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What’s New in Public Law

By November 16, 2020November 1st, 2024What's New in Public Law

—Gaurav Mukherjee, S.J.D. Candidate in Comparative Constitutional Law, Central European University, Budapest.

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 iconnecteditors@gmail.com.

Developments in Constitutional Courts

  1. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Hydro-Québec has the right to construct an electric-power transmission line along an existing corridor despite the objections of landowners.
  2. The First US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston upheld a ruling clearing Harvard University of discrimination against Asian American applicants.
  3. The U.K. Supreme Court will hear a significant LGBTQ rights case, which could force the country to adopt the internationally recognised non-gendered ‘X’ option.
  4. A leader of the Narc Kenya Party, Martha Karua moved to the High Court challenging the decision by Judicial Service Commission to dismiss her complaint against Justice Lucy Gitari.
  5. The High Court in Nairobi ruled against a ban on public gatherings in a petition filed by the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) under the certificate of urgency, citing the ban as a contravention of the freedom to associate enshrined in the Constitution of Kenya 2010.
  6. The Supreme Court of the United States Supreme Court ordered election officials in Pennsylvania to keep the late-arriving ballots separate from other ballots, and not to include them, for now, in announced vote totals.

In the News

  1. The Government of Hungary proposed a constitutional amendment requiring children to be raised with a Christian interpretation of gender roles, as Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s ruling nationalists turn to anti-LGBT rhetoric to shore up support.
  2. The Federal High Court in Abuja granted permission to a petitioner to pursue a suit against the President, over his refusal to appoint all the 33 nominees recommended to him by the National Judicial Council as judges of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
  3. Peru’s Congress voted to impeach and oust President Martin Vizcarra over allegations he took kickbacks from developers while serving as a regional governor in 2014.
  4. Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party proposed changes to electoral law to suit better the presidential system which critical changes that range from determining a new electoral threshold and limiting deputies’ ability to shift parties.
  5. Guyana’s Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Hon. Mohabir Anil Nandlall outlined that the Government intended to keep its manifesto promise on constitutional reform and commence the process with discussions in the National Assembly. 
  6. The High Court of Justice of Israel heard arguments made by petitioners against the coalition agreement between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Benny Gantz and the changes made to the country’s quasi-constitutional Basic Laws in order to implement the deal.

New Scholarship

  1. Ryan Doerfler and Samuel Moyn, Democratizing the Supreme Court, California Law Review, forthcoming 2020 (arguing that the debate over reform of the Supreme Court of the United States should abandon its framing around notions of legitimacy, and distinguishing between personnel reforms like court-packing and disempowering reforms like jurisdiction stripping and a supermajority requirement for judicial review).
  2. Uvin Dissanayake, Technocratic, Populism and the Pandemic State: Performative Governance in Post-COVID Sri Lanka, Centre for Policy Alternatives Discussion Paper, 2020 (examining how the Sri Lankan Government has been able to employ a counterintuitive and underexamined type of populist rhetoric, that of technocratic populism).
  3. Alan Greene, Emergency Powers in a Time of Pandemic (2020) (examining how human rights, democracy and the rule of law can be protected during a pandemic and how emergency powers can best be ended once it wanes).
  4. Jackie Dugard, Bruce Porter, Daniela Ikawa and Lilian Chenwi (eds.), Research Handbook on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as Human Right (2020) (combining practitioner and academic perspectives to provide a comprehensive, cutting edge analysis of economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR), as well as the connection between ESCR and other rights).
  5. Farah Peterson, Expounding the Constitution 130(1) Yale Law Journal (2020) (arguing that during the framing and ratification of the US Constitution, many of the Founders thought the Constitution would be interpreted according to the rules applicable to public legislation).
  6. Michael J. Klarman, The Degradation of American Democracy — And the Court – Foreword 134(1) Harvard Law Review 1 (2020) (discussing ways in which the US Supreme Court has contributed to the degradation of US democracy, offering some causes for the phenomenon, and possible ways forward). A podcast episode discussing this work can be found here.
  7. Tara Leigh Grove, Which Textualism? 134 Harvard Law Review 265 (2020) (arguing that the battle between textualism and purposivism has caused scholars to overlook a key and consequential division within textualism).

Calls for Papers and Announcements

  1. The Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and the Korea University School of Law host a roundtable on Covid-19 and Constitution with experts drawn from Korea and Germany.
  2. The British Association of Comparative Law (BACL) invited submissions for its blog on the theme “The regulation of fake news and its enforcement”.
  3. The Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard announced an online event on Enforcing Constitutional Commitments to Health and Social Equality in Kenya: A Conversation with Justice Mumbi Ngugi.
  4. The Indian Journal of Constitutional Law announced a call for papers for Vol. X of the Journal, to be published in 2021.
  5. King’s College, London hosts an online event on Ecocide in a Pandemic: Laws of Exposure and Encounter in the Anthropocene.
  6. The Institute for International Law and the Humanities together with the Australian Human Rights Institute host Beijing Platform for Action at 25: Progress, Retreat and the Future of Women’s Rights.
  7. The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies announced the Call for Proposals from potential Academic Directors of the 2022 WG Hart Workshop. The deadline for proposals is January 31, 2021.
  8. The Laureate Program in Comparative Constitutional Law (Melbourne Law School) and the Melbourne School of Government host the IACL-AIDC Global Roundtable on ‘Democracy 2020: Assessing Constitutional Decay, Breakdown, and Renewal Worldwide’.
  9. Penn State Dickinson Law invites applications from entry-level and lateral candidates for tenure-track and tenured faculty positions expected to begin July 1, 2021.
  10. Emory University School of Law sought applications for the John Lewis Chair for Civil Rights and Social Justice, beginning in the 2021-2022 academic year.

Elsewhere Online

  1. Rosalind Dixon, Towards a viable constitutional transformation in Chile?, EmolTV
  2. Ciarán Burke, An Irish Tale of Judicial Misconduct Or: How Not to go for Dinner after a Round of Golf, Verfassungsblog
  3. Katharine Jackson, What Makes An Administrative Agency “Democratic”?, LPE Blog
  4. Kim Lane Scheppele, What Happens Next? The Trials, the Transition and the Tinderbox, Verfassungsblog
  5. Cristina Guevara, ¡Basta Ya! How pandemic-related corruption calls for a new social contract in Panama, Atlantic Council
  6. Viktor Z. Kazai, Power Grab in Times of Emergency, Verfassungsblog
  7. Linda Greenhouse, The Supreme Court Is Now 6-3. What Does That Mean?, New York Times

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