What’s New in Public Law

—Mohamed Abdelaal, Assistant Professor, Alexandria University Faculty of Law

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 contact.iconnect@gmail.com.

Developments in Constitutional Courts

1. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an officer-involved shooting case.
2. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that civil claims against an individual employed by a tribe do not implicate the tribe’s sovereign immunity.
3. The Supreme Court of India held that income accruing from Formula 1 races is taxable.
4. The Court of Appeals in Kuwait upheld the government’s decision to increase the price of petrol.
5. The Federal Court of Malaysia found the 1988 amendment to the Constitution that checks the powers of the judiciary “contrary to the basic structure of the supreme law of the land.”
6. The Supreme Court of Cyprus is set to hear a challenge to the contentious “Enosis” bill, transferring the power to set school celebrations from parliament to the government.
7. The European Court of Justice found pirate streaming illegal because it violates copyright protection directive.

In the News

1. South Sudan is to draft a new constitution.
2. The main opposition party in Turkey will challenge the country’s recent referendum in the European Court of Human Rights, after the Council of State rejected its appeal against referendum results.
3. The State Constitutional Commission of Georgia proposed new constitutional amendments.
4. Paraguay’s Congress rejected a constitutional amendment that would have allowed for presidential re-election.
5. Israel appoints the first woman to serve as a judge, or a qadi, on a Muslim religious court.
6. India approves law banning discrimination against AIDS patients.
7. In Ireland, an amendment is being considered to abolish strict abortion rules.
8. The National Rifle Association (NRA) challenges expanded gun control laws in California.

New Scholarship

1. Richard Albert, Constitutional Reform in the Caribbean, 16 Election LJ (forthcoming 2017) (reviewing some of the constitution-level electoral reforms proposed in Caribbean countries and inviting scholars to engage more closely with the region)
2. Alexandra Bruce, The Exercise of Constitutional Rights, a Crime Punishable by Death (2017) (scrutinizing prosecutors’ use of the death penalty to maintain leverage in capital plea bargaining)
3. Erwin Chemerinsky and Michele Goodwin, Abortion: A Woman’s Private Choice, 95 Texas L. Rev. (forthcoming 2017) (discussing the uncertainty about abortion rights and providing a constitutional foundation and defense for their protection)
4. Gabriele Lattanzio, Shari’a Law and Economic Growth (2017) (examining the effects of the introduction of an ornamental constitution including a Shari’a as a Source of Legislation clause on Saudi Arabia’s economic growth)
5. Julia Grabowska, Forced Evictions: Racial Persecution and Social Exclusion of the Roma Minority in Romania (2017) (proposing a new legal framework for the European Court of Human Rights to adopt in adjudication of cases concerning forced evictions of vulnerable minorities)
6. Leslie Johns, The Design of Enforcement: Collective Action and the Enforcement of International Law (2017) (providing inductive evidence that the European Union is more likely to enforce EU laws that generate diffuse benefits, while private actors and governments are more likely to enforce EU laws that generate concentrated benefits)
7. Mattias Kumm, Jonathan Havercroft, Jeffrey Dunoff and Antje Wiener, The End of ‘the West’ and the Future of Global Constitutionalism, 6 Global Constitutionalism (2017) (considering the implications for the future of Global Constitutionalism)
8. Patrick Macklem, The Constitutional Identity of Indigenous Peoples in Canada: Status Groups or Federal Actors? (2017) (identifying institutional and normative challenges that status group pluralism and federalism pose in the context of constitutional recognition of Indigenous governing authority)
9. Shruti Rana, The Global Battle Over Copyright Reform: Developing the Rule of Law in the Chinese Business Context, 53 Stan. J. of Int’l L. (2017) (providing a comparative analysis of China’s reforms of copyright law, with reference to regimes in the United States, Japan, and Taiwan)
10. Albert Sanchez-Graells, Competition and State Aid Implications of ‘Public’ Minimum Wage Clauses in EU Public Procurement after the Regiopost Judgment, in A Sanchez-Graells ed. (2017) (assessing the use of public procurement to enforce labour standards from a competition and State aid perspective, with a focus on the establishment of contract compliance clauses)
11. Anikó Szalai, Same Target from Different Angles? Anti-Discrimination, Protection of Minorities and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the UN, Pécs Journal of International and European Law (2014) (showing the evolution of three different angles to protection against discrimination, and discussing whether they could be integrated into one regime)
12. Katharina Isabel Schmidt, Henry Maine’s ‘Modern Law’: From Status to Contract and Back Again?, American Journal of Comparative Law (forthcoming 2017) (conducting an assessment of Henry Maine’s “from Status to Contract” thesis in light of two essentially modern phenomena: contract standardization and relational contracting)

Call for Papers

1. Faulkner Law Review invites proposals for its ninth volume. The theme of the volume will be “The Role of the Executive in the Anglo-American Legal Tradition.”
2. The International and Transnational Tendencies in Law at Aarhus University hosts a two-day workshop on “Business and Human Rights” to be held on 2-3 October 2017.
3. The PluriCourts Centre of Excellence at Oslo University and the Europa Institute, Leiden University invite submissions for a Conference on the “Legitimacy of Unseen Actors in International Adjudication” to be held in Hague in October 2017.
4. The University of Oklahoma College of Law invites papers for the first Natural Resources Law Teachers Workshop on July 22, 2017. The submission deadline is May 31, 2017.
5. The 2017 Junior IP Scholars (JIPSA) Workshop to be held at Gonzaga University School of Law June 2-3, 2017, invites submissions.
6. The Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies invites applications to its Ph.D. program in Individual Person and Legal Protections. The deadline for applications is June 15, 2017.

Elsewhere on Blogs

1. Vicente F. Benítez-R., Judicial Review of Constitutional Amendments in Times of Peace: The Colombian Case, IACL, AIDC Blog
2. Joaquín Urías, The Spanish Constitutional Court on the Path of Self-Destruction, Verfassungsblog
3. Noah Feldman, Church playground case is a constitutional seesaw, DailyComet
4. Louis Fishman, Wounded but Alive: It’s Not Yet Game Over for Turkey’s Democracy or Its Resistance, HAARETZ
5. Nancy Simons, The Legality Surrounding the US Strikes in Syria, Opinio Juris