What’s New in Public Law

—Chiara Graziani, Ph.D. Candidate and Research Fellow in Constitutional Law, University of Genoa (Italy)

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 contact.iconnect@gmail.com.

Developments in Constitutional Courts

1. The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights accepted referral of the Big Brother Watch v. the United Kingdom case, ruled by the First Section in September 2018.
2. The European Court of Human Rights held that requiring a person to undergo DNA testing in the framework of an action to establish paternity does not amount to a breach of the right to respect for private life.
3. The Supreme Court of Brazil overturned an injunction that had frozen a probe into suspicious cash payments involving President Jair Bolsonaro’s son, ruling that the investigation can restart.
4. The UK Supreme Court ruled that not all miscarriage of justice victims are entitled to a payout.
5. The U.S. Supreme Court blocked a Louisiana law imposing restrictions on abortion.
6. The Supreme Court of India was asked by the government to allow land transfer near the town of Ayodhya.
7. The Constitutional Court of Hungary was asked by opposition parties to investigate an overhaul of the justice system.
8. The Canadian Supreme Court ruled that repeated attempts to destroy evidence can, in some cases, be used to infer intention to commit murder.
9. The German Federal Constitutional Court held that automatic number plate recognition pursuant to the Bavarian Police Act is partially unconstitutional.
10. A delegation of the German Federal Constitutional Court participated in a commemoration of the Weimar Constitution.

In the News

1. The Australian Parliament agreed to act on financial recommendations made by the Royal Commission, bringing relevant changes in the financial sector.
2. A judge of the District of New Jersey allowed a class action against Mercedes and Bosch over allegations of emissions cheating.
3. A number of human rights groups called for a United Nations investigation into China’s mass detention of Muslims. 
4. A U.S. judge dismissed a lawsuit by the state of Maryland on the Affordable Care Act.  
5. The U.S. House Judiciary Committee launched an inquiry into the Trump Administration’s decisions on some voting rights lawsuits and on the inclusion of a citizenship question in the 2020 U.S. Census.
6. Two bills aimed at strengthening enforcement of antitrust law were introduced in the U.S. Senate.
7. The U.S. announced that it will withdraw from arms control treaty with Russia, unless Russia ends alleged violations of the agreement.
8. The Pentagon announced deployment of an additional 3750 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
9. Constitutional amendments were proposed in Egypt that would allow the President to stay in power until 2034.
10. New measures to improve data exchange between EU information systems to manage borders, security and migration were informally agreed between MEPs and EU ministers.
11. The EU Parliament welcomed new Brexit plan.
12. An ECOWAS Court dismissed a suit from a former Nigerian military officer, holding that Nigeria has not violated its human rights in compelling him to retire for being enrolled in a University degree without the authorization of the Chief of the Army Staff.
13. France recalled its ambassador from Italy for consultations.

New Scholarship

1. Michael J. Boyle (ed.), Legal and Ethical Implications of Drone Warfare (2019) (examining how and to what extent the drone technology is changing the rules surrounding the use of force and enabling new and unprecedented approaches by states)
2. Giacomo Delledonne, Giuseppe Martinico (eds.), The Canadian Contribution to a Comparative Law of Secession (2019) (collecting essays discussing the impact of the Quebec Secession Reference, twenty years after its delivery by the Canadian Supreme Court)
3. Sherif Elgebeily, The Rule of Law in the United Nations Security Council Decision-Making Process (2019) (dealing with concerns based on the rule of law regarding the decisional process of the UN Security Council, evaluating where and how the rule of law is neglected and arguing in favour of external regulation of the Security Council’s practice and judicial review of its decisions)
4. Oliver Garner, The Existential Crisis of Citizenship of the European Union: The Argument for an Autonomous Status, 20(4) Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal Studies (arguing for the recognition of European citizenship as an autonomous legal status)
5. Damian A. Gonzalez Salzberg, Sexuality and Transsexuality Under the European Convention on Human Rights – A Queer Reading of Human Rights Law (2019) (analysing international human rights law through the lenses of the queer theory)
6. Fady Khoury, Reinforcing Ethnic Hegemony: The Social and Expressive Harms of the Jewish Nation-State Basic Law, 23(4) Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture (2018) (providing an analysis of the constitutional norm’s social and expressive harms through employing expressive theories of law as the frame of reference)
7. Christine Landfriend (ed.), Judicial Power. How Constitutional Courts Affect Political Transformation (2019) (discussing the impact of constitutional and supreme courts’ decisions on democratic governance)
8. Miguel Nogueira de Brito et al. (eds.), The Role of Legal Argumentation and Human Dignity in Constitutional Courts (focusing on how the concept of human dignity is treated in constitutional courts’ argumentation)
9. Patricia Popelier and Maja Sahadžić (eds.), Constitutional Asymmetry in Multinational Federalism (forthcoming 2019) (analysing the relationship between constitutional asymmetry in federal systems and multinationalism in countries in Africa, Asia and Europe)
10. Geoffrey L. Stone and Lee C. Bollinger (eds.), The Free Speech Century (2019) (evaluating the development of the free speech doctrine in the U.S. since the Schenck decision)

Call for Papers and Announcements

1. The Democratic Decay Resource (DEM-DEC) released the seventh monthly update of its bibliography on democratic decay (February 2019 – available here), containing new research worldwide from January 2019; items suggested by DEM-DEC users; a rapidly expanding list of forthcoming research; and a list of new resources added to the Links section. A post introducing the Update will be published on the IACL-AIDC Blog on Monday 11 February, followed by publication on Verfassungsblog.
2. Macquarie Law School invites applications to join its faculty. The Law School has a special priority interest in law & technology and health law & policy. More details are available here.
3. The British Institute of International and Comparative Law is organizing the Conference “Should FDI be restricted on national security grounds?”, to be held in London on March 13, 2019.
4. The Norwegian Center for Human Rights calls for submissions of abstracts for a Conference on “Protecting Community Interests under International Law: Challenges and Prospects for the 21^st Century”, to be held in Oslo on June 3, 2019. Proposals are to be sent by March 15, 2019 to gentian.zyberi@nchr.uio.no.
5. The Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong invites applications for its two-year Global Academic Fellow Program. Online applications can be submitted here by March 25, 2019. Any question should be addressed at jkroncke@hku.hk.
6. The Centre for Privacy Studies of the Danish National Research Foundation invites applications for 3 fully funded Postdoctoral Fellowships. The deadline to apply is April 15, 2019.  
7. The Leuven Centre for Public Law (LCPL) and RIPPLE (Research in Political Philosophy Leuven) invite the submission of abstracts along with CV to participate in the Conference “Democratic renewal in times of polarization. The case of Belgium”, which will be held in Leuven on September 19-20, 2019. The deadline to submit proposals (to ronald.vancrombrugge@kuleuven.be) is May 1, 2019.
8. The DCU Brexit Institute is organizing the “Brexit Day Seminar”, to be held in Dublin on March 29, 2019.
9. The Mouvement Jeune Notariat (French notaries) organizes its 50th annual conference on the practice of international estate planning that will be held in Lisbon (Portugal) on October 10-13, 2019.
10. The American Association of Law Schools’ Section on Comparative Law announces the inaugural “Mark Tushnet Prize” for an untenured scholar who has made an important scholarly contribution in the field of comparative law. The deadline to submit nominations is August 1, 2019.
11. Applicants are invited for a Special Workshop at the 2019 IVR World Congress on “Alternatives to Liberal Constitutionalism: Popular, Political, Deliberative.” More details are available here.

Elsewhere Online

1. Ariel I. Ahram, The Stockholm Agreement and Yemen’s Other Wars, Lawfare
2. Scott R. Anderson, What Does It Mean for the United States to Recognize Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s President, Lawfare
3. Iryna Bogdanova, WTO Dispute on the US Human Rights Sanctions is Looming on the Horizon, EJIL:Talk!
4. Marek Domin, A Part of the Constitution is Unconstitutional, the Slovak Constitutional Court has Ruled, IACL-AIDC Blog
5. Steve Peers, The European Central Bank – judicial review of monetary policy and banking supervision, EU Law Analysis
6. Eline Schaart, Citizens’ rights for Brits in the EU if there’s no Brexit deal, Politico
7. Martin Scheinin, The EU Regulation on Terrorist Content: An Emperor without Clothes, Verfassungsblog
8. Thomas Seibert, Efforts to write a new constitution for Syria grind to a halt, Constitutionnet
9. Szilárd Gáspár-Szilágyi, AG Bot in Opinion 1/17. The Autonomy of the EU Legal Order v. the Reasons Why CETA ICS Might Be Needed, European Law Blog
10. Anne Twomey, Can Standing Orders Prevent a Simple Majority of the House From Passing a Bill Against the Government’s Wishes?, Auspublaw
11. Arianna Vedaschi and Chiara Graziani, Citizenship Revocation as a Counter-Terrorism Measure in Italy, Verfassungsblog