What’s New in Public Law

–Wilson Seraine da Silva Neto, PhD Candidate in Law & Economics at the Faculty of Law, University of Lisbon; Assistant Professor at the University of Coimbra.

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. Nigeria’s Supreme Court has granted a musician, who was sentenced to death for blasphemy against the Prophet Mohammed, permission to appeal against his controversial sentence outside of the legal timeframe.
2. The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for Trump to fire FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter as a preliminary matter, and agreed to decide an expedited basis the merits of the president’s ability to fire the heads of independent agencies, potentially overruling a landmark precedent.
3. Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal (TK) has ruled that its own rulings should be regarded as being in force even though Prime Minister Donald Tusk refuses to publish them – a policy the TK says is “legally unfounded”.
4. Japan’s Supreme Court ruled that last October’s House of Representatives election was constitutional in terms of vote-value disparities.
5. Turkey’s Constitutional Court has dismissed nearly all allegations of rights violations in the case of a Kurdish woman whose body was left lying in the street for a week after she was killed by security forces during curfews in the country’s southeast in 2015

In the News:

1. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on 5 November in the pair of challenges to President Donald Trump’s authority to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
2. Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook urged the US supreme court to reject Donald Trump’s attempt to fire her, telling the justices that the Republican president’s unprecedented move would destroy the central bank’s independence and disrupt financial markets.
3. Google asks U.S. Supreme Court to halt key parts of app store injunction in Epic Games case, which would force major changes to its app store Play, in Epic Games case
4. Polish Supreme Court chamber says rulings of other chamber “non-existent” due to illegitimate judges
5. The German parliament failed to fill three vacancies at the Constitutional Court, which was removed from the agenda at short notice after it became apparent that one of the candidates, jurist and professor Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, would not receive enough votes because of a lack of support from conservatives in the ruling bloc.
6. Online gaming companies told the Supreme Court of India that their “businesses are shut down” owing to the new law which bans real money games, related banking services and advertisements.

New Scholarship:

1. Raúl L. Madrid, The Birth of Democracy in South America (2025) (The book argues that three main developments – the professionalization of the military, the growth of parties, and splits within the ruling party – led to democratization in the early twentieth century in the South American democracies).
2. Netta Barak Corren, Hanna Lerner, Tirza Kelman, Designing Constituent Assemblies for Democracies in Peril: Theory, Methodology, and Lessons from Israel (2025) (The article offers both a diagnostic lens and an actionable template for scholars and practitioners seeking rule-of-law-oriented constitutional renewal in deeply divided democracies.)
3. Darrell A. H. Miller, Falsifying Tradition (2025) (The article analyzes the use of tradition by judges in judicial cases.)
4. Mark Elliott and Philip Murray, In Defence of Classical Administrative Law (2025) (The article analyzes a range of recent legislative developments that placed in doubt that unlawful administrative acts are void ab initio and that judicial review remedies, such as quashing orders, are merely declaratory of such acts’ legal status).
5. Sanford Levinson, Jack M. Balkin, The Problem of “Popular” “Sovereignty” (2025) (The article discusses the concept of sovereignty, which has many difficulties and ambiguities that have existed from monarchical assertions of authority to present-day claims of democratic legitimacy).

Call for Papers and Announcements:

1. The “Constitutionalism Under Scrutiny: New Critical Voices” workshop invites scholars to examine opposition to constitutionalism. It seeks contributors who can innovate the theory and empirics of these consequential issues. Accepted authors will be invited to a workshop at Oxford University in Spring 2026, with selected papers prepared for a Special Issue/Symposium. Abstracts should be emailed to the editors by 15 November 2025.
2. The Market Sport and Betting Research Group invites you to the 2nd Brazilian Congress on Gaming and Betting Law that will take place on 16 October at IDP Asa Sul, Brasília, Brazil.
3. The University of Coimbra Institute for Legal Research invites you to the Cycle of Seminars: Challenges of Technical Societies in Legal Research, entitled ‘Intelligence and New Technologies’, that will be held on 15 October 2025 at the Sala do Varandim, Palácio dos Melos.
4. The Centre for Research in European, Economic, Financial and Tax Law (University of Lisbon) invites the academic community to submit scientific articles for the Conference “Deglobalization: Challenges for Regulation, Tariffs, and Monetary Policies”, to be held in a hybrid format on 25 February. Complete draft articles must be submitted by 23 January 2026.
5. The University of Coimbra Institute for Legal Research invites you to the Seminar Intra EU mobility – Social Security and Residence Issues that will be held on 7 November 2025 at Colégio da Trindade Chapel.

Elsewhere Online:

1. Or Bassok, They Studied Law, Opposed Netanyahu – and Now Approve the Israeli Army’s Mass Killings in Gaza, Haaretz Magazine
2. Kelsey Dallas, Justice Barrett reflects on public scrutiny, swing votes, and recusals at SCOTUSblog Summit, SCOTUSblog
3. Irin Carmon, The Supreme Court Has Bent the Knee, New York Magazine
4. Daniel Olmedo, From Term Limits to No Limits: El Salvador’s Constitutional Reform on Presidential Reelection, ConstitutionNet
5. George F. Will, Amy Coney Barrett’s Brand of Originalism Irritates Some People. Good., The Washington Post