What’s New in Comparative Public Law

–Margaret Lan Xiao, Washington University in St. Louis

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 Supreme Court of Canada struck down a Saskatchewan law that prevents public sector strikes.
2. Italian constitutional court judge Sergio Mattarella has been elected as the country’s new president by the Parliament.
3. Hungary’s Constitutional Court rejected a request submitted by the Metropolitan Appeals Court to annul previous legislation on retail loan contracts.
4. South Korea’s Constitutional Court publicly admitted its errors and deleted some misidentified names in the previous Unified Progressive Party-disbandment ruling.
5. South Africa President Jacob Zuma appointed three judges to the Constitutional Court.
6. Hungary’s Constitutional Court annulled as unconstitutional a January 2014 court ruling, which had upheld a fine by the National Bank of Hungary on news portals for illegal market manipulation.
7. Bulgaria’s Constitutional Court repealed the 2014 drugs law amendments.

In the News

1. Iraq’s Parliament approved the country’s 2015 budget, which is based on $56 a barrel for crude oil.
2. European Parliament President Martin Schulz met with newly elected Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
3. Singapore’s Parliament passed the new Liquor Control Bill which will ban late night public drinking.
4. The Afghan Parliament rejected the majority of President Ashraf Ghani’s cabinet nominees.
5. The Angolan Parliament approved the proposals of the Financial Institutions Law.
6. The French Cassation Court upheld the decision by which a marriage between a French national and a Moroccan national is valid, and stated that marriage between persons of same-sex is a fundamental freedom.

New Scholarship

1. Susan Rose-Ackerman, Stefanie Egidy, and James Fowkes, Due Process of Lawmaking: The United States, South Africa, Germany, and the European Union, Cambridge University Press (January 2015) (exploring the law of lawmaking and public policy-making in the legislative and executive branches in the cases of the United States, South Africa, Germany, and the EU)
2. Michael A. Livermore, Allen Riddell, and Daniel Rockmore, A Topic Model Approach to Studying Agenda Formation for the U.S. Supreme Court, Virginia Law and Economics Research Paper No. 2 (2015) (developing a new approach to further study the issue of agenda formation in the U.S. Supreme Court, with special attention to the differences between Supreme Court decisions and published decisions in the lower appellate courts)
3. Cheryl Saunders and Adrienne Stone, Constitutional Reasoning in the High Court of Australia, U of Melbourne Legal Studies Research Paper No. 701 (2015) (analyzing types of arguments and key concepts within the various methods of constitutional reasoning in the High Court of Australia)
4. Cormac S. Mac Amhlaigh, Putting Political Constitutionalism in its Place, International Journal of Constitutional Law (I*CON) (forthcoming 2015) (defending legislative supremacy through moral reasons and a minimal theory of legitimacy and concluding that a partial defence of political constitutionalism might be the only feasible defence of political constitutionalism in debates in constitutional theory)
5. The new issue of the European Journal of Legal Studies (EJLS) is available online now.

Elsewhere Online

1. Michael Forsythe, and A.: Roderick MacFarquhar on Xi Jinping’s High-Risk Campaign to Save the Communist Party, The New York Times
2. Jacob Gershman, DOJ Retreats from Fight With Rakoff Over Evidence Rules, The Wall Street Journal
3. Core Brettschneider and Nelson Tebbe, A License to Say Anything?, The New York Times
4. Aaron Blake, The Supreme Court could gut Obamacare. Here’s why that might not matter, The Washington Post
5. James Queally, New York City-funded law firm involved in video calling for police to be killed, Los Angeles Times
6. Neil Gough, Dentons to Merge With Dacheng of China to Create World’s Largest Law Firm, The New York Times
7. Zach Carter, Congress Revives Gingrich-Era Law To Thwart Obama, The Huffington Post
8. Mawuse Vormawor, Constitutional reform in non-conflict contexts: Ghana’s experience, Constitution Net
9. Angelique Devaux, Successions in Europe: What’s New in 2015?, Jurist
10. Mohamed ‘Arafa, Egypt’s Judiciary: Reform in the Criminal Justice System or Violation of International Human Rights Law?, Jurist
11. Michael Auslin, The Twilight of China’s Communist Party, The Wall Street Journal

Calls for Papers

1. National University of Singapore’s Center for Asian Legal Studies calls for papers for a conference on The Life and Future of British Colonial Sexual Regulation in Asia to be held on October 8-9, 2015.
2. Koç University Law School, Boston College Law School and the International Society of Public Law invite submissions for a full-day workshop on unamendable constitutional provisions, to be held on the campus of Koç University Law School in Istanbul on Tuesday, June 9, 2015.
3. The Law, Literature and the Humanities Association of Australasia calls for papers for a Conference specifically organized by The University of Technology, Sydney Law School to be held on December 9-12, 2015.
4. The Institute of Air and Space Law, Faculty of Law, McGill University calls for papers for the 3rd Manfred Lachs International Conference on NewSpace Commercialization and the Law to be held in Montreal, Canada on March 16-17, 2015.
5. Stanford Law School’s Stanford Program in Law and Society calls for papers for its Second Conference for Junior Researchers to be held on May 15-16, 2015.
6. Jindal Global Law School calls for papers for its 3rd Student Research Colloquium on Contemporary Challenges of Law to be held on April 2-3, 2015.
7. International Law News (ILN) calls for articles for its upcoming summer and fall issue (with different themes).