What’s New in Public Law

---

—Robert Rybski, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Warsaw, Rector’s Plenipotentiary for Environment and Sustainable Development.

---

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 Court of Justice of the European Union ordered Poland to pay the European Commission a daily penalty of one million EUR for each day of further functioning of the Disciplinary Chamber of the Supreme Court.
2. Colombia’s Constitutional Court voted 5-4 to decriminalize abortions in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy.
3. The Acting Head of Ukraine’s Constitutional Court rejected the adoption of any possible new Constitution.
4. The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Kosovo issued a ruling in which it stated the violation of due process in regards to granting feed-in tariff for generation of electricity from renewable energy sources.
5. The German Federal Constitutional Court published its annual report with its 70^th anniversary as a leitmotiv.

In the News

1. Russia invaded Ukraine on the 24^th of February 2022.
2. State leaders condemned the Russian invasion as a breach of international law and a grave breach of the United Nations Charter.
3. China rejected to determine Russia’s ‘special military operation’ as an invasion on Ukraine.
4. Alabama lawmakers seek to remove racist language from the state’s 121-year-old Constitution.
5. A Committee within Chile’s Constitutional Convention greenlighted a proposal to grant sexual and reproductive rights in the country’s new Constitution.
6. The Venice Commission criticized constitutional amendment which will be submitted to referendum on 27 February 2022.

New Scholarship

1. Jan Podkowik, Robert Rybski & Marek Zubik, Judicial dialogue on data retention laws: A breakthrough for European constitutional courts?, International Journal of Constitutional Law vol. 19, issue 5 (2021) (providing a comparative analysis of over a dozen of European constitutional courts that ruled on the same piece of European Union’s legislation that introduced a measure of mass invigilation)
2. David Kosar& Ladislav Vyhnánek, The Constitution of Czechia. A Contextual Analysis (2021) (providing a contextual and authoritative overview of the principles, doctrines and institutions that underpin the Czech constitution)
3. W. Gregory Voss, Transatlantic Data Transfer Compliance, forthcoming 28 Journal of Science & Technology Law (2022) (examines challenges in regards to transatlantic data transfer post-Schrems II)
4. Tom Ginsburg & Mila Versteeg, The bound executive: Emergency powers during the pandemic, International Journal of Constitutional Law vol. 19, issue 5 (2021) (presenting how courts, legislatures and subnational governments constrained national executives within their execution of emergency powers)
5. Pasquale Viola, From the Principles of International Environmental Law to Environmental Constitutionalism: Competetitive or Cooperative Influences?, Routledge (2022) (discusses whether domestic constitutional law could be considered as the most suitable legal arena for both theoretical and pragmatic responses to environmental concerns)
6. Péter D Szigeti, Comparative law at the heart of immigration law: Criminal inadmissibility and conjugal immigration in Canada and the United States, International Journal of Constitutional Law vol. 19, issue 5 (2021) (analysing the comparative methods used in North American immigration laws since the 1880s, for evaluating criminal records and intimate partnerships)

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. Academy for European Human Rights Protection at the University of Cologne invites submissions of abstracts for Young Researchers’ Workshop, 14-15 September 2022. Organizers welcome submissions on future-oriented research questions such as the impact of technological developments on human rights, the idea of developing “non-human” human rights in connection with harm to the environment and climate change, human rights as a remedy against populism, potential further human-rights problems in the area of communication, potential East-West or North-South cleavages as well as questions about the future of the protection mechanisms that are currently in place. Post-doctoral and doctoral researchers should submit their abstracts by the 30^th of April 2022.
2. The British Irish Chapter of ICON-S invites submissions of papers and panels for an online conference to be held 26-28 April, titled ‘The Constitutional Architecture of these Islands’. The submission deadline has been extended to Friday 4 March.
3. The European Constitutional Law Review invites proposals for a special section to be published in one of the 2023 issues for a set of interesting articles on a topic of European constitutional law produced within a research project or conference. The deadline for submissions is by 1 September 2022.
4. The International Center for Ethno-Religious Mediation (ICERM), New York, organizes its annual conference 2022 International Conference on Ethnic and Religious Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding, 28-29 September 2022. Organizers will consider submissions from multidisciplinary fields of study and practice on ethnic, racial and religious conflicts in countries around the world. The deadline for abstract submissions is 18 April 2022.
5. The Asia-Pacific Journal of International Humanitarian Law calls for papers to its 2022 Edition. Submission of articles should touch upon subjects related to international humanitarian law, humanitarian policy or humanitarian action. The Journal accepts papers on a rolling basis.

Elsewhere Online

1. Alex Putzer & Laura Burgers, European Rights of Nature Initiatives, IACL-Blog
2. Antonio Di Marco, Neutrality of the Olympic Movement and Freedom of Expression, Verfassungsblog
3. Başak Ekinci, Opposition Alliance in Turkey: Can it Restore Democracy?, IACL-Blog
4. Cem Abanazir, The Court of Arbitration for Sport’s Multifarious Views on Freedom of Expression, Verfassungsblog
5. Yaffa Epstein, Does the Earth Need More Legal People?, IACL-Blog
6. Pierre de Vos, Why context matters: Constitutional Court leave the hate speech threshold open to judges’ interpretation, Constitutionally Speaking