What’s New in Public Law

– Neslihan Çetin, PhD Candidate, University Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne

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. Parts of a contested new French immigration law go against the constitution and must be scrapped, France’s constitutional council has said. The council, a body that validates the constitutionality of laws, on Thursday annulled about half of the articles in the law, which was passed in December.
2. Thailand’s Constitutional Court clears Move Forward Party (MFP) leader of breaching election law. Pita Limjaroenrat, the former leader of Thailand’s MFP, has been found not guilty of violating the country’s election law, allowing him to be reinstated to Parliament.
3. Thailand’s Constitutional Court ruled that the progressive Move Forward Party must cease advocating amending the law on royal defamation — a decision that leaves the party vulnerable to being dissolved.
4. With a landmark ruling by the Constitutional Court of Turkey entering into force on January 28, married women are now able to use their maiden surname without resorting to court proceedings.
5. Germany’s highest court ruled that a small far-right party will not receive state funding for the next six years because its values and goals are unconstitutional and aimed at destroying the country’s democracy.
6. Albania’s Constitutional Court said a deal can go ahead with Italy under which thousands of migrants rescued at sea by Italian authorities would be sent to Albania while their asylum applications are processed.

In the News

1. The Taiwan Constitutional Court is to hear oral arguments on whether the death penalty is constitutional, and a ruling is to be made in three months, with an extension of two months allowed if needed.
2. Supreme Court is urged to rule Trump is ineligible to be president again because of the Jan. 6 riot.
3. Ethiopian Ambassador to Somalia, Muktar Mohamed Ware, issued an apology following reports of his possible dismissal over remarks he made regarding the country in an interview with Ethiopian local media.
4. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned domestic neo-Nazi activity after a group of masked men boarded a Sydney train on Australia Day.
5. The nomination of former president of Constitutional Court of Gabon sparks controversy. Marie Madeleine Mborantsuo who was ousted in the aftermath of the August 2023 coup will serve as the “honorary president of the Constitutional Court”.
6. Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court ordered a lower court to reconsider whether a state law limiting Medicaid funds for abortion violates the equal protection rights of low-income individuals.
7. With a view to entrench “environmental rule of law” into India’s environmental governance, the Supreme Court of India enunciated features that environmental bodies, authorities and regulators must imbibe to effectively preserve forests, wildlife, environment and ecology.
8. The Federal Court of Canada urged the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to “do better” in fulfilling its duty owed to the court, according to a decision handed down by Chief Justice Crampton in October.

New Scholarship

1. Christoph Bezemek, Constitutionalism 2030 (By giving nine eminent scholars in law and political science the opportunity to make their predictions, where the constitutionalist project will stand ten years from now, this volume creates a forum of deliberation that will not only aim at anticipating the developments in question but at the same time shape academic discourse on constitutionalism alongside it.)
2. Wen-Chen Chang, Kelley Loper, Mara Malagodi, Ruth Rubio-Marín, Gender, Sexuality and Constitutionalism in Asia (This book analyses the equal citizenship claims of women and sexual and gender diverse people across several Asian jurisdictions.)
3. Adam Chilton, Cristián Eyzaguirre, David Landau, Mila Versteeg, Constraining Constitution-Making (Whether constitution-making should be constrained has long been debated, but little is known about whether it is possible. The authors make several contributions to this question.)
4. Owen Fiss, Why We Vote (Surveys the recent crises of democracy in the United States, including decisions of a conservative Supreme Court diluting the protection of the right to vote, the assault on the Capitol that occurred on January 6, 2021, and partisan maneuvering aimed at the 2024 election that seeks to create obstacles to exercising the right to vote.)
5. Michael J. Glennon, Free Speech and Turbulent Freedom (Lays out a primer of compelling practical reasons for the First Amendment’s broad protection of free speech and explains why pliable international human rights norms fall short of protecting America’s marketplace of ideas.)
6. András Jakab, Constitutional Resilience (The essay explains that constitutional resilience is the capacity of a constitutional system to withstand attempts aimed at changing or violating its core elements.)
7. Jeffrey Kahn, The Irony of British Human Rights Exceptionalism, 1948–1998 (Assessments of London’s relationship with Strasbourg tend to highlight recent discontent about perceived infringements of parliamentary sovereignty by the European Court of Human Rights. This Article argues against understanding this story as one in which this relationship only recently soured.)
8. Zeming Liu, Integrating the “Socialist Core Values” into Legal Judgments: China’s New Model of Authoritarian Legality (This Note examines China’s latest project of integrating the “Socialist Core Values” (SCVs)—an official set of moralistic social norms—into legal judgments.)
9. Martin Loughlin, The British Constitution: A Very Short Introduction (Explains the scope and nature of the British constitution and includes a discussion of the impact of developments over the decade since its first publication.)
10. Yaniv Roznai, We the Fourth Branch? The People as an Institution Protecting Democracy (This essay focuses on the protest movement against the Israeli government’s proposals for judicial overhaul/constitutional reform in 2023.)

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. The upcoming Masterclass with Professor Philipp Dann will take place on 17-20 June 2024 at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, Germany and is now open for applications (deadline 17 April).
2. The T.M.C. Asser Instituut’s Centre for the Law of EU External Relations (CLEER) and Leiden University are inviting current PhD scholars and early career researchers to submit abstracts for a two-day PhD workshop on the legal implications of the EU’s “geopolitical awakening.” The workshop will take place at the Asser Institute in The Hague on May 6-7, 2024.
3. Submissions are still open for The International Society of Public Law’s 10th Annual Conference, scheduled to be held on July 8-10, 2024, in Madrid, Spain.
4. The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law still invites submissions on a closed list of topics in the field of comparative constitutional law.
5. You can still apply for The Leverhulme Research Leadership Award PhD studentship: The Social Life of Law in Authoritarian Contexts project offers two fully funded MPhil/PhD scholarships.
6. Registration is now open for the 3rd Graduate Conference on Constitutional Change at the University of Texas at Austin, to be held on December 9-11, 2024. Graduate students of all levels are welcome. More details here.

Elsewhere Online

1. Mark Deng, The Limits of Public Participation (1 February 2024)
2. Liz Hicks, Civil Disobedience and Judicial Theories of Political Change (1 February 2024)
3. Karthik Ravichandran, Guest Post: The Election Commission and the Pune By-Poll Evasion (31 January 2024)
4. Daphne Keller, The NetChoice Cases Aren’t About Discrimination (29 January 2024)
5. Steve Vladeck, Governor Abbott’s Perilous Effort at Constitutional Realignment (29 January 2024)
6. Zoltán Szente, Four Reasons Why EU Sanctions against Hungary Do Not Work (26 January 2024)