What’s New in Public Law

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–Pedro Arcain Riccetto, Ph.D. candidate at the University of São Paulo, Brazil

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 High Court of Guyana granted an injunction blocking the recount of votes from general and regional elections.
2. The Russian Constitutional Court found constitutional the amendment to reset the count on Vladimir Putin’s presidential terms.
3. The Honduran Supreme Court ordered a new trial for the former first lady Rosa Bonilla.
4. The Supreme Court of India ordered the Chief Minister Kamal Nath to face a floor test in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly.
5. The Colombian Supreme Court opened a preliminary investigation against former President Alvaro Uribe for vote-buying.

In the News

1. The US Supreme Court has indefinitely delayed arguments in more than a dozen cases scheduled for later this month and earlier next month due to coronavirus, including major cases on Donald Trump’s financial records.
2. In Chile, fifteen political parties agreed to postpone the referendum on the constitutional convention from April 26 to October 25 because of coronavirus outbreak.
3. Armenia delays a constitutional referendum to decide whether to amend the Constitution to allow the removal of sitting justices in the Armenian Constitutional Court because of coronavirus.
4. Brazil’s Supreme Court joins Congress coronavirus action independent of President Bolsonaro after he joined protesters calling for the closure of both the Supreme Court and Congress.
5. The US House of Representatives approved a War Power Resolution to limit president’s Iran war powers.

New Scholarship

1. Barry Sullivan and Cristina Tilley, Supreme Court Journalism: From Law to Spectacle? 77 Washington & Lee Law Review (2020) (analyzing how the press describes the work of the US Supreme Court by looking at the coverage of Brown vs. Board of Education and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle District No 1)
2. Jonathan Havercroft, Jacob Eisler, Jo Shaw, Antje Wiener and Val Napoleon (eds.), Decolonising Global Constitutionalism, 9 Global Constitutionalism (2020) (special issue discussing the implications of decolonizing global constitutionalism on the rule of law, constitutional theory, human rights, and democratic theory).
3. Nupur Chowdury, Judicial Cartography in Public Interest Litigation in India: Re-reading the Kudankulam case, Dialogue: Science, Scientists, and Society (2020) (questioning the public litigation system in India by adopting a judicial cartography approach to read the Kudankulam case).
4. Oran Doyle and Rachael Walsh, Deliberative Mini-Publics as a Response to Populist Democratic Backsliding (2020 forthcoming) (exploring whether citizens’ assemblies can help to counter populist democratic backsliding).
5. Samuel Issacharoff, The Corruption of Popular Sovereignty (2020) (looking to legal vulnerabilities that might allow the institutional framework of democracy to withstand the new populist assaults).
6. Sandra Botero, Trust, support for democracy and corruption: public perceptions of the Colombian Constitutional Court. 4 Latin American Law Review, (Spanish) (2020) (investigating which factors explain the confidence of Colombian public opinion in the Constitutional Court).

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. The British-Irish Chapter of ICON-S and the Centre for Constitutional Governance at Trinity College Dublin issues a call for papers for the conference “The Legal Status of the Irish Language: Past, Present and Future,” to be held in Dublin on June 27, 2020. The deadline for abstract submissions is 19 April 2020.
2. The editorial team of Global Constitutionalism invites submissions for the “Junior Scholars Workshop 2020: New Approaches to Global Constitutionalism,” to be held on July 16-17, 2020, at the University of Southampton. The deadline for submissions is April 6, 2020.
3. The Institute of Social Ethics (ISE) at the University of Lucerne invites applications for the Third “Lucerne Summer University: Ethics in a Global Context,” under the Patronage of UNESCO, to be held on June 4-9, 2020, in Lucerne. The deadline for applications is March 22, 2020.
4. The Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and the Rule of Law (MPFPR), in Heidelberg, is looking for applications for a Senior/Research Fellow in Constitutional Law, Project: Jordan. Applications will be received until March 27, 2020.
5. The University of Luxembourg is calling for applications for a funded PhD in EU Law under the guidance of Professor Eleftheria Neframi. The applicant will research on the topic of enforceability of EU law and availability of legal remedies: the challenges of multi-level settings to the protection and/or promotion of constitutional principles (in the fields of migration or internal market or external action of the EU). The deadline for applications is May 1, 2020.

Elsewhere Online

1. Arianna Vedaschi and Chiara Graziani, Coronavirus Emergency and Public Law Issues: An Update on the Italian Situation, Verfassungsblog.
2. Eric Segall, Chief Justice John Roberts, the 2020 election, and the Politics of Judicial Review Dorf on Law.
3. Federico Fabbrini, Brexit at the Time of Coronavirus, DCU Brexit Institute.
4. Mark Graber, Extraordinary and Ordinary Government Speech, Balkinization.
5. IACL-AIDC Blog organizes an online symposium on The Constitutional Dimensions of Irish Unification.
6. Wojciech Sadurski, The Polish Presidential Campaign in the Shadow of the Pandemic, Verfassungsblog.