What’s New in Public Law

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—Maja Sahadžić, Research Fellow, University of Antwerp

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 Constitutional Court of Germany ruled that the law banning assisted suicide services is unconstitutional.
2. The Constitutional Court of Germany confirmed that a headscarf ban for lawyers and trainees in German courtrooms is not unconstitutional.
3. The Constitutional Court of Indonesia ruled that the simultaneous general elections are “most constitutional”.
4. The Constitutional Court of Thailand dissolved an opposition party.
5. The Constitutional Court of Thailand ruled that a provision in the criminal code regarding abortion violates the Constitution, and must be amended.
6. The Constitutional Court of Guatemala suspended the appointment of judges to the Supreme Court amid concerns over influence peddling.
7. The Constitutional Court of Malawi dismissed the application to suspend a landmark judgment that annulled the last presidential elections.
8. The Constitutional Court of Ecuador denied the application to hold a referendum on mining activities in the Province of Azuay and confirmed the right of mining concession holders to legal security.
9. The Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that people born in South Africa to non-South African parents can apply for citizenship.
10. The Constitutional Court of Israel ruled that the surrogacy law excluding single men and gay couples violates the constitutional rights to equality and parenthood.

In the News

1. All judges of the Armenian Constitutional Court rejected the Government’s early retirement offer.
2. The working group for drafting amendments to the Russian Constitution announced the date of a national referendum on constitutional changes.
3. The President of the European Court of Human Rights appointed a new international judge to the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
4. The European Parliament is considering to hold its meetings and plenary sessions by teleconference due to growing concerns about the fast-spreading coronavirus.
5. The Parliament of Iraq failed to approve a new Government threatening to create a constitutional vacuum.
6. The Tunisian Parliament approved Prime Minister-designate ending months of political deadlock.
7. The Austrian Parliament passed a resolution condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign as antisemitic, urging that the anti-Israel movement not be supported.

New Scholarship

1. Karlo Basta, Performing Canadian State Nationalism through Federal Symmetry, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics (2020) (exploring the politics of federal a/symmetry in Canada, particularly in response to Quebec’s demands for greater recognition).
2. Pau Bossacoma, Morality and Legality of Secession, A Theory of National Self-Determination (2020) (exploring secession from three normative disciplines: political philosophy, international law and constitutional law).
3. Nasia Hadjigeorgiou, Protecting Human Rights and Building Peace in Post-Violence Societies (2020) (examining the relationship between protecting human rights and building peace in post-violence societies).
4. Nausica Palazzo, Equality in Canada: A Tale of Non-normative Groups Struggling with Grounds of Discrimination, Oñati Socio-Legal Series (2020) (addressing the limits associated with a rigid grounds-based approach to equality, requiring claimants to categorize their identity within a “ground”, by taking the Canadian Supreme Court’s case law in the field of marital status as a case study).
5. Jill I. Goldenziel and Manal Cheema, Protecting First Amendment Rights in the Fight Against Disinformation: Lessons Learned from FISA, Maryland Law Review (2019) (explaining how lessons learned from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act can inform legislation that would balance national security and Constitutional rights in the fight against disinformation).
6. R. Daniel Kelemen, The European Union’s authoritarian equilibrium, Journal of European Public Policy (2020) (examining an original commitment to liberal democracy and backsliding toward competitive authoritarianism in the European Union).
7. Joel Harrison, Post-Liberal Religious Liberty, Forming Communities of Charity (2020) (arguing that religious liberty is rooted in a theologically derived narrative of secularisation rather than being neutral).
8. Mattia Casula, Under which conditions is Cohesion Policy effective: proposing an Hirschmanian approach to EU structural funds, Regional and Federal Studies (2020) (comparing cohesion policy implementation in Italy and Spain from 1989 to 2017 to explain where, when, and how it has been successful).
9. Jorge Luis Fabra Zamora (ed.), Jurisprudence in a Globalized World (2020) (investigating the modifications to jurisprudence’s methodological approaches driven by globalization, the concepts and theoretical tools required to account for putative new forms of legal phenomena, and normative issues relating to the legitimacy and democratic character of these legal orders).

Call for Papers and Announcements

1. The United States Institute for Peace invites registrations for the event “Global Trends in the Rule of Law, Latest Findings and Insights from the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index 2020” in Washington, D.C. on 11 March 2020.
2. The Justice System Journal issues a call for papers for the special issue “Justice for All: Empirical Research on Indigent Defense”. The deadline for submissions is 15 May 2020.
3. The University of St Andrews welcomes submissions for the conference “3rd International Conference on Migration and Mobilities in St Andrews” on 8-10 July 2020. The deadline for submissions is 7 March 2020.
4. The University of Leiden invites submissions for a series of workshops “Behavioural Approaches in International Law” in Leiden and Hamburg starting on 26 November 2020. The deadline for submissions is 30 March 2020.
5. The University of Antwerp invites applications for the summer school “Legal technology and legal innovation” in Antwerp on 7-11 September 2020. The deadline for applications is 1 May 2020.
6. The University of Antwerp invites applications for tenured academic staff in two courses “Global legal systems” and “Legal pluralism”. The deadline for applications is 9 April 2020.

Elsewhere Online

1. Brice Dickson, Unionist Fears in a United Ireland, IACL-AIDC Blog
2. Anna Gamper, Second chambers in federal states, 50 Shades of Federalism
3. Gabriel Toggenburg, The 5th of all EU-r rights: no forced labour and how the Charter contributes, Eureka!
4. Hanna Wilberg, A Duty of Consistency? The Missing Distinction Between Its Two Forms, UK Constitutional Law Association Blog
5. Brian Christopher Jones, The Widely Ignored and Underdeveloped Problem with Judicial Power, UK Constitutional Law Association Blog
6. Timothy Jacob-Owens, A Breakthrough for Language Rights in Northern Ireland, Oxford Human Rights Hub
7. David R. Cameron, After another election setback, the CDU moves up date for choosing new leader, Yale MacMillan Center
8. D. Tinashe Hofisi, Fortifying Zimbabwe’s ‘Imperial’ Presidency? The Proposed Second Amendment to the Constitution, ConstitutionNet
9. Marguerite Soete and Annabelle Lepièce, Will Thomas Cook bankruptcy help Brussels Airlines to avoid a fine by the Belgian Competition Authority?, Lexology
10. David Abraham, Class, Identity and “We the People”, Verfassungsblog
11. Daniel Halberstam, Could there be a Rule of Law Problem at the EU Court of Justice?, Verfassungsblog
12. Timothy Less, Bosnia’s ‘Second Collapse’ is Starting to Look Inevitable, BalkanInsight