What’s New in Public Law

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–Amir Cahane, PhD student, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

–Carolina Gomide de Araujo, Master’s student, University of São Paulo

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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. Panama’s Supreme Court has ruled that same-sex marriage is not a human right and the country therefore does not have to recognize such unions, according to a judgment published Wednesday, March 1.
2. Supreme Court considers if Google is liable for recommending ISIS videos. The Supreme Court on Tuesday heard oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google, a lawsuit that could shift the foundations of internet law.
3. The Supreme Court of Israel has ruled that the Interior Ministry is obligated to register as married couples who wed in online civil ceremonies through the American state of Utah.
4. Montenegro’s parliament appointed three new judges to the country’s Constitutional Court, which has been without a quorum since September last year.
5. The Supreme Court of Nigeria ruled that old Naira banknotes remain legal tender until the end of the year, declaring that the use of executive powers by President Buhari on the Naira redesign policy was unconstitutional

In the News

1. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, access to abortion remains a state-by-state patchwork in the US. Abortion is now banned or under threat in these states.
2. De Moraes says Brazilian Supreme Court has jurisdiction to try personnel involved in the Jan. 8 riots in Brasilia, whether civilian or military. As per the new ruling, the STF may now investigate and judge military personnel suspected of involvement in the acts
3. Push to give Biden new powers to ban TikTok moves ahead in Congress. TikTok has come under increasing fire over fears that user data could end up in the hands of the Chinese government, undermining Western security interests. TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew is due to appear before Congress on March 23.
4. Nevada Senate Judiciary Committee considered Senate Bill 142, also reffered to as the “Homeless Persons’ Bill of Rights. The bill provides a set of rights for persons xperiencing homelessness in Nevada
5. Philippines House of Representatives voted to urge Congress to call for a constitutional convention that would propose amendments to the Constitution’s economic provisions.
6. Chile began its second attempt to draft a new constitution, after previous proposal was overwhemly rejected by voters in September 2022.

New Scholarship

1. Jorge M Farinacci-Fernós, Puerto Rico’s Constitutional Paradox (This book explains how the People of Puerto Rico managed to adopt a constitution whose content and process were both original and colonialist, participatory and undemocratic, as well as progressive and anticlimactic)
2. Rafael Mafei, Como remover um presidente (This book reconstitutes the historical development of impeachment – ​​its appearance in England, importance for the American Constitution and use in Brazil –, to then examine in depth not only the cases of Collor and Dilma, but also the attempts against Vargas, FHC, Lula and Bolsonaro)
3. Rosalind Dixon, Tom Ginsburg, Adem Abebe (Editors), Comparative Constitutional Law in Africa (this book offers an examination of substantive topics from multiple jurisdictions, it emphasises issues of local importance while also providing varied perspectives on common challenges across the African continent)
4. Volume 16(2) of Law & Ethics of Human Rights, on Mixed Constitutions and Human Rights, Co-edited by Cora Chan, Francisca Pou Giménez, and Gila Stopler, featuring papers by Yaniv Roznai, Tom Ginsburg, Zachary Elkins, Francisca Pou Giménez, Yi-Li Lee, Wen-Chen Chang, Ngoc Son Bui and Hanna Lerner.
5. Alan Mygatt-Tauber, Determining Constitutional Extraterritoriality (Analyzing the extraterritorial of the US constitution)
6. Julie C. Suk, A Constitutional Court for the United States: An Indirect Path to Supreme Court Reform (exploring the design, justification, and operation of constitutional courts to explain the inadequacies of the U.S. Supreme Court as a constitutional adjudicator and showing hows how a constitutional court, one devoted to abstract review rather than litigation of cases and controversies, could change the political ecology in which Congress and the Supreme Court operate)
7. J. Joel Alicea, Practice-Based Constitutional Theories, (identifiying and examining the primary justifications offered for practice-based constitutional theories: legal positivism, reflective equilibrium, and the stability that comes from an overlapping consensus)
8. Raffael N Fasel, Natural Rights, Constituent Power, and the Stain of Constitutionalism (demonstrating that the founding fathers of constituent power theory rejected the notion of unlimited constituent power and defended a natural rights approach according to which constituent power is legally limited by considerations such as freedom and equality)
9. Thai Legal Studies has just published a special issue (Vol. 2 No. 2) on the Thai Constitutional Court (featuring articles and commentary about recent decisions by the Court, including on Thai-style militant democracy, fundamental rights, same-sex marriage, and the reform of the monarchy, and containing an informative explainer describing the structure and procedures of the Court, translations of selected full opinions, and concise summaries of 12 other important decisions announced during the years 2019 – 2022).

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. The WSIS Forum 2023 is scheduled to be held from 13–17 March 2023 at the International Conference Centre Geneva (CICG) in Geneva, with the support of remote participation. The annual World Summit on the Information Society Forum is a global multistakeholder platform facilitating the implementation of the WSIS Action Lines for advancing sustainable development, organized by ITU, UNESCO, UNDP and UNCTAD.
2. Call for Applications: ITS Global Policy Fellowship Program 2023. The selected candidates will be able to choose one of our three primary areas of knowledge to develop their research: Rights and Technology; GovTech; Democracy and Technology:
3. The ICANN76 Community Forum will be held on 11-6 March 2023 in Cancún, Mexico. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced that ICANN76 would be a hybrid meeting. Typical attendees include government representatives, business managers, IT managers and consultants, DNS industry managers and experts, intellectual property managers, academics, and others invested in the continuing stable, secure and resilient operation of the Internet.
4. Call for Applications: The Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is seeking applicants for the 2023-24 Post-Doctoral Fellowships in Human Rights and/or Transitional Justice
5. CFP for presenations and attendance at the ‘Reimagining Public Law’ workshop held by the Centre for Employability, Professional Legal Education and Research at Birmingham Law School.
6. The Editorial Committee of Public Law invites Guest Editors to submit proposals for a themed set of ‘analysis’ papers to be published in the April 2024 issue of the journal.

Elsewhere Online

1. Despite voices of dissent within the Taliban government, female students remain barred from Afghan universities after being banned from campus on December 21, 2022.
2. More than 100,000 people are protesting in Mexico against a series of measures that will limit electoral authority and which, according to officials, will make it difficult to guarantee free and fair elections.
3. Amichai Cohen and Yuval Shany, The Current State of Play in Israel’s Constitutional Showdown, Lawfare (Febraury 23, 2023), a Lawfare podcast discussion with the authors, The Israeli Judicial System on the Brink, is also available.
4. A court in Belarus on Monday, March 6, sentenced exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya to 15 years in prison after a trial in absentia on charges including conspiring to overthrow the government.
5. Ylenia Maria Citino, Constitutionalising Insularity, verfassungsblog (3/3/2023)
6. Juan Auz, Another Advisory Opinion on the Climate Emergency? The Added Value of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (EJIL:Talk!) (2/3/2023)
7. Gautam Bhatia, Associations against the order of nature?: The Kenyan Supreme Court’s Judgment on LGBTIQ Association Rights (24/2/2023)