What’s New: Week of November 10

– Sarthak Gupta, Advocate and Researcher (Supreme Court of India and Columbia University)

–  Kushagr Bakshi, SJD Candidate (University of Michigan)

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 Constitutional Court of Indonesia ruled that all parliamentary bodies and leadership positions in the House of Representatives must ensure proportional and equal women’s representation, declaring several provisions conditionally unconstitutional. The decision mandates that at least 30% women’s representation be included across factions and parliamentary committees, aligning the law with the 1945 Constitution.
2. The European Court of Human Rights found that Estonia’s total prison smoking ban violated Article 8 for failing to assess its impact on prisoners’ autonomy. The 4–3 divided ruling highlights tensions over the Court’s expanding interpretation of Article 8 and whether a “right to smoke” merits Convention protection.
3. The Kenyan Court of Appeal has ruled in favor of a former Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) officer who was jailed for 42 days and dismissed from service after refusing to work on Saturday, his day of worship as a Seventh-day Adventist. The Court found that the KDF’s actions violated his constitutional right to freedom of religion and awarded him KSh 8 million in compensation for the unlawful detention and dismissal.
4. The Supreme Court of India held that informing an arrestee of the grounds of arrest in writing and in a language they understand is mandatory under Article 22(1) of the Constitution and Criminal Code for all offences.
5. The Supreme Court of Canada will hear an appeal from Saskatchewan on the Charter’s notwithstanding clause, joining a similar Quebec secularism case to examine the limits of governments’ use of Section 33, marking the Court’s first in-depth review of the clause since the 1980s amid its renewed use in Alberta and Quebec.
6. The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina rejected Former President Milorad Dodik’s appeal. They confirmed the final judgment of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which convicted Dodik for disobeying the decisions of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
7. The Supreme Court of New York County of Ulster dismissed a Writ of Mandamus filed by the State of Texas that sought to enforce a six-figure civil judgment against a physician for unlawfully prescribing an abortion medication to a patient in the state.
8. The Hong Kong Court of First Instance of the High Court has dismissed Tiananmen activist Chow Hang-tung’s bid to have her subversion charge thrown out, ruling that prosecutors have provided sufficient details of the allegations to guarantee a fair trial.
9. The Kenyan High Court has dismissed a petition contesting Former Attorney General Justin Muturi’s removal, ruling that President William Ruto lawfully appointed Dorcas Oduor as his successor.
10. The Supreme Court of Canada held that trial judges must evaluate the full body of evidence, rather than relying solely on a complainant’s testimony, when determining capacity to consent to sexual activity, providing important guidance on assessing consent in situations involving intoxication, memory lapses, or partial recollection.

In the News

1. The five-judge Constitution Bench of the Indian Supreme Court has reserved its verdict on whether judicial officers with seven years’ prior advocacy experience qualify for district judge posts under Article 233(2) of the Constitution.
2. The Government of Pakistan will present the 27th Constitutional Amendment on November 14, expected to pass, and establish a new federal constitutional court. It will also shift the power to transfer senior judges to the executive and authorize executive magistrates for minor offenses.
3. The European Commission urged North Macedonia to adopt pending constitutional amendments recognizing Bulgarians and other minorities, stressing full implementation of the Prespa Agreement and bilateral accords as part of its EU accession process.
4. The Interior Ministry of Germany banned the Islamist group “Muslim Interaktiv” for promoting a worldwide caliphate and rejecting the democratic constitutional order, citing ties to Hizb ut-Tahrir; the group’s assets will be confiscated.
5. The European Commission is considering infringement proceedings against Slovakia over a constitutional amendment asserting that domestic law prevails over EU law in matters of values and ethics, as confirmed by PM Robert Fico.
6. On the Isle of Man, the Constitution Bill 2023, which removes the Lord Bishop’s voting rights in the Legislative Council while retaining their seat, has passed key stages and moves to its final reading on November 11.

New Scholarship

1. Noah Corbett, Andrew Edgar and Yane Svetiev, Networked Governance, Peer Review and Democratic Accountability: Regulating Money Laundering in Australia, (2025) 48 Melbourne University Law Review 280,(challenges scholarship characterising the Financial Action Task Force, a transnational regulatory network, as being a coercive regime that dictates policy and empowers the executive to implement non-binding transnational standards into domestic law without legislative oversight, thereby precluding democratic participation and contestation. The authors argue that the FATF’s processes prompt and facilitate, rather than supplant, domestic deliberation of anti-money laundering legislation.)
2. Meghan Campbell, Hanging in the Balance: The Function of Justification in Achieving Women’s Equality, Bloomsbury Publishing (2025), (offers the first comprehensive analysis of how courts justify limits to women’s equality rights, challenging the adequacy of traditional frameworks like proportionality. Campbell proposes a novel, asymmetric relationship between equality and justification that redefines how constitutional democracies should adjudicate and protect women’s equality claims.)
3. Orna Ben-Naftali, Eitan Diamond, and Anna-Christina Schmidl, Fireflies Over Gaza: Reimagining the Language of International Law, MPIL Research Paper No. 2025 – 21, (examines how over two years of hostilities in Gaza have exposed the failure of international law to prevent devastation, arguing that this rupture undermines the post–World War II liberal legal order, revives Carl Schmitt’s geopolitico-legal vision from The Nomos of the Earth, and calls for reimagining international law through affect and solidarity rather than managerialism and objectification.)
4. Bruno Cunha and Renato Costa, “Brazilian federalism: populism, emergency powers, and political turmoil”, Federalism in a Turbulent Era In a Turbulent Era series 2025, (explores how Brazil’s federal structure interacts with political instability and populism, asking whether federalism serves as a stabilizing force or amplifies turmoil during democratic crises)
5. Andreas Knecht, Breaking with Lisbon: The German Federal Constitutional Court’s New Approach to EU Democracy and Responsibility for Integration, (2025)European Constitutional Law Review 1-26, (analyzes the Court’s 2024 ruling upholding a two-percent threshold for European Parliament elections, marking a departure from its Lisbon judgment by embracing the EU’s dual legitimation model and redefining Germany’s responsibility for integration to include supporting the Union’s effective functioning, reflecting an increasingly integration-friendly judicial stance.)
6. Rosalind Dixon and David Landau, Utopian Constitutionalism, (warning that transformative constitutionalism risks becoming “utopian” when ambitious social and economic rights lack feasible implementation or public support. Comparing Colombia’s 1991 Constitution and Chile’s failed 2022 draft, the authors argue that avoiding utopian excess requires realistic enforcement pathways, resistance to rights inflation, balanced constitution-making, and renewed attention to sustaining liberal democratic legitimacy.)
7. Thomas P. Schmidt and Gillian E. Metzger, Some Realism About Constitutional Remedies,  139 Harvard Law Review (forthcoming 2026), (arguing that courts must adopt a realist approach to crafting remedies for executive misconduct, emphasizing that equitable relief, not merely monetary damages, is essential to constrain a “bad man” executive and preserve the rule of law when officials lack a culture of legality.)
8. Kim Them Do, The Constitutional Law-Making Process: Theory and Practice through the Constitution of Vietnam (SSRN, 2025) (examines Vietnam’s constitutional evolution across its 1946–2013 constitutions, contrasting theoretical ideals with political realities and urging reforms such as an independent Constitutional Court to strengthen democratic governance and constitutional supremacy over Party control.])
9. Marco Goldoni, Extractivism as a Constitutional Bind: A Material Analysis (SSRN, 2025) (analyzes how extractivist political economies shape constitutional orders, embedding resource dependence into legal frameworks; using Chile as a case study, the article argues that extractivism constrains constituent imagination and perpetuates structural limits on democratic and ecological transformation.)
10. Rishika Sahgal and Gautam Bhatia, ‘Evictions, meaningful engagement and the right to housing in India: two roads‘ (2025) Comparative Constitutional Studies 1-24 (examining the jurisprudence on the right to housing in India)
11. “Deliberative Rights Theory”, Special Issue, Federal Law Review, Cambridge University Press, (This special issue explores how deliberative democracy reshapes the understanding and practice of human rights and constitutional adjudication. Articles examine the integration of deliberation and democracy in rights decision-making, propose a deliberative model of judicial review that strengthens legitimacy and participation, and reassess Australian constitutional interpretation amid the stagnation of formal amendment processes.)

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. Harvard Law School’s Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World and the Human Rights Program invite applications for the Neelan Tiruchelvam Memorial Fellowship (2026–2027), offering Sri Lankan legal scholars and practitioners a semester at HLS to conduct research on human rights in Sri Lanka and South Asia. Applications are due by 2 March 2026.
2. National Law University Delhi (India), under its Chair on Justice for Children, in collaboration with UNICEF, invites applications for the NLUD Justice for Children Litigation Fellowship (2025–26), a nine-month, part-time, contractual program starting December 15, 2025, in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir with a monthly stipend. Applications are due by 15 November 2025.
3. Submissions are open for Volume II of the Trinity Journal of Legal and Historical Critique, welcoming entries from all disciplines and universities. Send submissions or queries to editorinchief@trinitylhc.org
4. Oxford Sociology seeks expressions of interest for the 2026 Leverhulme Early Career Fellowships (3-year, full-time; up to 100% salary Y1, 50% Y2–3; £6k/yr research), with limited departmental support. Applications are due by 1 Dec 2025.
5. NLSIU Bengaluru will host the 6th India Public Policy Network Conference (IPPN) from June 1–4, 2026, on the theme “Public Policy Praxis in the Global South: Building Coherence and Capacity for Future Challenges.” The Call for Panels is open until November 30, 2025.
6. The University of Glasgow School of Law, with support from the Society of Legal Scholars, invites paper proposals for a workshop on “Economic Aspects of the Constitution,” to be held on April 16–17, 2026.
7. Applications are now open for the upcoming workshop titled The Science of Democracy Beyond Disciplines endorsed by the Research Network The Sciences of the Democracies as part of the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, held in person at the University of Innsbruck, 7-10 April 2026.Abstracts are due via the ECPR website by midnight GMT on 3 December 2025.
8. ICON-S (France) will conduct a conference on the book Droit constitutionnel des États africains, edited by Jean Matringe and Maurice Kamto, held in hybrid format at the Institute of Comparative Law (Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas) and online, on January 9, 2026. Register here.
9. ICON-S (France) will hold a virtual seminar on “Constitutional Transitions and the Future of the Syrian State,” featuring Zaid Al-Ali (Constitution-Building Advisor, International IDEA). The discussion will address the constitutional challenges faced by Syria after years of conflict and the prospects for building inclusive institutions in the region. Register here.
10. The 2026 Public Law Conference will be held at the Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town on the theme ‘Public Law and the Future of Constitutional Democracy. The Call for Papers is open and the deadline has been extended to 8 December 2025. Abstracts can be submitted here.

Elsewhere Online

1. Matteo Paolanti, Italy’s Constitutional Gamble, (Verfassungsblog, 30 October 2025).
2. Scott Bomboy, Supreme Court showdown on tariffs shaping up as landmark case, (National Constitution Center, 30 October 2025).
3. Mauni Jalali, On Tariffs and Constitutional Structure, (American Constitution Society, 3 November 2025).
4. Kushtrim Istrefi, The Security Council and the Western Sahara: Between Self-Determination and Implicit Recognition of Moroccan Sovereignty (EJIL: TALK!, 4 November 2025).
5. Gila Stopler, Book Symposium – Introduction: Women’s Rights in Liberal States: Patriarchy, Liberalism, Religion and the Chimera of Rights (IACL-AIDC Blog, 5 November 2025).
6. Tasneem Ghazi, Fact and Fiction: the European Convention on Human Rights, (The Constitution Society, 5 November 2025).
7. Matthias Mahlmann, Winning by Losing The Egenberger Decision and the Reconfiguration of Religious Freedom in Germany, (Verfassungsblog, 6 November 2025).
8. Mariana Brocca, The Private Is Still Political; Neutrality Was Never Neutral: Rereading Liberalism and Religion with Gila Stopler, (IACL-AIDC Blog, 6 November 2025)
9. Amy Howe, Supreme Court sides with Trump administration on sex designations on passports, (SCOTUS Blog, 6 November 2025)
10. Dr Corina Heri and Dr Hazhar Jamali, Fossil Fuel Litigation Goes to Strasbourg: Making Sense of Greenpeace Nordic, (Strasbourg Observers, 7 November 2025).