What’s New in Public Law

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—Chiara Graziani, Research Fellow in Comparative Public Law, University of Milan-Bicocca (Italy) and Academic Fellow, Bocconi University (Italy)

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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 iconnecteditors@gmail.com.

Developments in Constitutional Courts

1. The German Constitutional Court blocked the EU recovery fund.
2. The German Constitutional Court held correction of a company’s taxable income resulting in restrictions on freedom of establishment unconstitutional.
3. The French Constitutional Council ruled on a loi organique concerning the election of the President of the Republic. 
4. The US Supreme Court agreed to rule on a restrictive abortion law of the state of Kentucky.
5. The Canadian Supreme Court ruled the federal government’s plan to tax carbon emissions constitutional.
6. The European Court of Justice has been asked to determine whether Germany’s competition authority was right to order Facebook to halt its data collection practices, due to concerns over alleged abuse of its dominant market position and violations of EU data protection law.

In the News

1. The German government will introduce a bill expanding citizenship to descendants of Nazi victims.
2. A new law introduced stricter mask rules in Spain.
3. Portugal extended the state of emergency to contain Covid-19 until April 15, 2021.
4. The United Kingdom extended emergency Coronavirus powers for another 6 months.
5. The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, called on the United Nations Security Council to increase humanitarian access to Syria

New Scholarship

1. Dragoș Călin, Lucia Zaharia, Recent Controversy Regarding the Promotion of Judges in Romania: Searching for Meritocracy, 12(1) International Journal of Court Administration (2021) (addressing the 2018 Romanian amendments to the “laws of judiciary” and discussing how it adversely affected the equity of judicial competition for those who aspire to leading jurist positions)
2. Rosalind Dixon, David Landau, Abusive Constitutional Borrowing. Legal Globalization and the Subversion of Liberal Democracy (forthcoming 2021) (addressing current patterns of democratic retrenchment and discussing the rise of abusive constitutional practices)
3. Mariolina Eliantonio, Emilia Korkea-aho, Oana Stefan (eds.), EU Soft Law in the Member States Theoretical Findings and Empirical Evidence (2021) (analysing the impact that non-legally binding sources of law – otherwise known as soft law – have on national courts and administration)
4. Simone Glanert, Alexandra Mercescu, Geoffrey Samuel, Rethinking Comparative Law (forthcoming 2021) (investigating various assumptions and lines of reasoning of comparative law that deserve reconsideration and aiming to optimize the interpretive rewards that the comparison of laws is able generate)
5. Elif Mendos Kuşkonmaz, Privacy and Border Controls in the Fight against Terrorism. A Fundamental Rights Analysis of Passenger Data Sharing (2021) (offering legal analysis of sharing of passenger data from the EU to the US in light of the EU legal framework protecting individuals’ privacy and personal data)
6. Nikos Skoutaris, Between Two Unions: Brexit and the Secessionist Challenges in the UK, in Martin Belov (ed.), Territorial Politics. Constitutional and International Law Dimensions (2021) (discussing the constitutional pathways that Scotland and Northern Ireland can use and the challenges that they have to face in order to secede from the UK and re-join the EU)
7. Arianna Vedaschi, Kim Lane Scheppele (eds.), 9/11 and the Rise of Global Anti-Terrorism Law. How the UN Security Council Rules the World (forthcoming 2021) (giving a picture of the complex and evolving interaction between the international, regional and domestic levels in framing counter-terrorism law and policies)

Call for Papers and Announcements

1. LUISS University Center for Parliamentary Studies (Rome) announces two research scholarships of 6 months to work on a project on “Political Representation in the Euro-national Parliamentary System”. The deadline for the applications is 30 April, 12pm (Italian time).
2. The Erasmus School of Law (The Netherlands), together with the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on Digital Governance, invites submissions for a workshop supported by the Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research, to be held on October 28, 2021, on “AI and human rights: friend or foe?”. The deadline to submit proposals is May 15, 2021.
3. LUISS University School of Government invites applications for the 10th edition of the Summer Program on “Parliamentary democracy in Europe”, to be devoted to “Parliaments during and after the Covid-19 pandemic” and to be held July on 12-16, 2021, at LUISS University Campus in Rome. The deadline for the applications is May 16, 2021.
4. The European Yearbook of Constitutional Law invites scholars from around the world to submit proposals for its 2022 issue on the theme of “The Constitutional Identity of the European Union”. The deadline for proposal submissions is June 1, 2021.
5. Loyola University Chicago School of Law and George Washington University Law School are organizing the 12th Annual Constitutional Law Colloquium, to be held on November 12-13, 2021. The deadline to submit abstracts is June 12, 2021.
6. The journal Law & Practice of International Courts and Tribunals (Brill) will award a Prize in honor of H.E. Rosalyn Higgins. The deadline to submit papers to the competition is June 30, 2021.

Elsewhere Online

1. Fiona de Londras, Six-Monthly Votes on the Coronavirus Act 2020: A Meaningful Mode of Review?, UKCLA Blog
2. Pavlos Eleftheriadis, The Government’s Radical Theory of the Constitution, Oxford Human Rights Hub
3. Abhinav Mehrotra, Myanmar: A Case for Right to Democracy to be a Human Right, Cambridge International Law Journal Blog
4. Adam Krzywon, Electoral disinformation and summary judicial proceedings. Is the Polish experience relevant?, British Association of Comparative Law
5. David Natzler, COVID-19 and Commons procedure: back to the future?, The Constitution Unit
6. Michael Posner, Ryan Goodman, Terrorism and Other Dangerous Online Content: Exporting the First Amendment?, Just Security