Left-wing bookshops applying for an award handed out by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture? Striving to be honoured by the German state for their service to the good, the true and the beautiful? Does the current Commissioner, Wolfram Weimer, now in hot water for his decision to strike those left-wing bookshops off the winners’ list, even realise how amazing this is? Truly left-wing bookshops, mind you. Shelves crammed with the classics of revolutionary theory and practice. Bookshops like that are livid about the fact that the Federal Government doesn’t deem their efforts prizeworthy, and are taking the matter to court! How much more disarmingly faithful in the virtues of liberal democracy can you be?

Weimer, the Federal Government’s Commissioner for Culture, had passed the jury’s selection on to Germany’s domestic intelligence service to filter out those bookshops it had any “relevant findings” about. That he was not allowed to do, as the Federal Constitutional Protection Act provides no legal basis for it. But quite apart from whether what the minister did was legally or even politically defensible or not – what seems lacking to me in large parts of Germany’s liberal public sphere, and not least in liberal German legal scholarship, is a willingness to reflect on what is happening to liberal German democracy here.

The Right seeks to preserve, the Left to change power relations, and liberal democracy keeps this conflict productive and permanent. Both sides – those who hold power and those subject to it – bind themselves to rights and invoke them. Property rights and freedom of contract on one side; on the other, minority rights, rights of participation and human rights. Anyone who disregards the other side’s rights while demanding respect for their own ends up in self-contradiction and is thus, in the end, weakening their own position. That makes behaviour predictable and enables trust, thereby stabilising liberal democracy and keeping it in motion. People keep talking and negotiating, the Right becomes less right-wing and the Left less left-wing, political conflict is dissolved in legally ordered procedures, and ultimately nearly everyone is, in one way or another, liberal.

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In fact, for most of my life, almost everyone around me was liberal – myself included. I can’t think of many who would have wholeheartedly rejected that label. And why would they? Liberal as opposed to what? Apart from a handful of arch-Catholics, Silesia nostalgists and scraggy-bearded communist splinter-group remnants (and, of course, Nazis!) – mostly marginal, easily ridiculed figures with little in the way of numbers, power or prestige – apart from those people, in the world I grew up in, every fool and his mother was liberal. Liberalism was the common denominator that allowed the corporate lawyer and the organic-food mum to have a pleasant chat at parents’ evening, become friends perhaps, fall in love even – at any rate, to get along with one another across all political and economic divides.

Now, this liberal mainstream certainly has always been far more exclusionary, privileging and privileged than it usually likes to admit. Liberal as opposed to what? The liberal mainstream becomes oppressive when there is virtually no room left not to belong to it. I fully agree with Philip Manow and other apologists for populism who are making that point. (I don’t, however, when it comes to the conclusion that the strategy to exploit this situation to build an authoritarian regime is nothing but a self-serving liberal fantasy. But that seems to me such a trivial point that I hardly know what more to say about it.)

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A liberal mainstream that no longer knows what distinguishes it from anything else also becomes blind. It no longer perceives its environment. It is oblivious to all the things it keeps imposing and inflicting on people. And when those people protest and dissent, the liberal mainstream is full of indignation, finds that protest exaggerated, extremist, illiberal, all those people who want to expropriate housing corporations, occupy lecture halls, glue themselves to road junctions, and insist on calling the genocide in Gaza a genocide. All that feels like a threat to its certainties, to its property. They call for the police. The police gladly come. The political discourse, in this way, is becoming ever more authoritarian, and the mainstream ever less liberal, until eventually it dawns on the Germans that once again, in the all-too-familiar, ad nauseam repeated way, when the authoritarian regime was established in Germany, the liberals were nowhere to be seen.

What is so bizarre about the incident surrounding the booksellers’ prize is that, as far as we know, the affected bookshops did not have to do anything at all to be excluded. It was enough simply to be what they were: left-wing. According to this logic, anyone who wants to change power relations can be struck from the list of prize winners by ministerial order. If that is something the liberal mainstream in Germany lets this minister get away with, then we have indeed reached that point once again. Then “liberal” no longer denotes anything. Then all of us who refuse to accept the authoritarian turn, what else then can we call ourselves but – left-wing.

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Editor’s Pick

by JANA TRAPP

What would I be doing if I weren’t an editor for…? Quite possibly planning law. It sounds oddly specific, but an ARTE documentary I recently watched made the appeal clear.

Unfortunately, the film “Von lebendigen Brücken und Faserbauten” (“Of Living Bridges and Fiber Structures”) is only available in German. Still, the idea behind it is too good not to share. The episode explores how architecture is beginning to rethink itself by building with nature rather than against it. Plant fibers can produce structures that are both incredibly light and remarkably strong. Even more intriguing is what German researchers call “Baubotanik” – an approach to architecture in which living plants become part of the structure itself.

What sounds like science fiction might soon serve very practical purposes in increasingly overheated cities – cooling buildings naturally, for example.

The documentary also offers a gentle reality check for our traditional building materials. Concrete and steel, long symbols of modern architecture, now look increasingly like climate liabilities. Against that backdrop, it’s surprisingly hopeful to see how much creative potential lies in alternative materials and in the idea that buildings themselves might one day grow, breathe, and cool the cities around them.

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The Week on Verfassungsblog

summarised by EVA MARIA BREDLER

Another war, then – another blood-red thread running through our newsletter. I don’t know about you, but when trying to make sense of so much inhumanity, I often find art a better compass than law. All the more troubling, then, is the episode surrounding the German Bookshop Prize, discussed in this week’s editorial. NILS WEINBERG (GER) provides the legal framing of these “Weimer conditions”: while Culture Minister Weimer’s decision to remove three bookshops from the prize list on the basis of domestic intelligence findings may have been unlawful and politically unwise, it is difficult to challenge on constitutional grounds.

And so, once again this week, we try to grasp inhumanity through legal categories.

After the killing of Ali Khamenei, his second son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was announced as the third Supreme Leader. For MAHYA HOSSEINI (ENG), this succession exposes the Iranian system’s inability to justify its rule according to its own principles of legitimacy – and lays bare deep constitutional fracture lines.

Last week, SOPHIE DUROY and LUCA TRENTA (ENG) analysed the normalisation of political killing as an instrument of statecraft, arguing that Khamenei’s killing marks “a new stage in the erosion of the international norm against assassination”. In his response, AUREL SARI takes up what appears to be a passing point: the claim that Khamenei was killed “outside an armed conflict”. He argues that international humanitarian law applies from the very first act of violence in an armed conflict – including in this case.

ANNA-CHRISTINA SCHMIDL (ENG) shows how the German government condemns Iranian violence while remaining silent on US-Israeli attacks – a position that is both inconsistent in legal terms and strategically dangerous.

And when governments fall silent, should weapons be able to speak – or rather, to refuse? ZAID AL‑ALI (ENG) asks whether firearms should be technically programmed to reject blatantly unlawful use. If such technology is now within reach, should states require manufacturers by law to implement these safeguards?

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Who would have thought we might look to Big Tech, of all places, for protection against state overreach? The case of the US AI company Anthropic raises a similar question: Anthropic refused to grant the US military unrestricted access to its AI tools, citing concerns about mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. For LUCAS H. M. CONCEIÇÃO (ENG), the case shows that private companies can indeed defend constitutional values – but only if they are accountable to citizens.

Tesla, unfortunately, illustrates the opposite. At the latest works council election at Tesla’s Grünheide plant, the IG Metall list again failed to win a majority. IG Metall now accuses Tesla of union-busting. For MORTEN KRAMME (GER), the case shows why enforceable neutrality obligations for employers are needed in works council elections.

Corporate responsibility has also been on the federal government’s agenda: for years, Germany has debated creating a legal form for companies in “Verantwortungseigentum” (steward ownership). MARVIN REIFF (GER) takes a close look at the government’s new framework concept.

A framework has now also finally been proposed in Poland – this time for abortion reform and legal recognition of same-sex couples, a core promise of the governing coalition. Yet “recognition” is hardly the right word. The draft does not provide for marriage, but for a civil contract before a notary with a “closest person”. ANNA ŚLEDZIŃSKA‑SIMON (ENG) dissects the proposal’s many shortcomings.

By contrast, there’s good news from Luxembourg: Yesterday, the Court held in Shipov that EU law precludes national legislation preventing a Union citizen from changing gender-related data in civil-status records in relation to the exercise of free movement. ULADZISLAU BELAVUSAU (ENG) analyses how the Court further expands the role of Union citizenship as a vehicle for protecting personal identity and dignity.

Another important CJEU case is W.S. and Others v Frontex. SPYRIDOULA KATSONI (ENG) shows how the Court applies a directness test that diverges from other courts’ approaches, and explains what this means for the criterion of foreseeability.

With the GEAS Adaptation Act, Germany is implementing the reform of the European asylum system. But rather than merely transposing EU requirements, the law expands the scope for restricting freedom of movement and detaining people seeking protection, argues ANNIKA FISCHER-UEBLER (GER).

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The EU’s institutional balance is likewise under strain. On 11 March, the European Parliament approved a revised Framework Agreement governing its relations with the European Commission. ANDREW DUFF (ENG) analyses the revised text and shows why the Council’s objections point to deeper tensions within EU governance.

The Commission has also now decided to provisionally apply the EU-Mercosur Agreement. JULIAN SCHRAMM (ENG) explains why this is not only fully compatible with the Treaties, but also geopolitically necessary.

On 15 March 2026, Kazakhstan votes in a nationwide referendum on a new constitution proposed by President Tokayev – officially to move away from an overly presidential order. SELBI DURDIYEVA (ENG) warns that the draft may do the opposite: further concentrate presidential power, weaken parliamentary oversight, and restrict rights.

Finding majorities is becoming ever harder – and a new consultation procedure in the Saxon parliament is meant to help. JOHANNES DOMSGEN and CHRISTOF STEIDELE (GER) analyse whether and how far it can do so.

Meanwhile, the death of a bailiff in Saarland has prompted calls for tougher penalties for resisting state authority. More criminal law, more security? GEORGIA STEFANOPOULOU and JOCHEN BUNG (GER) assess the planned sentence enhancements.

Public debate in India, by contrast, is not grappling with calls for tougher penalties, but with the possibility that an institution meant to protect rights has itself become too tough: India’s Supreme Court has banned a school textbook discussing judicial corruption. ANMOL JAIN (ENG) analyses this extraordinary intervention and the serious concerns it raises.

From Germany to India, from schoolbooks to bookshops: we may be fighting over culture, but we should resist calling a culture war. What would then remain to help us understand war itself?

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That’s it for this week. Take care and all the best!

Yours,

the Verfassungsblog Team

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