What’s New in Public Law

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—Maja Sahadžić, Assistant Professor (Utrecht University), Visiting Professor (University of Antwerp), Senior Research Fellow (Law Institute in B&H), and Affiliated Scholar (CUHK).

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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. The Supreme Court of Israel heard a case against a law protecting Prime Minister from being removed from office.
2. The Supreme Court of Zimbabwe disqualified a presidential candidate in next month’s elections.
3. The Constitutional Court of Thailand put off ruling in political deadlock.
4. The Constitutional Court of Romania returned the law altering special pensions to Parliament.
5. The Constitutional Court of Ecuador temporarily suspended referendums on mining and oil projects.

In the News

1. The Parliament of Ghana voted to outlaw the death penalty.
2. Myanmar’s ruling junta announced a partial pardon of a former leader.
3. The Supreme Court of India suspended the opposition Congress party leader’s conviction in a defamation case, enabling him to return to parliament.
4. The Supreme Court of India heard Manipur violence petitions.
5. Cambodia’s election committee invalidated almost half a million votes from the national election.
6. The Government of the United States imposed sanctions against four top Bosnian Serb officials, including the Serb member of the country’s presidency, for undermining a peace deal.
7. The Central African Republic voted in a referendum on a new constitution as the president eyes a third term.
8. Former US President indicted for conspiracy in 2020 election interference case.

New Scholarship

1. Antoni Abat i Ninet (ed.), Constitutional Law and Politics of Secession (2023) (analyzes the concept of secession and its constitutional accommodation alongside an assessment of the effects of secession in constitutional and international law).
2. Bertus de Villiers, Indigenous Rights in the Modern Era (2023) (focusing on practical measures that have been implemented in states to give effect to free, prior and informed consent, self-determination by indigenous people, special electoral measures to benefit indigenous people, and the role of advisory bodies to advocate for indigenous interests).
3. Limor Yehuda, Collective Equality, Human Rights and Democracy in Ethno-National Conflicts (2023) (introducing the concept of ‘Collective Equality’ as a new theoretical basis for the law of peace, proposing a new approach for dealing with the tensions between peace-related arrangements and human rights norms, and developing a new paradigm that captures more accurately what equality and human rights mean and require in the context of ethno-national conflicts).
4. Joseph Marko, Maximilian Lakitsch, Franz Winter, Wolfgang Weirer, and Kerstin Wonisch (eds.), Religious Diversity, State, and Law, National, Transnational and International Challenges (2023) (clarifying the multifaceted theoretical and practical challenges of religious diversity and socio-political pluralism in Europe).
5. Zsolt Szabó, Constitution and Government at the Western Balkans (2023) (describing and evaluating the status and functioning of the constitutional and governance systems of the Western Balkans countries with regard to their EU-accession).
6. Jean-Francois Tremblay (ed.), The Forum of Federations Handbook of Fiscal Federalism (2023) (comparing fiscal federalism arrangements in eleven federal/ decentralized countries).
7. Maja Sahadžić, Marjan Kos, Jaka Kukavica, Jakob Gašperin Wischhoff, and Julian Scholtes (eds), Accommodating Diversity in Multilevel Constitutional Orders, Legal Mechanisms of Divergence and Convergence (2023) (offering insights into the legal mechanisms that are adopted in multilevel constitutional orders to accommodate the tension between contrasting interests of diversity and unity and the converging or diverging effects they may have on the functioning of a multilevel constitutional order).

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. Utrecht University as part of the CHAIN project invites abstracts and panel proposals for the international conference “Public Governance and Emerging Technologies: Values, Trust, and Compliance by Design” to be held in Utrecht on 11-12 January 2024. The deadline for paper abstracts and panel proposals is 15 October 2023.
2. The University of Regensburg and the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies invite applications for the “International Visiting Research Fellowship Program” for 2023/2024. The deadline for submissions is 16 September.
3. The Faculty of Law of the North-West University invites abstracts for the Southern African Law Teachers’ Conference “Law, Resilience and Social Justice in the 21st Century” to be held in Sun City on 16-19 January 2024.
4. The Venice Commission in cooperation with the Centre for Constitutional and Political Studies organizes an international seminar entitled “Constitutions and War” to be held in Madrid on 14-15 September 2023.
5. The University of Bristol Law School invites abstracts for the British Legal History Conference “Insiders and Outsiders in the History of Law” to be held in Bristol on 3-6 July 2024. The deadline for submissions is 1 September 2023.

Elsewhere Online

1. Francisco Javier Romero Caro, Spain faces the abyss, Eureka!
2. Elisabeth Alber, The South Tyrolean People’s Party: Between continuity and change, Centre on Constitutional Change
3. André Lecours, The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ): The New Hegemon of Québec Politics, Centre on Constitutional Change
4. Karlo Basta, Life Beyond Independence: Non-Secessionist Nationalism in the Global North, Centre on Constitutional Change
5. Andrea Maria Pelliconi, The Italian Constitutional Court’s new decision on state immunity and the ICJ Germany vs Italy No. 2, EJIL:Talk!
6. Vito De Lucia, On the Question of opinio juris in Nicaragua vs. Colombia, EJIL:Talk!
7. Andrés Martínez-Moscoso and Elspeth Burdette, Oil extraction or biodiversity protection? The dilemma in Ecuador’s upcoming referendum, ConstitutionNet
8. Alexis Essono Ovono and Kelly Joanna Nguema Ondo, Constitutional reforms in Gabon: the president’s strategic tool for political preservation, ConstitutionNet
9. Harun Išerić and Maja Sahadžić, Perils from Within and Without, The Constitutional Court of BiH Under Pressure, Verfassungsblog
10. Helmut Philipp Aust, Cluster Munition and International Law, Ukraine’s Use of Cluster Munition and its Implications for Allies Like the Federal Republic of Germany, Verfassungsblog
11. David Boss, „Blood On Your Hands“, The Legal Dimension of Metaphors in the Case of Zooey Zephyr, Verfassungsblog