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 held that Section 123 (3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 prohibits candidates from making religious appeals (religion of the candidates as well as the voters) during election campaigns for gaining votes.
2. The Supreme Court of Nepal ruled in favour of the Government to proceed with a significant constitutional amendment that aims to include demands of ethnic groups in Nepal concerning citizenship and boundary demarcation.
3. The Indian Supreme Court dropped the contempt of court proceedings against Justice Markandeya Katju (former Supreme Court Judge) after accepting his apology affidavit. Contempt proceedings were initiated against Justice Katju for writing certain blog posts against current judges of the apex court.
4. The Ombudsman of Romania approached the country’s Constitutional Court challenging a law that prohibits persons convicted for criminal offences from joining the government.
5. The Indian Supreme Court held, inter alia, that ordinances have to be laid before the legislative assembly or the Parliament as per the mandate of Articles 213 or 123 of the Constitution (in the judgment, the court relied on a book written by I-CONnect author Shubhankar Dam: Presidential Legislation in India (CUP 2014)).

In the News

1. The Government of Czech Republic is proposing to introduce a constitutional amendment that would allow citizens to use arms against terrorists during attacks.
2. The President of Slovakia sent a new bill which makes it onerous for religious minorities to become official or form religious societies back to the Parliament for reconsideration.
3. Syrian Kurdish parties adopted a draft federal constitution for northern Syria.
4. The President of India approved the Specified Bank Notes (Cessation of Liabilities) Ordinance, 2016 which criminalizes possession of demonetized currency notes of Rs.500 and Rs.1000 beyond a prescribed limit.
5. The Mauritius Government gave the nod for introducing a constitutional amendment that aims to amend the Constitution to establish the Prosecution Commission as a check against the decisions of the Directorate of Public Prosecutions.

New Scholarship

1. Richard Albert, The State of the Art in Constitutional Amendment, in Richard Albert, Xenophon Contiades & Alkmene Fotiadou (eds.), The Foundations and Traditions of Constitutional Amendment (Hart: Oxford 2017) (Forthcoming) (examining the architecture of constitutional amendment rules, the current challenges in the study of constitutional change, and the major fault lines in the field of constitutional change)
2. Anuj Bhuwania, Courting the People: Public Interest Litigation in Post-Emergency India (CUP 2017) (studying the political role that public interest litigation has come to play in contemporary India)
3. Sujit Choudhry and Tom Ginsburg (eds.), Constitution Making (Edward Elgar Publishing 2016) (presenting a critical volume of theoretical literature (case studies as well as classic articles) on constitution-making)
4. Tarunabh Khaitan, Directive Principles and the Expressive Accommodation of Ideological Dissenters (December 22, 2016) (arguing that constitutional directives can be a useful tool for the expressive accommodation of ideological dissenters in the society)
5. Andreas Lienhard and Daniel Kettiger (eds.), The Judiciary between Management and the Rule of Law (1st ed., Nomos 2016) (presenting the results of the research project ‘Basic Research into Court Management in Switzerland’ relating to key areas like the environment in which the judiciary works, its resources, caseload management etc…)
6. Valsamis Mitsilegas, Surveillance and Digital Privacy in the Transatlantic ‘War on Terror’: The Case for a Global Privacy Regime, Queen Mary School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper, No. 251 (2017) (examining the impact of the war on terror on the right to privacy)
7. Katharine Young, Proportionality, Reasonableness, and Economic and Social Rights, in Vicki C. Jackson and Mark Tushnet (eds.), Proportionality: New Frontiers, New Challenges (CUP 2017) (Forthcoming) (examining the relationship between reasonableness review and proportionality within the context of socio-economic rights).

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. Papers are invited for an international symposium on “The Separation of Powers: A Global Dialogue,” to be held at the University of Milan on May 22, 2017, featuring Jürgen Bast, Cindy Skach, Stephen Tierney, Jeremy Waldron, Anneli Albi, Leonard Besselink, Tommaso Edoardo Frosini, Giuseppe De Vergottini, Nicolò Zanon and Vincenzo Zeno-Zencovich. The submission deadline is January 15, 2017.
2. The Jindal Global Law School is inviting paper abstracts for the Colloquium on ‘Judicial Reasoning and Judicial Behavior’. The colloquium will be held in Sonipat, Harayana on April 29 and 30, 2016. Interested scholars must submit their paper abstracts by February 15, 2017 to Sannoy Das at sdas@jgu.edu.in.
3. The Berkeley Center for Law & Technology is inviting paper abstracts for the 10th Annual ‘Privacy Law’ Scholars Conference on June 1 and 2, 2017 in Berkeley, California. Interested participants must submit their abstracts by January 20, 2017. For more details, visit the conference website.
4. The Oxford Symposium on ‘Population, Migration, and the Environment’ will be held on March 15 and 16, 2017. This symposium focuses on global environmental issues and its effects on human welfare and progress. The deadline for submitting abstracts is February 20, 2017 and interested scholars must visit the symposium website to submit the same.
5. The Polish Yearbook of International Law is inviting articles for its next volume to be published in June, 2017. Manuscripts must concern public and private international law, including European law. The manuscripts must be within the word limit of 10,000 words (including footnotes). Interested authors must send their works to pyil@inp.pan.pl by January 31, 2017.
6. Laws, an open access Journal, is currently inviting submissions for its special issue on ‘Privacy and Surveillance in a Digital Age’. Interested authors must send their papers by May 31, 2017. For more details, visit the conference website.

Elsewhere Online

1. Marta Machado, Brazil: Supreme Court panel majority: Criminalization of abortion is incompatible with the Constitution, reprohealthlaw
2. Vibha Datta Makhija, Sedition And Free Speech: An Antithesis, Bloomberg Quint
3. Tomasz Tadeusz Koncewicz, Living under the unconstitutional capture and hoping for the constitutional recapture, Verfassungsblog
4. Gautam Bhatia, ‘O Brave New World’: The Supreme Court’s Evolving Doctrine of Constitutional Evasion, Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy
5. Carlos Closa Montero, Is Article 50 Reversible? On Politics Beyond Legal Doctrine, Verfassungsblog