05 September 2024
First Time as Tragedy, Second Time as Farce
In December 2023 the Hungarian Parliament speedily adopted the Act on the Protection of National Sovereignty and by February 2024 the government had already designated the Sovereignty Protection Office (SPO) for its enforcement. The history repeats itself, first time as tragedy, second time as farce. The current activities of the SPO exemplify the Hungarian government’s ongoing efforts to undermine free and independent society. It is crucial for the Union and European civil society to once again act swiftly to prevent the harassment of journalists and the potential disappearance of NGOs. Continue reading >>
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01 July 2022
The Logic of Patriarchy
With two decisions, the highest court in the U.S. judicial system shed the mantle of law. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the two-thirds majority of five male justices and one female justice of the Supreme Court declared the abortion right, vouchsafed in the legendary Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, to be moot and gave its blessing to Mississippi's abortion ban. Within just a week, the same majority, half appointed by Donald Trump, tore the controversial right to keep and bear arms from its dogmatic moorings in the Second Amendment. As overtly political measures, both rulings combine a preference for patriarchal society with a bonus for toxic masculinity. It remains to be asked how long the structurally minoritized women justices of the Court will participate in this legitimacy game Continue reading >>02 September 2020
Au revoir to Neoliberalism?
The oscillation between a social or a neoliberal paradigm in law as it appears prominently in this volume brings me back to my dissertation years when, between Trento (Italy) and Cambridge (U.S.), I was trying to map the role of la doctrine in the political economy of EU consumer law from the mid-1980s to the late 2000s. My puzzlement was always: where were European and private law scholars while these struggles were taking place in Brussels, Luxembourg and Barcelona? Continue reading >>
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