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. Singapore’s Court of Appeal struck on technical grounds an appeal of a High Court ruling that allowed for judicial review of an order that the Faith Community Baptist Church compensate a pregnant woman whom it fired due to adultery.
2. Turkey’s Constitutional Court to examine four articles in the recently passed omnibus law that have been criticized as unconstitutional.
3. Hungary’s Constitutional Court ruled that the media may show faces of police officers in news images.
4. Russia’s Constitutional Court upheld the country’s gay “propaganda” law.
5. Judge Edward Rubin of Louisiana’s 15th Judicial District ruled that the state’s ban on same sex marriage is unconstitutional.

New Scholarship

1. Tamir Moustafa, Judging in God’s Name: State Power, Secularism, and the Politics of Islamic Law in Malaysia, Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, Vol. 3 (2014) 152-67 (arguing that the institutionalization of Islamic law should not be understood as the achievement of an “Islamic state,” but rather as the subversion of core epistemological principles in the Islamic legal tradition).
2. S.I. Strong, Religious Rights in Historical, Theoretical and International Context: Hobby Lobby as a Jurisprudential Anomaly?, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, 2015 (Forthcoming) (examining US historical and theoretical underpinnings of religious rights to answer the question of whether the decision to grant a commercial corporation a religious accommodation is consistent with the rationales underlying religious rights)
3. Tania Groppi & Irene Spigno, Constitutional Reasoning in the Italian Constitutional Court, András Jakab, Arthur Dyevre & Giulio Itzcovich (eds.), Comparative Constitutional Reasoning, Cambridge University Press (Forthcoming) (discussing the context and methods of constitutional reasoning developed by the Italian Constitutional Court in 40 leading cases)
4. Michael Pal & Sujit Choudhry, Still Not Equal? Visible Minority Vote Dilution in Canada, 8(1) Canadian Political Science Review (2014) (examining the long-standing deviations from representation by population in Canada and concluding that vote dilution continues to exist and is concentrated in the areas with the highest proportion of visible minorities)
5. Sara Sun Beale, Public Opinion and the Abolition or Retention of the Death Penalty Why is the United States Different? (exploring the relationship between public opinion and the abolition or retention of the death penalty and comparing the US experience to that of other nations, such as Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Canada)
6. Grainne De Burca, International Law Before the Courts: The European Union and the United States Compared, Virginia Journal of International Law, Forthcoming (examining the approaches of the European Court of Justice and the US Supreme Court to the internalization of international law from 2002 to 2012)

In the News 

1. A Pentagon program that distributes military surplus gear to local law enforcement departments has allowed departments censured for civil rights violations to apply for and receive lethal weaponry.
2. The Myanmar Constitution Committee wrapped up debate on amendments to the country’s constitution.
3. Thirty people connected to the Hizmet movement in Turkey have taken statements from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan targeting the movement to the Constitutional Court, alleging hate speech.
4. Attorney Jerry Fent has filed a formal objection to a law to refurbish the Oklahoma state Capitol, likely triggering an Oklahoma Supreme Court review of the measure.
5. Ghana has taken legal action under a UN convention to resolve a maritime border dispute with Ivory Coast over water close to oil fields licensed by British firm Tullow Oil.
6. Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission declared Ashraf Ghani the winner of the country’s presidential election.
7. Bangladesh President Abdul Hamid signed into law the 16th Amendment to the nation’s Constitution, granting Parliament the ability to impeach Supreme Court justices.

Elsewhere Online

1. Lyle Denniston, Constitution Check: What if the Supreme Court takes a pass now on same-sex marriage?, Constitution Daily
2. Faisal Kutty & Shaikh Ahmad Kutty, The Kutty ‘Islamic Law’ Flowchart, SSRN
3. Stoyan Panov, The Tales of Two Transitional Constitutions, Jurist – Forum
4. Ruthann Robson, Sixth Circuit Rules Ohio’s New Voting Scheme Likely to Violate Equal Protection, Constitutional Law Prof Blog
5. Will Baude, Does the IRS recognize plural marriage?, The Volokh Conspiracy
6. Dan Harris, China Government And China Business. It’s Different, China Law Blog

Calls for Papers

1. The University of Milan’s Department of National and Supranational Public Law and the Younger Comparativists Committee of the American Society of Comparative Law welcome the submission of papers for a full-day workshop on comparative constitutional law, to be held on the campus of the University of Milan on Monday, May 4, 2015.
2. The International Organizations Interest Group of the American Society of International Law has issued a call for papers for its annual works-in-progress workshop to be held on Friday, December 12, 2014, in New York City.
3. Vanderbilt Law School’s Branstetter Litigation & Dispute Resolution Program invites submissions for its 2015 New Voices in Civil Justice Scholarship Workshop, to be held on May 11-12, 2015, at Vanderbilt Law School.
4. The Junior International Law Scholars Association (JILSA) welcomes submissions for its annual meeting on Friday, January 23, 2015, at the University of Miami School of Law.
5. The Indian Journal of Intellectual Property Law invites submissions for its upcoming volume.
6. The Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) has issued a call for papers for its annual conference to be held from July 27 to August 2, 2015 in Boca Raton, Florida.