What’s New in Public Law

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—Irina Criveț, PhD Candidate in Public Law, Koç University

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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 US Supreme Court will hear arguments challenging Biden’s administration COVID vaccine and test mandates for some employers and health workers.
2. The Constitutional Court of Spain rejected an appeal against a lower court’s decision that did not consider it a crime for a former relative to ask a woman for oral sex as a means of paying for debt. The court did not consider the case of ‘special constitutional significance.’
3. The Constitutional Court of Slovakia upheld a complaint of the NJSC ‘Naftogaz of Ukraine’ and found that the Ukrainian company had incurred unreasonable costs in enforcement proceedings in the Slovak Republic in a dispute with IUGAS ‘Italia Ukraina Gas.’
4. The US Supreme Court will decide whether to hear a case that challenges a Georgia law that places an extraordinary burden of proof – beyond reasonable doubt – on capital defendants seeking to be spared execution who are intellectually disabled.
5. The Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that sections of the Intestate Succession Act and Maintenance of Surviving Spouses Act are unconstitutional. The unconstitutional sections refer to the inheritance rights of life partners.
6. The Hungarian Constitutional Court unanimously upheld the decision of the Parliament to call for a referendum ‘On Child Protection.’
7. The Supreme Court of Canada will hear several cases challenging Section 33.1 of the Criminal Code that says if a person voluntarily consumes alcohol or other intoxicants to the extent that they lose conscious control of their actions and commit a crime of violence, they are accountable for that crime because they have failed “markedly” to meet reasonable community standards. The ‘extreme intoxication” defence in criminal cases will negatively affect realizing women’s right to equality and equal right to personal security.  

In the News

1. The Parliament of Austria adopted a new law allowing terminally ill patients or patients with a permanent, debilitating condition to end their own lives. The law was prompted by a decision of the Constitutional Court which claimed that the previous ban on assisted suicide was unconstitutional.
2. Pakistan appoints its first female Supreme  Court Judge. Justice Ayesha Malik is the first female judge on the Supreme Court in the 75 years since the country’s independence.
3. The Parliament of Jordan approved a constitutional amendment that established the ‘National Security and Foreign Policy Council’ to oversee security, defence and foreign policy matters.
4. The European Court of Human Rights declared inadmissible, by a majority, a man’s claim against a Belfast bakery that refused to make him a cake decorated with the message “support gay marriage”.
5. The European Court of Human Rights issued interim measures for the first time in a freedom of association case concerning the contested dissolution of Russia’s oldest human rights NGO, the Memorial.

New Scholarship

1. Richard Albert, Yaniv Roznai, Emergency Unamendability: Limitations on Constitutional Amendment in Extreme Conditions, (2022) (examining whether, in a period of emergency, constitutions should prevent their own amendment)
2. Sam Bookman, Edward Willis, Hanna Wilberg, Max Harris, Essays in Honour of Bruce Harris Pragmatism, Principle, and Power in Common Law Constitutional Systems (forthcoming 2022) (addressing matters concerning common law constitutions, such as the powers of the states, the role of judges, and the Crown-Indigenous relations through a pragmatic point of view)
3. Philipa Collins, Putting Human Rights to Work  Labour Law, the ECHR, and the Employment Relation (forthcoming 2022) (providing a comprehensive analysis of the law of dismissal in England and Wales, courts’ practice while dealing with the rights dimensions of cases and proposes an innovative solution – the Bill of Rights for Workers)
4. Conrado Hübner Mendes, Roberto Gargarella, and Sebastián Guidi (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Constitutional Law in Latin America, (2022) (providing a comprehensive study on constitutions, controversies, institutions, constitutional rights in Latin America)
5. Jeffry S Sutton, Who Decides? States as Laboratories of Constitutional Experimentation (2022) (exploring how American federalism allows the states to serve as laboratories of innovation for protecting individual liberty and property rights as well as structural guarantees)

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. The Law Unit of ATINER calls for papers to its 19^th Annual International Conference on Law, which will take place on 11-14 July 2022, in Athens, Greece. The conference is open to academics and researchers from all areas of law. The DL for abstract submission is March 21^st, 2022.
2. The HSE University and Freie Universität Berlin calls for abstracts to the Doctoral Workshop “Populist Mobilization, Globalization and Locality in East and West”, 7-8. April 2022. The workshop aims for gathering papers addressing the following themes: Elite Contestation, Migration and Diversity, Populist Economics, and the Role of History. The DL for submission of abstracts is January 31^st, 2022.
3. The Journal NAD. Nuovi Autoritarismi e Democrazie: Diritto, Istituzioni, Società (New Authoritarian Regimes and Democracies: Law, Institutions, Society) welcomes submissions for no. 1/2022. The issue will contain a special section on “Women in authoritarian systems. A Multidisciplinary Approach”, in collaboration with RUniPace (Rete Università per la Pace). The DLs for submissions are April 15th, 2022 for Essays and May 15th, 2022 for Others.
4. The Centre for Strategic and International Studies’ Africa Program invites applications to the Africa Acceleration Policy program. See more details concerning the eligibility requirements. The DL for applications is January 12^th , 2022.
5. The joint academic venture of Bio Forensic Research Centre, Italy and School of Law, Manipal University Jaipur, called for papers for the “Law and Forensic Science: A Global Challenge” a three-day, online hybrid, international conference taking place in Rome, Italy.
6. The Gonzaga University School of Law invites proposals for paper presentations at its Human Rights Conference in Florence, Italy, on May 26-27, 2022. The theme of the 2022 Conference is Artificial Intelligence, Government, Corporation, and Human Rights. The DL for abstract submission is January 30th, 2022.
7. The Åland Islands Peace Institute invites researchers in peace research, international law, political science or related disciplines to apply for the Åland Peace Fellowship 2022. The DL for application is January, 23rd 2022.

Elsewhere online

1. Ece Göztepe, Silvia von Steinsdorff, Ertuğ Tombuş, A Matter of Pragmatism rather than Principle: How to Restore Constitutional Democracy in Turkey, Verfassungsblog
2. Helmut Philipp Aust,“Realizing Material Justice“: Ne Bis in Idem and the Rule of Law under Pressure in Germany, Verfassungsblog
3. Roberto Gargarella, Restoring the Validity of Law in Democratic Societies, Verfassungsblog
4. Ernst Ulrich Petersmann, Self-Constitution of Mankind without Constitutional Constructivism?, EJIL:Talk!
5. Crissy Stroop, A crisis of democracy in the US – what to watch for in 2022, Open Democracy
6. Richard Clayton, ‘The Government’s New Proposals for the Human Rights Act; Part One – The Proposals in Outline’, UK Constitutional Law Association
7. Karolina Szopa, ‘Condemning the Persecuted: Nationality and Borders Bill (2021) and Its Compatibility with International Law’, UK Constitutional Law Association
8. Colin Yeo, Free Movement review of the year 2021, Free Movement
9. Jacob van de Kerkhof, Biancardi v Italy – A Broader Right to be Forgotten, Strasbourg Observers