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. Constitutional Court upholds law punishing sexual acts between same sex soldiers.
2. Nigeria’s Supreme Court affirms Tinubu’s presidential victory.
3. Supreme Court Allows Mobile Sports Bets at Florida Indian Casinos.
4. Japan’s Supreme Court strikes down required removal of reproductive organs to officially change gender.
5. Supreme Court quashes death penalty over ‘hurried trial’ of accused.
6. Supreme Court Of Canada Holds Designated Projects Scheme Under The Impact Assessment Act Is Unconstitutional
7. Turkey’s Constitutional Court finds rights violation in MP Atalay’s ongoing imprisonment

In the News

1. Canada to have first majority-female supreme court following nomination.
2. Georgia Supreme Court sends abortion law challenge back to lower court, leaving access unchanged.
3. Concerns of bias linger over Constitutional Court ethics council chief.
4. New Jersey asks federal appeals court to uphold new gun restrictions.
5. South Africa begins an inquiry into a building fire that killed 76 people in Johannesburg in August
6. Nepal’s lower courts reject marriage registration of non-heterosexual couple

New Scholarship

1. Luis Eugenio García-Huidobro, Elite non-cooperation in polarized democracies: Constitution-making deferral, the entry referendum and the seeds of the Chilean failure, (2023) (extends the study of the shortcomings of the constitution-making design that contributed to the failure of the Chilean process by addressing a largely overlooked aspect: the 2020 entry referendum)
2. Yaniv Roznai, Rasalind Dixon & David E. Landau, Judicial Reform or Abusive Constitutionalism in Israel (2023) (claims that recent changes in Israel may already threaten these institutional checks, and have the potential to do more damage in the future, if given broad effect and if combined with further changes in the power and independence of the Supreme Court. On this basis, it suggests, the relevant changes should be viewed as either ‘abusive’ or ‘proto-abusive’ in nature. By threatening to undermine both the power and independence of the Supreme Court of Israel, they directly threaten the health of the constitutional checks and balances system and, hence, the ‘democratic minimum core’ in Israel.)
3. Bakhtawar Bilal Soofi, The Eighteenth Amendment at trial in Pakistan’s Supreme Court  (2023) (critically examines the implications of the Supreme Court’s decision in Sui Southern Gas Company Ltd v Federation of Pakistan and argues that while the outcome is consistent with a general tendency of constitutional courts to centralize power, the expansive rule laid down by the Supreme Court does not square up with the spirit of the Eighteenth Amendment which was intended to resolve long-standing disputes between the centre and the provinces by conferring greater provincial autonomy.)
4. Jianlin Chen, Law and Politics of Religious Fraud Regulation:  China, Taiwan and Hong Kong (Forthcoming November 2023) (Presents a seminal contribution to the interdisciplinary study of religious freedom and  reveals not only  how these legal tools sustain a hierarchy of religion, but also the political dynamic behind the design and utilization of these legal tools.)
5. Lars Højsgaard Andersen, Court Delays and Criminal Recidivism: Results from Danish Administrative Data and a Policy Reform (2023) (uses administrative data and a policy reform in Denmark in 2007 to measure the unconfounded association between court delays – or, more specifically, time to adjudication – and criminal recidivism within 5 years. Results show that although court delays do not push more people into recidivism, the delays matter for how many crimes recidivists end up being convicted of.)
6. Lukas van den Berge, Roman Dictatorship: Emergency Government and the Limits of Legality (2023) (An analysis of the Roman dictatorship and its reception history in legal and constitutional scholarship serves as a case in point. Contrary to common belief, the far-reaching powers of the Roman dictator – acting to save the Roman Republic in times of great peril – were controlled by informal rather than formal legal restraints.)
7. Nakul Nayak, Constitutional Morality: An Indian Framework (2023) (Article attempts to address questions such as, What are the methodological moves that courts have adopted to deploy CM in case law? What judicial premises and logics are at work in CM? And, given CM’s path dependence, what implications does CM have for Indian constitutional law and theory, using three levels of analysis.)
8. Yvette Lind, Pandemocracy in Europe: Power, Parliaments and People in Times of COVID-19 (2023) (In the paper, two main challenges are addressed: first, the need for Europe to develop adequate and effective responses to a pandemic, both now and in the future; and, second, the challenge for Europe to uphold democratic values when responding to a pandemic)

Calls for Papers and Announcement

1. The National Law School of India University invites applications from accomplished committed, and dynamic legal minds for the following teaching positions. Please note, multiple positions may be open under each of these titles. Last date for applications is December 1, 2023.
2. The University of Alabama School of Law seeks qualified applicants for the position of Director of the Criminal Law Clinic and Assistant/Associate Professor of Clinical Legal Instruction. Details are here.
3. The SOAS is offering, “The Leverhulme Research Leadership Award PhD studentship”. The Social Life of Law in Authoritarian Contexts project offers two fully funded MPhil/PhD scholarships. The deadline for application is April 15, 2024. Details are here.

Elsewhere Online

1. Maame Efua Addadzi-Koom, Righting Wrongs: Ghana’s Supreme Court Declares a COVID19-Induced Law Unconstitutional, African Law Matters.
2. Josep M Tirapu, Trans Rights and the Scottish Parliament: Testing the Constitutional Limits of Scottish Self-government,  Oxford Human Rights Hub.
3. Eric Segall, Section 3, Originalist Chaos, and Why Donald Trump Should Not Be Constitutionally Disqualified from the Presidency, Dorf on Law
4. Alexander Peukert, Who Decides What Counts as Disinformation in the EU?, Verfassungsblog.
5. Kartik Kalra, The Supreme Court’s Marriage Equality Judgment – I: On the Right to Marry and a Case of Abstention through Delegitimization, Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy
6. Andrew M. Jefferson & Micah Grzywnowicz, Gender matters: A plea to National Human Rights Institutions worldwide, Open Global Rights.
7. Yash Giri & Kumar Kartikeya, Intertwining hate speech and politics, Deccan Herald.