What’s New in Public Law

---

–Silvio Roberto Vinceti, Research Fellow (Post-Doc), Department of Law, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia

---

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 narrowed the scope of federal jurisdiction over “waters of the US” under the Clean Water Act.
2. Cambodian Constitutional Council rejected the appeal against the disqualification of the main opposition party.
3. Kuwait’s Constitutional Court confirmed its pronouncement voiding September 2022 parliamentary elections.
4. Ecuadorean Constitutional Court rejected applications against the President’s executive decree dissolving the National Assembly.
5. The Constitutional Court of Romania affirmed the constitutionality of the “abuse of office” crime lacking a value threshold.
6. The judges of Costa Rica’s Constitutional Court condemned the President’s remarks against the press.
7. The German Federal Court of Justice ruled that search engines ought to delist content proven to be false.
8. The European Court of Human Rights held that Romania failed to provide adequate recognition and protection for same-sex couples.
9. The European Court of Justice annulled the Commission’s decision to approve the Italian aid package to Italian airlines in 2020.

In the News

1. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission issued a €1.2B fine against Meta for violating EU data protection law.
2. EU Council adopted conclusions calling for a European space traffic management approach.
3. The US President apparently brushed aside the idea of invoking the XIV amendment to overcome the “debt ceiling crisis.”
4. Michigan’s Ottawa County passed a symbolic resolution to become a “constitutional county.”
5. After approval of the state budget, the Israeli Prime Minister stated that judicial reform will return to the agenda.

New Scholarship

1. Irene Spigno, Valentina Rita Scotti & Janaína Lima Penalva da Silva (eds.) The Rights of Women in Comparative Constitutional Law (2023) (assessing women’s equality in thirteen countries through consideration of both formal and substantial constitutional provisions).
2. Reijer Passchier & Maarten Stremler, Sitting at the Same Table: A cross-disciplinary “constitutional-institutionalist” approach to the study of constitutions (2023) (presenting constitutional institutionalism as a research approach to study constitutional developments).
3. Stephen Gardbaum, What the World Can Teach Us About Supreme Court Reform (2023) (arguing that reform proposals should focus on those distinctive features of judicial review in the United States which, by comparative standards, maximize rather than minimize inherent concerns about unaccountable discretion and partisanship).
4. Dragoş Cǎlin Constitutional courts cannot build brick walls between the CJEU and national judges concerning the rule of law values in Article 2 TEU: RS (2023) (discussing the ECJ decision ruling out national constitutional courts’ ability to prevent domestic judiciaries from applying EU law and benefiting from EU rule of law protection)
5. W. Gregory Voss & Emmanuel Pernot-Leplay, China Data Flows and Power in the Era of Chinese Big Tech (2023) (analyzing holistically the regulation of personal data flows both into and from China from a comparative perspective).
6. Christina Lienen Shaped by the Nuanced Constitution A Critique of Common Law Constitutional Rights (2023) (claiming that neither common law constitutionalism nor political constitutionalism adequately explains public law litigation, and advancing the idea of a “nuanced” constitution) (20% discount code: GLR BE1UK (UK) or GLR BE1US (US))
7. Richard Johnson & Yuan Yi Zhu (eds.) Sceptical Perspectives on the Changing Constitution of the United Kingdom (2023) (examining far-reaching changes made to the UK constitution in recent decades and their ability to reshape the balance in the separation of powers, while claiming an attempted shift from a “political” constitution to a “legal” one) (20% discount code: GLR BE1UK (UK) or GLR BE1US (US)).
8. Mariolina Eliantonio, Emma Lees & Tiina Paloniitty EU Environmental Principles and Scientific Uncertainty before National Courts: The Case of the Habitats Directive (2023) (exploring how courts across Europe and beyond understand and analyze scientific information in nature conservation while focusing on the interplay between different understandings of scientific uncertainty and EU environmental principles) (20% discount code: GLR BE1UK (UK) or GLR BE1US (US))

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. The newly founded Joachim Herz Doctoral School at Leuphana University Lüneburg (Germany) advertises scholarships for the doctoral program on “Law and Transformation,” starting October 1, 2023. The application deadline is June 11, 2023.
2. Hertie School Centre for Fundamental Rights calls for papers for a workshop exploring the frames, framers, language, and assumptions shaping discussions on climate change, migration, and authoritarianism within the Council of Europe. The workshop will take place on 16-17 November 2023 at the Hertie School in Berlin. The deadline for abstract submission is June 23, 2023.
3. The European Yearbook of Constitutional Law (EYCL) invites scholars from around the world to submit proposals for its 2024 issue on “Varieties of Constitutionalism.” The deadline for proposals is June 9, 2023.
4. The University of Chicago Law School and the Society for Empirical Legal Studies (SELS) will host the 17th Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies (CELS). The paper submission deadline is June 29, 2023.
5. Asser Institute invites paper proposals for the hybrid workshop “Countering terrorism and violent extremism in the public interest.” The submission deadline is June 16, 2023.
6. US junior scholars are invited to submit 3-5 pages in length abstracts for the 5th Annual Equality Law Scholars’ Forum to be held at Boston University School of Law on November 10-11, 2023. The submission deadline is June 15, 2023.

Elsewhere Online

1. Conor Clarke There Is No Constitutional End Run Around the Debt Ceiling The Atlantic
2. David Weisberg The Judicious Use of Corpus Linguistics The Originalism Blog
3. Dragoș Călin Once again on the rule of law in Romania. The risk that thousands of defendants would not face criminal liability: a new wave of requests preliminary rulings at the CJEU UNIO
4. Andreas Samartzis & Nicholas Vadivoulis Greece’s Ambivalent Turn to Militant Democracy Verfassungsblog
5. Giovanni De Gregorio Monetising Harmful Content on Social Media Verfassungsblog