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What’s New: Week of June 8

— Yassin Abdelkarim, Judge at Assyut Economic Court, Egypt; LLM Leeds Beckett University, UK; Founder of Cyber Jurisprudence International Initiative (CyJurII).

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.  South Africa’s Constitutional Court overturned a Supreme Court of Appeal decision, holding that foreign nationals are not entitled to reapply for asylum after an initial rejection, in a petition filed by two nationals from Burundi.
  2. The Supreme Court of South Korea upheld a lower court’s conviction for animal abuse and property damage, clarifying the elements that constituted acts violating the relevant law, and laying down the conditions under which a defense of justification can be raised.
  3. The US Supreme Court permitted the State of Alabama to use a congressional map for 2026 elections, despite findings from lower courts that the map discriminates on grounds of race and violated the Voting Rights Act.
  4. The Inter-American Court delivered a preliminary judgment on preliminary in Revilla Soto v Venezuela, unanimously dismissing objections to their exercise of jurisdiction, which were raised in relation to Venezuela’s withdrawal from the American Convention on Human Rights. The judgment reinforces the Court’s oversight on political rights, due process, and civil liberties.
  5. The ECHR in Tožičková v. the Czech Republic, held that there had been a violation of the right to freedom of expression, and that domestic courts had failed to provide sufficient reasons to justify the applicant’s arrest. The Court found that the arrest, aimed at preventing the applicant from fulfilling her duties as a journalist, did not meet a pressing social need and could not be justified as necessary in a democratic society.
  6. The ECHR held inadmissible an application for international protection from a person claiming that Belgium failed to provide accommodation or material assistance as required by law. The Court found that the applicant’s claims were false and amounted to abuse of the right to individual applications.

In the News

  1. The US Supreme Court will issue over twenty opinions in the final month of their current term, deciding several cases that may redefine the scope of executive authority amid uncertainty about the President’s responses to their holdings, as well as questions concerning civil liberties and election laws. Significant cases concerns the President’s power to fire executive officials in independent agencies without showing cause, and the rights of transgender athletes.
  2. The Council of Europe has released a declaration on how the European Convention on Human Rights applies to cases concerning migration, in response to populist objections as well as some threats to withdraw from the Convention over concerns on migration. The declaration includes agreements that the bar for ‘degrading or inhuman treatment’ under article 3 of the Convention should be applied at a high level, and that a balance should be struck between individual rights and the interests of the public.
  3. Brazil’s Senate has rejected one the President’s nomination of Jorge Messias, Brazil’s solicitor-general, to the Supreme Court. This is the first such rejection in 130 years, and marks some political opposition as President Lula prepares to seek re-election for another term.

New Scholarship

  1. Mark Juergensmeyer, Religion and Violence: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press 2027) (examining questions concerning the relationship between religion and violence, drawing from case studies with militias and extremist groups of different religious to provide an evidence-based introduction to the topic).
  2. Derek Alan Woodard-Lehman, ‘Barth, Barmen, and Belhar: The Politics of Reformed Confession‘ 20(1-2) Journal of Reformed Theology 45–70 (2026) (arguing that Christian faith provides a prototype of civic freedom and a pattern for the rule of law, drawing from the Barmen Declaration and Belhar Confession as expressions of Reformed theology, in alignment with Karl Barth’s democratic paradigm).
  3. Chris Joseph and Tara Marsden, ‘Gitanyow Climate Test: Intersection of Major Projects, Climate, and Indigenous Reconciliation‘ Climate Law (Advance Articles, 2026) (evaluating the impact of a a climate test formulated by the indigenous Gitanyow people of British Columbia on Canada’s impact assessment law, and arguing that it demonstrates the evolving legal Canadian spheres in which indigenous nations participate to address gaps in colonial lawmaking as well as influence the development of projects).
  4. Jan-Melissa Schramm, ‘Human Rights, World Literature, and World Citizenship: From Charles Dickens to Alexis Wright‘ 11(2) Journal of World Literature 149–171 (2026) (arguing that imaginative literature creates a space in which the conflict between national sovereignty and universal human rights can be explored in ways that permit reframing personhood beyond restrictive legal definitions, through a discussion of the works of Charles Dickens, Peter Carey, and Alexis Wright).
  5.  Muhammad Asad Latif, ‘Classifying Muslims in Contemporary Europe: Their Identity, Religion and Race in Germany and United Kingdom‘ 33(1) International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 75–103 (2025) (comparing the classification of Muslims as a minority in the UK and Germany, and examining what it means to be Muslim between state classification and self-identification).
  6. Adom Getachew, ‘International Interdependence beyond the Family of Nations: Afterword to the Foreword by Susan Marks‘ 36 European Journal of International Law 807–814 (2025) (taking up Susan Marks’ argument that the family in international law in a metaphorical sense contributes to understanding global interconnections, and using anti-colonial and post-colonial perspectives to re-imagine families as associated with dependence, care, and inheritance, shaped by slavery and colonialism).

Calls for Papers and Announcements

  1. Florida State University College of Law and Loyola University Chicago School of Law invite abstracts for the Seventeenth Annual Constitutional Law Colloquium at the Florida State University College of Law Campus, USA. Deadline: 19 June 2026.
  2. The Legal Aid Society of Lucknow University, India, invites proposals for book chapters for an edited volume titled ‘Justice Beyond Courts – ADR in an Age of Legal Innovation’. Submissions are due by June 20, 2026.
  3. Jindal Global Law School, India, invites submissions for a special issue on ‘Artificial Intelligence and Law’ for their journal, the Jindal Global Law Review. Abstracts are due by 30 June 2026.
  4. The Geneva Graduate Institute invites abstracts for the Postgraduate Research Conference on the International Law of the Sea, taking place on 30 September 2026. Abstracts are due by 10 June 2026.
  5. Researchers and scholars interested in legal issues concerning cyberspace, such as digital constitutionalism and data privacy, are invited to participate on CyJurII.

Elsewhere Online

  1. Michael John-Hopkins, Eurovision, Non-Recognition and Bangaranga?! EJIL Talk! (2 June 2026)
  2. Julian Arato and Justina Uriburu, Treaty Interpretation in the ICJ’s Opinion on the Right to Strike.  EJIL Talk! (28 May 2026)
  3. Oliver Hailes, Denial of Environmental Justice: Would a Bar on Climate Tort Litigation Be Inconsistent with New Zealand’s International Obligations? EJIL Talk! (27 May 2026)
  4. Alexia Kapsampeli, Internet Access: Should it be a Human Right? CyJurII Insights (June 2026)

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