What’s New in Public Law

—Mohamed Abdelaal, Assistant Professor, Alexandria University Faculty of Law

In this weekly feature, I-CONnect publishes a curated reading list of developments in 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 public law blogosphere.

To submit relevant developments for our weekly feature on “What’s New in Public Law,” please email contact.iconnect@gmail.com.

Developments in Constitutional Courts

1. The French Constitutional Council ruled that a farmer who aided migrants crossing France’s border with Italy was immune from prosecution.
2. The Constitutional Court of South Korea banned private detective agencies.
3. The Constitutional Court of South Korea is reviewing a civil code article that designates animals as property.
4. In Uganda, the constitutionality of a controversial social media tax is being challenged before the Constitutional Court.
5. The Indian Supreme Court is set to hear petitions regarding anti-gay laws.

In the News

1. A public referendum has been called in Benin to review the constitution.
2. In the Philippines, a new constitutional draft has been submitted to the president.
3. The European Parliament voted down a copyright bill.
4. The German Legislature announces plans to prevent alleged violations of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
5. A German court held that Carles Puigdemont can indeed be extradited to Spain.

New Scholarship

1. Matthew Seligman, Constitutional Politics, Court Packing, and Judicial Appointments Reform (2018) (examining the constitutional politics of the appointments process in an era of rising partisanship and constitutional hardball through the lens of game theory)
2. Eric M.Adams, Judicial Agency and Anxiety Under the Canadian Bill of Rights: A Constitutional History of R V Drybones, National Journal of Constitutional Law (forthcoming 2018) (arguing that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms arrived not because the Bill of Rights failed as has so often been argued, but rather because the Bill of Rights succeeded in altering irretrievably, although not uniformly, Canada’s constitutional imagination)
3. Jean-Sylvestre Bergé, Stephane Grumbach and Vincenzo Zeno-Zencovich, The ‘Datasphere’, Data Flows Beyond Control, and the Challenges for Law and Governance, 5 European Journal of Comparative Law and Governance (2018) (considering the need and the difficulty of regulating the Datasphere and the different approaches followed on both sides of the Atlantic)
4. Adolfo Giuliani, What is Comparative Legal History? Legal Historiography and the Revolt Against Formalism, 1930-60 in A Masferrer, KÅ Modéer, and O Moréteau (eds), Comparative legal history (forthcoming, Research Handbooks in Comparative Law Series, Elgar, 2018) (arguing that to understand this new field of legal-historical studies, we need first to clarify how legal historiography has changed over time).
5. Hermann-Josef Blanke and Ricardo Perlingeiro, The Right of Access to Public Information: An International Comparative Legal Survey (Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, 2018) (introducing a comparative study on access to public information in the context of the main legal orders worldwide)
6. Jeremy Waldron, Judicial Review and Political Legitimacy (in Spanish: Control de Constitucionalidad y Legitimidad Política), 27 Núm. 1 – Chía, Colombi (2018) (analyzing the relationship between judicial review of legislation and the principle of political legitimacy, claiming that judicial review is not devised to produce political legitimacy, and suggesting some alternatives to mitigate the ‘democratic difficulty’ implied in judicial review)
7. Robin Fretwell Wilson and Shaakirrah Sanders, By Faith Alone: When Religious Beliefs and Child Welfare Collide, in The Contested Place of Religion in Family Law (Robin Fretwell Wilson, ed., Cambridge University Press, 2018)) (exploring the limits of the broad and constitutionally recognized grant of parental power and documents the veritable kaleidoscope of exemptions for practices that expose children to real and present harm)
8. Dagmar Schiek, On Uses, Mis-Uses and Non-Uses of Intersectionality Before the European Court of Justice (ECJ): The ECJ Rulings Parris (C-433/15), Achbita (C-157/15) and Bougnaoui (C-188/15) as a Bermuda Triangle?, Journal of Discrimination and the Law (forthcoming) (discussing three ECJ rulings which similarly failed to acknowledge intersectional discrimination, thus inviting national courts to deny recognition and adequate remedies to claimants)
9. Giuseppe Martinico, How can Constitutionalism Deal with Secession in the Age of Populism? The Case of Referendums, STALS Research Paper, 5/2018 (discussing the relationship between populism and constitutionalism)

Call for Papers and Announcements

1. The Journal on Contemporary Issues of Law welcomes submissions for its new volume.
2. The International Court of Justice has issued a call for papers for a workshop on “The International Court of Justice and Chagos,” to be held October 19-20, 2018, at the University of St. Gallen.
3. The Indian Review of Corporate and Commercial Laws (IRCCL) invites blog articles on current issues relating to corporate law, arbitration, anti-trust, taxation, insolvency law, and international trade law.
4. LUMS Law Journal (LLJ) announces a call for papers for its fifth volume.
5. The Dennis J. Block Center for the Study of International Business Law will sponsor a Scholars’ Roundtable on November 16-17, 2018 at Brooklyn Law School.
6. The Innovation Center for Law and Technology at New York Law School and the Center on Law and Information Policy at Fordham University School of Law announce a call for submissions for the Second Northeast Privacy Scholars Workshop at Fordham Law School on November 9, 2018.
7. Alberta University’s Centre for Constitutional Studies is seeking expressions of interest Editor-in-Chief for its journal, the Review for Constitutional Studies/Revue d’études constitutionelles.

Elsewhere Online

1. Supreme Court polarization is not inevitable — just look at Europe, The Conversation
2. Mark Joseph Stern, A Post-Roe Road Map, Slate
3. Curtis Doebbler, Immigrants Need Not Apply, Jurist
4. Monika Nalepa, Poland may forcibly ‘retire’ dozens of Supreme Court justices, The Washington Post
5. Jean-Paul Oury, What place should the environment have in the constitution?, European Scientist
6. Is Ivory Coast’s president tightening his grip on power?, Deutsche Welle