What’s New in Public Law

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—Wilson Seraine da Silva Neto, Master Student at the University of Coimbra – Portugal; Postgraduate in Constitutional Law at the Brazilian Academy of Constitutional Law

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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 Supreme Court of Pakistan has ruled that Prime Minister Imran Khan’s move to dissolve parliament and call for early elections was unconstitutional.
2. Former Portuguese Private Bank (BPP, acronym in Portuguese) administrator Paulo Guichard will have to serve a prison sentence of four years and eight months after the Constitutional Court rejected, last week, the claim of nullity of a ruling by that higher court.
3. The Constitutional Court of South Africa has ruled that the Minister of Police is liable to pay damages for sloppy police work to a woman who was held hostage and repeatedly raped over a 15-hour period.
4. Romania’s High Court upheld the 72-month jail sentence for bribery and abuse of office against former Minister of Development and Tourism Elena Udrea.
5. The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany has rejected several challenges to the provisional application of a controversial free trade agreement between the EU and Canada.
6. The Federal Supreme Court of Brazil ended a session this Thursday (7) with three votes to overturn decrees edited by President Jair Bolsonaro that restricted popular participation and governors in environmental agencies. The judgment is part of the package of actions on environmental issues selected by the court to compose the so-called “Green Agenda”.

In the News

1. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is confirmed as the 116th justice of the U.S. Supreme Court by a vote of 53-47. Jackson becomes the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.
2. Considered one of the most important jurists in Brazil, Dalmo de Abreu Dallari died this Friday (8). Dallari was professor emeritus at the Faculty of Law of the University of São Paulo (USP).
3. Senate Judiciary Chairman Richard J. Durbin proposes a reexamination of baseball’s antitrust exemption.
4. The Judicial Service Commission (JSC) has recommended four candidates for two vacancies in the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
5. Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that the Peruvian State refrains from executing the release order until it decides on provisional measures requested by the representatives of the victims of the 1991/92 Cantuta and Barrios Altos killings for which former President Fujimori was convicted and sentenced.

New Scholarship

1. Tamás Hoffman and Fruzsina Gárdos-Orosz (org.), Review of Central and East European Law (2022) (special issue on the effects of populist governance on the Hungarian Legal System).
2. Jacco Bomhoff, Proportionality in Comparative Law (2022) (the paper presents brief overviews of work concerned with the (1) identification, (2) explanation, (3) interpretation, and (4) critique, of proportionality’s global diffusion and ‘success’).
3. Adamilton Lima Borgneth and Jhonnatas dos Santos Sousa, Eduação e Direitos Huamnos: Teoria, prática e desafios em tempos de pandemia (2022) (analyzing education and other fields in human rights, referring to the Covid pandemic issue).
4. Tom Gerald Daly, ‘Good’ Court-Packing? The Paradoxes of Democratic Restoration in Contexts of Democratic Decay (2022) (comparative analysis of the legitimacy of court-packing through case-studies of Turkey and Argentina).
5. Mark Tushnet, Trust the Science But Do Your Research: A Comment on the Unfortunate Revival of the Progressive Case for the Administrative State (2022) (offers a critique of one Progressive argument for the administrative state)

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. The Charles University Faculty of Law will hold an international conference titled “European Constitutionalism and the Virus of Distrust” in Prague, Czech Republic on 27-28 April 2022.
2. The Editorial Board of the Review of European Administrative Law (REALaw) is inviting young scholars to submit abstracts of maximum 500 words before 30 April 2022 to participate a new edition of the REALaw Forum.
3. The German ICON-S Chapter invites abstracts and panel proposals for 2nd main conference “Margins in/of Law – Spielräume des Rechts” on the 15-16 September 2022 in Gießen. Deadline for abstracts and panel proposals is 15 April 2022.
4. Observatory on Religious Freedom in the Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human (ORFECT) welcomes abstract on Freedom of religion or belief in times of migration by 30 May 2022 to the ORFECT Inaugural Conference will hold on 6-7 October 2022.
5. VII International Congress on Human Rights of Coimbra extended deadline for the submission of proposals of symposiums by 18 April 2022.  

Elsewhere Online

1. Adam Liptak, A Transformative Justice Whose Impact May Be Limited, The New York Times.
2. Nicholas Reed Langen, The Justices Have No Clothes, Project Syndicate.
3. Scholars and Professors at University of Coimbra, Investigando na UC, Diário As Beiras
4. Valentina Montoya Robledo, Abortion Decriminalization in Colombia: Legal Fetishism or Practical Reform?, IACL-AIDC Blog
5. United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Questionnaire for Judicial Nominees: Ketanji Brown Jackson Nominee to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States