16 July 2020
Gender Parity in Parliaments – an Introduction
In an ideal world, there would be no laws mandating equal representation of men and women. Candidates for political offices would be selected according to their ability and political programs, representative bodies would roughly represent the composition of society, and the gender of the candidates would hardly be worth mentioning. In the political reality in Germany and elsewhere things are different. Continue reading >>
1 
08 December 2018
How Can a Democratic Constitution Survive an Autocratic Majority? A Report on the Presentations on the Judiciary
European institutions and governments have come in for a lot of critique over the past few years. Sometimes such critiques have seemed unfair and hypocritical, in particular where those who criticize are no role models either (e.g. the European Union). And judging on a case-by-case basis, some the actions of the Polish or Hungarian governments seem perhaps not that extraordinary. Yet, once we look at the whole, a different picture emerges. As Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq have argued in their recent book How to Save a Constitutional Democracy, democracies can erode where we see changes with regard in the three fields key to preserving democracy: free and fair elections, the sphere of public discourse and the rule of law and the institutions enforcing it, i.e. courts and the administration. In Hungary and Poland, we see changes in all of these areas and this should worry us. Continue reading >>
0
23 May 2018
Caviar, Corruption and Compliance – New Challenges for the Council of Europe
Compliance with judicial decisions often poses challenges, all the more so when international courts such as the European Court of Human Rights are involved. How to react to a failure to abide by judgments of the ECHR has been a question for the Council of Europe for some time. But the suspicious background of a currently unfolding episode involving Azerbaijan may offer an unusually clear justification for a strong reaction even to a single case of non-compliance. Continue reading >>22 April 2017
Introduction: Constitutional Courts and Populism
This mini-symposium is a joint project between the editors of […] Continue reading >>22 February 2014
On the courage to be wrong
The debate on the Wissenschaftsrat-Report has quickly turned into one […] Continue reading >>17 April 2012
Rescue Package for Fundamental Rights: Comments by MICHAELA HAILBRONNER
The Heidelberg proposal, with its suggestion of the adoption of […] Continue reading >>
0