What’s New in Public Law

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—Eman Muhammad Rashwan, Lecturer of Public Law, Cairo University, Egypt; Visiting Lecturer of Law, Hamburg University, Germany.

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In this weekly feature, I-CONnect publishes a curated reading list of developments in public law. “Developments” may include 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. The Supreme Court of Canada has refused to hear an appeal from property developer Concord Pacific Acquisitions, ending a long-running legal dispute over the billion-dollar development of one of Vancouver’s last parcels of waterfront land.
2. The German Federal Constitutional Court decided that the measles vaccination requirement for daycare children, among other things, remains in force.
3. The Turkish Constitutional Court rules that employers cannot collect employee fingerprint data for surveillance purposes.
4. Constitutional Court of Zambia confirmed the High Court at Ndola’s decision nullifying the election of Bowman Lusambo-the Appellant-as member of parliament for Kabushi Constituency on the ground that he had engaged in violence and other illegal acts or practices.
5. The Turkish Constitutional Court annulled the Presidential Decree on establishing the Price Stability Committee of Jun 30, 2021.

In the News

1. Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancée has filed an application with the Turkish Constitutional Court, demanding the cancellation of the transfer of the journalist’s case to Saudi Arabia.
2. The American Civil Liberties Union, along with 12 ACLU state affiliates and represented by Cooley LLP, filed an amicus brief with the US Supreme Court on Aug 18, urging the court to uphold the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act.
3. The US President Biden signed legislation to support law enforcement and expand benefits for survivors, including families of Jan 6 officers.
4. Civil-rights groups have sent a letter to the US Department of Homeland Security, asking for an investigation of a sham university set up by the federal government to expose student visa fraud.
5. Palestinian activists say Israel is behind a social media crackdown on activists, journalists, and news outlets whose social media accounts have been restricted following Israel’s three-day operation in the Gaza Strip.

 New Scholarship

1. Richard Albert, Does the World Need an International Constitutional Court?, 3 Rutgers International Law and Human Rights Journal (forthcoming 2023) (exploring the modern origins of the proposal for an International Constitutional Court and suggesting how to design an International Constitutional Court for success–delivered as the Edward J. Bloustein Jurisprudence Lecture at Rutgers University on May 18, 2022)
2. Murat C. Mungan, Erkmen G. Aslim, and Yijia Lu, Inmate Assistance Programs: Toward a Less Punitive and More Effective Criminal Justice System, George Mason Law & Economics Research Paper No. 22-32 (2022) (providing the first empirical analysis of IAPs’ general deterrence effects after explaining why these effects are likely to be insignificant under a more complete economic theory which accounts for knowledge hurdles; discounting of future outcomes; impulsive behavior; and loss aversion)
3. Edoardo Celeste, Amélie Heldt, and Clara Iglesias Keller, Constitutionalising Social Media, Hart Publishing, Bloomsbury Academic (2022) (exploring to what extent constitutional principles are put under strain in the social media environment and bringing together a multi-disciplinary group of experts from law, political science, and communication studies to examine the challenges of constitutionalizing what today can be considered the modern public square. The book is available with a discount when ordering online at www.bloomsbury.com – use the code GLR A6AUK for UK orders and GLR A6AUS for US orders to get 20% off!)
4. Mehmet Tag and Suleyman Degirmen, Economic Freedom and Foreign Direct Investment: Are They Related?, Economic Analysis and Policy, Vol. 73 (2022) (exploiting country-level data that spans 19 years of observations from 127 countries on the institutions of economic freedom to empirically examine the argument that economic institutions and policies that facilitate the efficient exercise of private property rights are instrumental in attracting higher levels of foreign direct investment)
5. Yu-Jie Chen, “One China” Contention in China-Taiwan Relations: Law, Politics and Identity, The China Quarterly (Forthcoming 2022) (examining the abiding “One China” contention between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC or Taiwan), focusing on their 2008–2016 cooperation and the ensuing political stalemate)
6. Lydia Brashear Tiede, Judicial Vetoes: Decision-making on Mixed Selection Constitutional Courts, Cambridge University Press series on Comparative Constitutional Law and Policy (2022) (Using empirical evidence from the constitutional courts of Chile and Colombia, this book develops a framework for understanding the factors, external and internal to courts, which lead individual judges, as well as the courts in which they work, to veto a law)
7. Stefan Griller, Lina Papadopoulou and Roman Puff, National Constitutions and EU Integration, Bloomsbury (2022) (exploring the relationship and tensions between the national Constitutions and the EU law in the different EU Member States)
8. Martin Belov, Constitutional Semiotics: The Conceptual Foundations of a Constitutional Theory and Meta-Theory, Hart Publishing, Bloomsbury Academic (2022) (offering an outline of the foundations of a theory of constitutional semiotics. The book provides a systematic account of the concept of constitutional semiotics and its role in the representation and signification of meaning in the constitution, constitutional law, and constitutionalism. It is available with a discount when ordering online at www.bloomsbury.com – GLR A6AUK for UK orders and GLR A6AUS for US orders to get 20% off!)

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. The Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society at Melbourne Law School invites applicants to the 18th Annual CILIS Islamic Studies Postgraduate Conference that will be held via Zoom on Tuesday, Nov 8, 2022.
2. The Regular registration for the World Congress of Constitutional Law is closing on Wednesday, Aug 31, 2022, at midnight (UCT+2). The congress is to be held from 5 – 9 December 2022 at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa.
3. The University Research Priority Program (URPP) Equality of Opportunity at the Faculty of Law of the University of Zurich announces the international conference “Contested Equality: International and Comparative Legal Perspectives.” The conference will take place at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, on Oct 20-21.
4. The Department of Public Law at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security, and Law in Freiburg in Breisgau / Germany (Director: Professor Ralf Poscher) is seeking to recruit several Doctoral Researchers (f/m/div) at the earliest possible starting date.
5. Loyola University Chicago School of Law’s Beazley Institute for Health Law & Policy is seeking candidates to fill its Beazley Chair in Health Law and Policy. The institute invites applications from full-time, tenured, lateral candidates specializing in health law and policy, with an appointment to commence in Fall 2023.

Elsewhere Online

1. Sarah E. Yerkes, The End of the Tunisia Model: The Country’s Democracy Has Died—but May Yet Be Reborn, Foreign Policy
2. Ankit Panda, South Korea’s “Decapitation” Strategy Against North Korea Has More Risks Than Benefits, Carnegie
3. Martin Kwan, Modern slavery: Is Domestic Servitude a “Commercial Activity” Exempted from Diplomatic Immunity?, Oxford Human Rights Hub
4. Leonid Sirota, The Good Government Trilemma, American Society of International Law
5. Alicia Espinosa, Effective Congressional Oversight: Capacity, Best Practices, and Measurement, THE OVERSIGHT PROJECT