What’s New in Public Law

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—Wilson Seraine da Silva Neto, Master in Constitutional Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Coimbra – Portugal. Lawyer.

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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 agreed to decide whether former President Donald Trump can be tried on criminal charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The case will be set for oral argument during the week of 22 April 2024.
2. The Slovak Constitutional Court has rushed to suspend several paragraphs in the government’s controversial legislative reform that make sweeping changes to the country’s judiciary and criminal code. The legislative package was also criticized by the EU, including in a resolution passed by the European Parliament.
3. The Constitutional Court of Turkey has found that the denial of books to inmates, including pro-Kurdish politician Sebahat Tuncel, violated their “freedom of expression.”
4. The Constitutional Court of Ecuador decriminalized euthanasia in the country.
5. The Canada Supreme Court rules that a request by police for an IP address is a search within the meaning of section 8 of the Charter (section that protects against unreasonable search and seizure).
6. The German Federal Constitutional Court ruled that a blocking clause for European elections in Germany does not violate the constitution.

In the News

1. Tamas Sulyok, previously president of the Hungarian’s Constitutional Court, was elected as the new president of the state by the Hungarian parliament.
2. The Thai reformist party which won the most votes at last year’s election could be dissolved after a court ruled one of its policies unconstitutional.
3. The Albania Constitutional Court, in co-operation with the OSCE Presence in Albania, presented the first Guide on Constitutional Court Case Law, on 21 February 2024.
4. The Slovakia Constitutional Court has suspended recent changes to the country’s laws that reduced the penalties for corruption and slashed the statute of limitations for major offenses like rape.
5. The unanimous State Supreme Court rejected a request to redraw Wisconsin’s congressional lines ahead of the 2024 elections.
6. The Alabama Supreme Court issued a ruling that embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF) should be considered children.
7. French lawmakers first endorsed the move to enshrine a right to abortion in the constitution after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade.

New Scholarship

1. Jack M. Balkin. Memory and Authority: The Uses of History in Constitutional Interpretation (2024) (shows how lawyers and judges channel history through standard forms of legal argument that shape how they use history and even what they see in history)
2. Stephen Breyer. Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism (2024) (analysis that deconstructs the textualist philosophy of the current Supreme Court’s supermajority and makes the case for a better way to interpret the Constitution).
3. Newton de Oliveira Lima, Jurisdição constitucional e construção de direitos fundamentais no Brasil e nos Estados Unidos (2024) (comparative analysis of the American and Brazilian judicial system, based on the protection of fundamental rights)
4. Yueduan Wang. Experimentalist Constitutions: Subnational Policy Innovations in China, India, and the United States (2024) (argues that the idea of federal laboratories is not exclusive to the American system; instead, similar concepts can be applied to constitutions with different center-local structures and levels of political competition).
5. Paul Finkelman and Gabriel J. Chin. How we know the US Constitution was Proslavery (2024) (argues that the 1787 Constitution was overwhelmingly proslavery, giving explicit recognition and multiple protections to only one form of property: slaves)

Calls for Papers and Announcements

1. The Conference “Justice, Equality and Gender in family”, from the project “Constitutional Transformations and the Principle of Equality in the Family: meaning, projections and limits” will take place in Coimbra, Portugal on the 7 to 8 March 2024.
2. The University of Coimbra Institute for Legal Research and Clavero Arévalo Institute invites you to the “V Jornada Coimbra-Sevilha de Direito Administrativo” that will take place in Coimbra, Portugal on the 17 May 2024. The event includes a call for communications, the deadline for which is 10 May 2024.
3. The EPIA Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI) will take place in Viana do Castelo, Portugal from 3 to 6 September 2024. The events welcome paper submissions by 15 March 2024.
4. IFIM Law School, Bangalore affiliated with the Karnataka State Law University (KSLU) is organizing Virtual Research Colloquium 2024 on 20 March. The theme for this Colloquium is “Corporate Governance in Healthcare”. The last date of submission is 15 March.
5. The National Law School of India Review (NLSIR) is inviting submissions for its upcoming Volume 36(2) to this year’s special issue on ‘Democracy, Free Expression, and Press Freedom’. The submission deadline is 15t May 2024.

Elsewhere Online

1. Ben Knight, Germany: How to protect the Supreme Court?, DW
2. Bea Bakó, Judging Hungary’s new president: a record of fealty to the government, Reporting Democracy
3. David B. Rivkin Jr. and Elizabeth Price Foley, Why the Supreme Court Had to Hear Trump’s Case, The Wall Street Journal
4. Olivier Le Bot. Constitutional Animal Law: Trends and Impacts, IACL-AIDC Blog
5. Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat, Carlos Lozada and Lydia Polgreen, The Pro-Life Movement Had a Plan Post-Roe. G.O.P didn’t. The New York Times (Podcast)