What’s New in Public Law

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–Wilson Seraine da Silva Neto, Master Student at the University of Coimbra – Portugal; Postgraduate in Constitutional Law at Brazilian Academy of Constitutional Law

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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 rejected a request from former President Donald J. Trump to intervene in the litigation over documents seized from his Florida estate, a stinging rebuke that blocked his effort to get access to classified documents found there by the F.B.I.
2. The São Tomé e Príncipe Constitutional Court extinguished four parties that competed in the September 25 legislative elections but did not reach the minimum of 0.5% of votes required by law.
3. Russia’s Constitutional Court recognized as lawful treaties signed by President Vladimir Putin to annex four Moscow-occupied regions of Ukraine.
4. The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday invalidated a lower-court ruling in a Pennsylvania election dispute and granted a request by David Ritter, a candidate in a 2021 race for a judgeship in a local Pennsylvania court.
5. The India Supreme Court upheld the Delhi High Court order, which dismissed the appeals filed by WhatsApp and Meta challenging a single judge bench order refusing to stay the Competition Commission of India’s (CCI) probe into alleged abuse of dominant position practices by WhatsApp in connection with its 2021 privacy policy.
6. The South Africa Constitutional Court orders a Western Cape woman, 85, to vacate the home she has occupied since 1947.

In the News

1. The Jan 6 Committee investigating the capitol raid votes unanimously to subpoena former President Donald J. Trump.
2. The Justice Ministry of Ukraine has appealed to the competent authorities of the Republic of Austria for the extradition of former Chairman of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine Oleksandr Tupytsky to Ukraine.
3. Brazilian President Bolsonaro admits he is considering increasing the number of Supreme Court justices if reelected. But he backs off after the repercussion.
4. Silvana Sciarra is the new president of the Constitutional Court of Italy.
5. The South Korean Constitutional Court held a hearing to determine whether it’s unconstitutional to detain a foreigner facing deportation in indefinite custody at a holding center.
6. The Thailand Constitutional Court ruled that Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha can keep his job at least until next year’s elections, settling a legal dispute that echoes the country’s deep political fault lines and dashing the opposition’s latest bid to remove the 2014 coup leader from office.

New Scholarship

1. Jimmy Chia-Shin Hsu (editor), Human Dignity in Asia: Dialogue between Law and Culture (2022) (Using interdisciplinary methods, this book explores Asian understandings of human dignity and human rights in the context of courts, religious traditions, and socio-political change. Furthering the dialogue between Asian and Western social values, this comparative study offers an alternative to a rigidified social imagination).
2. Hugo Moreira Lima Sauaia, Como o STF decide? (2021) (The work intends to demonstrate to jurists and non-jurists with data and not just theory, the backstage of the action of the Brazil Supreme Court).
3. Adam Łazowski and Adam Cyga (editors), Research Handbook on Legal Aspects of Brexit (2022) (analyzing the impact of Brexit on the future relationship between the UK and Europe).
4. Richard Albert, Ryan C. Williams and Yaniv Roznai (Editors), Amending America’s Unwritten Constitution (2022) (leading scholars of law, history, philosophy, and political science consider the many theoretical, conceptual, and practical dimensions of what it means to amend America’s ‘unwritten Constitution).
5. Oren Tamir, Beyond the Binary: Toward A New Global Model of Constitutional Rights Adjudication (2022) (demonstrating that there is another available model around which we can choose to organize systems for adjudicating constitutional rights)

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. October 26 is the deadline for submissions to the Global Summit on Constitutionalism in Austin, Texas, on March 16-18, 2023. Papers and panels are welcome!
2. Hasselt University invites young researchers to the 3rd edition of the Young Legal Researchers Conference to be held on 16 December 2022. This year, the theme will be “Back to the basics: Using fundamental principles of law to address contemporary challenges”.
3. The Riksbankens Jubileumsfond and Örebro University invite you to the Nordic CONREASON Project webinar series to be held on 9 November 2022 entitled “The political and legal culture in Iceland as the context of constitutional reasoning”. To know more about the project, click here.
4. In the same project, the Nordic CONREASON Project webinar series also invites you to the meeting entitled “The political and legal culture in Norway as the context of constitutional reasoning.” on 24 November 2022.
5. The University of Coimbra Institute for Legal Research and Technische Universität Darmstadt invites you to the workshop “The Evolution of Post-Democracy” to be held on 20 – 21 October 2022.
6. The ICON-S Directorate for Chapter Development invites the ICON-S chapter or part of the ICON-S leadership to ICON-S in the World: Virtual Coffee Edition which will occur every third week of the month on Thursday evening and Friday morning. The first round will be on 20 -21 October 2022.

Elsewhere Online

1. Salai Za Uk Ling, Antonia Mulvey and Chris Gunness, All eyes on Indonesia’s Constitutional Court which could be on verge of making history, The Jakarta Post.
2. Mari Margil, Can Nature Have Rights? That’s No Longer the Question, IACL-AIDC Blog.
3. William Baude and Michael W. McConnell, The Supreme Court Has a Perfectly Good Option in Its Most Divisive Case, The Atlantic.
4. Lisa Hänel, Transphobia in Germany: The danger of anti-queer attacks, DW.
5. Lexington, Of course the Supreme Court has been politicised, The Economist.