Skip to main content

What’s New: Week of November 24

— Marieta Safta, Professor Phd, Titu Maiorescu University, Bucharest, Romania

— Niels Graaf, Assistant Professor, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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 German Constitutional Court declared the state of Berlin’s salary regulations from 2008 to 2020 to be incompatible with the German Basic Law with only a few exceptions, holding that it had failed to fulfill the principle of alimentation, which requires employers to provide civil servants and families with adequate support for life, in line with their official status.
  2. The French Conseil Constitutionnel reaffirmed the constitutional protection of the principle of public hearings and clarified its scope, stating that the requirement only applies before courts competent to rule on public prosecution i.e. to decide cases on merits, and not to the mere pronouncement of security measures during pre-trial detention.
  3. The Italian Constitutional Court clarified the limits of the constitutional legitimacy of “extended” confiscation, holding in a conviction for minor drug-related offences that the provision allowing the confiscation of all assets disproportionate to the income of the convicted person, which the latter is found to possess and whose lawful origin he is unable to justify, is not constitutionally unlawful. In such a situation, it is not unreasonable to presume that those assets were acquired through broader criminal activity.
  4. The European Court of Justice dismissed Amazon’s action against the Commission’s decision designating the platform Amazon Store as a ‘very large online platform’.
  5. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in Ilievska and Zdraveva v. North Macedonia and Ribarev v. North Macedonia that the applicants’ right of access to a court had been violated. The Court found that the absence of any mechanism for reviewing the State Judicial Council’s post-remittal decisions prevented judicial bodies from verifying whether the State Judicial Council had properly addressed the issues identified on remittal. This lack of oversight restricted the applicants’ access to a court to such an extent that the essence of that right was impaired.
  6. The Constitutional Court of Romania admitted an objection of High Court of Cassation and Justice and found the law amending and supplementing certain normative acts in the field of service pensions (of magistrates) to be unconstitutional. The Court found that the legislative procedure was vitiated as to the lack of validity of the request for the mandatory opinion of the Superior Council of Magistracy, as well as the Government’s failure to observe the legal time frame within  which the CSM could lawfully issue its opinion. Debates about the reform of service pensions continue, within a broader climate of general budgetary austerity measures.
  7. The Italian Court of Cassation has accepted the four requests submitted by members of parliament from both the majority and the opposition to hold a referendum on the justice reform, which among other things would introduce the separation of judges’ and prosecutors’ careers. The referendum will therefore take place, and based on the maximum time limits allowed by law for the next steps, it must be held by the end of March 2026.

In the News

  1. In Hungary, a massive data leak has exposed personal details of nearly 200,000 citizens, including judges, allegedly linked to an opposition party app. Pro-government media immediately published the names, questioning judicial impartiality and even suggested dismissals.
  2. The Advocate General of the European Court of Justice Spielmann considers that certain provisions of the Spanish amnesty law on exemption from liability in respect of public funds may be incompatible with the right to effective judicial protection.
  3. The processing of applications to the ECHR, submitted in the context of the reorganisation of the judicial system in Poland, in what has been described by many observers as a “rule-of-law crisis”, has been further adjourned until 23 November 2026 to give more time to the Polish Government to adopt general measures following the Wałęsa v. Poland pilot judgment.
  4. The 3rd Annual Conference of the Balkan Constitutional Courts Forum took place on 14–15 November in Antalya, Republic of Türkiye, bringing together presidents and judges of constitutional courts from across the region, as well as representatives of the European Court of Human Rights on the theme “Standardisation of Human Rights and the Role of Constitutional Justice”. The conference featured three main sessions focused on the role of constitutional jurisdictions in strengthening and harmonising fundamental rights standards in South-East Europe.
  5. The Network of the Presidents of the Supreme Judicial Courts of the European Union held its Colloquium on 13 and 14 November 2025 in The Hague, the Netherlands. The programme included a joint session with international courts on the contribution of national and international judiciaries to the rule of law, featuring speeches by the Presidents of the ICJ, ICC, ECtHR and UK Supreme Court. Participants also held discussions on national courts and international crime, as well as the impact of social media on court communication and judicial independence.

New Scholarship

  1. Niels Petersen: Equality and its discontents: On the diversity of equality doctrines in comparative perspective (2025) Global Constitutionalism 1–25 (arguing that four primary equality frameworks can be identified, each reflecting not only different understandings of equality but also varying degrees of judicial deference to the legislature and executive).
  2. Andreas Knecht, Breaking with Lisbon: The German Federal Constitutional Court’s New Approach to EU Democracy and Responsibility for Integration: Analysis in light of Cases 2 BvE 6/23 and 2 BvR 994/23, Decision on Threshold for European Parliament Elections of 6 February 2024 (2025) 21(3) European Constitutional Law Review 528–53
  3. The Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy published a special issue about the virtue ethics approach to the legal professions, specifically zooming in on a wide array of roles in the legal profession (e.g. studying also legal professions in safeguarding the rule of law).
  4. European Law Open published a new special issue of on the history of European Union law seen from a bottom up perspective, and aims to rethink the notion of European legal integration which traditionally assumes a binary view of law created by European institutions and European nation states.
  5. Robert Rybski, ‘Sovereign Green, Social, Sustainability and Sustainability-Linked Bonds as Public  Finance Tools Implementing Environmental  Constitutionalism’ (2/2025) Przegląd Konstytucyjny 93–121

Calls for Papers and Announcements

  1. The 2026 World Congress of Constitutional Law will be hosted by the Universidad Externado de Colombia from 6-10 July 2026. The theme of the Congress will be Sustainable Constitutionalism: Answers for a Changing World.
  2. The II International Congress of Comparative and Constitutional Law (Cuba CON-PARA 2026) will take place in Havana, Cuba, from 3 to 6 February 2026, and will focus on the theme “Compara con Razón,” exploring current challenges in comparative and constitutional law from a multidisciplinary perspective. The deadline for submitting papers is 20 December 2025.
  3. Constitutional Studies is now accepting submissions for its 2026 issues in English, French, and Spanish. 
  4. The UCT Law Faculty invites submissions for the 2026 Public Law Conference 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 till 8 December 2025.
  5. Bharati Law Review calls for papers on recent developments in constitutional law, to be submitted by 25 December 2025.
  6. New York University School of Law is currently accepting applications for the Emile Noel Global fellowships for the 2026-2027 academic year.
  7. The 149th Plenary Session of the Venice Commission will take place at the Scuola Grande San Giovanni Evangelista in Venice on 11–12 December 2026.
  8. The European Journal of Risk Regulation invites submissions for a special issue titled Omnibus Legislation and EU Regulatory Reform: Between Efficiency and Constitutional Integrity. Abstracts should be submitted by 24 December 2025.

Elsewhere Online

  1. A new episode in the youtube series ‘Le sentenze della Corte in 3 minuti’ (The Court’s judgments in 3 minutes) is now available in Italian, dedicated to judgment no. 142 of 2025 of the Italian Constitutional Court in which the Court held that it is not permissible for the Constitutional Court to intervene by restricting the acquisition of citizenship by descent through a manipulative ruling that would require it to choose among multiple possible options involving a wide degree of discretion and having significant systemic consequences.
  2. Ingo Venzke and Christina Eckes, ‘The EU’s Proposed 2040 Climate Target is Illegal: The European Parliament Must Act Accordingly’ European Law Blog (18 November 2025)  

Leave a Reply