What’s New in Public Law

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—Eman Muhammad Rashwan, Ph.D. Candidate in the European Doctorate in Law & Economics (EDLE), Hamburg University, Germany; Lecturer of Public Law, Cairo University, Egypt

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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, 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. Former Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaoré was sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia after being convicted of participating in the assassination of his predecessor Thomas Sankara, who was killed along with 12 of his comrades during a coup d ‘état in 1987.
2. Israel’s High Court of Justice ruled against a petition demanding that the police confiscate money raised for the reestablishment of two illegal outposts demolished by the authorities in the West Bank.
3. Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled on April 7 that Prime Minister Imran Khan’s move to dissolve Parliament was unconstitutional and ordered lawmakers to return, a decision that ended with removing him from power on Friday.
4. On April 7, the Mexican Supreme Court of Justice resolved Constitutional procedures filed to override the Electricity Industry Law amendments published on March 9, 2021, in the Official Gazette of the Federation.
5. Chile’s constitutional court (TC) has ruled that the presumption of environmental damage from farmed fish escapes is unconstitutional, setting a precedent for the country’s aquaculture sector.

In the News

1. Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan was removed from office on Sunday after several weeks of political turmoil that culminated in a vote of no confidence from the country’s Parliament.
2. The Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi resigned on April 8 a Presidential Council was formed.
3. In the first round of the French presidential election, President Emmanuel Macron took the top spot with 28% of the vote and Marine Le Pen with 23%. The turnout was the lowest percentage in 20 years, at around 74 percent. The same two candidates also received the most votes five years ago. The second round will take place on April 24.
4. A mobile court opened on April 12 in Bana Ba Ntumba, Democratic Republic of Congo, to prosecute those allegedly responsible for numerous atrocities committed during an attack on several villages from April to May 2017 in the Dimbelenge territory of Kasai Central.
5. On Wednesday, Representatives of Libya’s two rival governments began UN-backed talks in Egypt aimed at reaching an agreement on holding national elections

 New Scholarship

1. Richard Albert and Richard Stacey, The Limits and Legitimacy of Referendums, Oxford University Press (2022) (exploring how referendums manage the tension between liberalism and democracy and whether this device holds promise for reconciling these two commitments)
2. M. Di Bari, Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments, DPCE, n. 1 (2022) (examining the Doctrine of the Basic Structure in its most recent development by the High Court of Kenya and comparing this judicial theorization with the Implicit Limitation Doctrine elaborated by the Italian Constitutional Court. This comparison focuses on the concept of constituent power in order to understand whether theories of unamendability of constitutional test – though called with different definition – commonly rest on the necessity to preserve the constitutional identity of a given legal order. The article also discusses the rationale behind the (unwritten) limits, questioning the necessity to adopt eternity clauses in constitutional texts)
3. Jonas Monast and John Virdin, Pricing Plastics Pollution: Lessons from Three Decades of Climate Policy, Connecticut Law Review (Forthcoming, 2022) (arguing that climate change and plastic pollution share numerous similarities, and these similarities allow policymakers to benefit from the three decades of climate policy experimentation when choosing plastics pollution policy instruments. The article focuses on one key policy instrument in climate policies—pollution pricing—and identifies lessons from carbon pricing that can inform the design of plastics pollution policies)
4. Carla Nunziato, Protecting Free Speech and Due Process Values on Dominant Social Media Platforms, Hastings L. J. (Forthcoming, 2022) (examining the desirability and constitutionality of recent federal and state legislative initiatives that seek to provide remedies for the alleged viewpoint discrimination against and censorship of conservative voices)
5. Marco Rizzi and Tamara Tulich, All Bets on the Executive(s)! The Australian Response to COVID-19, in Joelle Grogan and Alice Donald, Routledge Handbook of Law and the COVID-19 Pandemic (Forthcoming 2022) (examining the response of the Australian Federal and State governments to the COVID-19 pandemic. Arguing that while successful in limiting the spread of the virus, the response caused significant challenges from a rule of law perspective)
6. Frederick Schauer, Statistical Evidence and the Problem of Specification, Episteme, vol. 19 (Forthcoming, 2022) (Examining the issue of specification in statistical evidence in criminal and civil litigation, arguing it undercuts the prominent examples in a long and extensive literature and raises normative issues challenging the legal system’s traditional reluctance to base liability on the conjunction of probabilities)

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. The 9th Asian Constitutional Law Forum will be held in hybrid format on May 13-14, 2022. Registration is open for this event, hosted by Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.
2. The Asian Law and Society Association (ALSA) invites submissions to its 2022 meeting that will be held on 9-10 December 2022 at the School of Law, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam. The theme is “Globalization, Technology, and Uncertainty.”
3. The programme re:constitution – Exchange and Analysis on Democracy and the Rule of Law in Europe has recently published its Call for Applications for up to 10 Fellowships. The Fellowships address early-career scholars and practitioners of law and neighbouring disciplines to pursue their own topical projects about the current development and challenges to democracy and the rule of law in Europe.
4. The “Constitutional Democracy and the Rule of Law: Mediterranean Perspectives” conference will be held on 1-2 June 2022 and hosted by the Eastern Mediterranean University, the oldest university of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. The Conference aims to bring the foremost academicians, researchers and research scholars together to share their knowledge, experiences and research results on different aspects of the Constitutional Democracy and the Rule of Law.
5. The Network on Transnational Administrative Law calls application to its Postgraduate and Early Career Research Discussions (ECRs) for a workshop on transnational administrative law, to be held on 2nd and 3rd June in Barcelona and online. The deadline for application is May 1.
6. The University of Lisbon School of Law, Nova School of Law, and the International Association of Legislation (IAL) announce a call for papers to the International Conference on “Multilevel legislative drafting and Legislative Impact Assessment” that will be held in a hybrid format in Lisbon on July 15 2022.
7. The Department of Law of the University of Turin, in the framework of the UniTo Visiting Professor Program, issues a call for applications for one position in Public comparative law (a.y. 2022-2023, Second Term, 18 hours). The deadline for submission is April 22 2022 (11.00 a.m).

Elsewhere Online

1. Paul Waldman, Now nothing will stop the Supreme Court from overturning Roe v. Wade, The Washington Post
2. Richard Albert, 40 years on, Canada’s Charter of Rights is a beacon to the world, Ottawa Citizen
3. Dr. Riva Kantowitz, Mariska van Beijnum, and Marie-Laure Poiré, Effective Options for Financing Local Peacebuilding, GPPAC
4. Mariana Velasco-Rivera, Playing the Long Game: Behind Mexico’s Presidential Recall Election, IACL-AIDC BLOG
5. Jos Meester and Guido Lanfranchi, A clash of nationalisms and the remaking of the Ethiopian State, Clingendae