What’s New in Public Law

–Sandeep Suresh, LL.M in Comparative Constitutional Law (Central European University, Budapest)

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 Indian Supreme Court affirmed that the principle of “equal pay for equal work” applies to temporary employees.
2. The French Constitutional Council held that the surveillance law passed last year is unconstitutional because it enabled invasion of individual privacy.
3. The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany will pronounce judgment in a case on the “Acceleration of the Nuclear Phase-Out” on December 6, 2016.
4. The Indonesian Constitutional Court struck down a rule that made prenuptial agreements for mix-citizenship marriages mandatory.
5. The management of the Haji Ali Dargah, a mosque in the southern part of Mumbai, submitted before the Indian Supreme Court that it will implement the Bombay High Court’s order allowing the entry of Muslim women into the inner sanctum of the mosque.

In the News

1. France passed a law allowing transgender individuals to update their legal status without undergoing sterilization.
2. The Indian government will soon bring a bill that seeks decriminalisation of beggary and aims to offer a life of dignity by rehabilitating beggars and homeless people.
3. The Uzbekistan government ratified a convention recognizing the right to freedom of association and related rights.
4. An activist of the organization No Somos Delito (“We Are Not a Crime”) was fined after participating in one of the largest demonstrations against Spain’s controversial “gag law.”
5. The chief of the parliamentary standing committee in Bangladesh stated that NGOs do not have the right to freedom of expression under the country’s constitution.
6. South Korean President Park Geun-hye proposed amending the constitution to allow presidents to serve multiple terms or to establish a parliamentary system, saying the single-term presidency has served its purpose after nearly 30 years.

New Scholarship

1. Richard Albert, Four Unconstitutional Constitutions and their Democratic Foundations, 50 Cornell International Law Journal (forthcoming 2017) (exploring different conceptions of an unconstitutional constitution with reference to the Constitutions of Canada, Mexico, South Africa and the United States)
2. Paola Bergallo and Agustina Ramón Michel, Constitutional Developments in Latin American Abortion Law, 135 International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics (2016) (giving an overview of the shift towards more liberal rules and resolution of abortion disputes with reference to national constitutions)
3. Adam S. Chilton and Mila Versteeg, Rights Without Resources: The Impact of Constitutional Social Rights on Social Spending, Virginia Law and Economics Research Paper (2016) (addressing the question of whether constitutionalization of social rights by courts actually changes how governments provide social services by empirically studying the results of government spending in the fields of education and healthcare)
4. Erin F. Delaney, Analyzing Avoidance: Judicial Strategy in Comparative Perspective, 66 Duke Law Journal 1 (2016) (drawing on a series of avoidance strategies from apex courts around the word to tease out the relationships among timing, candor, and dialogue)
5. Sionaidh Douglas-Scott, Brexit, Article 50 and the Contested British Constitution, Modern Law Review (forthcoming) (discussing the problems that may arise in the Brexit process due to the lack of any coherent conception of the British Constitution)
6. Robert Leckey and Carol Rogerson, Marriage, Family, and Federal Concerns, in Nathalie Des Rosiers, Patrick Macklem and Peter Oliver (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Canadian Constitution (forthcoming) (examining the place of marriage, families, and family law in the Canadian federation by looking beyond constitutional text and considering institutional structures and practices)
7. Daniel R. Ortiz, Reterritorializing Deterritorialization, Virginia Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper (2016) (analyzing the concept of deterritorialization and the political and legal questions that deterritorialization makes relevant)
8. Alba M. Ruibal, Social movements and constitutional politics in Latin America: reconfiguring alliances, framings and legal opportunities in the judicialisation of abortion rights in Brazil, Contemporary Social Science (2015) (discussing the judicialization of abortion by the Brazilian Constitutional Court)
9. Ioanna Tourkochoriti, Speech, Privacy and Dignity in France and in the U.S.A.: A Comparative Analysis, 38 Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review 101 (2016) (analyzing judicial balancing between speech and the right to privacy in France and the United States)

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. The deadline for submissions has been extended to October 31, 2016 for the ASCL Younger Comparativists Committee’s third workshop on comparative business and financial law to be held on February 10-11, 2017 at the University of Kansas School of Law in Lawrence, Kansas.
2. The Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen, is seeking applications for a position as Associate Professor or Professor of international law or European law with focus on international courts. The position includes research-, teaching- and administrative responsibilities. The Associate Professor or Professor will be affiliated with iCourts – the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for International Courts. Interested persons may apply via the link here.
3. The European Data Protection Law Review is currently inviting contributions for its upcoming issues. The submission deadline for the first issue of 2017 is February 1, 2017.
4. Abstracts are invited for the 2017 edition of the WG Hart Legal Workshop on “Law, Society and Administration in a Changing World,” which will be held at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London on July 10-11, 2017. Abstracts must be submitted to Peter Cane at pc286@cam.ac.uk (cc’d to hooperhayley@hotmail.com and jeff.king@ucl.ac.uk) by December 31, 2016.
5. The Pepperdine Law Review will organize its 2017 Annual Symposium on the question of whether the deadlock over the nomination of Merrick Garland has converted the U.S. Supreme Court into an overly political institution on April 8, 2017. Interested scholars must submit proposals for presentations and biographies before November 11, 2016 to sipsas@pepperdine.edu.

Elsewhere Online

1. Josh Blackman, Chabad’s ritual is a clear example of the free exercise of religion, Los Angeles Times
2. John Finnis, Terminating Treaty-based UK Rights, UK Constitutional Law Association
3. Alok Prasanna Kumar, ‘Right to Choose’ as a Fundamental Right, Economic & Political Weekly
4. Akhilesh Pillalamarri, Asia’s New Democracies and the Liberal World Order, The Diplomat
5. Ilya Shapiro, The Senate Should Refuse To Confirm All Of Hillary Clinton’s Judicial Nominees, The Federalist
6. Chris Weller, There’s a proven way to get more people to vote, but the US won’t do it, Business Insider