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 Pakistani Supreme Court disqualified a former prime minister from running for parliament.
2. Trinidad & Tobago’s High Court declared sodomy laws unconstitutional.
3. In Spain, the Supreme Court denied a request to release the proposed Catalan leader.
4. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal of Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois, against charges over illegal political fundraising.\The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on internet tax sales.

In the News

1. Ivory Coast inaugurated its first senate.
2. Members of the Democratic Party in the United States claim that a recent strike in Syria is unconstitutional.
3. The Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court argued that the Knesset should not be given the authority to override High Court rulings that struck down laws.
4. In Portugal, the parliament adopts a law allowing citizens to change their gender.
5. In Spain, protesters flood the streets in support of the Catalan independence leader.
6. US senators introduce new war powers bill.
7. Recent amendments to the Turkish Constitution will come into force in 2019.
8. In Pakistan, the constitutionally of the president’s pardon powers is challenged before the Supreme Court.

New Scholarship

1. Amos N. Guiora, Inciting Terrorism on the Internet: The Limits of Tolerating Intolerance, in Incitement to Terrorism (A. Bayefsky & L. Blank, eds, Brill 2018) (discussing the First Amendment limitations and the duty to legally protect victims of hate speech.)
2. Colleen V. Chien, Inequality, Innovation, and Patents (2018) (exploring the relationship between inequality, innovation, and patents.)
3. Sherally Munshi, ‘You Will See My Family Became so American’: Race, Citizenship, and the Visual Archive, in Law and the Visual: Representations, Technologies, and Critique (Desmond Manderson, eds, 2018 (highlighting the tension between the visualization of race—a practice at once institutionalized by law and inextricably bound with the medium of photography—and the performance of national belonging.)
4. Christina Mulligan, Diverse Originalism, ‎U. Pa. J. Const. L (forthcoming) (arguing that originalists can take several actions today to address originalism’s race and gender problems, including debiasing present-day interpretation.)
5. Giuliano G. Castellano and Marek Dubovec, Global Regulatory Standards and Secured Transactions Law Reforms: At the Crossroad between Access to Credit and Financial Stability, 41 Fordham Int’l L.J. (2018) (arguing that dissonances between secured transactions law and capital requirements stem from their different ethoi and hinder both access to credit and financial stability worldwide.)
6. Jean Du Plessis, The South African Statutory Derivative Action: Background, Comparisons and Application (2018) (discussing the statutory derivative action under South African law, with some comparative notes.)
7. Mark Graber, Institutionalism as Conclusion and Approach, in Research Methods in Constitutional Law: A Handbook (David Law and Malcolm Langford eds, Edward Elgar Publishing, Forthcoming) (introducing a new perspective to the institutional analysis in public law.)
8. Stephen M. Griffin, Presidential Impeachment in Partisan Times: The Historical Logic of Informal Constitutional Change, 51 Conn. L. Rev. (2018) (introduction the mechanism of presidential impeachment as a new contribution to the ongoing debate in constitutional theory over theories of informal constitutional change.)
9. Lawrence B. Solum, Originalist Theory and Precedent (2018) (providing some introductory thoughts about the relationship between originalist constitutional theory and the proper role of precedent in the American judicial system.)
10. James R. Maxeiner, Failures of American Methods of Lawmaking in Historical and Comparative Perspectives, in ASCL Studies in Comparative Law (Cambridge University Press, 2018) (showing how the methods of American legislative lawmaking, owing to neglect, have failed to keep up with their counterparts abroad, and have thus denied the people the government of laws that the founders expected.)
11. Gilad Yadin, Virtual Reality Exceptionalism, 20 Vand. J. Ent. & Tech. 839 (2018) (arguing that cyberlaw theory and cyberspace-specific legal regimes may be dramatically undermined by the advent of virtual reality technology.)
12. Pierre Auriel, Olivier Beaud, Carl Wellman (Eds.) The Rule of Crisis Terrorism, Emergency Legislation and the Rule of Law (Springer 2018) (analyzing emergency legislations formed in response to terrorism.)
13. Mohamed Abdelaal, The Flawed Public Participation in the Egyptian Constitutional Process, in Tania Abbiate, Markus Böckenförde, and Veronica Federico (eds), Public Participation in African Constitutionalism (Routledge, 2017) (highlighting the difficulties and ambiguities of the Egyptian process, wherein the military-backed government sought to control and direct public attitude and input.)
14. Colton Fehr, Self-Defence and the Constitution, 43 Queen’s L. J. 85 (2017) (arguing that it will be necessary to parse the nuanced moral distinctions inherent in the law of self-defence.)
15. Elisa Arcioni, ‘We, what people?’ Constitutional identity in Australia, 2 This Century’s Rev. 34-36 (2017) (explaining how the Australian Constitution is a good example of how constitutional law – the text and surrounding interpretation – can give a rich account of who the constitutional “people” are.)

Call for Papers

1. The Interest Group on International Courts and Tribunals is organizing a workshop as a side-event to the ESIL 2018 Annual Conference in Manchester. The workshop will take place at the University of Manchester on 13th September 2018, 9-12.30 am.
2. The School of Law of University of Padova (Italy) will hold an International Law Conference on “International Lawyers and Human Dignity on the 80th anniversary of the promulgation of Italian Racial Laws” in Padova on 23-24 November 2018.
3. The Chinese Journal of Comparative Law and the School of Law of Xi’an Jiaotong University are co-hosting the inaugural Conference on Comparative Law: The Past, Present and Future on June 9-10, 2018 in Xi’an, China.
4. The University of Oklahoma College of Law invites submissions for the Tenth Annual Junior Faculty Federal Courts Workshop on September 14-15, 2018.
5. Applications are now open for Federal Scholar in Residence Program at Eurac Research Institute for Comparative Federalism to be held in Bolzano/Bozen, South Tyrol – Italyon.

Elsewhere online

1. David R. Cameron, Catalonia update: Months later, still no government and another election looming, Yale Macmillan Center
2. Ssemujju Ibrahim Nganda, Why we went to court over age limit law, The Observer
3. Melinda Haring, Presidential Administration Says Law Requiring Activists to Disclose Assets Is Invalid and Unenforceable, but Ukraine’s Activists Aren’t Buying It, Atlantic Council
4. Elie Mystal, Originalists Do Not Think Segregation Was Unconstitutional, And Wish You’d Stop Bothering Them About It, Above The Law
5. Garrett Epps, The Unconstitutional Strike on Syria, The Atlantic
6. Jennifer Tridgell, The Departed: Implications of the Philippines’ Withdrawal from the ICC, Opinio Juris
7. Mathieu Fabre-Magnan and Marat Mouradov, Evolution or revolution? The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation Ruling on parallel imports, Lexology
8. A Practical Guide to Constitution Building: The Design of the Judicial Branch, Constitution Net
9. M Rafiqul Islam, Constitutionality of army deployment in Bangladesh parliamentary elections, Constitution Net
10. Gila Stopler, Upsetting the Israeli Jewish-Democratic Balance: From the Declaration of Establishment to the Nation-State Bill, Constitution Net
11. Guma el-Gamaty, Libya’s road to peace: Constitution first, then elections, Constitution Project