Skip to main content

What’s New: Week of February 2

—Miracle Okoth Okumu Mudeyi, LL.B. (Hons) University of Nairobi, Master of Laws Candidate at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, Advocate of the High Court of Kenya

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 High Court of Kenya in in Katiba Institute v Attorney General & Others declared the establishment and staffing of various offices designated as “Advisors to the President” unconstitutional for violating the Constitution’s public-service architecture and values of transparency and merit and for bypassing mandatory institutional inputs.
  2. The Constitutional Court of South Africa has struck down statutory provisions that entrenched gender inequality within customary marriages, holding that cultural recognition cannot shield legislation from equality review. This decision matters because it affirms that constitutional protection of culture operates within, not outside, the equality framework, strengthening the transformative content of South African constitutional law.
  3. The Supreme Court of India has held that lack of menstrual hygiene facilities in schools violates Articles 14, 21, and 21A of the Constitution . The Court recognised dignified menstrual health as integral to equality, dignity, and meaningful access to education, imposing positive state duties to provide sanitary products, gender-segregated toilets, and disposal systems. The judgment entrenches substantive equality and rejects enrolment without conditions enabling participation.
  4. A Dutch court held that the State’s climate adaptation policies discriminated against residents of Bonaire in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights (private and family life; non-discrimination), requiring binding climate mitigation and adaptation plans within 18 months. This decision situates climate-change policy within conventional human-rights enforcement.
  5. The United States of America Supreme Court has held that the Double Jeopardy Clause bars cumulative convictions under 18 U.S.C. §§ 924(c) and 924(j) arising from the same firearm use. The Court rejected charge-stacking driven by prosecutorial drafting, reaffirming that legislative intent, not statutory overlap, determines permissible punishment.

In the News

  1. In Uganda, the Electoral Commission confirmed the January 2026 general elections, conducted under a constitutional framework increasingly shaped by security legislation and executive dominance, raising concerns about whether electoral legality can meaningfully constrain entrenched incumbency.
  2. In Peru, electoral authorities formally convened the April 2026 general elections, following repeated constitutional crises and executive-legislative breakdowns, testing whether electoral renewal can stabilise a persistently fragmented constitutional order.
  3. In Italy, Parliament approved a constitutional referendum on judicial reform for 22–23 March 2026, asking voters whether to amend the Constitution’s provisions governing the judiciary and disciplinary mechanisms.
  4. In Thailand, a constitutional referendum asking citizens whether to begin drafting a new constitution will be held on 8 February 2026 alongside the general election, testing whether institutional legitimacy can be reset after successive military-era charters.
  5. Republic of the Congo has scheduled its presidential election for 15 March 2026, a constitutional contest that follows the removal of presidential age limits and raises concerns about entrenched executive tenure.

New Scholarship

  1. Nick Robinson & Jyotika Randhawa, ‘Deciding how many judges should decide: The question of constitution benches at the Indian Supreme Court‘ International Journal of Constitutional Law, (2026) (examines how the Court’s declining use of constitution benches has quietly reshaped constitutional adjudication. They argue that privileging docket management over larger benches weakens doctrinal coherence and institutional legitimacy, while revealing bench size as a consequential choice in constitutional design rather than a neutral procedural matter).
  2. Helen Keller and Viktoriya Gurash, “Proportionality of the COVID-19 Measures: The European Court of Human Rights’ in Proportionality: A Guiding Principle in Public Health Law, Ethics, and Policy (Nikola Biller-Andorno, and others, eds, Oxford University Press, 2026) (analyses how the ECtHR applied a notably deferential proportionality review during the pandemic. They show that wide margins of appreciation, proceduralised scrutiny, and reliance on emergency uncertainty shielded restrictive measures from rigorous review, raising concerns about the long-term dilution of rights protection under crisis-driven constitutional reasoning).
  3. Richard Clary, Zim Nwokora, and DJ Galligan, Democracy in Crisis? The Putney Debates (Hart Publishing, 2025) (the contributors shift the analysis of democratic decline away from episodic breakdown and towards the legal forms through which erosion is normalised. Rather than treating events such as the refusal to accept electoral defeat or the contraction of the franchise as exceptional pathologies, the volume shows how constitutional conventions, electoral administration, and judicial restraint can quietly recalibrate the meaning of representative government. Its doctrinal contribution lies in reframing democracy as a legally sustained practice, vulnerable not only to executive overreach but to institutional compliance with formally valid yet democratically corrosive measures).
  4. Ngoc Son Bui, Mara Malagodi, and Christopher Roberts, Asian Comparative Constitutional Law, Volume 3: Constitutional Structure (Hart Publishing, 2025) (constitutional structure is treated not as institutional background but as a determinant of constitutional outcomes. Through detailed studies of nineteen Asian jurisdictions, the volume demonstrates how executive dominance, legislative configuration, military entanglement, and hybrid accountability arrangements shape the scope of rights protection and the limits of judicial intervention).
  5. Aikaterini (Katerina) Tsampi, Rethinking the Predominant Purpose Test under Article 18 ECHR—Lessons from the détournement de pouvoir à la française 26(1) Human Rights Law Review, (March 2026; published online 15 January 2026) (the author repositions Article 18 ECHR away from its marginal status as an exceptional add-on and towards a structured doctrine of administrative abuse. Drawing on French public-law traditions of détournement de pouvoir, the article shows how purpose-based review can expose situations where formally lawful measures are deployed to pursue constitutionally impermissible ends).

Call for Papers and Announcements

  1. The African Network of Constitutional Lawyers has an open call for papers for its Biennial Conference on Constitutional Law (10–13 June 2026) with notification of acceptance on 16 January 2026 and full-paper deadlines in April 2026.
  2. Phase 2 of the IACL’s World Congress of Constitutional Law abstract call remains open until 23 January 2026, for the congress scheduled 6–10 July 2026 in Colombia on the theme Sustainable Constitutionalism.
  3. European Central Bank Legal Research Programme 2026 invites proposals by 18 January 2026 on topics including AI and institutional decision-making.
  4. Public Law journal issued a January 2026 announcement inviting proposals for Guest Editors of the Annual Themed Analysis Section (April 2027).
  5. The International Association of Constitutional Law will conduct its Junior Scholars Forum and Foro Iberoamericano de Jóvenes Constitucionalistas on March 4, 18 and 20 of 2026.

Elsewhere Online

  1. Laura Cress, ‘Ofcom investigates Elon Musk’s X over Grok AI sexual deepfakes‘ (BBC, 12 January 2026)
  2. Nuno Garoupa, Virginia Rosales, Rok Spruk, ‘Assaults on Judicial Independence under the Pretense of Modernization: Evidence from Venezuela’ (Arxiv, 11 November 2025)
  3. Gautam Bhatia, ‘Active Democracy and a Culture of Justification: the Kenyan High Court’s Presidential Advisors Judgment‘ (Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy Blog, 26 January 2026)

Leave a Reply