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What’s New: Week of December 15

—Benjamin Nurkić, Managing Editor of the Law and Governance of South and East Europe and a member of the Constitutional Committee of the House of Representatives of the Parliament of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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. On 11-12 November, in Pristina, staff from the constitutional courts of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo met for a practical exchange, joined by a constitutional law expert from Croatia. With support from the Council of Europe, the meeting facilitated closer collaboration among courts and ensured the consistent application of standards enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights in their decisions.
  2. The Constitutional Court of Turkey ruled that the statutory interest rate set out in Article 1 of Law No 3095 on Legal Interest and Default Interest is unconstitutional in respect of “obligations not arising from a contract.” The Constitutional Court issued this decision following a request by the Kahramanmaraş Third Administrative Court in connection with a lawsuit seeking compensation for damage arising from immovable property destroyed in an earthquake. The local court argued that the statutory interest rate violated the right to property, which is protected under Article 35 of the Constitution.
  3. The Constitutional Court of Ukraine declared Articles 23.4.1, 23.4.2, 23.4.3 of the Law of Ukraine “On Prosecution” No. 1697-VII dated October 14, 2014, as amended, as complying with the Constitution of Ukraine (constitutional). Certain provisions of Article 23.3.1 of the Law of Ukraine “On Prosecution” No. 1697-VII dated October 14, 2014, as amended, have been found to be inconsistent with the Constitution of Ukraine (unconstitutional).
  4. At its hearing of 6 December 2024, the Constitutional Court of Romania, in order to ensure the correctness and legality of the electoral process, exercised its power under Article 146 (f) of the Constitution and, unanimously, decided as follows:
    1. Pursuant to Article 146 (f) of the Constitution, the entire electoral process with regard to the election of the President of Romania, conducted on the basis of Government Decision No 756/2024 on setting the date of the 2024 presidential elections in Romania and Government Decision No 1061/2024 approving the calendar program for carrying out the actions necessary for the election of the President of Romania in 2024, is annulled. 2) The electoral process for the election of the President of Romania will be resumed in full, with the Government setting a new date for the Romanian presidential elections, and a new calendar program for the necessary actions. 3) This Decision shall be final and generally binding, shall be published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, and shall be made public.
  5. On 5 December 2025, the Supreme Court of the United States granted review in a case that will determine the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship.

In the News

  1. Austria’s lower house of parliament has passed a ban on Muslim headscarves in schools after a previous ban was overturned on the grounds that it was discriminatory. Lawmakers passed the new legislation on Thursday by a large majority, meaning that girls younger than 14 will not be permitted to wear headscarves that “cover the head in accordance with Islamic traditions” in all schools, with non-compliance fines ranging from 150 to 800 euros ($175-930).
  2. Judges and prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC) have been cut off by banks, credit card companies and tech giants like Amazon as a result of sanctions brought by the United States President Donald Trump administration over war crimes investigations into Israeli and US officials.
  3. Thailand has dissolved parliament after nearly a week of fresh clashes along its border with Cambodia, with a general election to be called within 45 to 60 days.
  4. The US Food and Drug Administration intends to put a “black box” warning on Covid-19 vaccines, according to two people familiar with the agency’s plans.
  5. In the United States, Indiana’s Republican-led Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly rejected a Trump-backed congressional map that would have eliminated two Democratic-held districts, denting GOP hopes for a nine-seat sweep in next year’s midterms. 

New Scholarship

  1. Maja Sahadzic, Tatjana Sekulić, Nevenko Vranješ, and Jens Woelk, The Dilemma of Constitutional Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Discussing Options with a View to EU Accession (Brill, 2025) (constituting the first comprehensive examination of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s complex constitutional architecture, authored by a group of distinguished scholars primarily affiliated with leading public universities in the country. Grounded in a two-year research project and scholarly dialogue, it engages critically with the foundational constitutional principles, institutional configurations, and territorial arrangements underpinning the post-Dayton constitutional order).
  2. Heinz Klug, The Constitution of South Africa: A Contextual Analysis (Bloomsbury, 2025) (providing students and teachers of constitutional law and politics an invaluable resource through which to understand the emergence, development and continuing application of the supreme law of South Africa. The chapters present a detailed analysis of the different provisions of the Constitution, providing a clear, accessible and informed view of the Constitution’s structure and role in the new South Africa.)
  3. David Feldman, Key Ideas in Constitutional Law (Bloomsbury, 2025) (arguing that tensions arise over both distribution and use of powers, and a constitution seeks a degree of stability, but also adjusts dynamically to social, economic, military and political events and changing expectations of the state and what makes it legitimate. To show how these processes work, the book illustrates how different kinds of power are allocated between state institutions at different levels of government, how they are distributed between institutions at the same level of government, and some of the values which animate the relationships between institutions. To understand the nature of constitutional practices and rules, the book compares the UK’s constitution with aspects of other countries’ constitutional accommodations).
  4. Tahir Herenda, ‘Imposing the Outcome vs. Imposing the Process: Lessons on Dependency Syndrome from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Northern Ireland‘ (2025) Nationalism and Ethnic Politics pp. 1–23. DOI: 10.1080/13537113.2025.2586890 (exploring the role of external actors in the establishment and sustainability of power-sharing arrangements in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina and Northern Ireland. It examines the actions and strategies of international and kin-state actors in the first decade following the peace agreements in both regions. The study highlights the contrasting outcomes: the lack of local buy-in and dependency syndrome in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the relative success and cooperation in Northern Ireland).
  5. Camelia-Claudia Mureşan, ‘The (Un)Likely Emergence of a “Right to Die” under the European Convention on Human Rights‘ (2025) Review of European and Comparative Law DOI: 10.31743/recl.18625 (discussing the question of whether the right to die is likely to emerge under the  European Convention on  Human  Rights.  In recent decades,  several member states of the Council of Europe have changed their legal frameworks by decriminalizing the offences of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia.  This development is particularly significant for individuals with terminal illnesses who,  in these jurisdictions,  are granted the possibility to choose when and how to die with dignity. For this reason, this article focuses on the implications of these trends for the European Convention).
  6. Brian Christopher Jones, ‘Pocket Constitutions: America’s Founding Document in Small Print’ (2025) Wisconsin Law Review Forward (examining the evolution of pocket constitutions in the US in terms of their style and content, and discussing implications for partisanship and idolatry that pocket constitutions may present to America’s current constitutional landscape)

Calls for Papers and Announcements

  1. The Institute of Criminology & the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana invite abstracts for a conference on Criminological Perspectives on Palestine: Legal Responses and Academic Complicity in Times of Genocide, to be held at the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana on 9-10 April 2026. Theh submission deadline is 31 January 2026.  
  2. The Leuven Centre for Public Law invites abstracts for a conference on ‘Revisiting the ECHR: A Closer Look at Calls for Change’ to be held at the University of Leuven (Belgium)
    on 22 May 2026. The submission deadline is 17 January 2026.
  3. The Journal of Comparative Law invites papers for a special issue on “Global Law and Particular Legalities: Essays in Honour of William Twining”. The deadline for submission of abstracts is 09 January 2026.
  4. Global Constitutionalism invites papers on constitutionalism, human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
  5. The Armenian International Law Association invites applicants to present at the Inaugural AILA Conference on International Law, to be held in Yerevan in February 2026, on the theme of ‘Rethinking International Law: Knowledge, Action, Reflection’. Abstracts are to be submitted by 15 December 2025.
  6. The University of Oxford invites applications for the Oxford Summer Seminar on Constitutional Process and Design, to be held at the Pembroke College, Oxford, UK, on August 3-14, 2026. Applications are due by January 5, 2026.

Elsewhere Online

  1. Nedim, Hogić, Thirty years from Dayton: Has the Bosnian Constitution found its legitimacy?, EJIL: Talk! (10 December 2025)
  2. Lamia Yasin, The Persecution of Raja Eghbaria: A Case Study of Systemic Repression Against Palestinians in Israel, International Joint PhD Progamme: Human Rights, Society and Multi-Level Governance (20 November 2025)

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