What’s New: Week of September 14

— Silvia Talavera Lodos, Ph.D., Member of Sant’Anna Legal Studies

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. Missouri’s Supreme Court blocked the Republican-drawn congressional map for this year’s midterms and ordered the “Respect Missouri Voters” initiative onto the November ballot.
2. Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court struck down a pension-law provision denying reimbursement for private medical transport to pensioners unable to use ordinary transit.
3. The en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that the Constitution does not guarantee a right to clean drinking water, affirming dismissal of Jackson, Mississippi residents’ lead-contamination suit.
4. Spain’s Constitutional Court suspended several articles of Extremadura’s Ley de Concordia while it reviews the central government’s constitutional challenge.
5. Belgium’s Constitutional Court upheld the government’s unemployment reform capping benefits at 24 months, striking down only a discriminatory transitional provision.

In the News

1. India’s government told the Supreme Court that criminalizing marital rape is Parliament’s job, not the judiciary’s, as the Court scheduled final hearings on the issue
2. Brazil’s Supreme Court sank deeper into crisis five weeks before the October election, with two justices moving to investigate each other and eleven of fifteen Federal Police directors offering to resign in protest.
3. The EU General Court dismissed Hungary’s challenge to the European Peace Facility Committee’s decision allocating the first installment of frozen Russian asset revenues to military support for Ukraine.
4. In the Philippines, the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte continued, with her defense invoking the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination to resist a prosecution request that she take the witness stand.
5. The Commonwealth Lawyers Association raised concerns over procedural fairness in Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court hearing on 67 petitions challenging the 22nd Constitutional Amendment, which would raise the retirement age of judges.

New Scholarship

1. Su Bian, ‘Polycontexturality for China’s Legal Development? Contending with Gunther Teubner’ German Law Journal (10 August 2026).
2. Marco Goldoni, ‘The constitutional law and political economy of European public goods: A reply to Armin Steinbach’ International Journal of Constitutional Law (2026).
3. M Victoria Kristan, ‘Global democracy and unrepresentative states’ International Journal of Constitutional Law (2026).
4. Lucas Lixinski, ‘Litigating heritage rights’ Human Rights Law Review (21 August 2026).
5. Doreen Lustig, ‘What democracy owes the future’ International Journal of Constitutional Law (2026).
6. Armin Steinbach, ‘European public goods’ International Journal of Constitutional Law (2026).

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. The Society For Constitutional Law Discussion (TSCLD), Chanakya National Law University, Patna, invites submissions for its blog and Journal of Constitutional Studies on themes including electoral transparency versus the right to privacy, constitutional morality versus popular morality, and transformative constitutionalism.
2. The LSE Law Review invites submissions, with a deadline of 20 September 2026.
3. Worldwide Lawyers Association (WOLAS) invites submissions for its 2026 conference, to be held on 4 and 5 December 2026 at Istanbul University Faculty of Law, on AI governance, international law, regulation, accountability, and the future of human dignity amid rapid technological change. Abstracts are due by 12 October 2026.
4. The European Journal of Risk Regulation invites abstracts for a special issue on “The Contested Governance of Data Centres: The Law, Politics and Materiality of AI,” edited by Alberto Alemanno and Kristina Irion. Submissions are due by 1 October 2026.
5. The Keele Law Review invites submissions for its seventh volume (2027) on the theme “Private Power, Democracy, and Human Rights,” co-edited by Yossi Nehushtan, Danielle Anne Pamplona, and Beatriz Flügel Assad.

Elsewhere Online

1. Akhil Amar & Vikram Amar, Justice Kavanaugh Stands Up for State Constitutional Law in the Missouri Congressional Case, SCOTUSblog (9 September 2026).
2. Kazi Ayman Awsaf, Amending the Unamendable: Bangladesh’s Constitutional Paradox After the July Uprising, I·CONnect (10 September 2026).
3. Luis Eslava, Correcting the Map, as We Must, and Yet Still, Verfassungsblog (10 September 2026).
4. Carlos Moreno, America’s Right to Kidnap: What Alvarez-Machain Tells Us About Legal Dualism at the Border of Sovereignty, Verfassungsblog (7 September 2026).
5. Melanie O’Brien, A New Genocide Convention Case in the ICJ: DRC v Rwanda Version 3.0, Opinio Juris (7 September 2026).
6. Raffaele Roberto Severino, Environmental Impact Assessment: A Procedural Avenue for Enforcing Substantive Climate Obligations, I·CONnect (8 September 2026).