What’s New in Public Law

–Simon Drugda, Nagoya University Graduate School of Law (Japan)

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 Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic held that foreigners without official employment or permanent residence are not entitled to free medical care.
2. The Constitutional Court of Taiwan held that current laws preventing members of the same sex from marrying violate their right to equality and are unconstitutional.
3. The US Supreme Court has struck down two congressional districts in North Carolina because race was an impermissibly predominant factor in their creation.
4. The US Supreme Court made it easier for companies to defend against patent infringement lawsuits. Such lawsuits can be filed only in states where the target companies are incorporated, to prevent forum shopping.
5. The US Supreme Court will hear the constitutional dispute over President Trump’s temporary ban on entry of foreign nationals of six Mideast nations with Muslim majorities.
6. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte stated he will ignore the Supreme Court and Congress as he enforces martial law across the southern third of the country, despite the constitutio giving them oversight.
7. The Constitutional Court of Korea upheld a law that restricts subsidies on the purchase of smartphones and other mobile devices.

In the News

1. Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj submitted several proposals for consideration during the process of amendment of the country’s Constitution.
2. After a meeting between the Nicolas Maduro regime and the Venezuelan Episcopal Conference (CEV), the catholic bishops rejected the proposal of a Constitutional Assembly to rewrite the nation’s Constitution.
3. The Somali Ministry of Constitutional Affairs (MoCA) along with the Speakers of the National Federal Parliament have introduced to international partners a plan for the review of Somalia’s Provisional Constitution.
4. Japanese PM Shinzo Abe has renewed his call to amend Article 9 of the Constitution that limits the establishment, threat, and use of offensive military forces.
5. The Netherlands resumes the process of the second reading to amend the Constitution. The amendment will provide a constitutional basis of Bonaire, St. Eustatius, and Saba and establish an Electoral Council for the islands.
6. The Senate of the Oliy Majlis (upper house of the Uzbek parliament) approved amendments to the law on the Constitutional Court.
7. Syrian groups agree to constitutional consultations.

New Scholarship

1. Richard Albert, How a Court Becomes Supreme, 77 Maryland Law Review (forthcoming 2017) (in paper prepared for annual “Constitutional Law Schmooze,” proposing eight strategies for high courts to invalidate constitutional amendments)
2. Anthony J. Connolly, The Foundations of Australian Public Law: State, Power, Accountability (2017) (exploring the themes of state, power and accountability in Australia’s public law across federal, state and territory jurisdictions)
3. Jeremy Cooper (ed.), Being a Judge in the Modern World (2017) (covering a wide breadth of topics on “being a judge” including the impact of technological innovation, judicial diversity)
4. Loretta Dell’Aguzzo and Emidio Diodato (eds), The ‘state’ of Pivot States in South-Eastern Mediteranean. Turkey, Egypt, Israel, and Tunisia after the Arab Spring (2017) (examining pivot states in terms of their stability)
5. Shai Dothan, International Courts Improve Public Deliberation, Michigan Journal of International Law (2017 forthcoming) (explaining how international courts shape public discourse by supplying legal arguments to the public and by building networks of activists, how these courts interact with governments, and how they form an international community of lawyers)
6. Joshua C. Gellers, The Global Emergence of Constitutional Environmental Rights (2017) (presenting an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, statistical analysis, and comparative case study of Nepal and Sri Lanka designed to explain the diffusion of constitutional environmental rights)
7. Roderick M. Hills Jr. and Shitong Qiao, Voice and Exit as Accountability Mechanisms: Can Foot-Voting Be Made Safe for the Chinese Communist Party?, 48 Columbia Human Rights Law Review (2017) (examining how exit may complement voice in China and improve governmental accountability)
8. Helen Irving, Citizenship, Alienage, and the Modern Constitutional State A Gendered History (2017) (examining denaturalization laws and their impact on women around the world, with a focus on Australia, Britain, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States)
9. András Jakab and Dimitry Kochenov (eds.), The Enforcement of EU Law and Values: Ensuring Member States’ Compliance (2017) (covering all legal issues of EU law enforcement)
10. Liav Orgad, Naturalization, in Ayelet Shachar, Rainer Baubock, Irene Bloemraad, and Maarten Vink (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (2017 forthcoming) (exploring legal and theoretical aspects of naturalization including its object, ethics, trends in naturalization policy, and future directions for study)
11. Stéphanie De Somer, Autonomous Public Bodies and the Law: A European Perspective, (2017) (discussing the impact of EU law on the creation and empowerment of autonomous public bodies at Member State level, and recent attempts to rationalize delegation to APBs)
12. Edward Stiglitz, Delegating for Trust, University of Pennsylvania Law Review (forthcoming 2017) (arguing that that Congress may delegate to take advantage of the credible rationality, transparency, and public trust afforded to administrative procedures)
13. Paul R. Verkuil, Valuing Bureaucracy: The Case for Professional Government (2017) (examining the effects of outsourcing government functions to private contractors)
14. Wendy E. Wagner, William F. West, Thomas Owen McGarity, and Lisa Peters, Dynamic Rulemaking, 92 N.Y.U. Law Review (2017) (empirically exploring the vibrant world of rule revision and the incentives agencies have to revise and update their rules outside of formal requirements)
15. Alex Wang, Explaining Environmental Information Disclosure in China, 44 Ecology L.Q. (forthcoming 2017) (examining the emergence of environmental information disclosure in China, and its social effects in the authoritarian bureaucratic governance setting)
16. Po Jen Yap and Eric Chan, Legislative Oaths and Judicial Intervention in Hong Kong, 47 Hong Kong Law Journal (2017) (disagreeing with the Hong Kong Court of Appeal’s decision to disqualify two newly elected members of the Legislative Council from office)

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. The Centre for Asian Legal Studies (CALS) at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore and the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES), Sri Lanka invite paper proposals for a Conference on “Religion and Constitutional Practices in Asia,” to be held at ICES in Colombo, Sri Lanka on November 9-10, 2017. The deadline for submission of abstracts is July 10.
2. Yale Law School hosts the Seventh Annual Doctoral Scholarship Conference, to be held on November 10-11, 2017, in New Haven, Connecticut. This year’s three thematic wheels will cover papers in the fields of “International Law”, “Law, Society, History”, and “Law, Politics, Theory.” The deadline for submissions is July 1, 2017.
3. On September 15, 2017, Savannah Law Review will present “Rise of the Automatons,” a colloquium examining the legal implications of automation in society. Rise of the Automatons will explore the law’s response to a variety of topics, including cyber security threats, displaced workers, automation of legal industry jobs, and legal rights of robots. Interested scholars may submit a 500-word abstract to lawreview@savannahlawschool.org by July 17, 2017, for consideration.
4. University of Illinois College of Law and University of Bologna School of Law, Center for Constitutional Studies and Democratic Development invite paper proposals for the Third Annual Illinois-Bologna conference on “Constitutional History: Comparative Perspectives.” The conference will be held in Bologna, Italy, on November 13-14, 2017. Proposals received by July 1, 2017, will receive priority.

Elsewhere Online

1. Joseph Fishkin, Locating the absolute minimum level of policy “seriousness” our public sphere demands, Balkinization
2. Jack M. Balkin, Constitutional Rot and Constitutional Crisis, Balkinization
3. Robert Craig, Zombie Prerogatives Should Remain Decently Buried: Replacing the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (Part 1, Part 2), UK Constitutional Law
4. Andrew Cook, Changing the way the UK votes: the Conservative manifesto’s proposals relating to the conduct of elections, The Constitution Unit
5. Tatiana Khramova, To Pay or Not to Pay – Russia’s Next Step Away from the European Convention, Blog of the IACL, AIDC
6. Nomfundo Ramalekana, Human Dignity, Land Dispossession, And The Right To Security Of Tenure: A Note On The South African Constitutional Court’s Judgement In Daniels v Scribante, OxHRH
7. Juan Antonio Mayoral Díaz-Asensio, Judicial Trust as a Zero-Sum Game in Turbulent Times, Verfassungsblog
8. Pierre de Vos, The Constitutional Court speaks about land and dignity » Constitutionally Speaking, Constitutionally Speaking
9. Eugene R. Fidell, The Rocky Road of Military Justice: Pakistan, India and Beyond, Law and Other Things
10. Praharsh Johorey, The Section 6A Challenge: “Illegal Migration” as “External Aggression,” Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy
11. Upendra Baxi, Anthropogenic Harm and Subdelegation, Admin Law Blog
12. Eric C. Ip, The Morality of Administrative Law, Admin Law Blog
13. Linda Greenhouse, Election Wars at the Supreme Court, The New York Times
14. Noah Feldman, Lessons From Turkey’s Slide Toward Dictatorship, Bloomberg View