What’s New in Comparative Public law

—Rohan Alva, Jindal Global Law School

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.

Development in Constitutional Courts

1. Four new justices have been appointed to the Supreme Court of India. With the addition of these justices, the total number of Supreme Court judges now stands at 30, a notch below its full strength.
2. Ricardo Lewandowski has been elected as the President of the Brazilian Supreme Court, and will replace Joaquim Barbosa who had in June this year expressed his desire to step down from the Court.
3. A judge in Tennessee has affirmed a state law which bars the official recognition of out-of-state same-sex marriages.
4. The Ontario Court of Appeal in Canada ruled that the requirement of prospective citizens to take an oath of allegiance to the Queen as per the Citizenship Act, is constitutional and is not a form of forced speech.
5. The European Court of Human Rights, ruling on a batch of petitions brought by prisoners incarcerated in the United Kingdom, declared that the UK’s prohibition on prisoner’s exercising their franchise was in breach of their suffrage rights. The Court, however, declined awarding monetary recompense for the rights violation.

New Scholarship

1. Shai Dothan, In Defence of Expansive Human Rights Interpretation in the European Court of Human Rights, 3 Cambridge Journal of International and Comparative Law (2014) (presenting a defense of, and analyzing the benefits which flow from, the European Court of Human Rights’ method of broadening the ambit of human rights that ought to be protected by member states)
2. Lee Epstein & Andrew D. Martin, An Introduction to Empirical Legal Research (Oxford University Press, forthcoming) (emphasizing the increasing importance of empirical legal inquires and explaining the framework within which empirical analysis should be engaged in)
3. James Bernard Murphy, The Philosophy of Customary Law (Oxford University Press, 2014) (jurisprudentially analyzing the meaning of customs and evaluating the position and impact of customs within the formal legal structures)
4. Annick Masselot & Anthony Maymont, Balanced Representation between Men and Women in Business Law: The French ‘Quota’ System to the Test of EU Legislation, Centre for European Law and Legal Studies Online Paper Series (University of Leeds, 2014) (examining the nature of gender disparity in the appoint of female board members in European Union based companies, and positing on the useful lessons that can be learned from the French efforts towards attaining gender equality)
5. Bryne Michael, Can the Hong Kong ICAC Help Reduce Corruption on the Mainland, 2 Chinese Journal of Comparative Law 78 (2014) (analyzing the positive role of the Independent Commission Against Corruption in combating corruption in Hong Kong, and evaluating how the introduction of specific changes in the Prevention of Bribery Ordinance can strengthen the Commission’s ability to properly target corruption in mainland China)

In the News

1. The Indian Parliament formally passed the National Judicial Appointments Commission Bill, a piece of legislation which seeks to reform the process by which justices are appointed to the high courts and Supreme Court by creating a stand-alone body to deliberate on judicial appointments. The bill, which will effect an amendment to the Indian Constitution will be transmitted to the states for ratification.
2. The Brazilian president assented to a law which endeavors to offer holistic protection to domestic workers. This law regulates important aspects of domestic work such as working hours, and wage payments.
3. The House of Representatives in Trinidad has approved a constitutional amendment proposal to establish a term limit for the prime minister, to institute a recall procedure for parliamentarians, and to require all elected representatives to win a majority of the vote in their electoral district.
4. The American president, Barack Obama, has called on voters to provide the Democrats with a working majority in the Senate, since this would be essential for the Obama administration to successfully nominate justices to the US Supreme Court, which he hopes to do within his presidential term.
5. Peter Nyomb, the Attorney General for Uganda, has instituted an appeal calling for a review of the Ugandan Constitutional Court’s invalidation of the ‘Anti-Homosexuality Act’.

Elsewhere on the Web

1. KT Thomas, In defence of the collegium, The Indian Express
2. David Cole, The Anti-Court Court, The New York Review of Books
3. Bruno Dondero, Conflicts of interests: the French Law approach, Le Blog du professeur Bruno Dondero
4. Dimitrina Petrova, Uganda’s anti-homosexuality law and our cultural wars, Oxford Human Rights Hub
5. Renáta Uitz, Worthy of a second look? The Chamber judgment in the Hungarian church re-registration case, ECHR Blog

Call for Papers/Conferences

1. Max Planck Institute for Human Development invites entries for a conference on ‘Criminal Law and Emotions in European Legal Cultures’ to be held on the 21^st and 22^nd of May, 2015.
2. Participants are invited for the ‘Second International Conference on Interdisciplinary Legal Studies’ which is organized by the International Center for Research & Development and Unique Conference. The conference is scheduled to be held on the 9^th and 10^th of June, 2015.
3. The Law and Development Institute in association with the Payson Centre and School for Law, Tulane University, invites submissions for a conference on ‘New Directions for Law and Development Studies’ to be held on the 10^th of April, 2015. Single page abstracts are due by the 15^th of October, 2015.
4. Submissions are invited by the Australian International Law Journal for its 21^st Volume. All submissions are due by the 12^th of September, 2014.
5. A save the date has been announced by the European Society for International Law for its ‘Annual Summer Conference’ which is to be held from the 10^th of September to the 12^th of September, 2015.