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 Constitutional Court of Republic of Moldova suspends presidential attributions on appointing ministers.
2. The Russian Constitutional Court dismissed an appeal to allow an opposition figure to run for presidential election.
3. Spain’s Supreme Court ruled that former Catalan Vice President must remain in jail pending an investigation on rebellion charges.
4. The Supreme Court of India ordered a review to the ban on gay sex.
5. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a water dispute between Florida and Georgia.

In the News

1. The Nigerian General Assembly approved new constitutional amendments.
2. The South African Parliament will review rules on removing the president.
3. In Norway, the government’s plans for oil exploration in the Arctic were held constitutional.
4. In Iceland, a new law has been promulgated requiring equal pay for women.
5. In Thailand, the Democrat Party will seek Constitutional Court nullification of an Article 44 order amending the political party law.
6. UN experts condemned Saudi Arabia’s use of anti-terror laws.

New Scholarships

1. Gerard Magliocca, The Heart of the Constitution: How the Bill of Rights became the Bill of Rights (Oxford University Press 2018) (providing a sweeping reinterpretation of the Bill of Rights)
2. Farah Diaz-Tello, Melissa Mikesell, and Jill E. Adams, Roe’s Unfinished Promise: Decriminalizing Abortion Once and for All (2018) (discussing the constraints of misunderstanding and the restraints of criminalizing non-clinical abortion)
3. Chris Jenks, A Matter of Policy: United States Application of the Law of Armed Conflict, 46 Southwestern Univ. L. Rev., 2017 (examining to what extent does the law of armed conflict apply to the United States military fighting in armed conflicts)
4. John Witte Jr., Law, Religion, and Metaphor, in Günter Thomas and Heike Springhart (eds.), Risiko und Vertrauen/Risk and Trust: Festschrift für Michael Welker zum 70. Geburtstag (Leipzig: Evangeliche Verlagsanhalt, 2017) (exploring the role of metaphors in shaping our thought and language in general, and in the fields of law and religion in particular)
5. Marcelo Thompson, The Biographical Core of Law: Privacy, Personhood, and the Bounds of Obligation, in Daniel Matthews and Scott Veitch (eds.), Law, Obligation, Community (Routledge, 2018) (querying the quintessential realm where law and human subjectivity intersect)
6. Allan Beever, Engagement, Criticism and the Academic Lawyer, 27 New Zealand Univ. L. Rev. 79-93 (2017) (examining the way in which academic lawyers relate to the work of their colleagues)
7. Thomas Schultz and François Ost, Shakespearean Legal Thought in International Dispute Settlement (2017) (examining the contributions of Shakespearean legal thought to our understanding of core aspects of international dispute settlement)
8. Graham Butler, Pre-Ratification Judicial Review of International Agreements to be Concluded by the European Union, in ‘The Court of Justice of the European Union: Multidisciplinary Perspectives’, Mattias Derlén and Johan Lindholm (eds) Hart Publishing/Bloomsbury 53-77 (2018) (analysing the pre-ratification judicial review option, Article 218(11) TFEU, available to certain actors for future EU international agreements)

Call for Papers

1. The Center for Law, Science & Innovation at Arizona State University is calling for abstracts for the 6th Annual Conference on the Governance of Emerging Technologies & Science Law, Policy and Ethics. The conference will be held May 16-18, 2018.
2. The Journal of Corporate Finance invites proposals for special issues on the theory and practice of corporate finance.
3. The Seattle Journal for Social Justice welcomes submissions for its symposium entitled “Police Brutality: Its Chilling Effect and Innovative Solutions” on Friday, April 6th, 2018.
4. Babson College and The Virginia Tech Center for Business Intelligence Analytics and The Department of Business Law and Ethics, Kelley School of Business invites submissions for its annual research colloquium, “Law and Ethics of Big Data,” which will be held at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts on April 27-28, 2018.
5. A call for papers has been issued for the fourth volume of the South Asian Law Review Journal, which will focus on contemporary issues of law (National & International).
6. The Minerva Center for the Study of the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions at the University of Haifa (Faculty of Law and the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies), invites proposals for research activities, as outlined below, aimed at analyzing the various aspects of pre, during and post-emergency resilience.

Elsewhere online

1. M. Wawrykiewicz, P. Kieszkowska-Knapik, M. Ejchart-Dubois and S. Gregorczyk-Abram, Poland’s government is undermining the rule of law, ConstitutionNet
2. Giovanni Bonello, Misunderstanding the Constitution: A battery of pointless ‘principles’?, Times Malta
3. Constitutional Rights and the Police, The Punch
4. Christian V. Esguerra, Draft constitution ‘dangerous,’ gives Duterte temporary lawmaking power: ex-solon, ABS-CBN News
5. Larry Davidson, It’s time the Supreme Court makes sales tax fair again, The Washington Post