What’s New in Public Law

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—Anubhav Kumar, Advocate & Researcher, Supreme Court of India 

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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. Canada’s Supreme Court dismisses FATCA constitutionality challenge
2. Court dismisses Dr Nandipha’s application for leave to appeal.
3. Constitutional Court accepts election commission’s petition for review, suspends Pita as MP.
4. Supreme Court refers Delhi Services Ordinance case to a constitution bench
5. Supreme Court questions resumption of pork barrel fund.

In the News

1. Democratic-backed US Supreme Court ethics bill passed by Senate panel.
2. Vantage Goldfields takes its fight for Mpumalanga gold mines to the Constitutional Court.
3. Constitutional Court to rule next week in impeachment case against interior minister.
4. US Supreme Court to take up review of South Carolina congressional map on October 11.
5. Missouri Supreme Court weighs fate of amendment to restore abortion rights.

New Scholarship

1. M. Bashir Mobasher, The Constitutional Law and Politics of Ethnic Accommodation Institutional Design in Afghanistan (Forthcoming) (2023) (explores whether the legal and political institutions of Afghanistan have been able to incorporate diverse ethnic groups into the political process. Ethnic accommodation has gained central stage in literature on institutional design and democratic consolidation)
2. Vito Breda, Constitutional Crises and Regionalism (2023) (Analyses regional constitutional crises, where a large portion of residents no longer believe that the rule of law, as defined by central institutions, governs them. Laying out a framework for effective governance in divided societies, Vito Breda argues that peace and collaboration are linked to managing shared beliefs through constitutional law.)
3. Abigail Novak & Shelby Gibreath, Police Stops and Subsequent Delinquency and Arrest: Race and Gender Differences (2023) (examines the relationships between police stops in childhood and adolescence and delinquency and arrest in adolescence, as well as identify how these relationships vary by gender and race. Results suggest the relationships between police stops and subsequent delinquency and arrest differ across gender and race. Further, Black girls experience the greatest increase in probability of arrest following a stop in adolescence)
4. Saumya Saxena, Policing Sati: Law, Order, and Spectacle in Postcolonial India (2023) (This article explores the response of the postcolonial state to the question of widow immolation – sati. It demonstrates that the conversation on the practice of sati at the high point of Hindu law reform in the 1950s reflected the simultaneous pressures on the new democracy to establish rule of law while also accommodating the renewed reverence for tradition and religious custom in an independent nation state)
5. John K.M. Ohnesorge, Regulation of the Legal Profession in China: An Historical Overview (2023) (an exploration of the role of law and “proto lawyers” in imperial China, followed by a survey of the legal profession and its regulation in Republican China before 1949 (Section II). Section III addresses lawyer regulation during the high tide of Soviet and the Maoist influence (III.A.), and in the post-1978 reform period (III.B. and III.C.), including the regulation of foreign lawyers and law firms in the China market. Section III.D. turns to developments since Xi Jinping took power in 2012, and Section IV offers concluding observations.)
6. Gaurav Mukherjee, The political economy of effective judicial remedies,  (2023) (considers two new books that explain the why and how of the current crisis of judicial remedies in jurisdictions across the world: Aziz Z. Huq’s The Collapse of Constitutional Remedies and Kent Roach’s Remedies For Human Rights Violations: A Two-Track Approach to Supra-national and National Law. Huq and Roach both offer valuable methodological and substantive insights for comparative law scholars and practitioners.)

Calls for Papers and Announcement

1. Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, Northwestern’s Program on Food and Animal Law and Sustainability, and Northwestern’s Donald Pritzker Entrepreneurship Law Center are issuing an open Call for Speakers for a conference, Animal Welfare and Climate Change: Intersections and Parallels, on Friday, March 29, 2024. Details are available here.
2. The Constitutional Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin, in collaboration with the International Forum on the Future of Constitutionalism, welcomes submissions for its 2nd Graduate Conference on Constitutional Change. This Conference will be held fully in-person from Thursday, January 11, 2024, to Saturday, January 13, 2024, at the University of Texas at Austin. Registration is open until October 16, 2023. Details are available here.
3. Department of Gender Studies, London School of Economics invites two vacancies for 2-year fellowships in Gender, Rights & Human Rights and Gender, Development & Globalization. Last date of application August 9, 2023.
4. The Applications for the CEDE winter Cohort 2023 (Internship) are now open. Apply here.
5. The College of Law at the University of Oklahoma seeks outstanding applicants, entry-level or lateral, for two full-time tenure-track Associate Professor or Professor positions with a starting date of August 16, 2024. Details are here.

Elsewhere Online

1. Sajini Wickramasinghe, Sri Lankan High Court Delivers a Landmark Order as a Bulwark for Freedom of Expression,  Oxford Human Rights Hub.
2. Ruth Rubio Marín, Advancing Reproductive Rights, Verfassungsblog.
3. Joshua Malidzo Nyawa, From Symbolic Constitutionalism to Real Constitutionalism: Taming Imperial Presidency in Kenya’s CAS Judgment, African Law Matters.
4. Sylvain Keller, An Effective Form of Judicial Treatment of Foreign Terrorist Fighters in Kosovo? , EJIL Talk.
5. Farrah Ahmad, Cuckoos, chameleons, and Indian citizenship, Open Global Rights.
6. Gautam Bhatia, Book Review: Githu Muigai’s “Power, Politics & Law: Dynamics of constitutional change in Kenya, 1887-2022”, Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy.
7. Merel Vrancken, Not The Court’s Finest Work: Inclusive Education and Reasonable Accommodations for Pupils with Disabilities in T.H. V. Bulgaria, Strasbourg Observers.