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 of Turkey rejected an application claiming a violation of freedom of expression over the country’s internet censorship.
2. The Constitutional Court of Ukraine upheld a law that equates communism to Nazism.
3. The Constitutional Court of Croatia decided that the use of the Serbian language and Cyrillic script for official purposes in the Croatian town of Vukovar should be extended.
4. The Constitutional Court of Slovenia annulled legislation that allows police to use systems for automatic license plate recognition, finding it contravenes the constitutional right to protection of personal data.
5. The Supreme Court of India rejected a plea that Muslim women should be allowed to enter mosques.
6. The Constitutional Court of Guatemala blocked a controversial immigration agreement with the United States about the designation of Guatemala as “a safe third country.”
7. The Constitutional Court of Saarland in Germany ruled that speed camera readings that cannot be independently verified violate the right to a fair trial.
8. The Constitutional Court of Mauritania confirmed the country’s next president, dismissing an appeal by opposition candidates over alleged voting irregularities.
9. The Supreme Court of Canada allowed the government of Nova Scotia to keep “conquered people” documents secret.
10. The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany dismissed a complaint by the Argentinian government on the grounds that German courts had refrained from a referral to the Federal Constitutional Court in proceedings concerning the Argentine Debt Crisis.

In the News

1. The European Parliament elected the president of the European Commission.
2. The President of Egypt appointed the Head of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt.
3. The Parliament of Tunisia failed to elect the remaining members of the Constitutional Court.
4. The President of Chile signed into law a bill to remove the statute of limitations on sex crimes involving children amid a sex abuse crisis that involved the Catholic Church.
5. The Parliament passed the national system of science and technology bill, which imposes criminal charges against foreign researchers found guilty of violating visa regulations.
6. The United States legislature approved a bill to limit the President’s authority to go to war against Iran.
7. The Parliament of Malaysia considers lowering the voting age to 18.
8. Several environmental groups marched to the Malaysian Parliament, demanding stronger forestry laws.
9. Finland rejected calls to end corporate sponsorships to cover part of the costs of the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union.
10. A former Peruvian president was arrested in the United States.

New Scholarship

1. Patricia Popelier, Procedural Rationality Review after Animal Defenders International: A Constructively Critical Approach, 15 European Constitutional Law Review (2019) (examining whether the European Court of Human Rights should establish a wide margin of appreciation, whether the quality of the lawmaking procedure justifies an outcome that is highly dubious, and what procedural rationality review involves)
2. Giacomo Delledonne and Giuseppe Martinico (eds.), The Canadian Contribution to a Comparative Law of Secession Legacies of the Quebec Secession Reference (2019) (reflecting on the importance of the Quebec Secession Reference as a turning point in Canadian law of secession)
3. Andrew Harding and Khin Khin Oo (eds.), Constitutionalism and Legal Change in Myanmar (2019) (attempting to gauge the extent and potential for the entrenchment of constitutionalism in Myanmar in a rapidly changing environment)
4. Robert A. Flatow, Reimagining Congress’s Treaty-Implementing Authority: An Originalist Case for the Unexplored Middle Ground, Perspectives on Federalism (2019) (addressing prerogative to implement non-self-executing treaties of the US Congress)
5. Giuseppe Martinico, Preserving Constitutional Democracy from Populism – The Case of Secession Referendums (2019) (exploring the relationship between constitutional democracy and referendum in contexts characterized by new waves of populism)
6. Marianna Muravyeva (ed.), The Foundations of Russian Law (forthcoming 2020) (elucidating the main concepts underlying Russian law and explaining how does it operate in practice by using original legal sources and case law)
7. Giacomo Delledonne, Constitutional courts dealing with electoral laws: comparative remarks on Italy and Hungary (2019) (examining major trends in the case-law of constitutional courts in Italy and Hungary on the constitutionality of electoral laws)
8. Jurgen de Poorter, Ernst Hirsch Ballin, and Saskia Lavrijssen (eds.), Judicial Review of Administrative Discretion in the Administrative State (2019) (comparatively examining the role of the judiciary in the administrative state)

Call for Papers and Announcements

1. Nominations are welcome for the Mark Tushnet Prize in Comparative Law, presented to an early-career scholar. Details are available here. The deadline is August 1, 2019.
2. The International Forum on the Future of Constitutionalism invites submissions for its conference on “Constitution-Making and Constitutional Change” to be held at the University of Texas Law School on January 17-18, 2020. More details are available here.
3. The Younger Comparativists Committee (YCC) of the American Society of Comparative Law (ASCL) solicits nominations, including self-nominations, for the annual Richard M. Buxbaum Prize for Teaching in Comparative Law. Early stage scholars in a tenure-track position at an ASCL Member Institution are eligible to apply.
4. The Younger Comparativist’s Committee of the American Society of Comparative Law (ASCL YCC) invites paper submissions from emerging scholars for a panel at the ASCL’s annual meeting to be held at the University of Missouri Law School in Columbia, Missouri, on October 17-19, 2019. The deadline for submissions is August 10, 2019. The University of Zurich organizes a conference on “Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations in the Age of Reemerging Nationalism – Are They Really Justified?” on November 21-22, 2019.
5. The African Network of Constitutional Lawyers (ANCL), University of Nairobi School of Law, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Democratic Governance & Rights Unit at the University of Cape Town, and the Faculty of Law at Stellenbosch University invite submission for the ANCL biennial conference on  “The Paradox of Constitutionalism in Africa: Reflecting on 10 years of the Kenyan Constitution,” to be held on August 27-29, 2020, in Nairobi. The deadline for submissions is July 31, 2019.
6. Washington School of Law organizes its 32nd Annual Indian Law Symposium on September 5-6, 2019 in Seattle.
7. University of Ottawa Law School invites for the Fourth Biennial Public Law Conference on “Public Law: Rights, Duties and Powers,” to be held on June 17-19, 2020. The deadline for submissions is September 2, 2019.
8. Association of American Law Schools Advancing Excellence in Legal Education organizes the 2020 Annual Meeting on “Pillars of Democracy: Law, Representation, and Knowledge,” to be held on January 2-5, 2020, in Washington D.C.
9. The Florence Competition Programme announces the annual conference “Hipster Antitrust, the European Way?” to be held on October 25, 2019. 

Elsewhere Online     

1. Yonatan Fessha, Internal Secession and Federalism in Ethiopia, IACL-AIDC BLOG
2. Elena Kremyanskaya, Symposium: Recent and Potential Future Constitutional Developments in Russia, IACL-AIDC BLOG
3. Oreste Pollicino, New Technology, Algorithms and the Rising of Private (Digital) Powers and new Challenges for Constitutional Law, EUreka!
4. Klaus Detterbeck, Political Parties: Driving Federal Dynamics, Adapting to Federal Structures, 50 Shades of Federalism
5. Hans-Martien ten Napel, The Natural Law and Natural Rights Tradition: A Foundation for Religious Freedom, LSE
6. Joelle Grogan, Prorogation is a Paper Tiger, but Time is the Elephant, Verfassungsblog
7. Nadija Samour, “Say My Name”: The Politics of Not Naming, Verfassungsblog
8. Tom Spencer, The Sovereignty of Parliament, the Rule of Law, and the High Court of Parliament, UK Constitutional Law Association
9. Joseph Nathan, Southeast Asia’s democracies must be reformed, Asia Times
10. William Pesek, Abe’s post-election “to do” list is long but achievable, Asia Times
11. Sam Wang, If the Supreme Court Won’t Prevent Gerrymandering, Who Will?, The New York Times
12. Andrew Rettman, Ugly face of Polish judicial reforms laid bare, euobserver
13. Abusaleh Shariff, Ayodhya as Cultural Smart City: A Mediation Proposal for the Mosque-Temple Dispute, The Wire
14. Sándor Lénárd, “The pressure to standardize constitutions is a pernicious assault on national autonomy” – conversation with Professor Nelson Lund, precedens.mandiner
15. Sándor Lénárd, The “administrative state” and the “deep state” both result in problems, conversation with Professor Randy Barnett, precedens.mandiner