What’s New in Public Law

Developments in Constitutional Courts

1. The Indian Supreme Court declined to hear a public interest litigation petition that asked for the creation of an independent institution to oversee judicial appointments.
2. Teimuraz Tugushi was appointed as a judge of the Constitutional Court of Georgia.
3. The Romanian Constitutional Court deferred ruling on a petition that invited the Court to rule on the validity of a same-sex marriage.
4. In its forthcoming fall session, the Canadian Supreme Court will decide a class action suit against Facebook for violating privacy rights.
5. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that county commissioners in North Carolina could commence public meetings with a prayer.

In the News

1. Ukraine’s Parliament voted on legislation that sets up an independent energy market regulator.
2. In Jordan, nearly 1.5 million voted to elect members to the parliament, with the elections registering an increase of nearly 200,000 voters.
3. Myanmar’s House of Representatives approved of a bill requiring the Union to ensure that the privacy and property rights of citizens are protected.
4. U.S. President Barack Obama vetoed a bill passed by Congress that would have empowered “9/11 victims and their families” to take legal action against Saudi Arabia.
5. A commission under the Council of Europe released a preliminary report finding that proposed changes to the Azerbaijan Constitution are not justified and would hinder the balance of government power.

New Scholarship

1. Richard Albert, Amendment and Revision in the Unmaking of Constitutions, in Edward Elgar Handbook on Comparative Constitution-Making (David Landau & Hanna Lerner eds., forthcoming)
2. Elisa Arcioni, The Core of the Australian Constitutional People-‘The People’ as ‘The Electors’, 39 University of New South Wales Law Journal (2016) (evaluating the nature of the relationship that the constitution creates between the people and the elected branch, and how such a relationship translates into restrictions on the power of Parliament to legislate)
3. Elisa Arcioni, Tracing the ethno-cultural or racial identity of the Australian constitutional people, 15 Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal (2015) (proposing that Australian constitutionalism did not incorporate a particular racial identity and that any “negative racial component” must be removed from Australian constitutionalism)
4. Cora Chan, A Preliminary Framework for Measuring Deference in Rights Reasoning, International Journal of Constitutional Law (forthcoming) (propounding a novel framework to judge the degree of deference a court accords to the adjudication of issues on human rights and evaluating the utility of adopting such a framework)
5. Debtoru Chatterjee, Presidential Discretion (2016) (critically examining, both historically and comparatively, the discretionary powers vested in the President of India and how past presidents have utilised their discretionary powers to overcome the challenges of their times)
6. Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias and Wojciech Sadurski, The Law of Ritual Slaughter and the Principle of Religious Equality, 4 Journal of Law, Religion and State (2016) (evaluating, from a religious equality perspective, the decision of the Constitutional Court of Poland invalidating a law prohibiting animal slaughter)
7. David Rudenstine, The Age of Deference: The Supreme Court, National Security, and the Constitutional Order (2016) (positing that over the years the U.S. Supreme Court has accorded greater deference to the executive branch in matters of national security, and examining the deleterious impact such judicial deference has had on rights)

Call for Papers

1. Papers are invited for a conference on “Imposed Constitutions: Aspects of imposed constitutionalism” to be held at the University of Nicosia on May 5-6, 2017. Abstracts of papers must be submitted by December 20, 2016.
2. A call for papers has been issued by the Jean Beer Blumenfeld Center for Ethics for a conference on “Overcriminalization and Indigent Legal Care” to be held at Georgia State University on April 6-7, 2017. Abstracts of papers should be sent in by December 15, 2016.
3. Papers are called for by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for a conference on “Law as Religion, Religion as Law” to be held on June 5-7, 2017. Abstracts of papers are due on October 26, 2016.
4. Papers are invited by the Center on Applied Feminism, University of Baltimore School of Law for the “Tenth Anniversary of the Feminist Legal Theory Conference” to be held on March 30-31, 2017. Proposals of papers should be sent in by October 28, 2016.
5. Bar-Ilan Faculty of Law is hosting the “4th Annual Conference of the International Network on Transnational Legal and Political Theory” on May 7-8, 2017. Participants are invited to apply by October 31, 2016.
6. The German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development is organizing a conference on “Law for Development: Strengthening Social Protection Systems in Africa” on November 10-11, 2016 in Berlin.

Elsewhere Online

1. Richard Albert, Is it time to scrap the Constitution and write a new one? Boston Globe
2. Maja Daruwala, Ten years and waiting, The Indian Express
3. Noah Feldman, When a county board’s prayer goes too far, Bloomberg View
4. Leah Jessen, What’s at stake in the next Supreme Court term, The Daily Signal
5. Maya Manian, Protecting Abortion Rights after Whole Woman’s Health, Jurist