—Richard Albert, Boston College Law School
We published the first edition of “What’s New” three years ago on January 5, 2014. Its format today is largely unchanged and its purpose has remained the same: to update our readers on developments in public law around the world from the previous week. Developments include news from constitutional and supreme courts, new scholarship in public law, calls for papers, and highlights from around the blogosphere.
This coming year in 2017, an outstanding team of seven scholars will continue to bring you “What’s New” every week: Mohamed Abdelaal, Vicente Benitez, Angélique Devaux, Šimon Drugda, Nausica Palazzo, Maja Sahadzic and Sandeep Suresh. We invite you to get to know them; their bios are listed below.
As the new year begins, we say thank you to two dear friends who have been integral members of the “What’s New” team and are now moving on to new opportunities and challenges.
Patrick Yingling, our team leader in 2016, will have his hands happily full at home to care for his and his wife Stephanie’s first child. Patrick will also continue to build his legal practice at Reed Smith LLP and he will also find time to write about comparative corruption, his field of scholarly research interest. Rohan Alva, also a long-time member of the “What’s New” team, is now a first-time father as of this month. (Congratulations to Rohan and Nina!) Rohan will continue to develop his successful litigation practice before the High Court of Delhi and the Supreme Court of India. We wish Patrick and Rohan great luck, joy and success, and most of all good health to their children.
We welcome your submissions of items to include in “What’s New.” Please send them by email to contact.iconnect@gmail.com. A reminder: we require weblinks for all submissions; we do not upload documents, whether in PDF, Word or otherwise.
Please join me in thanking Patrick and Rohan, and also in welcoming the new and returning members of our “What’s New” team!
Mohamed Abdelaal is an Assistant Professor of Law at Alexandria University, Faculty of Law in Egypt and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis, Indiana. Abdelaal earned his Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree from Alexandria University, Faculty of Law (“English” Department) in 2009, a diploma in public law in 2010, and his Master of Laws degree (LL.M.) and Doctor of Juridical Science degree (S.J.D.) from Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in 2011 and 2014, respectively. He focuses his teaching and scholarship in the areas of Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Islamic Law, Islamic Constitutional Law, International Human Rights. Mohamed has authored several law reviews articles and he served as a presenter and panelist in several law conferences and workshops in USA. Meanwhile, he is licensed to practice law in Egypt and he is admitted as a certified arbitrator under the Egyptian Law. Also, he is a permanent member of the Egyptian American Rule of Law Association (EARLA) in Washington, D.C., and he has been invited for two consecutive years (2012-2013) to serve as an Egyptian expert to draft the Rule of Law Index Report sponsored by the World Justice Project (WJP).
Vicente Benitez graduated from Javeriana University in Bogota, Colombia, in 2008 (4th in his class). In 2013, he obtained a Master in Constitutional Law (Hons.) from La Sabana University (Chía-Colombia). He is currently pursuing an LL.M in Legal Theory at New York University as a Arthur T. Vanderbilt Scholar (2016-2017). He is a full-time professor at La Sabana University and has been Visiting Constitutional Law Professor at several Colombian universities. Vicente’s research interests focus on the Colombian Constitutional Court’s democratic legitimacy in the judicial review of constitutional amendments and the impact of public opinion on the Court’s behavior.
Angélique Devaux is a French Qualified Attorney (Diplômée Notaire) at Cheuvreux Notaires in Paris, France, where she assists international clients in real estate transactions and estate planning. She began her international career in the UK as a French lawyer in a solicitors law firm, before working in a large firm of notaires for six years in Paris specializing in family law with cross-border issues, and then moving to the U.S for another six years. She is also an LL.M. American law graduate at Indiana University Robert McKinney School of Law, where she co-taught comparative law and has been giving lectures in French and European Law. She has authored several articles in comparative law, and essentially focuses her research on International Family Law, International Private Law (Conflict of Laws), Trusts and Estates, and Comparative Law.
Šimon Drugda completed his undergraduate studies in Law (Bc.) in early 2014 at Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. He spent a semester studying in Norway at the University of Bergen, before winning a Japanese government scholarship (the only Master/PhD researcher in Slovakia for the year 2015) to pursue a master’s degree in Comparative Law and Politics (LL.M.) at Nagoya University in Japan. He teaches a course for undergraduate students at Meijo University in Nagoya. Among Simon’s research interests are judicial studies, activism, court sociology, and electoral disputes.
Nausica Palazzo is an Italian researcher in Comparative Constitutional Law. She earned her Combined Bachelor and Master of Science in Law from Bocconi University (Hons.). She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Trento, in Italy, lecturing at Bocconi University on Constitutional Law, and training public bodies on Anti-Corruption Law through Transparency International. Her research interests cover Anti-Discrimination Law and Critical Gender Theory, Electoral Laws, and Separation of Powers.
Maja Sahadzic is a researcher, lecturer, and expert legal advisor. At present, she is a doctoral researcher at the Government and Law research group at the Faculty of Law, the University of Antwerp. Her research is about constitutional asymmetries in multi-tiered multinational systems. Her work experience includes earlier academic positions at universities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and the United States of America. She has also worked as a lawyer and journalist. So far, she has published over fifty books, book chapters and papers in journals and conference proceedings within the field of constitutional law, international law, diplomacy, and security.
Sandeep Suresh graduated with B.P.Sc (Hons.) and LL.B (Hons.) from the National Law University, Jodhpur in 2015. Currently, he is a LL.M. (Comparative Constitutional Law) student at the Central European University in Budapest. In his research projects, he mainly focuses on judicial process, limitations on individual rights, and separation of powers. He is concerned with reforms in legal education and teaching pedagogy as well.
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