What’s New in Comparative Public Law

—Angelique Devaux, French Licensed Attorney (Notaire)

In this weekly feature, I-CONnect publishes a curated reading list of developments in comparative 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 comparative public law blogosphere.

To submit relevant developments for our weekly feature on “What’s New in Comparative Public Law,” please email contact.iconnect@gmail.com.

Developments in Constitutional Courts

1. In Turkey, the Constitutional Court has found that the rights of the family of journalist Hrant Dink, who was assassinated in 2007, have been violated because the murder investigation had not been conducted effectively.
2. The Croatian Constitutional Court rules against minority shareholders.
3. Spain’s Constitutional Court has thrown out a law against hydraulic fracturing for shale gas and oil in the northern region of Cantabria, stating that the matter is up to the central government.
4. A federal appeals court upheld a Florida “Docs vs. Glocks” law restricting what doctors can tell patients about gun ownership.
5. A federal judge ruled that the Colorado ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.
6. Georgia‘s Attorney General says that gay marriage ban is constitutional.
7. South Korea’s Constitutional Court ruled that the current ban on dual citizenship is constitutional.

In the news

1. In France, a former local election candidate from France’s far-right National Front was sentenced to nine months in prison for comparing the country’s black Justice Minister Christiane Taubira to a monkey.
2. In Italy, an appeals court acquitted former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi of paying for sex with a minor and abuse of power charges in a surprise ruling that overturned a guilty verdict handed down by a lower court last year.
3. In New York, the State Appellate Division found that a Long Island father’s spanking of 8 year-old boy “was reasonable use of force.”
4. The council of the EU adopted the proposal for a regulation on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market.
5. Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej announced his support for an interim constitution that would grant extensive authority to the National Council for Peace and Order, the military junta currently in power.
6. In the United States, a date has been set for oral arguments in a federal appellate court on same-sex marriage bans in Indiana and Wisconsin.

New scholarship

1. Ying Chen, Trade, Food Security, and Human Rights, The Rules for International Trade in Agricultural Products and the Evolving World Food Crisis (Ashgate) (Examining EU and US agricultural policies and World Trade Organization negotiations in agriculture, the author argues how they affect the international agricultural trade, claiming that current food insecurity is the result of inequitable food distribution and trade practices.)
2. Bruno Rodrigues de Almeida, The “Shakespearean Rose” Blossoms Down the Equator: Reflection upon the impact of Brazilian Supreme Court’s Decision Recognizing the Constitutionality of Same-Sex Civil Unions, Panorama of Brazilian Law. Vol.1, No 1 (2013) (This article discusses the Brazilian Supreme Court’s Decision of May 5^th, 2011 that allows civil unions between two people regardless their gender, thus admitting same-sex partnerships as a legitimate type of family entitled to special protection provided by article 226 of current Brazilian Political Charter.)
3. Frank Emmert and Siniša Petrović, The Past, Present, and Future of EU Enlargement, 37 Fordham International Law Journal (2014) (This article shows how individual Member States, or rather individual leaders of those Member States, via the unanimity requirement of the Council, were able to impose the views on enlargement in the early years, showing that this power has shifted noticeably to the Commission as the number of Member States has grown.)
4. Antonios E. Kouroutakis, Judges and Policy Making Authority in the United States and the European Union, 8 ICL Journal 186 (2014) (The main target of the article is to identify the judicial activism exercised by the US Supreme Court and the European Court of Justice and to seek to understand its place, function and need in the legal order.)
5. Ronald A. Brand, Cooperation in Legal Education and Legal Reform, 74 University of Pittsburgh Law Review (2013) (This contribution traces that partnership between the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and the University of Pristina School of Law in Kosovo, and draws lessons from that cooperation and its resulting impact on developments in Kosovo, for both legal educators in the United States and for legal educators and government officials in Kosovo.)

Call for Papers

1. The Kentucky Law Journal has issued a call for papers in the areas of intellectual property or internet law with deadline on Sept. 1, 2014.
2. The Editorial board of The Business Lawyer is soliciting submissions of articles and essays for Volume 70.
3. The Searle Center on Law, Regulation, and Economic Growth has issued a call for original research papers to be presented at the Sixth Annual Conference on Internet Search and Innovation, to be held at the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, IL, on June 4 and 5, 2015.
4. The Maastricht Centre for Human Rights welcomes papers and suggestions for panels for its conference on Denialism and Human Rights to be held in Maastricht, The Netherlands on January 22-23, 2015.
5. The European Conference on Politics, Economics and Law call for papers for its conference to be held in Brighton, East Sussex, United Kingdom, on July 2-5, 2015.

Elsewhere on Blogs

1. Helene Landemore, The Icelandic experience challenges the view that constitutional process must be exclusionary and secretive, Democratic Audit
2. Mark Elliot, Human rights reform and the role of the Strasbourg Court, UK Constitutional Law Blog
3. V. Venkatesan, Macauley Revisited, Law and Other Things
4. Joe Cochrane, A Child of the Slum Rises as President of Indonesia, The New York Times
5. Irshad Rashid, India: Snaring Dissent  is Undemocratic, Constitution Net