What’s New in Public Law

Developments in Constitutional Courts

1. The Spanish Constitutional Court suspended a resolution passed by the Catalan Parliament that paved way for a new referendum for independence in September, 2017.
2. The Indian Supreme Court held that the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest Act, 2002 is applicable to Jammu & Kashmir and underlined that the State Constitution is subordinate to the Constitution of India.
3. The Colombian Constitutional Court ruled that the national government has the authority to fast track the process of executing the peace treaty with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
4. The Indian Supreme Court pronounced a judgment issuing a set of directions to the government for curbing the increasing rate of racial violence against Indian citizens from the north-eastern states.
5. The Indonesian Constitutional Court upheld the government’s tax amnesty scheme as constitutional.

In the News

1. Polish citizens staged protests in front of the country’s Parliament against the government’s new proposal to curb press freedom by limiting the number of reporters allowed to cover parliamentary proceedings.
2. The National Human Rights Commission of Korea has called upon the country’s constitutional court to hold that conscientious objection to mandatory military service is a universal human right.
3. A group of four churches withdrew the suit challenging the Massachusetts law that affords protection for transgender persons from discriminatory acts.
4. In a recent referendum, Kyrgyzstan citizens voted in favor of a constitutional amendment that bans same-sex marriages.
5. Egyptian parliamentarians raised demands for amending the Constitution to enhance the military courts’ jurisdiction to try cases of terrorism.

New Scholarship

1. Bruce Ackerman, Reorganizing NATO: Europe’s Last Chance to Preserve Fundamental Rights, Keynote Address: Conference on Global Constitutional Discourse And Transnational Constitutional Activity, The Venice Commission (December 7, 2016) (discussing several issues that may arise in the relationship between America and Europe due to Donald Trump’s presidency)
2. Richard Albert & Carlos Bernal (eds.), Cambio constitucional informal (2016) (investigating the forms, functions and limits of informal constitutional amendment)
3. Michael Asimow and Yoav Dotan, Open and Closed Judicial Review of Agency Action: The Conflicting U.S. and Israeli Approaches, 64 American Journal of Comparative Law (2016) (explaining the differences in the models of judicial review of administrative agency action in the United States and Israel with specific focus on the materials a reviewing court is permitted to consider)
4. Norman L. Eisen, Richard Painter and Laurence H. Tribe, The Emoluments Clause: Its Text, Meaning, and Application to Donald J. Trump, Governance Studies at Brookings Institute (2016) (explaining various implications of the recent revelations about foreign interference with the American political system and the importance of adhering to the strict prohibition on foreign government presents and emoluments of any kind)
5. Christopher S. Elmendorf and Darien Shanske, Solving ‘Problems No One Has Solved’: Courts, Causal Inference, and the Right to Education (2016) (arguing for an information-oriented education rights jurisprudence in which courts should enable more credible tests of the competing predictions of warring education reformers)
6. Jill Goldenziel, Curse of the Nation-State: Refugees, Migrants, and Security in International Law, 48 Arizona State Law Journal (2016) (arguing that states have always revised international law regarding displaced people to protect their security as displacement circumstances have changed)
7. Jean Leclair, Legality, Legitimacy, Decisionism and Federalism: An Analysis of the Supreme Court of Canada’s Reasoning in Reference Re Secession of Quebec, 1998, in A. Lopez-Basaguren and L. Escajedo San Epifanio (eds), Claims for Secession and Federalism. A Comparative Study with Special Focus on Spain (forthcoming 2016) (explaining the merits of the decision in Reference Re Secession of Quebec and how the Canadian Supreme Court succeeded in achieving a nuanced path of solution in this case)
8. Pan Mohamad Faiz, Legal Problems of Dualism of Judicial Review System in Indonesia, 16 Jurnal Dinamika Hukum (2016) (suggesting that the authority to review laws should be integrated under the jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court alone)
9. Manon Oostveen and Kristina Irion, The Golden Age of Personal Data: How to Regulate an Enabling Fundamental Right?, in Bakhoum, Conde Gallego, Mackenordt and Surblyte (eds), Personal Data in Competition, Consumer Protection and IP Law – Towards a Holistic Approach? (forthcoming 2017) (explaining the regulation of processing of individual personal data from the perspective of individual fundamental rights)

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. LUISS University is inviting abstracts for the IACL Roundtable Conference on “Constitutional Adjudication, Between Pluralism and Unity.” The conference will take place in Rome on May 5-6, 2017. Interested junior scholars must send abstracts of their papers and CV to pfaraguna@luiss.it by January 16, 2017.
2. The School of Law at Queen’s University, Belfast is inviting paper proposals for the Conference on “The Concept of Fairness in Law-Making,” which will be held on May 19, 2017. Interested participants must submit their proposals to the Conference Committee at fairnessconference@qub.ac.uk by January 13, 2017. 
3. The Faculty of Law and Political Sciences at Széchenyi István University, Hungary is inviting applications for the Winter Seminar on “Protecting Democracy – Law, Politics, Economy and Society in Central and Eastern Europe.” The seminar will be held from February 20-25, 2017 in Gyor, Hungary. Interested applicants must submit the duly filled application form (available on the program webpage) and a letter of recommendation from a professor by January 20, 2017. The documents must be sent to Ms. Orsolya Szalay at szalay.orsolya@sze.hu and Dr. Peter Smuk at smuk@sze.hu.
4. The Faculty of Law at the University of New Brunswick is inviting paper proposals for the 2017 Symposium on “Equality in Education,” which will be held from February 24-25, 2017. Interested scholars must submit their paper proposals by email to kvanbusk@unb.ca by January 8, 2017.  
5. The School of Law and Social Sciences at London South Bank University is inviting stream proposals the 6th Annual London Conference in Critical Thought to be held in London on June 30 and July 1, 2017. Proposed streams must encourage interdisciplinary engagement. Interested stream organisers must send their proposals (500 words) to stream-subs@londoncritical.org by January 9, 2017.

Elsewhere Online

1. Rosalind Dixon, When Political Leaders Won’t Leave (Speech-video), University of New South Wales
2. Alkmene Fotiadou, Peter Leyland, The Constitution of the United Kingdom. A Contextual Analysis (Hart Publishing 2016): A view from the outside (Book Review), Constitution Making & Constitutional Change
3. Caleb Trotter, Can the government decline to register disparaging trademarks?, Pacific Legal Foundation’s Liberty Blog
4. Alok Prasanna Kumar, Much ado about beards: How not to read Supreme Court’s judgement on Muslim servicemen, Scroll.in
5. David Howarth, On Parliamentary Silence, UK Constitutional Law Association