What’s New in Public Law

–Silvia Talavera Lodos, PhD Candidate, School of Advanced Studies Sant’Anna

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. Kosovo Constitutional Court ruledthat national Assembly had not yet been constituted because of absence of election of Deputy Speaker from Serb community.
2. Indonesia’s Constitutional Courtstrikes down Tapera Law, lawmakers urge creative housing solutions.
3. South Africa’s Constitutional Court grants fathers equal right to parental leave.
4. U.S. Supreme Court allows Trump to end temporary protected status for Venezuelan migrants in a brief ruling on the shadow docket.
5. Dutch Supreme Court orders government to reassess weapons exports to Israel over possible international law violations.

In the News

1. Political deadlock in Kosovo: parties await Constitutional Court ruling to break post-election blockade (see also reference to Court ruling above).
2. Ecuador’s New “Social Transparency” law expands surveillance and silences civil society amid Noboa’s authoritarian turn.
3. Puigdemont’s challenge delays Spain’s Constitutional Court ruling on amnesty.
4. Frane Staničić elected new president of Croatia’s Constitutional Court amid chaotic session.
5. Republika Srpska Constitutional Court clears Dodik Referendum, rejecting Bosniak claims of vital interest violation.

New Scholarship

1. Sandra Fredman, Adjudicating Human Rights: Bounded Deliberative Democracy (2025) (This book proposes a model of bounded deliberation, where courts strengthen democracy by ensuring that human rights decisions are reasoned through inclusive, value-oriented deliberation rather than power-based bargaining, illustrated through examples from India, South Africa, and the United States).
2. Peter Hilpold, Furthering the Right to Self-Determination by EU Courts: The Western Sahara Decisions of 4 October 2024 and the Völkerrechtsfreundlichkeit of the European Court of Justice (2025) (This case note analyses the European Court of Justice’s landmark October 4, 2024 rulings on the Western Sahara, showing how the Court firmly advanced the right to self-determination within EU law, reinforcing the EU’s role as a defender of fundamental international law principles despite political resistance).
3. David Kosař, Embedding Strategies of the European Apex Courts: Why Court Communication with All Segments of Society Matters (2025) (This article argues that in an age of disinformation, public trust in the judiciary depends not only on judicial independence but also on courts’ proactive communication with all societal groups through strategies that enhance social embeddedness and prevent court-curbing).
4. Giuseppe Martinico, In the Mind of the Illiberal. Constitutionalism as a Dispositif of Depoliticization (2025) (This article explores how both right- and left-wing illiberal movements challenge the “super-legality” of constitutionalism and human rights, constructing an illiberal constitutional counter-narrative that rejects the depoliticizing effects of entrenched rights protections).
5. Marin Roger Scordato, After the Realist Revolution: Judicial Lawmaking in an Age of Instrumentalist Common Law Jurisprudence (2025) (tracing how mid-twentieth-century legal realism transformed the understanding of American common law, arguing that this shift constituted a Kuhnian paradigm change and examining how remnants of formalism continue to shape contemporary judicial reasoning).

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. The 11th Annual Emerging Scholars Conference in Public Law, hosted by the University of Texas at Austin on February 26–27, 2026, invites graduate students and emerging scholars to submit abstracts on the theme “Bastion of Democracy: The Role of Courts in Navigating Democratic Governance” by October 15, 2025.
2. The European Yearbook of International Economic Law (EYIEL) invites 500-word abstract submissions for its 2026 edition—focused on “Reconstruction of International and European Economic Law”—by 30 November 2025.
3. The Conference “The Future of Constitutional Reform in the United Kingdom” (University of Manchester, 20–21 May 2026) invites paper titles and abstracts up to 300 words from scholars at all stages by 21 November 2025.
4. Bharati Law Review welcomes papers for its 2025 issue on “Recent Developments in Constitutional Law,” open to academics, practitioners, researchers, and students, with submissions due by December 25, 2025.
5. The University of Texas at Austin seeks proposals for the interdisciplinary conference “Contemporary Political Myth and Reality in Eurasia,” to be held February 12–13, 2026, inviting individual papers and fully formed panels from scholars and practitioners across disciplines by October 15, 2025.

Elsewhere Online

1. Silas Isenjia, Zambia’s Catholic bishops raise concerns over lack of public participation in constitutional amendment process, CONSTITUTIONNET.
2. Kelsey Dallas, How a mail delivery dispute made it to the Supreme Court, SCOTUSblog.
3. Miriam L. Henríquez Viñas  and Sabrina Ragone, Caring for Rights: OC-31/25 and the Recognition of Care in Inter-American Human Rights Law, Verfassungsblog.
4. Scott Bomboy, How the Supreme Court ruled on press censorship cases after World War II, National Constitution Center.
5. Rudraksh Lakra, Surveillance by Suspicion – Telangana’s ‘History Sheets’ and the Erosion of Rights, Constitutional Law and Philosophy.