What’s New in Comparative Public Law

–Patrick Yingling, Reed Smith LLP

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. The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany declared the country’s Inheritance and Gift Tax law to be partly unconstitutional.
2. The High Court of Kenya suspended eight sections of the country’s new anti-terrorism law until a legal challenge by the opposition is heard by the court.
3. Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a petition filed by eight human rights groups and four Israeli families against a policy of demolishing terrorists’ homes.
4. Egypt’s Court of Cassation ordered a retrial for three Al Jazeera journalists jailed for falsifying news reports and associating with the Muslim Brotherhood.
5. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled 5-1 that the requirement that all sex offenders who were juveniles at the time of their crimes must remain on the Megan’s Law Registry for life is unconstitutional.

In the News

1. China added another brick to its Great Firewall, tightening access to Google’s email service.
2. India’s President, Shri Pranab Mukherjee approved the National Judicial Appointments Commission Bill to modify the judicial selection process in the nation’s supreme court and 24 high courts.
3. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed the Rome Statute to join the International Criminal Court at a meeting in Ramallah.
4. According to Speaker Volodymyr Greusman, the first vote in the parliament on amendments to the Ukrainian Constitution will be held during the spring session.
5. The Chairman of Nepal’s Constituent Assembly, Subas Nemban, urged major parties to grant him the authority to bring forth a preliminary draft of the county’s constitution if agreement remains elusive.

New Scholarship

1. Jack Tsen-Ta Lee, According to the Spirit and not to the Letter: Proportionality and the Singapore Constitution, 8(3) Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law 276–304 (2014) (arguing that although proportionality was originally a European legal doctrine, its use in Singapore is not only desirable but necessary if the Constitution is to be regarded as guaranteeing fundamental liberties)
2. Manoj Mate, The Rise of Judicial Governance in the Supreme Court of India, Boston University International Law Journal (forthcoming 2015) (analyzing how the Supreme Court of India, through its activism and assertiveness, has emerged as arguably the most powerful court among democratic polities)
3. Samuel William Bettwy, A Survey of Comparative Criminal Procedure through Foreign Films, Pisa: Opinio Juris in Comparatione (Special Issue 2014) (describing and applying constructs of comparative law to examine the adjudicative process through foreign films)
4. Ronald J. J. Wong and Sarah Shi, Changing Scope of Human Rights in the Age of Terror, Global Law Review, Vol. 2, Issue 2, March 2011, 157-186 (focusing on Singapore, the United States, and the United Kingdom to conduct a comparative survey of human rights practice and policy in the context of counter-terrorism)
5. Albert H. Y. Chen, Constitutions, Constitutional Practice, and Constitutionalism in East Asia, (2014) (providing a framework for studying the constitutions and constitutional practice of states in East and Southeast Asia)

Elsewhere Online

1. Tom Ginsburg, Addition by Subtraction in the Maldives, The World Post
2. Clarence Leatherbury, Debating Guantanamo Bay and Torture, Jurist
3. Jerry Pinto, India and the Right to Suicide, The New York Times
4. Omar Ould Dedde O. Hammady and Michael Meyer-Resende, Saving Libya’s Constitution-Making Body, ConstitutionNet
5. Ayalew Getachew Assefa, Realising the right to birth registration to prevent statelessness in Africa: in the context of the General Comment on Article 6 of the African Children’s Charter, AfricLaw

Calls for Papers

1. The International Journal of Law and Legal Jurisprudence Studies has issued a call for papers for Issue 1 of Volume 2.
2. Organizers have issued a call for papers for the Juris Diversitas Annual Conference to be held on June 2-4, 2015 in Limerick, Ireland.
3. The Public Law Group of the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law and the Younger Comparativists Committee of the American Society of Comparative Law invite emerging scholars to submit paper proposals for a full-day workshop on comparative public law with the theme “Politics and the Constitution” at the University of Ottawa on July 10, 2015.
4. The Journal of Law, Religion & State has issued a call for papers for its international conference on “Religion and Equality” to be held on June 9-11, 2015 at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.
5. The Graduate Law Students Association and the Department of Legal Studies, Faculty of Political Science and Law, Universite du Quebec a Montreal have issued a call for papers for an international conference on “Law and Context” to be held on May 14-15, 2015 in Montreal, Canada.