What’s New in Public Law

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—Irina Criveț, PhD Candidate in Public Law, Koç University

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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 U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor permitted Yeshiva University to refuse to recognise an LGBTQ student club that the Jewish school in New York City has said violates its religious values. Later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Yeshiva University will have to continue recognising the LGBTQ student organisation.
2. Michigan constituents will vote in November on whether to protect abortion rights in the state constitution.
3. Bosnia’s Constitutional Court has ruled that Republika Srpska’s public broadcaster, RTRS, slandered the journalist Vladimir Kovacevic who was brutally attacked covering mass protests in Banja Luka four years ago.
4. The Supreme Court of India will hear over 200 petitions challenging the Citizenship Amendment Act that aims to grant citizenship to illegal immigrants belonging to the Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Christian, Jain, and Parsi communities who came to the country from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan on or before 31 December 2014, but excluding Muslim immigrants.
5. Angola’s Constitutional Court rejected a vote recount from the runner-up in last month’s election, confirming the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola as the winner.
6. New Zealand’s  Supreme Court dismissed the application for an appeal Māori seeking a guarantee over Nelson Tenths land by arguing that the interests of local Maori were sufficiently protected in terms of interim relief due to undertakings given throughout the recent proceedings.

In the News

1. Justice Abdu Aboki steps down from the Supreme Court of Nigeria after turning 70.
2. Pakistan’s Supreme Court has started the new judicial year with five vacant posts of judges.
3. Five international organisations have submitted an amicus to Colombia’s Constitutional Court calling for respect of the rights of Indigenous Wayúu communities peacefully fighting the expansion of Latin America’s biggest coal mine.
4. Professor Marco D’Alberti was appointed as Judge of the Constitutional Court of Italy.
5. The Russian Federation has ceased to be a Party to the European Convention on Human Rights.

New Scholarship

1. Suryapratim Roy & Alexandru Gociu (2023) People v Arctic Oil: Context, Judgement, and Takeaways for Future Climate Litigation, forthcoming in Stefan Weishaar and Kars de Graaf (eds) The Future of Environmental Law: Ambition and Reality, Edward Elgar (analyses the People v Arctic Oil judgement within the political context of Norwegian oil policy, focusing on the policy coalition that preferred a ‘weak sustainability’ to a new policy coalition in favour of more robust environmental protection and argues that the future climate litigation should consider ‘the potential of the right to a healthy environment in shaping climate policy, and the logic in viewing extraterritorial emissions as a domestic policy concern’)
2. Melissa Murray (2022), Legitimising Illegitimacy in Constitutional Law, Washington University Law Journal (investigates why illegitimacy has been sidelined in constitutional law curricula and argues that the sidelining of illegitimacy in constitutional law reflects the liminal status of nonmarriage and nonmarital families in law and society more generally)
3. Melissa Crouch (2022), Judicial Loyalty to the Military in Authoritarian Regimes: How the Courts are Militarised in Myanmar, Law & Social Inquiry (explains the role the judicial-military relations play in authoritarian regimes by focusing on a case study of judicial profiles in Myanmar)
4. Dragoș Călin, Self-Governance of the Judiciary System in Romania: Dependent Judges in an Independent Judiciary, Justin Working Papers Series & Commentaries (presents how changes made in the justice system in Romania between 2017 and 2019 produce various legal effects, including the creation of a category of dependent judges within an independent judiciary)
5. Silvia Serrano Guzman, Ariadna Tovar Ramirez & Oscar A. Cabrera (2022), Commercial Speech and the Prohibition of Tobacco Advertising: The Colombian Constitutional Court Approach, Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics, Vol. 50 (support the decision of the Columbian high court to ban the advertising and promotion of tobacco products)
6. Chibli Mallat & Mohammed Abdulrahman (eds) (2022), Three circles and a few promises in The Promise of Constitutionalism in the Arab Gulf, Brill (this special issue of Abhath addresses constitutionalism in the six Arab monarchies of the Gulf: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates)

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. The Global Summit on Constitutionalism is now accepting submissions for individual papers and fully-formed panels.
2. The Journal of Constitutional Law issued by the Constitutional Court of Georgia with the support of Robakidze University calls for papers for scholars, researchers and experts in constitutional law for Volume 2, 2022. The journal aims to publish: academic papers, articles, case reviews, and book reviews. The DL for submission is no later than October 15th, 2022.
3. The special issue of the Law Text Culture 2023, volume 27, seeks scholarly articles or other creative works such as poetry, short stories, auto-ethnographies or photo essays, that engage with a range of urgent, critical and interconnected to the theme of the issue ‘Imagining Decolonised Law’. A 400-500 words abstract should be submitted to the guest editions through email by  October 31, 2022.
4. The Human Rights Education Review invites papers for a Special Issue on the intersection of language learning and human rights education. An extended abstract of no more than 300 words must be sent to the Managing Editor of Human Rights Education Review Marta Stachurska-Kounta: marta.m.stachurska-kounta@usn.no by October 24, 2022.
5. The Editorial Board of the Review of European Administrative Law (REALaw) is pleased to announce the 2022 REALaw Forum for Young Scholars, which will take place in Toledo (Spain) on 6 and 7 October 2022, and will be hosted by the Center for European Studies of the University of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM), invites participants for online attendance to register at https://www.uclm.es/centros-investigacion/cee. The overarching theme of the 2022 Forum is European Administrative Law and the Challenges of Uncertainty.
6. The Nordic CONREASON Project: Nordic exceptionalism? Mapping Constitutional Reasoning in the Nordic Countries organises a webinar on the Danish Supreme Court on October 4, 2022. The Webinar will be held by the Danish researcher of the project, Professor Helle Krunke (University of Copenhagen), on October 4th 2022, 11:15-13:00 CET (UTC +1), on Zoom.

Elsewhere Online

1. Karan Gupta, ‘Atypical’ Love: The Supreme Court’s Decision in Deepika Singh vs CAT,  Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy
2. Avanti Deshpande, Addressing ‘Honour Killings’ in India: The Need for New Legislation, Oxford Human Rights Hub
3. Roberto Gargarella, Rejection of the New Chilean Constitution: Some Reflections, Oxford Human Rights Hub
4. Loveday Hodson and Kseniya Kirichenko, Rosanna Flamer-Caldera v Sri Lanka (CEDAW, 2022): The First International Case on Lesbian Criminalisation, Oxford Human Rights Hub
5. Pierre de Vos, It Can Be Dangerous When National Security is Used as a Cover to Dodge Accountability, Constitutionally Speaking
6. Tereza Žuffová-Kunčová and Michal Kovalčík, Czechia’s First Climate Judgment, Verfassungsblog
7. André Lecours, The media coverage of the Catalan self-determination process in Canada, Centre for Constitutional Change
8. Josh Kimblin, New Prime Minister, New Climate, Same Constitution, Centre for Constitutional Change
9. Michael Foran, Interpretation After the Human Rights Act? The Principle of Legality and the Rule of Law, UK Constitutional Law Blog
10. Sinisa Jakov Marusic, Environmentalists Want to See North Macedonia’s ‘Ecocide’ Law Enforced, Balkan Insight
11. Andrew Koppelman, Religion and Samuel Alito’s Time Bomb, The Hill