04 November 2020
LawRules #7: We need to talk about Legal Education
As the last couple of episodes of our podcast have demonstrated, preserving the rule of law depends to a large quantity on people working in legal professions. What prosecutors, judges, attorneys, and, to a large degree, people working in the executive branch have in common, is a law degree. This means that we have to turn to legal education itself in order to find answers to the question how rule of law systems may remain or become resilient against authoritarian backsliding. Are current legal education systems in the EU equipped for this task? How are they affected by the turn to authoritarianism and illiberalism in a number of member states? And what are intrinsic shortcomings of academic and professional legal education? Continue reading >>
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13 Dezember 2019
Toward a Glorious Revolution
In the closing article, Gábor Attila Tóth offers a twofold argument. First, despite all its shortcomings, the 1989 coordinated regime change is a unique success story in the region. It resulted in revolutionary changes in the constitutional system. Second, there is a need again for a peaceful, revolutionary establishment of legitimate government, but without a revolution as such. Continue reading >>
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07 September 2019
The Age of Constitutional Barbarism
We need to rediscover the force of normative arguments in order to better understand the autocratic rivals to liberal democracy. Geburtstagskind Verfassungsblog provides a vibrant and openly accessible forum for discussions. Continue reading >>17 Juni 2019
The Most Dangerous Branch
On 7, 8 and 9 June 2019, from Friday to Sunday, the Moldovan Constitutional Court delivered six rulings which were rather atypical, to say the least. The court ordered the dissolution of the new parliament and declared all parliamentary acts unconstitutional, then invalidated the nomination of the new prime minister and the appointment of the government, and lastly, removed the Moldovan president from office and replaced him with the former prime minister as interim president. One week later, however, the situation became even more bizarre when the court announced a new judgment repealing each of its six rulings. What was going on in Chișinău and why? Continue reading >>
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07 Dezember 2018
Laws, Conventions, and Fake Constitutions
Does pure majoritarian decision making have intrinsic value or offer better consequences for society? The case of Hungary is not isolated but is an integral part of a global phenomenon. In contrast with earlier waves of democratization that spread across the globe, more recent tendencies have led to the disintegration of democracies. Not only Hungary and Poland (two EU Member States), but also Russia (probably the first regime of this kind), and many other countries from Azerbaijan to Venezuela epitomize this phenomenon, in which the country in question adopts — apparently in a democratic manner — a legal transformation that moves it ever further from, rather than toward, democratic principles. Given that today democracy counts solely as a legitimate constitutional system, the most salient new feature is that authoritarianism must play at being democracy. Continue reading >>
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06 Dezember 2018
Introduction: Constitutional Resilience and the German Grundgesetz
What lessons does the plight of the Polish and the Hungarian democracy hold for a seemingly stable constitutional state like Germany? How resilient would the German constitutional setup turn out to be in the case of an authoritarian majority taking and successfully holding on to power? What kind of legal or institutional changes may be helpful to make that event less likely and/or less hard to prevent? These were the questions we aimed to address in a debate jointly organized by Verfassungsblog and WZB Center for Global Constitutionalism, generously supported by Stiftung Mercator. Continue reading >>26 September 2015
Judging Fears in Refugee Crisis
The current refugee crisis in the heart of Europe recalls the crucial contrast between rational worry and phobia. The historic decision of the US Supreme Court in the case of United States v. Schwimmer may help us understand the nature of fear in constitutional theory and practice. Continue reading >>
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26 September 2015
Judging Fears in Refugee Crisis
The current refugee crisis in the heart of Europe recalls the crucial contrast between rational worry and phobia. The historic decision of the US Supreme Court in the case of United States v. Schwimmer may help us understand the nature of fear in constitutional theory and practice. Continue reading >>
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