What’s New in Public Law

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–Silvio Roberto Vinceti, Research Fellow (Post-Doc), Department of Law, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia

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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 Irish Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the 2022 Judicial Appointments Commission Bill.
2. The Scottish Supreme Civil Court confirmed the legality of the UK government’s decision to veto Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform.
3. The Polish Constitutional Tribunal declared that EU fines against Poland violated the Constitution
4. Latvia’s Constitutional Court upheld the laws prescribing the demolition of Soviet monuments.
5. Albania’s Opposition Party challenged the constitutionality of the Refugee Agreement between Albania and Italy.
6. The Turkish Constitutional Court voided a provision against non-member individuals committing crimes on behalf of organizations.
7. The Peruvian Constitutional Court ordered the release of former President Alberto Fujimori on humanitarian grounds.

In the News

1. The EU Council and the EU Parliament struck a deal on the Artificial Intelligence Act.
2. Donald Tusk was elected as the new Polish prime minister.
3. The release of a new edition of the “Parlemeter” survey showed stable support for the EU among European citizens.
4. Australia’s House of Representatives adopted new legislation allowing the government to detain migrants perceived as threats.
5. In the wake of the UN Secretary General’s invocation of Article 99, the US vetoed the Security Council resolution for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

New Scholarship

1. Steven Gow Calabresi, Elise Kostial & Gary Lawson What McCulloch v. Maryland Got Wrong: The Original Meaning of “Necessary” Is Not “Useful,” “Convenient,” or “Rational” (2023) (offering new evidence on the meaning and scope of the Necessary and Proper Clause in the US Constitution by means of corpus linguistics).
2. Laura Cahillane & David Kenny The Seamus Woulfe Controversy and the Deficiencies in Ireland’s Judicial Appointments Process (2023) (discussing inadequacies in judicial appointments in Ireland).
3. James Rooney Judges, Education and Class in Ireland (2023) (researching the educational background of the Irish Supreme Court since its establishment in 1924 and considering what trends in secondary and tertiary education among the bench tell about the Irish judiciary).
4. Sara Dietz Central banks and inequality (2023) (discussing the redistributional effects of Central Banks monetary policy measures while providing a structural analysis of how the notion of equality is embedded in the mandate of the ECB and how it translates into legal requirements with regard to the implementation of monetary policy measures).
5. Mark Tushnet & Dimitry Kochenov (Eds) Research Handbook on the Politics of Constitutional Law (2023) (discussing the politics of constitutional law around the world, using both comparative and political analysis, delivering global treatment of the politics of constitutional law across issues, regions, and legal systems).
6. Alison L. Young  Unchecked Power? How Recent Constitutional Reforms Are Threatening UK Democracy (2023) (discussing recent problematic changes in the post-Brexit constitution).

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. The West Coast Sexuality, Gender & the Law Conference invites abstract submissions for participation at its First Annual Conference to be held at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, on March 22-23, 2024. Abstracts are due by December 15, 2023.
2. The Participatory Law Fund welcomes applications for awards of authors of “participatory law scholarship” — ie, “legal scholarship written in collaboration with authors who have no formal training in the law, but rather expertise in its function and dysfunction through lived experience.” Deadline is on December 15, 2023.
3. The Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law invites proposals for a special issue of the Journal to be published in the upcoming year. The deadline for proposal submission is on December 20, 2023.
4. The American Bar Foundation seeks applications for the ABF/JPB Foundation Access to Justice Faculty Scholar. The application deadline is on January 15, 2024.
5. The call for papers for the UACES Annual Conference 2024 to be held in Trento, Italy, on September 1-4 is open. Abstracts should be submitted by January 21, 2024.
6. The IACL Research Group on “Constitutional Responses to Terrorism” calls for papers for its Annual Workshop on “Advanced Technologies in Emergencies: The Downfall of the Transparency Principle in Counter-Terrorism and Warfare?” to be held in Madrid on May 30-31, 2024. Interested scholars are invited to submit an abstract by January 31, 2024.

Elsewhere Online

1. Daniel Sarmiento and Sara Iglesias Sánchez Round Two in the EU’s Rule of Law Crisis – Is the EU’s Toolbox Fit for Purpose? EU Law Live
2. Germán M. Teruel Lozano Rule of Law Eroded Verfassungsblog
3. Dániel G. Szabó Protecting the Fairness of European Parliament Elections via Preliminary Ruling Verfassungsblog
4. Iurii Barabash The Struggle for the Rule of Law in the Judicial System of Ukraine: A Hamster Wheel or the Wrong Strategy? IACL-IADC Blog
5. Ece Göztepe & Silvia von Steinsdorff The Constitutional Court of Turkey between Legal and Political Reasoning: Perspectives From Outside and From Within IACL-IADC Blog