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What’s New: Week of December 8

—Yassin Abdalla Abdelkarim, Judge at Assyut Economic Court, Egypt; LL.M, Leeds Beckett University, UK

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. The ECHR held that the Montenegrin Court of Appeal violated the right to a fair hearing (art 6 § 1) and violated the protection of property (Article 1 of Protocol No. 1) by repeatedly and willfully failing to comply with its own Constitutional Court’s directions to quash a protracted insolvency proceeding marked by arbitrary decisions and unreasonable delays. This non-compliance led to the unlawful loss and sale of a company’s property, underscoring the necessity of judicial coherence.
  2. The ECHR held in the case of Europa Way S.r.l. v. Italy that there had been a violation of the right to freedom of expression. The case concerned the allocation of frequencies for digital television broadcasting.
  3. The Singapore High Court found a lawyer to be guilty of serious professional misconduct by mismanaging client funds, failing to verify instructions, abusing the court’s process, and impugning the judicial process on social media, in a series of applications that included suits by migrant workers and reviews filed by prisoners sentenced to death. The Court struck him off the role of advocates and solicitors after finding him ‘manifestly unfit’ to be an officer of the court.
  4. The Singapore Court of Appeal in an August 2025 decision rejected an application to review the award of the death penalty to four prisoners sentenced to death for drug trafficking. The application challenged the constitutionality of the Misuse of Drugs Act, which creates statutory presumptions that shift the burden of proof to the accused, and the Court rejected arguments that this violated the constitutional presumption of innocence, after evaluating substantive and procedural questions.
  5. The Egyptian Supreme Court held in (Case No. 78/29, 2025) that a challenge to the 1981 Income Tax Law was inadmissible, and that new income tax provisions introduced in 2005 repealed the provisions under challenge and introduced lighter penalties, making it more favourable to the plaintiff. The plaintiff, who was being prosecuted for tax evasion, was ordered to pay costs and had a bond confiscated.

In the News

  1. In Poland, the processing of applications submitted in the context of the reorganisation of the judicial system –  in what has been described by many observers as a “rule-of-law crisis” – have been further adjourned until 23 November 2026. This is to allow the Polish Government to adopt general measures following the Walesa v Poland pilot judgment.
  2. In the USA, a filing before the 10th Circuit’s Court of Appeal’s challenges a District Court decision that upheld a ban on ‘conversion therapy’ for LGBT individuals in the state of Colorado. The appellant argues that the District Court erred by holding that the counselling they provide is ‘medical treatment’ subject to regulatory oversight governing professional conduct in providing for public health, as opposed to protected free speech in the form of “a therapeutic modality – carried out through use of verbal language – by a licensed practitioner authorized by Colorado to care for patients.” 
  3. In Mali, the Supreme Court has convicted 17 people in connection with a high-profile procurement scandal worth $60 million under the regime of late former president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.
  4. In Japan, ruling parties have begun talks concerning constitutional amendments governing the military, working toward drafting proposals for the first-ever revision to Japan’s postwar pacifist Constitution.
  5. In Spain, The President of the Constitutional Court stressed that judicial independence is not a privilege of judges, but a guarantee for all citizens, at the closing of the World Conference presided over by His Majesty the King of Spain

New Scholarship

  1. Gralf-Peter Calliess, ‘Reflexive Contract Law: Party Autonomy and the Constitutional Right to a Remedy’ (2025) German Law Journal 748–765 (arguing that a core legal conflict involves a constitutional right to a remedy – access to court – versus party autonomy in dispute resolution agreements (DRAs), and that DRAs, like arbitration clauses, inherently waive default legal rights. The author argues that reflexive contract law must balance these by setting consistent standards for DRA enforcement, proportional to the risk and parties’ proficiency. Achieving this coherence is complex due to diverse international and national regulation).
  2. Iwona Wróblewska, ‘Do We Need the Concept of Drittwirkung to Protect Fundamental Rights in Private Relations? A Lesson from Germany’ (2025) German Law Journal 1–22  (reconstructing the dogmatization process of Drittwirkung with reference to the key rulings in the development of this concept, and presenting a possible account of the relationship between Drittwirkung and Schutzpflichten, to argues in favour of a reorientation of the doctrine of the Drittwirkung, framing the horizontal application of fundamental rights as an interpretation in accordance with the constitution).
  3. Kirsty Hughes, Stevie Martin, and Stephanie Palmer, Human Rights Law in the UK: Themes and Principles (Cambridge University Press 2025) (offering a rich analysis of aspects of the UK and European frameworks for human rights, including critiques of varying conceptions. The book engages with Strasbourg case law, domestic jurisprudence and academic scholarship to cover a variety of issues including the prohibition of torture, abortion and assisted dying, human trafficking, terrorism, immigration, hate speech, privacy, religion, equality, nondiscrimination, and the right to life and protest).
  4. Melissa Crouch, The Palimpsest Constitution: The Social Life of Constitutions in Myanmar, (Oxford University Press) (drawing on archival and ethnographic research in Myanmar, the book proposes the counterintuitive idea that constitutional endurance can be understood as the social life of past constitutions, not just the legal life of the contemporary constitutional text. Offering a ‘constitutions-in-societies’ approach to the study of constitutional history, the book conceptualises constitutions as palimpsests, incorporating traces of past ideas and practices, reflecting contested constitutional legacies)
  5. Sabine C. Carey, Mark Gibney, and Anita R. Gohdes, The Politics of Human Rights: The Quest for Dignity in the 21st Century(2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 2025) (providing an accessible and engaging fresh empirical approach to understanding human dignity and the global responsibility to protect it, by using data-drive insights to explore why human rights occur, and how they can be prevented with shared responsibilities beyond borders).
  6. Theresa Squatrito, ‘The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights: Subtle Constraints and Minimal Deference’ in Judging Under Constraint: The Politics of Deference by International Courts (Cambridge University Press 2025) (presenting the way in which the ACtHPR has been shaped by its colonial past, and showing that its decisions are characterised by minimal deference and a willingness to rule against states with intrusive remedial orders. The chapter connects the ACtHPR’s nondeference to its subtle political constraints, noting it has broad strategic space due to its relatively high formal independence and politically fragmented membership).

Calls for Papers and Announcements

  1. 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.
  2. The Cyber Jurisprudence International Initiative invites researchers and scholars to join in its establishment to refine the global understanding of essential legal topics in cyberspace, such as digital constitutionalism, data privacy, etc.
  3. The European Research Council’s DISSECT research project invites research papers examining evidence in international human rights organisations, for a conference to be held in  Mas Boronat, Spain, from 7 to 9 September 2026. Abstracts should be submitted by 22 December 2025.
  4. The Indian Journal of Law and Legal Research invites contributions to vol VII, issue 5 on the theme of ‘law and related disciplines’
  5. The Journal of the Knowledge Economy invites papers for a special issue on ‘Global Value Chains in Transition: Deglobalization, Innovation, and the Future of Competitiveness’, by 31 May 2026.
  6. UNSW invites applications for a workshop on ‘The Military as a Legal and Constitutional Actor’, to be held at UNSW Sydney, 17 to 19 June 2026. Applications are due by 2 February 2026 or when positions are filled.

Elsewhere Online

  1. Arnulf Becker Lorca, ‘Five Reasons to Stay Away from the ‘Crisis and Renewal’ Narrative in International Law’ EJIL Talk (28 November 2025)
  2. Dimitrios Papantoniou, ‘O.G. and Others v. Greece: Disproportionate Disclosure of Medical Data’CyJurII Case Law Commentary (November 2025)
  3. Equal Futures, ‘The Right To a Healthy Environment’ (November 2025) (a new policy brief on the right to a healthy environment in the constitutions of all 193 UN member states)  
  4. Hannah Welte, ‘The Erosion of Women’s Rights and the ECtHR’s Judgment in A.R. v. Poland’ EJIL Talk (25 November 2025)
  5. Sarah Nouwen, ‘International Law in the Current Moment: Radically Different or Much the Same, and Then What?’ EJIL Talk (25 November 2025).

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