What’s New in Public Law

—Mohamed Abdelaal, Assistant Professor, Alexandria University Faculty of Law

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. Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has ruled that a third gender option must be allowed in the registry of births.
2. Liberia’s Supreme Court suspended the presidential run-off vote pending an investigation allegations of vote fraud.
3. Iraq’s Supreme Federal Court ruled Kurdish secession attempt unconstitutional.
4. The Egyptian Constitutional Court determined the jurisdiction of military courts in cases of illegal protesting.
5. In Indonesia, the Constitutional Court held that indigenous faiths must be acknowledged by the State.

In the News

1. In Kenya, the opposition urges a constitutional amendment to curb presidential powers.
2. The EU Commission declares that Poland’s judicial reforms pose a systemic threat to the rule of law.
3. In the Bahamas, the House of Assembly passes a constitutional amendment establishing the country’s first Independent Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
4. In Australia, according to the Prime Minister, all MPs and Senators will have to declare their citizenship status.
5. Syria announced its intention to ratify the Paris Climate Accord.

New Scholarships

1. Bjorn Dressel, Raul Sanchez.Urribarri, and Alexander Stroh, The Informal Dimension of Judicial Politics: A Relational Perspective, 13 Annual Rev. of L. & Soc. Sci. 413 (2017) (proposing a relational approach to studying judicial politics in non-western societies).
2. Ryan Abbott, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Intellectual Property: Protecting Computer-Generated Works in the United Kingdom, Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Digital Technologies (Tanya Aplin, ed., Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, Forthcoming) (providing an up-to-date review of UK, EU and international law regarding intellectual property and computer-generated works).
3. Anna Su, Varieties of Burden in Religious Accommodations (2017) (arguing that it is imperative to acknowledge different kinds of burden of proof in religious accommodation claims)
4. Stephen Gardbaum and Richard H. Pildes, Populism and Democratic Institutional Design: Methods of Selecting Candidates for Chief Executive in the United States and Other Democracies (2017) (providing an historical and comparative analysis of the different ways in which the United States and other major democracies select candidates for president or prime minister, and of how this important institutional design issue can enable or constrain populism).
5. Michael B. Rappaport, Is Proportionality Analysis Consistent with Originalism?, 31 Diritto Pubblico Comparato Ed Europeo (2017) (arguing that originalism is not necessarily inconsistent with proportionality analysis).
6. Marta Simoncini and Gert Straetmans (eds), Sixty Years Later. Rethinking Competing Paradigms for EU Law in Times of Crisis, 9 Perspective on Federalism (2017) (examining the concept of federalism from a comparative perspective).
7. Laura Pelucchini, L’eredità della primavera araba, ovvero il lungo inverno delle donne tunisine, 2 Rivista Di Diritti Comparati (2017) (discusing the political and constitutional challenges facing Tunisia after the 2011 Revolution).
8. Deirdre Curtin, Brexit and the EU Area of Freedom, Security and Justice: Bespoke Bits and Pieces (2017) (exploring the existing opt-outs, specifically in the field of the AFSJ to elaborate possible paths of flexible integration for the future of the UK as a third country after Brexit)
9. Gábor Halmai, Second-Grade Constitutionalism? The Cases of Hungary and Poland, 1 CSF-SSSUP Working Paper (2017) (discussing recent deviations from the shared values of rule of law and democracy—the ‘basic structure’ of Europe—in some of the new Member States in East-Central Europe, especially in Hungary and Poland)

Call for Papers

1. The Younger Comparativists Committee of the American Society of Comparative Law (YCC) invites submissions for the Phanor J. Eder LL.B./J.D. Prize in Comparative Law, in connection with its Seventh Annual Conference, to be held on April, 20.21 2018, at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio.  The Phanor J. Eder Prize is named in honor of the first president of the American Society of Comparative Law.
2. The Inner Temple announces the launch of its fourth triennial book prize which celebrates and rewards outstanding contributions to the understanding of law.
3. The Melbourne Law School invites applications from qualified scholars for a PhD scholarship as part of the Laureate Program in Comparative Constitutional Law.
4. The Indiana University Global Gateway Network has issued a call for papers for its 3^rd Global Meeting Conference. The Conference theme is “Slavery Past, Present & Future.”
5. The African Network of Constitutional Lawyers (ANCL) in collaboration with the Department of Law at the University of Botswana and partners is organizing the next ANCL Biennial Conference in Gaborone, Botswana, October 11.14, 2018.
6. The University of Detroit Mercy Law Review announces its annual academic symposium to be held on March 23, 2018 at University of Detroit Mercy School of Law.  It is titled: The Return of Sanctuary Cities: The Muslim Ban, Hurricane Maria, and Everything in Between.
7. The Parul Institute of Law welcomes submissions for Seminar on Constitutional Challenges in the Era of Globalization to be held on Nov. 25 in Vadodara, Gujarat, India.
8. The Istituto Di Diritto, Politica E Sviluppo welcomes submissions for a seminar under the theme of “Explaining the CJEU’s Authority towards National Courts: A Dynamic Approach.”

Elsewhere on Blogs

1. Ricardo Arredondo, Attack Against the Argentine Embassy in Chile: A Violation of International Law, Jurist
2. David M. Crane, Gassing International Law, Jurist
3. Daniel Sarmiento, On Cockroaches and the Rule of Law, Verfassungsblog
4. Marci A. Hamilton, The Russian Meddling in the 2016 Election: The Internet Meets the Democratic System, Verdict
5. Igor De Lazari, Antonio G. Sepulveda and David S. Kemp, The Changing Scope of the Freedom of Expression in the United States and Brazil, Verdict
6. Michael B. Mukasey, Don’t Rebuild the Surveillance ‘Wall’, The Wall Street Journal
7. Katie King, How Netflix is breeding a new generation of miscarriage of justice lawyers, Legal Cheek