Contesting Big Tech’s AI Greenwashing
Sustainability is among the most contested topics in contemporary debates around AI. While the industry’s meteoric growth has sparked growing public concern about its environmental impacts, Big Tech companies have gone to great lengths to portray AI as not just sustainable but positively good for the environment. Misleading practices related to consumer transactions are illegal under EU law, and the 2024 Directive on Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition has just introduced stricter rules on greenwashing.
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Die Minimierung des Minimums
Am 15. April 2026 hat das Bundesverfassungsgericht zum dritten Mal eine Grundsatzentscheidung zum Asylbewerberleistungsgesetz getroffen. Anders als in den Entscheidungen in den Jahren zuvor beanstandete es die vielfach kritisierten Leistungen diesmal nicht umfassend. Das Gericht hielt nur einen Aspekt für verfassungswidrig: Die Berechnungsgrundlage war veraltet und genügte damit nicht mehr den verfassungsrechtlichen Anforderungen. Die Entscheidung fügt sich in einen größeren Kontext zunehmend restriktiver Migrationskontrollen ein – und offenbart innere Grenzpolitiken, die abgesenkte Minimalstandards für bestimmte Personengruppen legitimieren.
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Decorative by Design
FIFA’s climate criteria for World Cup hosts borrow the authority of international climate law without any enforcement consequence. The 2026 host country’s withdrawal from the parent treaty regime exposes the borrowing as decorative. On 11 June 2026, the US opens the tournament that promised environmental leadership and an emissions trajectory aligned with the Paris Agreement. FIFA treats this contradiction as a non-event. What exactly do FIFA climate criteria oblige, and through what mechanism? The answer, on close reading, is that they oblige very little.
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Nach dem Overshoot
Die verfassungsrechtliche Beurteilung der Klimapolitik hat sich bisher an Obergrenzen der atmosphärischen Erwärmung orientiert. Sie wird neu herausgefordert, wenn diese Grenzen überschritten werden. Die Frage, wie mit dieser Herausforderung umzugehen ist, stellt sich derzeit in mehreren anhängigen Verfahren. Dieser Beitrag macht einen Vorschlag, der in diesen Verfahren vielleicht gehört werden kann. Er lenkt die Aufmerksamkeit vom Kalkulieren und Zuteilen von Emissionsbudgets auf die Suche nach dem, was an Emissionsvermeidung technisch, ökonomisch und sozial machbar ist.
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Rewriting Marriage After Trojan
In the span of just a few weeks in spring 2026, the post-Trojan Polish Supreme Administrative Court delivered a series of judgments that confirmed the obligation to transcribe foreign same-sex marriage certificates into the Polish civil status register. At the same time, on 22 May 2026, Poland adopted a regulation explicitly allowing entries such as husband/husband and wife/wife. These developments indicate a broader shift towards grounding recognition in constitutional and human rights reasoning rather than in free movement considerations.
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EU Inc. and the Myth of the Perfect Legal Basis
The debate surrounding the proposed EU Inc. has become one of the most vibrant discussions in European corporate law. Recently, however, attention has shifted to a different question. In a thoughtful contribution, the European Company Law Experts Group argued that the proposal rests on shaky constitutional foundations. These concerns deserve serious consideration. Yet they also risk obscuring a more fundamental reality. When political consensus exists, institutional and legal solutions usually follow. The constitutional debate therefore risks putting the cart before the horse.
Continue reading >>Normalising Lawlessness via Membership
The European Law Institute has recently welcomed Poland’s (compromised) Supreme Court and Supreme Administrative Court as its latest institutional members. Beyond this professional network, two judicial networks known as the Conference of European Constitutional Courts (CECC) and the Network of the Presidents of the Supreme Judicial Courts of the EU (NPSJC) have similarly failed – through inaction – to take account of CJEU and ECtHR rulings as regards their Polish members. This post will look at the negative spillover effects created by these networks’ membership (in)action.
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Das Heizungsgesetz, die Demokratie und der Rechtsstaat
Die deutsche Wirtschaft steckt in der Krise. Um „Überregulierung“ und „Bürokratisierung“ abzubauen, rückt zunehmend das Umwelt- und Klimaschutzrecht in den Fokus. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist eine Debatte entbrannt, ob die geplante Änderung des Heizungsgesetzes gegen (verfassungs-)rechtliche Vorgaben verstößt. Zugleich wird diskutiert, ob im Umwelt- und Klimaschutz eine mit Blick auf das Demokratieprinzip problematische „Überkonstitutionalisierung“ besteht.
Continue reading >>Power Without Oversight
Last week, the Indian Supreme Court delivered an important verdict on the power of the Election Commission of India (ECI) under the Indian Constitution – specifically, whether, and in what manner, it can conduct the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise for the revision of electoral voter rolls. Unlike minor revisions, SIR is a large-scale revision exercise to clean the electoral rolls by removing duplicate entries and names of those who have either migrated or died. The legal backdrop in which the judgment was delivered offers important insights for comparative constitutional law scholars, particularly those studying fourth branch institutions, electoral management bodies, and constitutional design.
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The Rise and Fall of the Mafia-State in Hungary
Ever since the elections, there has been a sense of euphoria sweeping the country that surpasses even the democratic transition of 1989. Yet, one of the key lessons drawn from both the revolutionary 1989 and the counter-revolutionary 2011 constitution-making processes is that both were elite-driven, lacking any participatory dimension – which may have contributed to the fall of liberal democracy. Today, the overwhelming euphoria could yet channel itself into genuine “constitutional enthusiasm”. Perhaps Hungary has yet another chance to seize that constitutional moment.
Continue reading >>CURRENT DEBATES
On Law and Politics in the Hungarian Transition
The Hungarian opposition’s landslide victory has raised high expectations in Hungarian and European society. Many now expect Fidesz’s hybrid regime to be swiftly undone and constitutional democracy restored. Hungarian and European institutions therefore face a momentous task. This symposium, emerging from a three-day conference at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (MPIL), offers analysis, legal imagination, and constructive critique. It brings together views by Hungarian, Polish, and other European and international experts on the constitutional transition, the judiciary, corruption, market, media, civil society, and the role of supranational actors.
Read all articles >>Reflexive Globalisation and the Law
In October 2025, a new Centre for Advanced Studies was established at the Humboldt University of Berlin’s Law Faculty. Named “Reflexive Globalisation and the Law: Colonial Legacies and their Implications in the 21st Century” (RefLex), the Centre explores the premise that the globalisation of law and legal discourse has entered a reflexive phase: one in which law and knowledge production about law are less and less one-directional exports from or within the Global North but rather dynamic, multidirectional exchanges that confront colonial legacies, epistemic hierarchies, and enduring asymmetries of power. This blog symposium, co-edited by Philipp Dann, Florian Jeßberger, and Kalika Mehta, aims to present and extend these interactions to a broader, accessible dialogue with a wider community beyond the university setting. Featuring contributions from a range of different disciplines and regions, the symposium serves as a public prelude to its official launch, which can be watched live here.
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Volume 7,Issue 2
July 2025
JUS COGENS
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Killing Hitler Word by Word: The Oath as Apocalyptic Lawmaking
GREGOR NOLL
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Adjudicating Climate Protest as a Tool of Modern Republicanism
DMITRII KUZNETSOV
OUR LATEST PUBLICATION
Christophe Geiger & Bernd Justin Jütte (eds.)
Enabling Access, Fostering Innovation: Towards a Digital Knowledge Agenda in Europe
Access to knowledge and information is essential to foster innovation. In the EU, existing copyright rules pose significant barriers to research and education. Instead of promoting access to knowledge resources, copyright creates legal uncertainty for researchers and educators and enables information intermediaries to exercise strict control over the use of protected works. This edited volume proposes ways out of the copyright conundrum by rethinking copyright as an access right.
Discover the Open Access digital edition here.
EDITORIAL
„Das Haftsystem ist in Libyen zu einer Industrie geworden“
Im Mai 2026 schloss der Internationale Strafgerichtshof (IStGH) das Verfahren zur Bestätigung der Anklagepunkte gegen Khaled El Hishri ab, einen ehemaligen hochrangigen Offizier der libyschen Special Deterrence Force. Die Anklage richtet sich zwar gegen El Hishri persönlich und betrifft Taten, die zwischen 2014 und 2020 im Mitiga-Gefängnis in Tripolis begangen worden sein sollen. Gleichzeitig macht die Anklageschrift ein System sichtbar, dessen Strukturen weit schwerer zu durchdringen sind. Wir haben mit Allison West, Senior Legal Advisor beim European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), über die Komplexität des Verfahrens gesprochen.
VB SECURITY AND CRIME
In cooperation with:
VB Security and Crime is a cooperation of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law (MPI-CSL) and the Verfassungsblog in the areas of public security law and criminal law. The MPI-CSL Institute is a member of the Max Planck Law network.