What’s New in Comparative Public Law

—Mohamed Abdelaal, Alexandria University (Egypt)

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. Indonesia’s Constitutional Court rejects challenge to presidential election result.
2. Portugal’s Constitutional Court partially rejects salary cuts, pension tax.
3. Uganda Constitutional Court strikes down anti-gay law.
4. India’s Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Congress Party’s appeal that it violated campaign finance laws.
5. Tennessee Supreme Court rules State Constitution requires government to compensate private property owners for regulatory takings of property.
6. Federal judge rejects independent voters challenge to N.J. primary system.
7. Federal Court rules Indiana must recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages.

In the News

1. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is indicted on charge of abuse of power.
2. Missouri weighs unusual addition to its constitution: Right to Farm.
3. Virginia same-sex marriage supporters urge Supreme Court not to block ruling.
4. Pakistan protesters reach capital as Supreme Court issues warning.
5. Judges are often impotent in China’s courtrooms. That might be changing.

New Scholarships

1. Zachary Elkins, Tom Ginsburg & James Melton, Imagining a World without the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (The article builds towards a prediction of the content of the world’s constitutions, conditional upon the absence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It identifies two empirical implications for drafting constitutions subsequent to 1948: (1) that its content has projected onto subsequent national constitutions; (2) that the UDHR’s similarity to post-UDHR constitutions represents some deviation from the trajectory of constitutional design.)
2. Adrian Vermeule, Beard and Holmes on Constitutional Adjudication, Constitutional Commentary, Forthcoming (The article shows that standard approaches to constitutional adjudication are resolutely internal and have little use for the external standpoint of Beardian scholarship. It also describes a strategy of reconciliation offered by Justice Holmes, one that connects external and internal perspectives by means of a non-ideal theory of constitutional judging under political constraints.)
3. Eugene Kontorovich, Three International Courts and Their Constitutional Problems, Cornell Law Review, Forthcoming (The article address challenges regarding the US potential participation in the International Criminal Court by responding to an argument that constitutional objections raised by John Quincy Adams and others were motivated by ideological considerations. It also examines the constitutional debate over the International Prize Court, and the Slave-Trade Tribunals.)
4. Gregory Ablavsky, Beyond the Indian Commerce Clause, Yale Law Journal, Forthcoming (The article discusses the argument that the Indian Commerce Clause is the primary constitutional basis for the exercise of federal power over Indian affairs. It also highlights the inadequacy of the Indian Commerce Clause as the principal constitutional foundation for the federal Indian affairs power.)
5. Neomi Rao, Removal: Necessary and Sufficient for Presidential Control, 65(5) Alabama L Rev 1205 (2014) (The author’s explains why Congress’s authority over agency structure must have judicially enforceable limits in order to prevent encroachment on the executive power. The article discusses how the ability to remove principal officers is necessary and sufficient for presidential control of the executive branch.)
6. Ioanna Tourkochoriti, The Snowden Revelations, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Divide between U.S.-E.U. in Data Privacy Protection, 36 Univ of Arkansas at Little Rock L Rev 161 (2014) (The paper analyses the key differences in data privacy protection between the European Union and the United States in reference to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the reactions in Europe following the Snowden revelations.)
7. Mark Elliott, Constitutional Legislation, European Union Law and the Nature of the United Kingdom’s Contemporary Constitution, European Constitutional Law Review (Forthcoming) (The article analyses the judgment of the UK Supreme Court in R (HS2 Action Alliance Ltd) v Secretary of State for Transport [2014] UKSC 3, [2014] 1 WLR 324.)
8. Veronika Fikfak, Domestic Courts’ Enforcement of Decisions and Opinions of the International Court of Justice, Mads Andenas and Eirik Bjorge, eds., A Farewell to Fragmentation: Reassertion and Convergence in international law, Cambridge: CUP, 2014 (Forthcoming) (Investigates the role of domestic courts in the implementation of decisions of the ICJ in the domestic legal order, and examines how domestic courts have reacted to the decisions and opinions of the ICJ.)

Call for Papers

1. The Socio-Legal Review welcomes contributions for its eleventh volume to be released in 2015.
2. The Stanford Law Review is now accepting submissions for publication in Volume 67.
3. The Lincoln Memorial University Law Review invites submissions related to its Spring 2015 Symposium entitled “The Snowden Effect: The Impact of Spilling National Secrets.” to be held on Friday, January 30, 2015 at the LMU-Duncan School of Law.
4. The Australian International Law Journal invites submissions for Volume 21.
5. The University of Baltimore School of Law’s Center on Applied Feminism seeks submissions for its Eighth Annual Feminist Legal Theory Conference to be held on March 5 and 6, 2015.

Elsewhere on Blogs

1. Michael Coenen, “Congress” Versus “the Congress”, Concurring Opinions
2. Gerard Magliocca, The Incorporation of the Seventh Amendment, Concurring Opinions
3. Gabriel Arana, Supreme Court’s gay encore: Why the marriage equality battle is not over yet, Salon
4. Seth Barrett Tillman, Court of Appeal just a new version of Supreme Court – only more costly, The Irish Times
5. Jacob Gershman, Ferguson Unrest Focuses Attention on Rights of Protesters, WSJ Law Blog