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 ordered search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to set up in-house committees to block keywords and advertisements related to prenatal sex determination.
2. The North Gauteng High Court in South Africa held that the national government cannot issue a notice of withdrawal from the International Criminal Court without parliamentary approval.
3. The Constitutional Court of South Korea has set February 27, 2017 as the date for final hearing in the impeachment trial of the President.
4. The Bulgarian Constitutional Court rendered unenforceable a legal provision in the nation’s Electoral Code that introduced compulsory voting.
5. The United States Supreme Court reversed the death sentence of a black person convicted for murder because sentencing was influenced by racial bias. The apex court has sent the case back for re-trial.

In the News

1. The German Constitutional Court judges drafted a non-binding Code of Conduct to govern the post-retirement assignments of the Court’s judges.
2. Members of the French National Assembly referred the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the European Union and Canada to the French Constitutional Council because the Agreement violates the nation’s Constitution.
3. The Brazilian Federal Senate confirmed the nomination of Alexandre de Moraes (the current Justice Minister) to the Supreme Court.
4. The Theresa May Government in the United Kingdom indicated that a new Bill of Rights will be drafted only after the completion of Brexit.
5. Malawi amends its Constitution to ban child marriages.

New Scholarship

1. Luis Roberto Barroso, Reason Without Vote: The Representative and Majoritarian Function of Constitutional Courts, in Democratizing Constitutional Law: Perspectives on Legal Theory and Legitimacy of Constitutionalism (Springer 2016) (discussing the importance of the representative role played by constitutional courts, a subject that has been neglected by constitutional scholars in general, with few exceptions)
2. Vlad Perju, Proportionality and Stare Decisis: Proposal for a New Structure, in Vicki Jackson and Mark Tushnet eds., Proportionality: New Frontiers, New Challenges (Cambridge University Press 2017) (arguing that a change in the formal structure of proportionality analysis can increase the chance of proportionality test’s successful transplant into American constitutional law)
3. Eric Posner, Liberal Internationalism and the Populist Backlash, University of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 606 (explaining how populists around the world have targeted international law and see international law as a device used by global elites to dominate policy making and benefit themselves at the expense of the common people)
4. Harry Hobbs, Andrew Lynch and George Williams, The High Court Under Chief Justice Robert French, 91 Australian Law Journal 53 (2017) (examining the constitutional law jurisprudence evolved by the High Court of Australia under Chief Justice Robert French, who retired in January, 2017).
5. Katie R. Eyer, The Canon of Rational Basis Review, Notre Dame Law Review, 2017 (rorthcoming) (elucidating the problems with the current understanding of the real role of rational basis review)
6. Reva Siegel, Same-Sex Marriage and Backlash: Consensus, Conflict, and Constitutional Culture, Yale Law School (February 9, 2017) (examining claims about backlash in the debate over same-sex marriage, and the popular and academic assumptions about courts on which they are based)

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. Columbia Law School is inviting student papers for its inaugural ‘Human Rights Student Paper Symposium’ to be held on April 7, 2017. Students must submit their papers or works-in-progress to HumanRightsSymposiumCLS@gmail.com by March 1, 2017.
2. The Jean Monnet Network LAWTTIP is inviting paper proposals for the ‘First Joint Conference’ on ‘The TTIP and Beyond: Negotiating and implementing the EU’s Free Trade Agreements in an uncertain environment’ to be held in Rennes on June 15-16, 2017. Proposals must be sent to pasquale.breger-tesnier@univ-rennes1.fr by March 15, 2017.
3. The WZB Berlin Social Science Center, the European University Institute and the London School for Economics and Political Science are inviting submissions for the ‘Inaugural Annual European Junior Faculty Forum for Public Law and Jurisprudence’ to be held on June 28-29, 2017. Interested scholars must submit their CV, draft article and its abstract to ejff@wzb.eu by April 15, 2017.
4. The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law is inviting paper abstracts for the Second Annual Administrative Law New Scholarship Roundtable on June 27-28, 2017. Interested scholars must submit abstracts to Chris Walker at walker.1432@osu.edu by March 17, 2017.
5. The International Journal of Transitional Justice is inviting submissions for its 2-18 Special Issue on ‘Transitional Justice from the Margins: Intersections of Identities, Power and Human Rights’. Interested scholars must submit their papers online by July 1, 2017.

Elsewhere Online

1. Gautam Bhatia, Upsetting a very fine balance, The Hindu
2. Tomasz Tadeusz Koncewicz, In Judges We Trust? A long overdue Paradigm Shift within the Polish Judiciary (Part I), Verfassungsblog
3. Tomasz Tadeusz Koncewicz, In Judges We Trust? A long overdue Paradigm Shift within the Polish Judiciary (Part II), Verfassungsblog
4. George Letsas, The Constitution and the Folly of Majoritarianism, UK Constitutional Law Blog
5. Janet Albrechtsen, There is no room for section 18c in a truly liberal Australia, The Australian
6. Alok Prasanna Kumar, Jayalalithaa DA case: Supreme Court judgment shows judges’ tendency to be verbose in ‘visible cases’, Firstpost