What’s New in Public Law

—Sandeep Suresh, Faculty Member, Jindal Global Law School

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 Supreme Court of India will hear a petition that seeks to live stream the hearings of important constitutional cases in the apex court.
2. The Constitutional Court of Romania held that the repeal of those provisions in the Civil Servants’ Statute which enabled suspension of civil servants who faced criminal prosecution is unconstitutional.
3. The Constitutional Court of Benin held that employees in the public sector have the right to strike which was earlier prohibited by a law passed by the Parliament last year.
4. The Constitutional Court of Zimbabwe will hear the challenge against sections 23 and 71 of the Electoral Act which prohibit Zimbabweans living abroad from voting in local elections without physically going back to the country on February 7, 2018.
5. The Constitutional Court of Russia rejected opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s complaint against the ban that barred him from being a candidate in the upcoming presidential election due to a past criminal conviction for corruption.

In the News

1. The Government of Macedonia will send the new language law that mandates the use of Albanian language in all central government institutions, courts etc. to the Venice Commission for scrutiny.
2. The Government of Canada informed that it will not intervene in the upcoming case before the Quebec Superior Court in which the validity of Quebec’s new law that bans people involved in public services from wearing face coverings will be challenged.
3. The Chief Observer of the European Union’s Kenya Election Observation Mission advised Kenya to reform the country’s electoral system in light of the recent controversies surrounding the presidential election.
4. The Parliament of South African convened to draft specific rules regarding impeachment of the President which is provided in Section 89 of the Constitution.
5. The Supreme Court of Libya will hear an appeal against the draft constitution on the basis of the illegality of its adoption in the Constituent Assembly.

New Scholarship

1. Nicholas Aroney and James Stellios, Rights in the Australian Federation, European Journal of Law Reform (2018 (looking at the position of rights in the Australian federation against the country’s constitutional history and its constitutional context).
2. Luke Beck, The Role of Religion in the Law of Royal Succession in Canada and Australia, 43(1) Queen’s Law Journal (2018) (comparatively examining the laws of succession and constitutional protections of religious liberty in Canada and Australia).
3. George H. Gadbois, Jr., Supreme Court of India: The Beginnings (Vikram Raghavan and Vasujith Ram eds., OUP 2017) (studying the Indian Supreme Court’s history and the role played by some of its major judgments in India’s polity till 1964).
4. Ernest Lim and Cora Chan, Problems with Wednesbury Unreasonableness in Contract Law: Lessons from Public Law, 135 Law Quarterly Review (2018) (forthcoming) (pointing out the key problems with the current use of Wednesbury unreasonableness to control the exercise of discretion in contract law by English courts).
5. Yahli Shereshevsky, Targeting the Targeted Killings Case – International Lawmaking in Domestic Contexts, 39(2) Michigan Journal of International law (2018) (forthcoming) (arguing against the Israeli administration’s current approach towards targeted killings in light of the Israeli Supreme Court’s Targeted Killings case in 2006).

Call for Papers and Announcements

1. The Central European University, Budapest is currently inviting applications for the summer course on ‘Constitution Building in Africa’. The course will be held from July 2-13, 2018. The two-week research course intends to tackle complex societal, political, and legal problems in constitution-building from an interdisciplinary perspective, informed by field experience. The last date to apply for the course is February 14, 2018.
2. The University College Dublin’s Sutherland School of Law is currently inviting applications for three PhD scholarships. The scholarships cover tuition fees (including for non-EU students) as well as a yearly stipend of €16,000. Even though the University is open to all subject areas, preference would be given to applications focusing on constitutional law. The last date to apply is January 31, 2018.
3. Journal of Civil and Legal Sciences is inviting submissions for the journal’s upcoming issue (Vol.7, No.1). The last date for submission is February 20, 2018.
4. Gulf Research Center Cambridge is currently inviting papers for the workshop titled ‘Gulf Cooperation Council Culture and Identities in the New Millennium: Resilience, Transformation, (Re)Creation and Diffusion’. This workshop is a part of the 9th Annual Gulf Research Meeting which will take place at Cambridge University from July 31-August 3, 2018. Interested scholars must submit their papers by February 10, 2018.
5. The International Association of Constitutional Law is organizing the 10^th IACL World Congress 2018 on ‘Violent Conflicts, Peace-Building and Constitutional Law’ in Seoul from June 18-22, 2018. The Association is specifically inviting papers for Workshop No. 27 titled ‘Accommodating Conflicts through Federal Arrangements: from conflict management to secession’. The last date to submit paper proposals is March 30, 2018.

Elsewhere Online

1. Mathias Hong, The German Network Enforcement Act and the Presumption in Favour of Freedom of Speech, Verfassungsblog
2. Editorial Board, The courts may address partisan gerrymandering. Virginia and Maryland, take note, The Washington Post
3. Faizan Mustafa, Grab This Opportunity To Abolish Disqualification Due to ‘Office of Profit’, The Wire
4. Charles Rothfeld, What’s the harm in a T-shirt?, SCOTUSblog
5. Janaki Nair, Reading the Constitution, The Hindu