50 Shades of Federalism
2. Maxime St-Hilaire, Mikisew Cree First Nation v Canada and “manner and form” requirements: tiny dicta with huge implications, Blogue à qui de droit
3. Anurag Deb and Conor McCormick, Lee v Ashers: A Recipe for Jurisdictional Confusion?, UK Constitutional Law Association
4. Anna Mazurczak, Poland’s Supreme Administrative Court recognizes Same-sex Parents, Verfassungsblog
5. Brian Barry, Why the process of appointing judges really matters, RTÉ
6. Jacob Rowbottom, Cakes, Gay Marriage and the Right against Compelled Speech, UK Constitutional Law Association
7. David R. Cameron, Bavarian Earthquake: Big losses for the CSU and SPD, big wins for the Greens and AfD, Yale MacMillan Center
8. Marco Antonio Simonelli, Judicial Appointments in the Age of Trump – Are There Remedies for Polarization?, IACL-AIDC BLOG
9. Mark Elliott, Parliamentary control over Brexit-related delegated legislation: An important Government climbdown, Public Law for Everyone