Nina Braude
Two recent fisheries disputes reveal that the “best available science” standard is neither singular nor straightforward. Instead, science emerges as contested terrain, shaped by power, uncertainty, and competing truths. These cases could have important implications for the future application of the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights and its growing relevance for biodiversity and animal protection.
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Yaffa Epstein, Eva Bernet Kempers
The recognition of animals and nature as potential rights holders has long been a controversial proposition within European legal discourse. However, we believe that the EU legal order is more hospitable to such recognition than one might expect. In a recent article, we argued for a rights-based reinterpretation of EU animal welfare and environmental protection laws. EU constitutional and secondary laws can be construed as entailing legal rights for non-human entities – even if these rights are not explicit the texts. We consider how the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and other EU legal acts may support a post-anthropocentric vision of Union law.
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Ester Herlin-Karnell
The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights remains silent on animal rights, even as a growing number of constitutions worldwide now explicitly protect animals. While the EU already recognises animals as sentient beings under Article 13 TFEU, this recognition has yet to translate into meaningful constitutional safeguards. Embedding animal welfare into the Charter would align the Union with global developments and help move its integration project beyond an overly anthropocentric model.
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Bertjan Wolthuis
The European Union recently changed the legal status of the wolf from “strictly protected” to “protected”. In this contribution, I advocate a different response to the problem that wolves prey on animals kept by humans: the further development of the European ecological network called Natura 2000. The premise of my argument, based on animal rights theory and Kant’s philosophy of law, is that wolves have the right to be on Earth. In the past, humans have tried to eradicate wolves, which is a clear violation of this right. I argue that this historical injustice generates the duty to restore the habitats and natural infrastructure used by wolves.
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Maneesha Deckha
The European Charter on Fundamental Human Rights is not concerned about animal rights. Although the Charter is silent about animals, it is possible to connect certain human rights it enshrines to animals in a manner that can foment animal rights. The protection of a healthy environment in Article 37 is an obvious choice. A lesser theorized human right in the Charter similarly has considerable potential to benefit animals: the right to education under Article 14.
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Poul F. Kjaer
The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union makes no mention of animals—a silence that reflects a broader pattern across EU law, including in Global Value Chain Law (GVC Law), which governs the legal infrastructures of global economic activity. Animals hold no particular legal status in this domain, revealing striking parallels in how law has historically shaped and domesticated both human and animal life. Rethinking this shared legal trajectory sheds new light on the social condition underpinning the fundamental values of EU law.
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Alena Schröder
Lawyer, judge, professor, UN legal expert, researcher – forced to start over repeatedly, Dr. Cecilia Medina Quiroga has earned herself nearly every title you could think of in the field of law. Above all, she is a specialist in international human rights law who truly believes that women’s rights can be advanced through the application of human rights. Her perspective has contributed to the development of women’s rights protection, notably in the Inter-American Court for Human Rights’ historic “Cotton Field Femicide” case over which she presided.
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Hans Lindahl
The effort to anchor animal rights in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights has gained relevance in light of the widespread commodification of animals within the EU’s market-driven integration process. While commendable in principle, incorporating animal rights into the Charter risks serving a largely symbolic function if it diverts attention from the more pressing task of reconfiguring what I take to be the six foundational institutions of private law in capitalist political economy: property, contract, corporation, tort, labor, and consumption. These institutions reinforce the binary between the human subject and the other-than-human object, a division that enables the commodification of non-human beings.
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Ester Herlin-Karnell, Matilda Arvidsson
Animals have largely been left out in EU law scholarship and environmental law studies. The role of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights has not been discussed to any greater extent. In this symposium, we discuss the pros and cons of the EU Charter for securing sufficient animal protection in the Member States. More specifically, the contributions in this symposium explore a number of questions such as that of the legal standing of animals and animal rights in the context of the EU, and reflecting on the relationship between animal rights and the EU.
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Matilde Rocca
On 3 June 2025, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Justice delivered its judgment on the Kinsa-Case. At the core of the matter were the criminal charges of a third-country national for the facilitation of unauthorized entry of two minors in the territory of an EU Member State. With this ruling, the Court takes an important step towards the de-criminalization of care for migrant children who are seeking international protection. However, the Grand Chamber’s reasoning offers limited considerations on the relevant links between “actual care”, humanitarian assistance, and migrant children’s rights. This shortcoming may ultimately curb protection standards of migrant children in future cases
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Stefano Zirulia
The CJEU’s judgment in Kinsa marks a rare rights-based correction to the EU’s punitive approach to migration. Prompted by a case from Italy, the Court confronts the criminalisation of those who cross borders caring for children. Rather than deferring to enforcement rationales, it centres fundamental rights and draws clear constitutional limits. The ruling opens a path to challenge overbroad criminalisation not just retrospectively, but at the level of legal design. In the shadow of ongoing EU reform efforts, Kinsa signals a shift: from border control to proportionality scrutiny.
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Pauline Endres de Oliveira, Nerea González Méndez de Vigo
Teilweise bringt die GEAS-Reform Verbesserungen für die Rechtsstellung von Kindern mit sich. Andere Bereiche – wie etwa die Regelungen zum neuen Screening-Verfahren oder Möglichkeiten der (de facto) Inhaftierung von Kindern – werfen aus kinderrechtlicher Perspektive allerdings Bedenken auf. Vor diesem Hintergrund beleuchtet dieser Beitrag, wie das Kindeswohl bei der nationalen Umsetzung der GEAS-Reform angemessen berücksichtigt werden kann.
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Catharina Ziebritzki
Im Zuge der GEAS-Reform wurde das Konzept „sicherer Herkunftsstaaten” bereits ausgeweitet. Am 20. Mai 2025 hat die Europäische Kommission nun erneut einen Vorschlag für Verschärfungen vorgelegt. Ob die Pläne – Abschaffung des Verbindungskriteriums und der automatischen aufschiebenden Wirkung von Rechtsbehelfen – mit Völkerrecht und Unionsrecht vereinbar sind, ist allerdings umstritten.
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Annika Fischer-Uebler, Tanja Roxana Rollett
Gerade wegen Erfahrungen mit Umsetzungsdefiziten aus der Vergangenheit kommt es entscheidend auf den Monitoring-Mechanismus an, um eine menschenrechtskonforme Ausgestaltung der GEAS-Reform sicherzustellen. In diesem Beitrag werden Aufgaben, Befugnisse und mögliche Chancen und Herausforderungen der Umsetzung dargestellt.
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Constantin Hruschka
Die neuen Rechtsakte der GEAS-Reform enthalten über 500 Seiten Text. Der Gesetzgeber ist der Ansicht, das unionsrechtliche Normwiederholungsverbot gebiete es, möglichst wenig davon im nationalen Recht zu duplizieren. Allerdings sprechen der Grundsatz der praktischen Wirksamkeit und der Normenklarheit bei einem so komplexen Gesamtsystem wie dem GEAS eher für eine umfangreiche Wiederholungsgesetzgebung. Auf die Regelungs- und Verweisungstechnik kommt es an.
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Robert Nestler
„Haft“ und Freiheitsbeschränkungen waren und sind bei den Diskussionen um das neue Gemeinsame Europäische Asylsystem zentrale Schlagworte. In diesem Beitrag wird deshalb einerseits die Zunahme von Möglichkeiten der formellen Inhaftnahme dargestellt. Außerdem werden weitere Inhaftierungspotentiale – also faktischer Freiheitsentzug, ohne dass dieser als solcher bezeichnet wird – aufgezeigt.
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Dilken Çelebi, Rebekka Braun, Catharina Conrad
Frauen und Mädchen machen einen hohen Anteil unter vulnerablen geflüchteten Personen aus. Die GEAS-Reform enthält diesbezüglich zwar in Teilen Verbesserungen. Allerdings erscheint die Umsetzung dieser Vorgaben zweifelhaft, im Koalitionsvertrag sind gar asyl- und aufenthaltsrechtliche Verschärfungen vorgesehen. Hier ist im Kontext völkerrechtlicher Verpflichtungen des geschlechtersensiblen Schutzes dringlicher Verbesserungsbedarf.
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Konstantinos Lamprinoudis
On 5 June 2025, Advocate General Ćapeta issued her Opinion in Commission v. Hungary, a landmark ECJ case on Hungary’s “anti-LGBTIQ” law. While the law is overtly discriminatory, the Commission framed its case around internal market rules, Charter rights, and Article 2 TEU values. While this might seem curious, I argue this reflects a strategic “camouflaging” of non-discrimination claims to better protect LGBTIQ rights within the limits of current EU anti-discrimination and equality law.
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Katharina Stübinger
Der Kompromisscharakter der GEAS-Reform kommt besonders deutlich beim Thema Rechtsschutz zum Ausdruck. Die elf Rechtsakte der Reform enthalten eine ganze Reihe von Neuregelungen zum Rechtsbehelfsverfahren, in denen der EU-Gesetzgeber den Mitgliedstaaten erhebliche Gestaltungsspielräume eingeräumt hat. Wirksamer Rechtsschutz ist vor dem Hintergrund von Art. 47 EU-Grundrechtecharta (GRC) dabei nicht verhandelbar.
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Lena Kaiser
Advocate General Ćapeta delivered her Opinion regarding a violation of Article 2 TEU, which lies at the heart of the pending case before the CJEU – a case that bears, quite appropriately, the name “Valeurs de l’Union”. Her opinion is likely to cause a stir. Even though this is not the final judgment, it is unprecedented for Article 2 TEU to be declared justiciable and found to have been infringed.
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Julia Kienast
Das Asyl- und Migrationsrecht kommt aus der „Krise“ nicht heraus. Ziel der Reform ist insbesondere, nationale Alleingänge in Derogation des GEAS einzudämmen, indem sie europäische Prozesse für bestehende Probleme schafft. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist die neue Krisenverordnung und das damit geschaffene Rechtssystem für ein gemeinsames Vorgehen in Zeiten besonderer Belastungen eine der wesentlichen Errungenschaften der gesamten Reform.
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Maximilian Pichl, Lisa Steurer
Etliche Mitgliedstaaten haben in den vergangenen zwei Jahren „migrationsbedingte Notlagen“ erklärt. Werden diese nationalen Alleingänge im neuen GEAS noch möglich sein? Die neue AMMVO, die die vorherige Dublin-III-VO ersetzt, sieht zum ersten Mal einen Solidaritätsmechanismus vor. Dieser könnte eine institutionelle und verfahrensförmige Solidarität schaffen, die für unilateral ausgerufene Notlagen keinen Raum mehr lässt.
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Saniya Amraoui
The so-called migrant crisis has been instrumentalized to promote ideas such as “massive invasion” and “the great replacement” – narratives that frame migrants as threats to public security and cultural identity. This rhetoric forms part of a broader phenomenon of othering, in which legal mechanisms are used to exclude and marginalize migrant populations. This text explores how EU migration law actively contributes to this process by reinforcing exclusionary narratives and practices. Drawing on postcolonial scholarship and the concept of borderization, it argues that EU legal frameworks regulate certain groups as undesirable or excessive, echoing colonial patterns of control. These exclusionary dynamics are not merely reflections of societal bias but are structurally embedded in EU law itself.
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Anna-Lena Priebe
Die neue einheitliche Screening-Prozedur stand für Union und Mitgliedstaaten von Beginn an im Zeichen von Effizienz und Kontrolle, wirft allerdings (grund- und menschen-)rechtliche Bedenken auf. Dabei stehen insbesondere die für Persönlichkeitsrechte relevante Digitalisierung der Grenze sowie die Gefahr im Fokus, dass das Screening mit Haft und mangelndem Rechtsschutz einhergeht.
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Constantin Hruschka, Robert Nestler, Katharina Stübinger
Acht Jahre lang haben die Mitgliedstaaten und das Europaparlament mit sich und den verschiedenen Vorschlägen der EU-Kommission gerungen, um einen Kompromiss bei der Reform des europäischen Asylsystems zu erreichen. Die Lektüre der über 500 Seiten Gesetzestext offenbart jedoch zahlreiche juristische Unklarheiten und Spannungsfelder. Eine rechtzeitige Auseinandersetzung mit den Neuregelungen ist deshalb unerlässlich.
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Silvia Steininger
The Danish-Italian public letter to the European Court of Human Rights from 22 May 2025 must be understood in the context of two decades of “crises” in the European human rights regime. None of it is new or unprecedented. What makes it truly troubling, however, is the changed geopolitical context and the focus on migrants and asylum seekers as the most vulnerable.
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Peter Hilpold
Since 22 May 2025, a disquieting letter has been circulating: nine leading EU politicians are calling for “a new and open-minded conversation about the interpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights,” with particular reference to migration. The signatories seek to explore whether “the Court, in some cases, has extended the scope of the Convention on Human Rights too far compared with the original intentions behind the Convention, thus shifting the balance between the interests that should be protected.” The letter raises not only political and ethical questions but also significant legal concerns.
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Ortwin Renn
Kurzfristig ließe sich zur Institutionalisierung von Bürgerräten eine Organisationseinheit „Partizipative Demokratie“ beim Deutschen Bundestag einrichten. Dieses Modell würde kurzfristig die Verstetigung von Bürgerräten ermöglichen. Langfristig benötigt es eine robustere Lösung, um politische Unabhängigkeit zu gewährleisten und Kontinuität sicherzustellen: eine Stiftung für partizipative Demokratie.
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Philipp C. Verpoort, Ennio Friedemann
Eine gelungene Rahmenregelung zu Initiativrecht, Themenfindung und Zusammensetzung erleichtert die Integration von Bürgerräten in das Instrumentarium demokratischer Prozesse und ihre Akzeptanz in der Bevölkerung. Wie könnten solche Eckpfeiler in Form eines bundesgesetzlichen Rahmengesetzes für Bürgerräte aussehen?
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Florian Wieczorek
Es gibt mit dem Schöffenamt bereits ein staatsbürgerliches Ehrenamt, bei dem Bürger:innen ebenfalls an (judikativen) Entscheidungen des Staates partizipieren – es könnte somit als Vorbild für Bürgerräte und deren Ausgestaltung dienen. Aber inwieweit ließen sich die Regelungen zu den Laienrichter:innen tatsächlich auf eine mögliche Rahmengesetzgebung für Laienpolitiker:innen übertragen?
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Andreas Glaser
Bürger:innenräte sind in der Schweiz ein etabliertes Format. Entgegen der Kritik harmonieren sie mit den vielfältigen Instrumenten der direkten Demokratie auf allen Staatsebenen. Am Ende könnten sie gar das Modell sein, das sich für die Totalrevision der Verfassung am ehesten anbietet.
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Peter Bußjäger
Die Unzufriedenheit mit der Leistungsfähigkeit der repräsentativen Demokratie auf allen Ebenen ist bekannt. In dieser demokratischen Melancholie wurde das Instrument des Bürger:innenrates geboren. Am Beispiel von Österreich schaut sich dieser Beitrag an, wie Bürger:innenräte normativ verankert wurden. Auch wenn das Resultat eher bescheiden ausfällt und darüber hinaus zu viel von der Beteiligung der Bürger:innen erwartet wird, sollte die Politik in bestimmten Settings mehr Bürger:innenräte wagen.
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Arne Pautsch
Das ostbelgische Modell zeichnet sich neben der Permanenz durch die Institutionalisierung in einem Dekret aus, einer gesetzlichen Regelung des Parlaments aus dem Jahre 2019. Dies unterscheidet es maßgeblich von vergleichbaren Modellen weltweit und lässt es als “Blaupause” sog. Mini-Öffentlichkeiten erscheinen.
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Christian Ernst, Ennio Friedemann
Laut dem Bericht „Bürgerräte in Deutschland“ finden rund 80% aller Bürgerräte auf kommunaler Ebene statt. Dies wirft die Frage auf, wie Länder und Kommunen einen rechtssicheren Rahmen für ihren Einsatz schaffen können. Die kommunale Selbstverwaltungsgarantie bietet hier Chancen, auch wenn ihr Verhältnis zum Demokratieprinzip sowie Kompetenzüberlegungen zu beachten sind.
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Marco Goldoni
The study of European Union Law from the perspective of Law and Political Economy (LPE) offers valuable insights from two perspectives. This post shows that on the one hand, LPE as a scholarly movement provides a critical framework for analysing fundamental legal aspects of the EU’s political economy and brings to the debate a much needed renewal of the importance of the critique of the political economy. On the other hand, investigating the EU from a perspective sensitive to LPE analysis is also a potentially enriching challenge for the scholarly movement itself.
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André Bächtiger, Saskia Goldberg, Marina Lindell
Juristische Überlegungen zur verfassungsrechtlichen Rolle und Verstetigung von deliberativen Bürgerräten brauchen ein empirisches Korrelat. Deshalb haben wir Bürgerinnen und Bürger in Deutschland, USA, Irland und Finnland befragt, welche politischen Kompetenzen Bürgerräte haben sollten und wie sie institutionell ausgestaltet sein müssten. Es gibt zwei Lesarten der Ergebnisse.
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Pola Brünger
Ein besonderes Potenzial von Bürgerräten liegt in der Beteiligung derjenigen Bevölkerungsteile, die von der Wahlteilnahme ausgeschlossen sind. Dazu gehören 14,1 Millionen Menschen ohne deutsche Staatsangehörigkeit. Um ihren Zugang zu Bürgerräten geht es in diesem Beitrag.
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Frank Brettschneider
Bei der Kommunikation über Bürgerräte sind drei Phasen zu unterscheiden: die Kommunikation, bevor er seine Arbeit aufnimmt, die Kommunikation, während er arbeitet, und die Kommunikation, nachdem er seine Arbeit abgeschlossen hat. In jeder Phase sind für eine ideale Kommunikation unterschiedliche Schwerpunkte zu setzen.
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Antoine Vauchez
What is therefore needed is a much thicker description of the current phase of semantic destabilization. This implies to build a new questionnaire able to grasp the dynamics of contemporary legal controversies allowing to bring historical depth and socio-legal […] While there is certainly a large variety of methodologies able to address this questionnaire, […] I contend however that a socio-genetic approach is better equipped when it comes to unpack the notion of “context” and reconstitute the complex “hermeneutic space” of legal concepts that continuously move back and forth from the legal and the political fields.
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Philip Berger
Der zentrale Vorwurf gegen Bürgerräte lautet in aller Regel, derartige Institutionen seien im Kern undemokratisch und verfassungswidrig. Allerdings bietet das Grundgesetz hier durchaus Anschlusspotential. Dieser Beitrag argumentiert, dass die verfassungstheoretische Gemengelage es durchaus hergibt, dass entscheidungsbefugte Bürgerräte im Grundsatz mit dem Grundgesetz vereinbar sind.
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Klara Westerlage
Das Modell der repräsentativen Demokratie steckt in einer Krise. Wenn man sich auf den Standpunkt stellt, dass Bürgerräte hier einen Beitrag leisten können, müssen diese eine Form von Wirksamkeit aufweisen. Da eine quasi-legislative Entscheidungsgewalt verfassungswidrig wäre, liegen verfassungsrechtlich andere Einbindungensmodi wie eine parlamtenarische Befassungspflicht nahe.
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Moritz Schramm
Have you ever wondered why a legal text is the way it is, or whether its implementation actually works as intended? Typically, one would approach such questions by consulting existing textual material. If one is extraordinary inquisitive, one might even file access-to-document requests. However, sometimes one cannot escape the feeling that something is missing. In that situation, I suggest, one should do the obvious: talk to people who know better – ideally, the people working on or embodying the phenomenon one intends to research.
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Signe Rehling Larsen
On 9 May 1831, a young French aristocrat trained as lawyer arrived in Rhode Island for a nine-months visit to the United States. Officially tasked by the French government with studying the American prison system, his ambition and desire for political and literary fame propelled him to conduct a much broader study of the character of the American Republic. Based on his observations, the young lawyer wrote Democracy in America; a book that holds as much insight about the European Union today as it did about the early American Republic back then.
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Daniela Winkler, Kornelius Löffler
Die politik- und rechtswissenschaftliche Diskussion über Bürgerräte kreist vor allem um die Frage nach Formaten. Mindestens genauso relevant ist aber die Verortung im Staat-Gesellschaft-Gefüge. Mit welchen anderen Institutionen unserer Demokratie sind sie vergleichbar? Bürgerräte lassen sich letztlich als „Transmissionsriemen“ zwischen öffentlicher und privater Willensbildung verstehen, womit eine Verortung als Hybride naheliegt.
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Marc Zeccola
Die Akzeptanz der Demokratie als Herrschaftsform schwindet. Bürgerräte erfüllen vor diesem Hintergrund vielfältige Funktionen, die das Vertrauen der Bevölkerung wieder stärken können. Zu nennen sind dabei Legitimations- Akzeptanz- Transparenz- Informations- und Qualitätsfunktion. Das Ziel einer Kongruenz zwischen Funktion und Wirkung lässt sich allerdings nur herstellen, wenn Bürgerräte auch institutionell standardisiert werden.
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Felix Petersen
Wie steht es um die Debatte um Bürgerräte in Deutschland? Dieses Symposium versammelt interdisziplinäre Beiträge zu Form und Ausgestaltung, den Funktionen und der verfassungsrechtlichen Verankerung von Bürgerräten. Es behandelt rechtsvergleichende und gesellschaftliche Perspektiven und macht konkrete Vorschläge zur Institutionalisierung.
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Fernanda G. Nicola
The Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) stands as a central institution in the European legal and political landscape. Its judgments not only shape the trajectory of European integration but also reveal deeper EU Law Stories – ideological clashes, conflicting narratives and distributive consequences with the subtle emergence of winners and losers in each case. Yet, these dimensions often remain hidden behind the opaque language of the increasingly lengthy rulings and traditional doctrinal analysis.
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Afroditi Marketou
Law can be viewed not as a universal (or European) science but, following Geertz, as local knowledge. To illustrate the relevance of this perspective for understanding EU law, its effects, and the limits of integration through law, this text draws on the findings of a “classical” comparative study on the application of proportionality as an EU law principle in three national contexts: France, England, and Greece. This type of approach has the potential to evolve – and indeed is already evolving – into an interdisciplinary exploration of the diverse ways in which EU law is understood, applied, and experienced in settings as varied as the Paagalayiri market in Ouagadougou, the train-line connection between Paris and Marseille, or the camp of Moria on Lesvos.
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Jennifer Orlando-Salling
In EU legal studies, time, space, place, and knowledge are locations for contestation, deliberation and reconstruction. Other submissions in this symposium have elaborated on the limitations in understanding and accounting for the ‘what was’ as a fundamental blind spot of EU law. Extending from this starting point, I will show how decolonial approaches can bridge the gap between history, theory, and action, offering practical and alternative solutions for reconciliation. To do so, I will use the rule of law as one such site for contestation.
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Laure Clément-Wilz
This post emphasizes the human factor as a critical method of analysis for legal scholars specializing in European Union law. The aim is to critically analyse the evolution of the rules governing the CJEU, shedding light on its composition, organization, and functioning, while also proposing reform initiatives. Some of these reforms prioritize greater transparency within the CJEU. Furthermore, by focusing on the human factor in EU law, this method reveals how individuals are positioned within the institution, helping to identify potential phenomena of invisibility or exclusion in decision-making processes.
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Matilde Rocca
On 10 April 2025, Advocate General de la Tour delivered his Advisory Opinion in the joined cases Alace and Canpelli dealing with the powers of Italy – and, by extension, other EU Member States – to legislate on what constitutes a “safe third country” and a “safe country of origin”. The AG confirmed that Italy can list a third country as “safe” when it is “generally” deemed as such, provided that this designation is compliant with EU law. This piece discusses how the human rights of applicants seeking international protection are likely to be hindered by this approach.
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Päivi Johanna Neuvonen
Critique has become one of the latest buzzwords in EU legal studies. Who, after all, would not want to be identified as a critical scholar if the danger is that one’s work might otherwise be labelled as reactionary, unsophisticated, naïve or whatever other signifier could be used to demolish the value of scholarly enterprise? But the down-side of this growing interest in being critical as an EU law scholar is that the idea of critique itself is in danger of becoming inflated.
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Vincent Réveillère
Since the publication of last year’s symposium “Controversies over Methods in EU Law”, methodological issues are still pervading contemporary debates in EU law. These ongoing controversies over methods in EU law reflect a broader rethinking of the discipline, influenced by multiple crises in the European Union. These crises have led scholars to question their relationship with the European institutions, which have been central to the development of the core concepts of EU law and of EU law as a disciplinary field.
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Sara Wissmann
In public international law circles, especially those indulging in the law of the sea, Elisabeth Mann Borgese, the youngest daughter born to German Nobel Prize-winning novelist Thomas Mann in 1918, is perhaps best known for her pioneering work on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Her convictions and contributions to the UNCLOS focused on social justice, equitable access to resources, and environmental protection. By offering a glimpse into her contributions to the UNCLOS, this post highlights how Elisabeth Mann Borgese’s ideology – influenced in part by her cautious feminist beliefs – permeates her legacy.
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Elena Izyumenko
This contribution examines the practical ways in which the human right to a healthy environment (HR2HE) can influence the development and interpretation of intellectual property (IP) laws. It focuses on two potential approaches to reconciling this human right with IP: (1) the so-called “internal” reconciliation approach, which essentially uses the HR2HE as an interpretive tool to recalibrate IP law’s own internal rules and mechanisms in a more sustainability-friendly direction, and (2) the “external” reconciliation approach, which views the HR2HE as an independent defence against IP infringement actions that can be invoked in courts to challenge allegations of IP infringement.
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Charlotte Vrendenbarg
The current practice of enforcement of intellectual property rights impacts the environment in many ways. There is increasing recognition of the pressing need for more human and environmentally friendly alternative remedies, such as donating goods to charity, removing infringing signs or parts, or disposing of the goods outside the EEA/EU. The question is whether and to what extent the legal framework leaves room for ecologically sustainable alternatives to disposing of and destroying IPR-infringing goods.
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Léon Dijkman
How may patent law contribute to or hinder the technologies and innovation needed to conserve a healthy environment? This brief contribution seeks to make two points in this respect. The first is that the role patent law can play on its own should not be overestimated. The second is that future studies in this direction should take an innovation systems approach. While neither point is new, I believe connecting them and building on key publications that first expressed them serves as a useful agenda for future research in this field.
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Heidi Härkönen
When we talk about intellectual property (IP) and sustainability, we rarely pay attention to the moral rights of authors. However, it is important to assess these ‘authors-only’ rights in a world where copyright is often used as a tool to maximise corporate profits. In terms of sustainable development, moral rights can both promote and hinder environmental, social and cultural sustainability in the creative industries. However, their relationship with sustainable development is not straightforward. This blog post looks at some of the key issues that link the protection of moral rights in copyright to sustainable development and the circular economy.
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Péter Mezei
Upcycling has become one of the trendiest buzzwords for people with a sustainability-oriented mindset. While the term might refer to various forms of recollection, improvement and reuse of data or (raw) materials, this post adopts a narrower focus. It is limited solely to reviewing how upcycling might be approached from a copyright perspective.
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Irene Calboli
In recent years, upcycling has seen a surge in popularity thanks to its positive impact on sustainability and the circular economy due to consumers’ increasing attention to the environment. As a result, individuals, artisans, and small companies have enthusiastically embraced the practice as a central part of their activities and a way to reduce waste. However, with fame often comes unwanted attention, and the growth of upcycling practices has led to various legal challenges against independent upcyclers based on the argument that their products violate intellectual property (IP) rights.
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Martin Senftleben
With new collections each season, the fashion industry produces a highly problematic fashion garbage heap every year. Circular economy projects seeking to produce “new” garments by reworking second hand and unsold fashion items have particular societal value against this background. Evidently, legal solutions that support fashion reuse have particular relevance in the light of these goals.
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Eva Meyermans Spelmans
In the new ultra-fast fashion era, garment production cycles are accelerated to new heights, while the quality of the garments deteriorates. Key characteristics of the industry are its reliance on cheap manufacturing, overconsumption and short-lived garment use. This blog post will set out who is responsible for the protection of human rights from climate change within the textile industry. In a second step, this blog post aims to analyse the EU Strategy, focusing on the intersection between environmental and social rights in the textile industry.
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Luísa Netto
The appeal to future generations as a means to legitimize climate litigation is growing. The idea of advocating for the rights of future generations is closely linked to the recognition of the human right to a healthy environment. However, this appeal – and the conceptual connection it entails –raises various questions. While protecting the planet for future generations is crucial, the legal invocation of future generations remains unclear and inconsistent.
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Jasper Krommendijk
Over the last five years, there has been a noticeable turn towards human rights in climate litigation. In the same period, European climate legislation has evolved into a considerable legal framework. This warrants the question of whether there has been a similar turn to human rights before the Court of Justice of the EU – especially as Article 37 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights consecrates the “principle” of environmental protection.
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Natalia Kobylarz
The ECtHR lacks a mandate for general measures aimed at redressing or preventing environmental harm as such. Only the introduction of the environment as the object of human rights protection, through the Right to a Healthy Environment, could trigger the necessary conceptual shift and legitimise the Court and the CoE Committee of Ministers to require member States to take measures such as mitigation of environmental risks and ecological redress.
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Otto Spijkers
The recognition of a right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment remains contested under customary international law. Some view recent UN resolutions as evidence of its emergence, while others argue they merely reinforce existing obligations. The Human Rights Council and General Assembly have acknowledged this right, but states differ on its legal impact. As the International Court of Justice examines the issue, the focus is shifting from recognition to implementation, with institutions now working to monitor and enforce environmental human rights.
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Elena Izyumenko
With the effects of climate change escalating, there has been a notable increase in discussions about the, at first glance, not obvious impact of IP protection on environmental sustainability. At the same time, considerations of human and fundamental rights in the context of IP protection are increasingly shaping the legal discourse. Given these two major trends in IP law – growing attention to environmental sustainability as well as to human and fundamental rights – it seems that the time is ripe to explore what the human right to a healthy environment might mean for IP.
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Julia Gelbhaar
Simone Rozès was a pioneering French jurist who left a lasting impact on the French judicial system and beyond. Her decade-spanning career was marked by her many prestigious positions and her commitment to justice. However, as a woman in the mid-20th century, she also faced various challenges, including overcoming gender barriers within the judiciary.
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Guido Westkamp
The emergence of digital networks over the past decades has presented a problem for copyright exploiters. Thus, they resorted to strategic enforcement targeting individual users. However, the users would often remain anonymous due to the lack of access to traffic data revealing their identity. But the decision in La Quadrature du Net II – permitting retention and disclosure of traffic data for minor offences – has the adverse effect: it incentivises enforcement strategies targeting users and requiring platforms to hand over such data.
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Vanessa Domingues
Ángela de Oliveira Cézar de Costa (1860-1940) was a pioneer in the realms of international pacifism and “female diplomacy” during the late 19th and early 20th century – and yet she remains standing in the shadow of a statue she had commissioned: the Christ in the Andes is far better known than her own name.
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Ana Milosevic
Can commemorative practices such as memorials, museums, and national remembrance days effectively transform attitudes and behaviours to deter violence? Despite the proliferation of memorialisation practices globally, their tangible impact on reducing violence or fostering reconciliation and healing is often assumed rather than rigorously demonstrated.
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Vera Zvereva
Digital memory scholars highlight a shift to “connective memory”, which connects individuals to a multitudes of users as opposed to the memory of a collective. Additionally, the importance of forgetting has become an essential demand of participants in digital communication, which leads to the importance of understanding “disjunctive memory” as well. Undermining the hopes for progressing empathy and understanding in the digital age, its disruptive effects materialize in Russian digital media discourse in the 2020s.
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Taha Yasseri
In an era where Large Language Models increasingly shape how societies remember and interpret history, it is crucial to recognize their potential impact on the diversity and plurality of collective memory. By implementing regulatory frameworks, fostering digital literacy, and prioritizing ethical AI development, we can ensure that these technologies enhance rather than homogenize our shared narratives, preserving the richness of human history for future generations.
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Jacquelyn D. Veraldi, Alberto Alemanno
Our symposium ‘Musk, Power, and the EU’ has evolved in parallel with the inauguration of the new US administration and has been marked by numerous and unprecedented attacks on the European Union. Amid a flurry of announcements challenging the status quo - often with brutal disregard, even against traditional allies - the European Union, along with the way it exercises power, suddenly appears as the antithesis of the new America. Yet does the EU have what it takes to resist such an expansionist and plutocratic projection of power, which now threatens Europe’s security, lifestyle and overall existence?
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Anna Gerbrandy, Viktorija Morozovaite
Elon Musk’s corporate empire spans an impressive array of markets and industries. This empire includes SpaceX (and its subsidiary Starlink), Tesla, Neuralink, The Boring Company, X, xAI, and the Musk Foundation. These corporations are connected and interlinked, creating a cross-corporate power structure. Competition law, which focuses on market power in narrowly defined relevant markets – say, a market for booster rockets – has very limited reach to guard against the possible detrimental effects of such multifaceted concentrated power in the hands of a few on open democratic societies.
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Marco Siddi
The “politics of forgetting” – as I call the political strategy of omitting or marginalising key historical events in official memory – influences both domestic and foreign policy. Its effects on foreign policy are multifarious. Not remembering a historical event, or selectively forgetting parts of it, enables a certain foreign policy posture. A further issue arises when an event that is “forgotten” or marginalised in national narratives plays a major role in the political constructions of another country.
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Valentina Lana, Aziz Z. Huq
The La Quadrature du Net II decision’s ripple effects are profound. By placing the ruling in thick context, this analysis uncovers hidden legal innovations and unexpected interactions that could reshape the future of data protection in the EU.
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Martin Schulze Wessel
The German debate on whether and to what extent Germany should support Ukraine in its war against Russia with arms supplies is closely linked to Germany’s collective memory. For a long time, Germany's guilt for the crimes of occupation during the Second World War was largely associated with Russia – and not with Ukraine and Belarus. It is only since the Russian invasion in 2022 that the highest levels of the German government have begun to recognize the special responsibility Germany has towards Ukraine, a responsibility that also stems from the memory of the Second World War. Along with this change, it can be observed that the imperative of ‘never again’, closely tied to the German memory of the Second World War and especially of the Holocaust, is gradually being formulated in more abstract terms in historical-political debates, despite some resistance.
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Julian Uhlenbusch
Elon Musk seems to many in Europe to symbolize the dawn of a digital dystopia. I argue, however, that this view may be incorrect in several respects. With the Digital Services Act (DSA) and its new “systemic tools,” the EU has an opportunity to address the technological roots of Musk’s powerful position in the digital sphere. In this context, Musk (potentially) using his platform (or AI) to intentionally influence the access, distribution, and presentation of information is “merely” a manifestation of risks that are already inherent in the systemic position of certain digital services.
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Maria Mälksoo
Will the Russian war against Ukraine prove to be a watershed moment for the implementation of international criminal law on the aggressor? This contribution focuses on the Baltic states’ accountability-seeking for Russia as the politics of deterrence by legal means and a struggle for historical justice.
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Peter Vermeersch
In the years following the brutal suppression of pro-democracy protests in Belarus in 2020 and 2021, a wave of politically engaged Belarusian artists — visual artists, musicians, filmmakers, poets and novelists — have been driven into exile. Scattered abroad, these artists not only use their work to reflect on the repression at home, but also seek new ways to keep the spirit of resistance alive.
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Andrea Pető
In this contribution, I am analysing the reasons for the appropriation of the 1956 Hungarian revolution. I argue that these reasons are four-fold: First, the memory of 1956 has been divided from the start. Second, half of the population, namely women, were excluded from this memory. Third, the revolution was a bottom-up event. Fourth, the transition after 1990 was built on the concept of authenticity and truth made the narrative vulnerable to illiberal appropriation.
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Elena García Guitián, Luis Bouza García
After Elon Musk's attacks on European politicians, Emmanuel Macron warned of digital tycoons threatening democracy. This post examines how tech giants have evolved from EU allies to political actors shaping policy and public debate. It questions whether current regulations can curb their growing influence while balancing free speech and platform neutrality.
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Franziska Bachmann
A life dedicated to helping those in need, Lucy Thoumaian fought tirelessly for justice and peace. She gave her voice and heart to the Armenian people and rescued her Armenian husband when he was imprisoned and sentenced to death - this female “knight errant” even inspired a late 19th century novel. As initiator of the “Every Woman” International Movement, she called upon her “[d]ear Sisters of Every Land” to unite for peace during the First World War. The story of our “Sister” begins in France and Switzerland in the mid-19th century, in the peace of the mountains.
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Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias
The introduction of a legal component into the already complex and emotionally charged mosaic of memory in Poland, instead of calming and ordering the disputes, seems only to reinforce antagonistic attitudes, whether on the Polish, Jewish or Ukrainian side. In such a situation, the law can become a weapon both for and against historians and politicians alike, but it can also harm the witnesses of history, the still living victims of past crimes, or their relatives.
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Uladzislau Belavusau
While France embraced the formal regulation of historical memory regarding its colonial past nearly two decades ago with the adoption of a law by its parliament, the Netherlands has opted for more symbolic recognition on behalf of the head of state. The essay argues that, despite neither approach being capable of fully satisfying all sides in the debate on how to frame colonialism in the present, the Dutch model is notably less problematic concerning its impact on freedom of expression, adherence to the rule of law, and the fit towards a unique set-up of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
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Andrii Nekoliak, Paula Rhein-Fischer, Mirosław M. Sadowski, Dovilė Sagatienė
Memory laws pose a set of distinct challenges for modern democracies, including in the realm of human rights law. In the four reports, conducted during the MEMOCRACY project, we took stock of the dynamics, trade-offs, and the effects of legal governance of historical memory in a region ridden with mnemonic conflicts. This contribution distils the most interesting comparative findings of the reports, namely the fact that the countries’ own and foreign experiences with totalitarianism are legally and politically approached very differently. On this basis, we sketch the consequences and challenges of these fundamental differences, both for the establishment of a “European memory” and the various states’ approaches to modern geopolitics.
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Angelika Nußberger, Paula Rhein-Fischer
Present-time politics are, to an unprecedented extent, shaped by struggles over how to remember the past: Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine is led in the name of history; Germany’s wrestling with the war in Gaza is largely determined by its memory of the Holocaust, to give just two examples. However, historical narratives have not only swept into politics, but also into law.
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Carolyn Moser, Laurids Hempel
Viewing Elon Musk’s recent forays into (electoral) politics in Europe primarily as a geopolitical wake-up call to European leaders, our analysis focuses on the promise and relative weaknesses of law and policy solutions as well as institutional arrangements the EU has put in place to protect European democracies from foreign interference. The EU and its Member States must adapt quickly to the new international realities if they do not want to be norm-takers rather than norm-shapers on major international dossiers.
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Ferry Biedermann
Seeing Elon Musk with Donald Trump at the latter’s inauguration, it would be tempting to single him out as a unique and overbearing threat to a range of EU interests, such as its online environment, election integrity and regulatory capacity. But that would be to miss the point of a larger trend; what Joe Biden has termed the “tech-industrial complex” is not limited to the US. It, and an associated worldwide oligarchy, is converging with ascendant ultra-nationalist political agendas to pose wide-ranging challenges.
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William E. Scheuerman
Populist authoritarianism is a global phenomenon. However, the US is the only so-called consolidated democracy where its ascent has been eased by the systematic dismantling of legal limits on campaign donations. US elections are now not only the world’s most costly, but they are also directly subject to the inordinate influence of wealthy individuals and corporations. The Supreme Court of the United States’ 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling has paved the way for the emergence of so-called “super” PACS (political action committees) that, while formally barred from coordinating with candidates or parties, can accept unlimited corporate contributions.
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Aurelio Corneo
On his first day in office, US President Donald Trump signed dozens of Executive Orders on various issues. Among those receiving little public attention was the announcement of the US withdrawal from the OECD project on reforming global corporate taxation. This step, although expected, is a major setback for the only global plan aimed at increasing economic fairness that has any real chance of success.
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Todd Davies, Spencer Cohen
The urgency of Europe’s creep towards plutocracy calls for a similarly urgent response. Competition law, given its history and potential as a tool of anti-domination, is a natural fit to protect and revitalise democracy in Europe from the threats posed by excessive concentrations of private power. For it to be effective for that purpose, competition scholars must clearly articulate which democratic values, like non-domination, competition law should seek to pursue, and clear-mindedly design mechanisms through which to channel them.
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William E. Scheuerman
How can we make sense of the return of Donald Trump, who again convinced enough US voters of his populist bonafides? Populist authoritarianism has made inroads around the world. Only Trump’s version, however, probably brings together so much wealth and power, with super-rich business executives now at the helm.
Here I tap a brilliant but neglected book, The Folklore of Capitalism (1937), by the legal scholar and New Deal trustbuster, Thurman Arnold (1891-1961), to understand this remarkable development. Folklore of Capitalism helps explain Trump’s wide appeal, despite the electorate’s disagreements with many of his policy preferences.
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Judit Bayer
On January 7, 2025, and in the days following, the founder and CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, made a series of statements that framed Meta's previous and future content policy with an evidently strategic intention. The change of content moderation policy, as described in three comprehensive points in his personal announcement on his own platforms, may even sound reasonable, as discussed below. However, the reasoning and the framing of these changes appear to show that Meta is up to something entirely different from just further optimizing its curation of content on its platforms.
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Dieter Zinnbauer
When thinking about this current moment in time when major currents of political and economic power seem to flow into each other in exceptional and perhaps unparalleled ways, it might be useful to tease out in some more detail how exactly plutocracy 2025 differs from the entanglements of economic and business power that have come before. Here is one difference that seems particularly striking. Plutocracy in 2025, unlike its typical predecessors, is not really engineered in discrete fashion behind the scenes by deep-rooted dynasties of political and economic life. Instead, it is a full-frontal brash attack right on the public stage.
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Viktoria H.S.E. Robertson
At the dawn of 2025, liberal democracy is faced with a considerable challenge: Big Tech bosses appear to leverage their market power for far-reaching political influence, without any democratic legitimisation to do so. As someone working on issues of market power in the digital economy, one cannot help but wonder: shouldn’t competition law be able to contain (some of) this unseeming wielding of market power?
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Jacob van de Kerkhof
In this blogpost, I situate and address Musk’s position within the broader EU debate on freedom of expression. The purpose of this symposium is to elucidate aspects that make Musk, his influence, and his provocations to the EU legal order, problematic under EU law, and, should we consider his influence as unwanted, harmful or illegal, whether EU law can provide answers to it. This post centres on three points: (i) Musk’s changes to X’s content moderation process, (ii) Musk’s usage of X to amplify select political candidates and (iii) Musk’s ownership of Starlink. It ends with a note on how this fits in a grander theme, which has been dubbed by commentators such as Paul Bernal as the ‘techbrocracy’.
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Alberto Alemanno, Jacquelyn D. Veraldi
At a time when calls for the EU to respond to Musk’s provocations multiply, critical questions about whether, why, and how the EU may react remain largely unanswered. Musk’s conduct, which spans sectors as diverse as social media (X, formerly Twitter), AI (xAI), satellite technology (Starlink), space rockets (SpaceX), and electric vehicles (Tesla), pose unique challenges to existing legal frameworks. His multi-industry influence gives rise to profound questions about the limits of individual influence and power accumulation in a complex geopolitical landscape.
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Ann-Sophie Hartmann
For abolitionists, she cared too much about “the woman question”, for feminists, she was too concerned with anti-slavery reforms. Lucretia Mott was caught in a crossfire of human rights movements. Her relentless activism for universal liberty and freedom allowed her to embrace both efforts.
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Gábor Halmai
This post concerns one of the crucial problems of transitional constitutionalism after a period of democratic and rule of law backsliding: how to restore the principle of the rule of law? Are there circumstances when, during this restoration, the principles of the rule of law are allowed to be violated? For instance, when the violation of the rule of law was an important tool to exercise arbitrary power, as was the case before the 1989-1990 East-Central European democratic transitions?
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Lena Leffer
Algorithmische Lösungen zur Aufdeckung potenzieller Geldwäschefälle werden in Finanzinstituten und Banken bereits großflächig eingesetzt. Der EU-Gesetzgeber hat jedoch die Chance verpasst, solche KI-Systeme als hochriskant i.S.d. EU-KI-Verordnung einzustufen und damit einer besonders strengen Regulierung nach Art. 8 ff. EU-KI-Verordnung zu unterstellen. In der Geldwäschebekämpfung ist der Einsatz von KI mit gravierenden Risiken automatisierter Fehlentscheidungen verbunden, die durch die Privatisierung des geldwäscherechtlichen Verdachtswesens zu massiven Grundrechtsumgehungen führen können. Eine staatliche Einhegung wäre daher wünschenswert (gewesen).
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Kim Lane Scheppele
The Venice Commission’s recent opinions on Poland’s judicial reforms have prioritized formal legality over substantive judicial independence. The Commission thereby effectively legitimizes the judiciary captured under the previous autocratic government. The Commission’s shift contrasts sharply with its own prior critiques and European court rulings, raising concerns that the Commission’s stance now shields autocracy under the guise of legality.
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Marie Siegemund
Tendayi Achiume is a leading voice in international law, combining academic expertise with global advocacy to combat systemic racism, xenophobia, and gender discrimination. Her career is marked by an unwavering commitment to social justice, grounded in the belief that interdisciplinary collaboration is essential for impactful knowledge production. Through her work, she has distinctively contributed to rethinking human rights in the context of colonial legacies and migration justice.
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Anna Wójcik
In contrast to the slower-paced reforms in the judiciary, the new Polish government opted for swift and radical action in reforming public media during its first year. Political considerations often overshadowed strict adherence to the law in public media changes. However, public media showed improvement compared to their propagandist role under the previous administration. The media reform will be tested through its approach to revising legislation and following a constitutional procedure to appoint public media boards.
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Karolina Kremens
The ongoing reform of the Polish Prosecution Service, initiated by separating the roles of Prosecutor General and Minister of Justice, aims to restore the rule of law and enhance the institution's independence and effectiveness. Yet, achieving this goal requires comprehensive reforms to address longstanding issues and external factors. Success hinges on legislative support, particularly from the Ministry of Justice, and overcoming resistance to change among prosecutors, marking a potential new era for the institution.
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Marcin Szwed
Despite some progress, the Polish government faces immense political and structural hurdles in implementing ECtHR judgments concenring the rule of law. Because November 2025 marks one year since the ECtHR issued the pilot judgment in Wałęsa v. Poland, it is a good moment to reflect on the progress made by the current authorities in implementing ECtHR judgments. This post delves into the steps taken, the obstacles ahead, and the question of whether a coherent plan exists to navigate this legal and constitutional crisis.
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Jarosław Gwizdak
Lay judges in Poland, who play a crucial role in enhancing civic participation in the judiciary, have seen their role marginalized over time due to systemic changes and professional judges’ attitudes. Lay-judges do not feel adequately appreciated, do not see their function as a source of pride. Despite being undervalued and facing dwindling interest from citizens, revitalizing their participation through legislative reforms and a fresh narrative could strengthen public trust and legitimacy in the justice system.
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Michał Stambulski
What happens when judges are both legitimate and illegitimate at the same time? In post-2023 Poland, tension arises between ‘old judges’ (pre-2018), accusing ‘neo-judges’ of ethical compromise, and the new government, which aims to maintain judicial continuity. As a result, neo-judges find themselves in a state akin to Schrödinger's cat, their legitimacy simultaneously affirmed and denied. This paradox encapsulates the broader struggle over judicial authority and political influence in the country.
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Maria Skóra
Poland has become a real-time laboratory of rule of law restoration. The new government is faced with the fundamental question of how to tackle undemocratic reforms with legitimate, democratic measures. Avoiding obstruction by the affiliates of the outgoing regime and suppressing the desire for retribution by the injured parties presents the biggest challenge. Yet, the Polish government has a rare occasion to lead by example on how to solve the rule of law crisis not only by legal, but also political means.
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Krzysztof Izdebski
In the Rule of Law in Poland Action Plan, the Polish government outlined its approach to restoring the rule of law in the country. It might have been a good starting point for developing the concept of restoring the rule of law. However, it remains unsatisfying that, after so many years of discussing the collapse of the rule of law, more elaborate ideas for its restoration were not put on the table, and the Action Plan lacks concrete proposals.
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Jakub Jaraczewski
Poland’s 2025 Presidency of the Council of the EU arrives at a moment of political turbulence and high stakes, with security as its flagship theme. This short period will see the return of Donald Trump, the volatile German snap parliamentary election, and the buildup to Poland's own presidential election. While Poland’s government promises a fresh, value-driven approach, its own challenges in fully restoring the rule of law and balancing pragmatism with EU ideals may temper its ambitions.
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Niovi Vavoula
How does the EU's AI Act affect migration and border management? This blog examines the critical gaps and challenges posed by the classification of high-risk AI systems, revealing how exceptions and loopholes amplify fundamental rights risks and accountability gaps. The analysis points out the need for stronger oversight and higher standards to protect the rights of individuals affected by AI-driven migration technologies.
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Evelien Brouwer
In the European Union, AI and non-AI technologies are increasingly being used for border and migration control. In this blog, Brouwer argues that the new AI Act, while adding safeguards, falls short of sufficiently protecting fundamental rights. This is due to its blanket exceptions and broad discretion for national and EU agencies to experiment with AI tools when making decisions about migrants, including asylum seekers and refugees. It is therefore important that the general legal framework on fundamental rights continues to be observed.
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Sabine Gless
Moderne Autos, Fitnessarmbänder oder Herzschrittmacher beobachten ihre Nutzer ständig und werden dadurch zu potenziellen Beweismitteln. Können ihre Beobachtungen Teil der strafprozessualen Beweisführung werden? Sollten sie in Augenschein genommen oder doch eher wie Belastungszeugen konfrontiert werden? Hilft die KI-VO, wenn die Strafverteidigung die Vertrauenswürdigkeit einer Beobachtung testen will? Die der KI-VO eigene Mischung aus Produktesicherheit und Grundrechtsschutz birgt nicht nur ein generelles Potenzial für mehr Vertrauenswürdigkeit, sie könnte auch helfen genuin strafprozessuale Anliegen in das digitale Zeitalter zu überführen. Dieses Versprechen wird aber nur eingelöst, wenn Rechtswissenschaft und Rechtspraxis die europäischen Vorgaben in den Strafverfahrensalltag übersetzen.
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Antonia Buchmann, Dieter Kugelmann
Angesichts der Möglichkeiten automatisierter Datenanalyse wachsen bei den Sicherheitsbehörden die Begehrlichkeiten. Mit der im August 2024 in Kraft getretenen KI-Verordnung existiert eine Regelung, die die Gestaltung und Nutzung von Hochrisiko-KI-Systemen reguliert und dadurch die verfassungsrechtlichen sowie datenschutzrechtlichen Anforderungen an die polizeiliche Datenanalyse schärft. Für die gesetzlichen Vorgaben von Analysebefugnissen und deren Anwendung ist es entscheidend, klare Leitlinien für einen verantwortungsvollen und grundrechtsschonenden Einsatz von KI in Gefahrenabwehr und Strafverfolgung zu etablieren.
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Johanna Hahn
Kein anderes Thema hat die Gemüter beim Ringen um die KI-Verordnung der EU so sehr erhitzt wie die automatisierte Gesichtserkennung in der Strafverfolgung und ihre Regulierung. Jetzt stehen die Vorschriften für Gesichtserkennung und andere Methoden biometrischer Fernidentifizierung fest – zumindest der aller-äußerste Rahmen, den die KI-Verordnung festlegt. Diese Regelungen sind allerdings nur ein Anfang, mehr nicht.
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Alice Giannini, Sarah Tas
Remote biometric identification (RBI) systems are increasingly becoming part of our daily lives. The most prominent example is the use of facial recognition technologies in public spaces (e.g. CCTV cameras). The AI Act regulates the use of RBI systems distinguishing between real-time and post RBI systems. While one of the main aims of the AIA was to ban real-time RBI systems, the Regulation failed to do so in an effective manner. Instead, it can be argued that the AIA still allows for a broad use of such systems.
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Bettina Schoendorf-Haubold, Christopher Giogios
Mit der Verabschiedung der KI-Verordnung wurde nicht nur ein Rechtsrahmen für den sicherheitsbehördlichen KI-Einsatz geschaffen, sondern erneut die Diskussion über eine kompetenzwidrige Europäisierung des Sicherheitsrechts aufgeworfen. Neben der Notwendigkeit gemeinsamer datenschutzrechtlicher Mindeststandards im Raum der Freiheit, der Sicherheit und des Rechts sprechen jedoch auch die Einhaltung grundrechtlicher Garantien und die in der KI-Verordnung vorgesehenen Regelungsspielräume der Mitgliedstaaten für die Zulässigkeit einer übergreifenden Regulierung des KI-Einsatzes durch den EU-Gesetzgeber.
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Plixavra Vogiatzoglou
In 2024, the EU legislators adopted a detailed national security exception to the AI Act, contravening prior EU case law. Beyond the possibility of a future ruling that would realign the AI Act’s scope with said case law, the impact of this exception might be limited by other applicable laws and the interpretative and practical difficulty of distinguishing between national and public security. The AI Act’s failure to sufficiently account for these intricacies risks further legal uncertainty within the already complex security landscape. Therefore, this blog post explores the challenges of implementing the exception of national security to the AI Act’s scope of application.
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Christian Thönnes
The process of integrating European security law is imperfect and unfinished – given the constraints posed by the European Treaties, it is likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future. This inevitable imperfection, lamentable as it may be, creates opportunities for legal scholarship. Legal scholars are needed to explore the gaps and cracks in this new security architecture and to ultimately develop proposals for how to fix them. This debate series, being a product of VB Security and Crime, takes the recently adopted AI Act as an opportunity to do just that: It brings together legal scholars, both German and international, in order to explain, analyze and criticize the EU AI Act’s impact on security law from both an EU and German national law perspective.
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Vanessa Domingues
Paula Ventura de Carvalho Escarameia’s legacy extends beyond classical legal achievements. With a diversified career over decades that got cut short way too soon at the age of fifty, she’s earned global acclaim for her expertise in public international law, especially concerning the situation in East Timor. She believed that public international law was no rigid construct but could and should be changed especially in the areas of self-determination and the protection of human rights – ultimately contributing to the establishment of the International Criminal Court.
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Sarah Stummer
Although digital anonymity is associated with a wide range of opportunities, it also stands in the way of successful criminal prosecution. The right to respect private and family life under the the EU Charter as well as the right to protection of personal data are of fundamental importance for natural persons. However, since life is increasingly taking place online, anonymity can be exploited to spread hate, discriminatory content, and fake news. Considering these risks, the ECJ has opened the door to data retention in Europe and thereby restricted digital anonymity.
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Marcin Rojszczak
La Quadrature du Net II has been criticized for allowing generalized metadata retention measures. However, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that the law must not become a mechanism for protecting criminals. The scale of online rights violations are a real problem. P2P networks are not only a threat to copyright protection, but also an environment for the distribution of content related to serious crime. It is therefore necessary to strike a balance between these two concerns and to propose solutions that adequately protect users without guaranteeing impunity for criminals.
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Aqilah Sandhu
La Quadrature du Net II, which allows for the general retention of IP addresses to combat copyright infringements committed online, should not be viewed as carte blanche for general data retention measures by the Member States. Instead of watering down fundamental rights protection on a case-by-case approach, Member States should agree on guarantees and safeguards as well as a list of serious crimes allowing only the restricted use of targeted data retention in specific cases.
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Thomas Christian Bächle
After the major shift in surveillance practices from state power and control to big tech corporations and monetisation, we are currently witnessing yet another Zeitenwende: Surveillance practices as a means of hybrid warfare, with the AI-driven vision of accessing what people think and feel. This type of surveillance produces knowledge that not only claims to reveal what people are likely to do in the future but also what they feel and think. The consequences of this epistemological bending are potentially grave.
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André Bartsch, Johanna Fink, Jakob Mutter, Marc Bovermann, Isabelle Weiss
Nowadays, data is mostly collected not by state actors but by businesses. In 2010, the German Constitutional Court held that the legislator has to evaluate the overall level of surveillance in Germany before enacting new data retention obligations. In light of the recent rejuvenised discussions about data retention and a general surveillance account, this text explores whether such an account needs to consider private data pools and what is required for a successful evaluation.
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Chiara Graziani
This blog post compares the European and US approach to metadata surveillance and highlights some challenges that arise therefrom. It aims at shedding light on the main legal issues that may arise for the future of global counterterrorism. The essential role of courts in striking and keeping a balance between security and protection of human rights is further examined in light of the judgement in La Quadrature du Net II. Efforts should be made to avoid that the economic power of the US would lower the privacy standards when it comes to metadata surveillance.
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Giulia Formici
The Court of Justice’s Quadrature du Net judgements mark another key moment in the complex and long-lasting legal debate on mass data retention in the European Union. This blogpost critically discusses the “constitutionalisation path” outlined by the EU Judges as well as the fragmented roads taken by Member States, with specific attention to Italy. Ultimately, it demonstrates the need for a decisive EU legislators’ intervention, able to draw the future path of data retention regimes.
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Elif Mendos Kuşkonmaz
Is general and indiscriminate data retention permissible under the EU fundamental rights framework? In La Quadrature du Net II, the Court tilts the metaphorical scale towards data retention. The take-away could contribute to the enlargement of privatised surveillance that rests on a generalised pre-emptive data retention scheme. The ECJ’s findings could cement intrusive practices emerging from the counter-terrorism narrative to regular state practice at the expense of fundamental rights protection.
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Ana Bobić
The classic story about the right to privacy and data protection in the EU is one of a high level of protection. Yet, this original rosy image is increasingly fading away, most visibly in the La Quadrature du Net litigation, which is a continuation of two dynamics. First, the Court is still cleaning up the residual mess that lingers on from the now annulled Data Retention Directive. Second, in so doing, it is incrementally allowing the Member States indiscriminately retain personal data. Hence, the Court is carving out space for Member States’ preferences to the detriment of the protection of the individual.
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Lukas Martin Landerer
Die jüngeren Urteile des EuGHs zur Vorratsdatenspeicherung sind nicht als „kopernikanische Wende“ zu verstehen, in der der EuGH sein Selbstverständnis als Grundrechtsgericht aufgegeben hätte. Sie sind keine autoritär motivierte Abkehr von einer vormals grundrechtsfreundlichen Rechtsprechung. Vielmehr fügen sich die Urteile ein in die komplexe Entwicklung des ursprünglich national geprägten Sicherheitsverfassungsrechts. Diese Einordnung bedarf eines genaueren Blickes.
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Lukas Martin Landerer
The recent judgements of the CJEU on data retention should not be regarded as an authoritarian move towards a less fundamental rights-sensible position of the Court. Rather, the case law adapts the ever more complex development of the constitutional security law, which was originally dominated by the Member States. As a European court, the CJEU cannot simply ban certain police measures but must respect the complexity and heterogeneity of national law enforcement agencies.
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Erik Tuchtfeld
Mass data retention is on the rise. In the current heyday of security packages in Germany, we are now witnessing a “super grand coalition” in favor of mandatory IP address retention. Some are calling for greater protection for victims through data retention. Yet, what one often overlooks is the following: The investigative capacities of law enforcement authorities have never been better, and the digital data pools that can be analyzed have never been larger. Hence, victims must be protected without mass surveillance.
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Joachim Herrmann
Mass data retention is all about proportionality. The threat level determines the proportionality of the means – both of which are subject to the perpetual flux of time. Data retention is intended to protect victims of digital crimes. To protect freedom online, our security services urgently need to be able to access stored IP addresses. The alarming developments in our security situation are calling many certainties from the past into question. This also involves a re-evaluation of traffic data retention.
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Erik Tuchtfeld
Ten years after its groundbreaking judgment declaring the Data Retention Directive incompatible with the EU Charter, the Full Court significantly eased its previously strict requirements. On 30 April 2024, it issued La Quadrature Du Net II and, for the first time, declared the general and indiscriminate retention of IP addresses permissible for the purpose of fighting general crime. Given the CJEU’s fundamental change of heart, we have gathered a range of scholars to contextualize the judgment and situate it within the broader debate on mass data retention, online surveillance, and anonymity.
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Kelly Amal Dhru
Imagine if the very first article of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, 1948, referred “all men”, rather than “all human beings”, and asked us all to act in the spirit of “brotherhood”. Thankfully, that is not how it reads, and for this, credit is due to an Indian woman: Hansa Mehta, whose contribution UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres recognized in his speech celebrating 70 years of the UDHR when he said: “without her, we would literally be speaking of Rights of Man rather than Human Rights.”
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Eleonora Di Franco
The diverging standards of protection concerning the right to a fair trial, as interpreted by the CJEU and the ECtHR, remain a critical obstacle to the EU’s renewed attempt at accession to the ECHR. In this field, the two Courts seem to be drifting further apart rather than converging, leading to unresolved conflicts between the standard of fundamental rights protection and mutual trust obligations in the EU. Except in the unlikely event of a course-correction by the CJEU, this means that we are no closer to accession today than we were ten years ago, when the now-infamous Opinion 2/13 was handed down.
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Ilaria Gambardella, Tatiana Ghysels, Marleen Kappé, Sophie-Charlotte Lemmer, Yann Lorans, Alexandros Lympikis, Alicja Słowik
The EU should ensure fundamental rights’ compatibility of EU legislation before its adoption. To that effect, we propose three distinct paths to improve the EU control mechanisms. Whilst mechanisms to ensure quality control do exist, primarily in the form of impact assessments, these mostly remain a merely formal exercise. Henceforth, we suggest strengthening the ex ante fundamental rights review of EU legislation through enhanced involvement of FRA in the legislative process.
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Henning Lahmann
Alleged threats from outside actors to the information ecosystems of the liberal-democratic societies in Western Europe have prompted policymakers to look for solutions that utilize artificial intelligence. However, such a techno-solutionist framing securitizes and externalizes an issue that is ultimately primarily societal and internal in nature.
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Omar Kamel
In the appraisal of international threats, seldom is media discourse included as an essential element of study. This post suggests that no analysis of international or European security is complete without considering the impact of mass media in shaping public perceptions of legal realities.
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Emma Bolopion
As the discourse linking climate change and security keeps on developing, the Union has positioned itself as a key player on the matter. Political and military realities however seriously hinder its action.
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Maciej Grześkowiak
The contribution looks into what be be termed a paradigm shift in the field of asylum law, decisively away from a focus on the individual and towards harsh, indiscriminate measures, whenever ‘security’ so dictates.
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Francesco Saitto
In light of the increasingly established autonomous European constitutional legality, national constitutional courts are now compelled to reconsider their roles. Through a progressive expansion of its direct applicability by national ordinary judges, the Charter of Fundamental Rights risks fostering the marginalization of national constitutional courts. I argue that the solution lies in a highly differentiated consolidation of constitutional legalities that integrates and embraces the unique roles of national constitutional courts in their respective systems of adjudication.
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Pietro Faraguna
The three seemingly trivial observations that follow inform three substantive proposals regarding the protection of fundamental rights within the EU. To address the challenges faced by national constitutional courts and the CJEU, it is essential to leverage existing procedural tools within domestic legal systems. Additionally, expanding the applicability of these versatile tools and considering a structural revision of the judicial bodies may facilitate the creation of hybrid entities that could collaboratively address major issues, thereby steering constitutional developments in the EU.
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Jasmine Sommardal
In the Religious Movement Advisory Opinion, the European Court of Human Rights established detailed risk and proportionality assessment criteria that deviate from its previous case law in individual applications. The Court thus seems eager to embrace its standard-setting role and the spirit of dialogue inherent in the advisory opinion procedure, indicating some potential for resilience in rights interpretation within this sensitive context.
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Emilia Sandri
In 2014, the European Court of Justice clearly prioritised the EU’s position on the unity and effectiveness of EU law over the protection of fundamental rights (Opinion 2/13). Ten years later, in October 2024, a judgment pitting football against the media seems to have turned the tables. In Real Madrid vs Le Monde, the Court held that excessive defamation damages may breach the freedom of the press and trigger the public policy exception. This is a significant shift, prioritising fundamental rights protection over the traditional objective of seamless judicial cooperation across the EU.
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Tobias Lock
This blog post argues that the most interesting aspect of the Charter of Fundamental Rights at the moment is its impact on remedies in national law. Almost 15 years since its entry into force, it is not unusual to meet domestic lawyers and judges who will voice doubts as to whether the Charter really matters in practice. Yet, through the right to an effective remedy under Article 47, the Charter opens up domestic law for new (or modified) remedies, thus placing national procedural autonomy under greater constraint than it was from the principles of effectiveness and equivalence.
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Maria Bebec
In the context of the EU’s intention to accede to the ECHR, the CJEU, through its recent case-law on restrictive measures, shapes the scope of its jurisdiction in CFSP matters and opens up new prospects for the future architecture of the EU legal order. The first part of this post recalls how the Court’s case-law on restrictive measures contributed to the constitutionalization of the CFSP through the extension of its jurisdiction in the matter. The second part presents the challenges posed by the most recent cases on EU sanctions and the possible implications of the Court’s responses.
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Sionaidh Douglas-Scott
So, has the Charter come of age, now that it is nearing its quarter century, and has been binding in force for nearly 15 of those years. No longer is the Charter a “sleeping beauty”, and no longer are fundamental rights mere epiphenomena in EU law – offshoots framed in the amorphous category of “general principles of law” – creations of the EU’s earlier desire for legitimacy in its quest for greater integration. The EU Charter contains the essence of a common language, a currency that all can understand. And the EU is better with it than without it.
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Sofia Vandenbosch
The political question doctrine is a controversial admissibility requirement that intersects the rule of law and separation of powers. Based on recent ECtHR and ECJ judgments, this blog post highlights the need to evaluate the doctrine within a broader framework of legal accountability.
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Leon Seidl
The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine has caused not only untold human suffering, but also immense damage to Ukraine’s physical, economic and social infrastructure. This contribution highlights the leading role of the European Union in coordinating international assistance for the reconstruction of Ukraine and its implications for the Union’s capacity to be a global player in peacebuilding and crisis management.
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Carolyn Moser
Is the EU on the path to a European Defence Union? Previously seen as militarily insignificant, the EU’s defence landscape is rapidly evolving in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This post explores how EU defence is changing in terms of aims, actors, and activities. It shows that the EU has left its comfort zone as a normative power to get ready for the geostrategic challenges of our time.
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Kerttuli Lingenfelter
For the core international crimes committed in Ukraine in the wake of the Russian war of aggression, criminal accountability remains a priority shared by, among others, Ukraine, the EU, EU member states, and the ICC. The contribution delves into the remaining uncertainty where accountability will be ensured.
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Robert Stendel
Recently, plans to establish a tribunal for the crime of Aggression against Ukraine under the auspices of the Council of Europe have gained momentum. As this blogpost argues, this is a viable and also preferable option to hold the Russian leadership to account.
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Sofia Vandenbosch, Kerttuli Lingenfelter, Carolyn Moser
The first contribution of the online symposium Europe’s geopolitical coming of age - adapting law and governance to harsh international realities explores the profound changes in European security and defence law following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The new geopolitical realities of dealing with warfare in Europe set the scene for the symposium.
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Thoko Kaime, Bonolo Ramadi Dinokopila
Teaching international law as an antiracist endeavour is essential for addressing the historical and systemic biases that continue to shape the field. The text argues that by diversifying the curriculum, employing critical pedagogy techniques, and promoting active learning and engagement, educators can help students develop a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of international law and its impact on diverse populations.
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Fareda Banda
After Rhodesia's 1965 unilateral declaration of independence, which upheld white minority rule, sanctions were imposed to challenge the regime. However, support from allies like South Africa helped circumvent these restrictions, revealing the limitations and mixed effectiveness of sanctions.
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Shreya Atrey
With the Rwanda scheme, the UK government unleashes a regime of offshore asylum processing which is being considered by countries around the world. Such schemes though may be considered racist for their obvious neocolonial implications of removing and returning asylum seekers and refugees from the global north to the global south. More importantly though, such schemes undermine the commitment to abide by international human rights law and the obligations which attach to states in a particular rather than vicarious sense.
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Mehrdad Payandeh
The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination’s design makes it a very promising legal instrument to combat racial discrimination in particular regarding its structural manifestations. Expecting this legal framework to be of use in combatting racism is not unrealistic, but is hindered by the lack of visibility of the Convention, a lack of resources for the Convention system, and, above all, the lack of political will of States to effectively implement their obligations under the Convention.
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Marie-Louise Reuter
The contribution promotes the concept of intersectionality as a means of addressing the gap between what anti-racism law promises and what it delivers. Then, nationality serves as an example to illustrate if and how intersectionality can affect anti-racism law.
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Serawit Debele
Drawing on conversations with a queer interlocutor who moved to Austria to escape persecution in their country of origin, I reflect on the limits of legal protection in the host country when and if it is not accompanied by social change. I focus on the tension introduced by anti-black racism that comes in the way of queer solidarity.
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Jean-Aristid Banyurwahe
Germany, as a major greenhouse gas emitter, has a critical obligation to support developing countries affected by climate change; however, its adherence to the constitutional “debt brake” undermines this responsibility and exacerbates global inequalities.
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Daniel-Thabani Ncube
By drawing upon insights of sociolegal thought, feminism and the US social context, this contribution argues that anti-racism law’s apparent ineffectiveness stems from its reliance on the inherently vague concept of “race”.
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Victor Kattan
This contribution argues that, reading between the lines, the expression “systemic discrimination”, which the Court referred to in para. 223 of the Advisory Opinion, was used as a synonym for “apartheid”, even though the Court did not link this description to a breach of Article 3 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, but there does not appear to be any substantial difference between apartheid and systemic discrimination. This is because the word systemic is associated with crimes against humanity which is how apartheid is defined as a crime in international law.
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Tamar Hostovsky Brandes
This post examines the relationship between the Advisory Opintion and Israeli law with respect to the duty to distinguish between Israel and the OPT. While the Opinion requires States to distinguish between Israel and the OPT in their dealings with Israel, and to omit acts that may strengthen Israel’s hold of the Territories, calls for such distinction are a civil tort under Israeli law, and those making them can be denied entry to Israel. As a result, Israelis are unlikely to support the Opinion. This will contribute to the growing gap between the international discourse and the domestic discourse in Israel with respect to the OPT.
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Johannes Siegel
Police operations such as stops are prone for patterns of racial profiling. The contribution looks into the role of the new federal police commissioner (Polizeibeauftragte des Bundes) and his tools to address this.
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Mohamed M. El Zeidy
This article focuses on the legal findings of the ICJ concerning the Oslo II Accord, and argues in favour of its relevance in deciding the jurisdictional question raised by the UK before the International Criminal Court (ICC). It also addresses whether invoking this question through a procedure of an amicus curiae during the warrant of arrest stage fits neatly within the ICC’s procedural regime, and it concludes that it does not.
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Fareda Banda, Hatem Elliesie, Thoko Kaime
The first contribution of the online symposium explores the ineffectiveness of anti-racism laws. It raises the leading question whether their underperformance is a result of unrealistic expectations regarding the potential of law in general, or whether inherent flaws in legal design are the root cause.
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Matthias Goldmann
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) not only made it crystal clear that Israeli occupation is illegal in every respect – by itself a challenge for Western foreign offices as they face reproaches for double standards. The Court also added a number of paragraphs detailing the legal consequences of the Advisory Opinion for UN Member States.
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Maryam Jamshidi
This post analyses the possibility of unseating the Israeli Government from the UN General Assembly in case of non-compliance with the Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024. The Advisory Opinion provides a particularly strong legal basis – grounded primarily in the right to self-determination – to unseat Israel’s government from the General Assembly until it complies with the Opinion – as the Assembly did with South Africa fifty years ago.
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Yussef Al Tamimi, Andreas Piperides
What are the possible implications of the Advisory Opinion for the United Kingdom and Cyprus with regard to the UK’s arms and surveillance support to Israel through its military bases in Cyprus? This post argues that the third State obligations identified by the Court, including the duty not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the illegal situation, also apply to the current war in Gaza.
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Yaël Ronen
In the OPT Advisory Opinion, the ICJ considered that Israel’s abuse of its position as an Occupying Power, through de jure and de facto annexation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, renders Israel’s presence in the OPT unlawful. In determining the legal consequences of this illegal presence, the Court held by a vote of 12:3, that all States are under an obligation “not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of the State Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”. This holding was not accompanied by any concretization in either the Advisory Opinion or any of the many declarations and separate opinions attached to it.
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Eloísa Machado de Almeida
In May, the Brazilian parliament introduced a bill that included a gestational age limit for performing abortions, even in cases where the pregnancy resulted from rape. In practice, the bill would criminalize women who were victims of sexual violence, especially young girls. The proposal triggered a strong reaction from civil society, which ultimately prompted parliament to withdraw the bill. The case illustrates how the Brazilian parliament has become a dangerous place for women’s sexual and reproductive rights – a situation that has worsened due to an institutional dispute between the parliament and the constitutional court.
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Jinan Bastaki
While international law accepts that States may employ otherwise prohibited actions in exceptional circumstances and within certain constraints, the Advisory Opinion firmly affirms that security cannot justify illegal actions such as annexation or prolonged occupation. The rights of the Palestinian people, including their right to self-determination, cannot be compromised by security claims. The Advisory Opinion serves to limit State practices predicated upon security when those practices violate essential rights and when the security claim is based upon an illegal situation created by the very State which invokes security concerns.
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Yuval Shany, Amichai Cohen
This contribution discusses three possible rationales for the Court’s rejection of the relevance of Israel’s security concerns: Lack of proof of serious and legitimate security concerns by Israel, the insufficiency of broad security concerns to justify the continued use of force, and the insufficiency of broad security concerns to deny realization of Palestinian self-determination. As long as international law doctrine on the duty to end a belligerent occupation despite the prevalence of serious security concerns remains contested, and as long as security conditions in the region remain extremely unstable, it is unlikely that a withdrawal will be deemed practicable
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Felix Aiwanger
Bekanntlich sind Gesetze wie Würste. Doch dass man – anders als nach dem Otto von Bismarck zugeschriebenen Zitat – bei beiden durchaus dabei sein sollte, wenn sie gemacht werden, zeigt die momentane Reform des Tierschutzgesetzes. Am 26. September fand im Bundestag die erste Lesung statt. Der Gesetzesentwurf wurde in den vergangenen eineinhalbjährigen Vorarbeiten an entscheidenden Stellen abgeschwächt oder nicht zu Ende gedacht und begegnet deshalb rechtlichen Bedenken. Bevor es zu spät ist, sollten sich die anstehenden Ausschussberatungen jetzt um zukunftsfähige Regelungen bemühen, statt halbgare Kompromisse zu verwursten.
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Victoria Guijarro Santos
Law shapes and is shaped by the contemporary, dominant economic system. This contribution illustrates this finding by the case of Uber.
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Shastikk Kumaran
The ICJ’s treatment of the state of occupation in Gaza is questionable. While it rightly accepted the functional approach to occupation, I doubt whether Israel was indeed capable of exercising its authority in Gaza sufficiently for its occupation to be found as having continued post-2005. The Court should have relied on Israel’s continued exercise of administrative authority vis-a-vis Gaza residents to find the existence of a state of occupation.
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Aeyal Gross
The ICJ has de facto adopted the functional approach to occupation with regard to Gaza. The Opinion is thus a critical point in the development of the law of occupation, in that it transcends a binary approach to the question of the existence of occupation, in favour of a more nuanced approach that enables holding that a territory is occupied, but not in an “all or nothing” way. More generally, the Opinion as rejects a more restrictive approach to the question of whether occupation exists in a territory or not in favour of a more flexible approach.
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Jasmine Moussa
This post analyses the separation between jus ad bellum / in bello as arising from the Advisory Opinion of the ICJ. This separation was challenged by many States appearing before the Court, some of which implied that Israel’s policies and practices, as violations of jus in bello, rendered the occupation unlawful under jus ad bellum. The Court ultimately reaffirmed the separation with a twofold argument, namely qualifying the ‘legality of the occupation’ as a jus ad bellum question, and framing Israel’s policies and practices (prolonged occupation, annexation, and settlement policy) as violations of jus ad bellum.
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Ariel Zemach
The Court’s determination that Israel’s annexation policies render its continued presence in the West Bank unlawful finds no basis in the international prohibition against the use of force. Moreover, the Court’s determination circumvents the Law of State Responsibility that determines the consequences of Israel’s unlawful annexation policies.
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Maximilian Petras
Nahezu jeder Beitrag zum Symposium zeigt, dass ein Theorie-Import der LPE-Positionen aus Yale nicht bruchlos möglich ist. Zugleich gibt es gerade in Europa Forschungsprojekte zu Recht und politischer Ökonomie gibt, die sowohl theoretisch fundiert als auch eingebettet in eine konkretisierende Praxis arbeiten. Mit ihnen können wichtige gesellschaftliche Infrastrukturen stabil, klimaschonend und innovativ umgestaltet werden.
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Maximilian Petras
Almost every contribution to the symposium shows that it is not possible to import LPE positions from the US without friction. At the same time, an LPE Europe research agenda exists that is theoretically sound and embedded in a concretising practice. This could be used to reorganise important social infrastructures in a stable, climate-friendly and innovative way.
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Alexander Hellgardt
Crises are a good test case, not only to check the practical performance of the law, but also to gain conceptual clarity about the possibilities of (certain areas of) the law. This post compares a German regulatory approach to private law with the US Law and Political Economy movement.
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Ardi Imseis
It is no understatement to say that the 19 July 2024 ICJ Advisory Opinion constitutes a seismic change in the international law and practice on the question of Palestine. In one fell swoop, the ICJ has shifted what was hitherto an almost exclusive focus of the international community on how Israel has administered its 57-year occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory under International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law, to the requirement that Israel end its occupation of that territory as “rapidly as possible”.
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Barak Medina
The conflict between Israel and Palestine, or more accurately, between the two Peoples, has persisted for over a century. A tragic reminder of the unbearable costs of this conflict is the deadly October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, and the ensuing war, which has led to horrific consequences, with thousands of Israelis and Palestinians killed, many severely injured, and extensive damage to the civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. In these circumstances, an important question arises: what role should international law and international tribunals play in mitigating the grave harm to all those involved in the conflict?
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Marvin Reiff
Among the many crises challenging our societies is the inequality crisis. The central role of law in creating and addressing this crisis is not sufficiently recognized. What do “Steward Ownership” and “Law and Political Economy” might have to offer in this regard?
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Anna-Julia Saiger
Scholarly debates on climate change law in general and climate change litigation more specifically and the recent LPE debates mutually enrich each other. Surprisingly, the interaction of those two fields of study – while evoked frequently – remains underdeveloped.
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Omar Yousef Shehabi
The accepted framework for settling the Palestine question through bilateral negotiations, in legal terms, does not survive the Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024. The degree to which the Advisory Opinion catalyses a new political framework remains to be seen. But the Advisory Opinion gives the Palestinians newfound agency in shaping one.
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David Kretzmer
The principle uti possidetis juris, raised in the Dissenting Opinion of Vice-President Sebutinde and according to which a new State established in formerly colonial territory inherits the former (colonial) borders is untenable in the situation of Israel. The reason is that at the time of independence Israel’s leaders accepted the principle of partition. No claim was made then or subsequently that the State of Israel inherited the borders of Mandatory Palestine and legislative acts reveal that Israel even regarded territories not within the UN Partition Plan borders as occupied territory.
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Kai Ambos
The Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the "Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem" was a groundbreaking moment in international law. It has consequences not only for Israel, but also for third States, as well as international and regional organizations, in terms of non-recognition and non-cooperation. In this blog symposium, Palestinian, Israeli, and other scholars take stock of the Advisory Opinion and its regional and global impact.
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Bettina Rentsch
To redeem its commitment to an ‘emancipatory critique’, LPE would do good by supporting itself with a theory of science, or at least an epistemic program. While the critical tradition has raised powerful normative desires, it first and foremost stands for an alternative model of scientific reasoning. LPE, as will be shown, updates much of critical theory’s historical normative claims. Yet, at least from my readings, it appears to be missing out on a theory of science.
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Emma Sammet
Law and Political Economy sharpens our understanding of how law came into being and how economic thought has shaped legal reality. Applied to housing, it uncovers the path dependencies of marketization and allows to question their background assumptions.
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Andreas Kerkemeyer
The relationship of Economics and Law is long, contested, and entangled. Law and Political Economy, a group of legal scholars that are mostly working at universities in the United States, offers yet another perspective on this relationship. LPE may be described as an attempt to analyse, criticise and shape Law and legal scholarship to contribute to a more democratic and more egalitarian society. How this concept translates to the german and european legal debate is examined in this blog post. What can LPE bring to the table?
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Dominik Rennert
LPE’s diagnosis for the US situation does not map neatly on Germany’s political, constitutional and economic model and its trajectory. This does not mean, however, that the German model faces no problems; but these problems take a different shape and require distinct answers.
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Jonathan Schramm, Cora Wegemund
Für einen leistungsfähigen Rechtsstaat braucht es sowohl eine wehrhafte Demokratie als auch hochqualifizierten Nachwuchs. Generell zeigt sich aber, dass bislang überraschend wenige das Ziel, den Rechtsstaat gegenüber autoritär-populistischen Tendenzen resilienter zu machen, mit der juristischen Ausbildung zusammenbringen. Dabei ist empirisch belegt, dass Bildung, die auf Risiken und Gefahren vorbereitet, einen nicht zu unterschätzenden Einfluss auf die Herausbildung eines kritischen Bewusstseins und auf die Bewältigung von Krisen hat.
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Eva Herzog
Eva Herzog opens the blog symposium by introducing the US-American LPE movement’s main thesis. She calls for thorough contextualization in German and European economic, social and cultural history.
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Thomas Wischmeyer
Is constitutionalization a process that Law and Political Economy should strive for? So far, this debate has mainly been conducted in the US context. There, promoting a version of popular constitutionalism based on an egalitarian economic vision is clearly an “uphill battle.” But what about Europe and Germany? Is constitutionalism here a way of transforming LPE’s critical perspective into a positive agenda?
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Lilian Langer
Lore Maria Peschel-Gutzeit was a judge, lawyer and Senator of Justice in Hamburg and Berlin. She fought for the introduction of part-time work and family leave for female civil servants, which was introduced in 1968 and has since become known as "Lex Peschel".
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Florian Jeßberger, Kalika Mehta
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), a UN body essentially responsible for resolving inter-state disputes, has been increasingly asked to consider matters with implications for individual criminal responsibility – a predominant concern of international criminal law. In some cases, the link is direct; for instance, in the last two years, the Genocide Convention has been invoked twice on behalf of Ukraine and Gaza. Although for the ICJ, its application is a question of State responsibility, it will give rise to questions of individual responsibility in other international and domestic fora.
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Eva Maria Bredler
Sexualisierte Gewalt gibt es keine, Reproduktion auch nicht, und jede darf selbst über ihren Körper bestimmen: So sieht die Welt nicht nur in Greta Gerwigs Film „Barbie“ aus, sondern auch in der juristischen Ausbildung. Dass Sexismus im Curriculum kaum vorkommt, ist kein theoretisches Problem, sondern macht sexistische Rechtsauslegung und -anwendung wahrscheinlicher. Die Forderung ist nicht neu: Statt rosaroter Brille braucht es dringend eine machtkritische Perspektive im Jurastudium.
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Hinnerk Wißmann
Wenn möglichst viele Menschen Jura studieren können sollen, dieses Studium auch in Zukunft zugleich akademisch grundständig und berufsbefähigend angelegt sein soll, und schließlich die eigene Verantwortung für den Studienweg gestärkt werden soll – dann gibt es nichts Besseres als das bestehende System des Staatsexamens.
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Nele Austermann
Was braucht es für eine Staatsexamensausbildung, die Jurist:innen ausbildet, die mit geistiger Unabhängigkeit, politischer Sensibilität, moralischer Orientierung rechtliche Entscheidungen und Aussagen treffen können? Zum einen braucht es eine antifaschistische Ausbildung über die Gefahren des Rechts im Rechtsstaat. Damit meine ich keine unpolitische Extremismusbildung, bei der in der staatsorganisationsrechtlichen Vorlesung die „Feinde“ des liberalen Rechtsstaats mit Konzepten der „wehrhaften Demokratie“ oder der „freiheitlichen demokratischen Grundordnung“ bekämpft werden sollen.
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Johanna Croon-Gestefeld, Till Patrik Holterhus
Der Eindruck, dass es erst einer Gesetzesänderung bedürfte, um grundlegende Reformen des Jurastudiums anzustoßen, täuscht. Schon heute zeigt eine Initiative des Landes Niedersachsen, dass auch im bestehenden (bundes-)rechtlichen Rahmen auf wesentliche Aspekte der Kritik am etablierten Modell des Jurastudiums reagiert werden kann: Im Lüneburger Modell folgt das Jurastudium zum Staatsexamen einer stark veränderten Konzeption.
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Marina Giglberger
Das Erste Juristische Staatsexamen zählt aufgrund der Menge des in einem Block geprüften Stoffumfangs und der damit verbundenen langen Prüfungsvorbereitung zweifellos zu einer der anspruchsvollsten Prüfungsphasen des deutschen Hochschulsystems. Das JurSTRESS-Projekt konnte mithilfe moderner biopsychologischer Methoden und einem detaillierten, longitudinalen Design bestätigen, dass die Vorbereitung auf die Erste Juristische Staatsprüfung eine sehr belastende Zeit für die Studierenden darstellt. Besonders bedenklich sind dabei die hohen Raten an zu mindestens einem Messzeitpunkt auffälligen Werten in den Dimensionen Ängstlichkeit (48%), Depressivität (19%) und chronisches Stresserleben (59%).
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Anna Katharina Mangold
Dieser Beitrag beleuchtet einige Aspekte von Diskriminierung und juristischer Ausbildung und stellt Überlegungen vor, wie eine inklusive und möglichst diskriminierungsfreie juristische Ausbildung aussehen könnte und wie diskriminierende Strukturen in der juristischen Ausbildung verhindert werden könnten. Jura ist wie wenig andere Studiengänge geprägt von starken Exklusionen in der Auswahl von Lehrpersonal und Studierenden. Eine inklusivere personelle Auswahl könnte sich auf die Inhalte in der juristischen Ausbildung auswirken, der es bisher weitgehend an vertiefter thematischer Auseinandersetzung mit Rechtsfragen von Diskriminierung mangelt.
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Armaghan Naghipour
Die bundesdeutsche juristische Ausbildung ist darauf ausgerichtet, Jurist:innen auszubilden, die in allen Kernbereichen des deutschen Rechts einsetzbar sind - "Einheitsjuristen". Dieses Ziel, den „Einheitsjuristen“ möglichst breit einzusetzen, mag in Zeiten der juristischen Spezialisierung und Ausdifferenzierung der juristischen Arbeit anachronistisch erscheinen; es erklärt sich jedoch durch die staatliche Sichtweise, die die juristische Ausbildung prägt. Dabei bleibt aber vor allem eine diskriminierungssensible Ausbildung auf der Strecke.
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Personalrat der Referendar:Innen am Hanseatischen Oberlandesgericht
Für viele Absolvent:innen ist das Jurastudium nicht das Ende der juristischen Ausbildung. Das Referendariat, das auf das zweite Staatsexamen vorbereitet, bedeutet einen anderen Modus der Ausbildung, die nun mehr von praktischer Arbeit geprägt ist. Dieser Ausbildungsabschnitt ist von geringer Bezahlung und mitunter hohen Kosten geprägt; an seinem Ende steht abermals ein belastendes Examen. Um mehr Chancengleichheit herzustellen, sind Reformen notwendig.
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Sophie Früchtenicht
Während die Fragestellungen der sozial-ökologische Transformation wohl in die meisten unserer Lebensbereiche vorgedrungen sind, bleibt ein Bereich bisher noch überraschend unberührt: die juristische Ausbildung. Dabei ist weder die Rechtswissenschaft noch die juristische Ausbildung ganz unbeteiligt. Gerade in den Details der Transformation und ihrer Hintergründe wird deutlich, warum auch die Rechtswissenschaft am Thema der sozial-ökologischen Transformation nicht vorbeikommt.
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Lys Kulamadayil
Soziale Hierarchien werden in der juristischen Ausbildung in Deutschland widergespiegelt und reproduziert. Während in der Rechtssoziologie die soziale Reproduktion der juristischen Zunft schon lange Forschungsgegenstand ist, beschäftigen sich juristische Fakultäten selbst nur selten mit der Frage, wie die juristische Ausbildung zur Aufrechterhaltung und Reproduktion sozialer Hierarchien beiträgt. Noch seltener findet eine Reflektion darüber statt, wie diese Reproduktion sich auf die Rechtspraxis und ihren Beitrag zur gesellschaftlichen Ordnung in Zeiten einer stetig weiter auseinanderklaffenden Wohlstandsschere auswirkt.
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Hilal Alwan, Hannah Katinka Beck, Paula Schmieta
Bengt Fuchs, Richter am VG Gera, steht unter Verdacht, seine richterliche Unabhängigkeit missbraucht zu haben. Er lehnte Klagen von Geflüchteten aus Nigeria und Eritrea deutlich häufiger ab als seine Kolleg*innen im Bundesdurchschnitt. Rassismus in der Justiz gefährdet die politische Gleichheit aller Bürger*innen und dient damit der autoritär-populistischen Strategie, die Erzählung vom „wahren“, weißen Volk Wirklichkeit werden zu lassen. Es braucht deshalb dringend mehr Forschung und einen rassismussensiblen Bewusstseinswandel in der Justiz.
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Alena Schröder
What to do when national and international legal systems fail thousands of survivors of sexual violence? The life and work of Yayori Matsui shows that the fight for justice does not require a legal background. As a journalist and feminist activist, she succeeded in convening a private people’s tribunal to prosecute crimes against women committed by the Japanese army during World War II.
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Frederik Janhsen
Die Diskussion um eine Reform der juristischen Ausbildung ist fast so alt wie die juristische Ausbildung selbst. Doch jedes Mal, wenn die Reform berechtigterweise auf der Tagesordnung politischer Gespräche steht, ist das Ergebnis fast schon festgeschrieben: So richtig zufrieden ist niemand, aber eine wirkliche Reform ist von den Entscheidungsträger:innen nicht erwünscht. Für eine attraktive, zukunftsfähige juristische Ausbildung ist ein Umdenken notwendig; es braucht einen intensiven Austausch aller Beteiligten und neue Entscheidungsstrukturen. Das Narrativ der „Reformunfähigkeit“ des Jurastudiums muss überwunden werden.
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Andreas Fischer-Lescano
Wir brauchen Jurist*innen und damit auch das Jurastudium, um die gesellschaftlichen und ökologischen Herausforderungen des 21. Jahrhunderts zu bewältigen. Wir brauchen Jurist*innen, die angesichts des grassierenden Rechtsextremismus und der sozial-ökologischen Katastrophe nicht beim Wiederkäuen der Wissensbestände der Vergangenheit stehen bleiben, sondern die sich ihrer sozial-ökologischen Verantwortung bewusst sind und die die rechtspolitischen Kämpfe mit Engagement und Courage zu führen bereit sind. Aus den Ruinen der aktuellen Curricula und der aktuellen Lehr- und Lernmodelle werden wir daher das Jurastudium der Zukunft entwickeln müssen.
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Christopher Paskowski, Sophie Früchtenicht, Felix Hanschmann, Andreas Fischer-Lescano
Die Rechtswissenschaft steht vor zahlreichen Herausforderungen: Ob dies die Resilienz gegen rechts oder die sozial-ökologische Transformation zur Bekämpfung des Klimawandels beziehungsweise die notgedrungene Anpassung an seine Folgen betrifft. Klar ist, dass die (deutsche) Rechtswissenschaft und damit auch die Rechtswissenschaftler*innen sich in den nächsten Jahren und Jahrzehnten mit zahlreichen neuen Fragestellungen beschäftigen (müssen). Während die Debatten auch hier auf dem Verfassungsblog zeigen, in welcher Diversität sich die Disziplin bereits heute mit einigen dieser Fragestellungen befasst, bleibt doch ein Thema unterbelichtet: ein ganzheitlicher Blick auf die Rolle der juristischen Ausbildung.
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Elisabeth Kaneza
Die AfD schafft durch ihren rassischen Volksbegriff ein Narrativ, das Ausländer:innen und generell nicht-weiße Menschen zu einer Bedrohung macht, insbesondere für die nationale Sicherheit. Darüber hinaus stellt die AfD die deutsche weiße Bevölkerung als Opfer eines Reverse Racism dar und droht, Diversity-Maßnahmen abzuschaffen. Ausgehend von ihrem umgekehrten Rassismus-Verständnis könnte sie nach den Landtagswahlen in Brandenburg, Thüringen und Sachsen im September und der Bundestagswahl im kommenden Jahr institutionellen Rassismus verstärken, wenn ihr eine Regierungsbeteiligung gelingt.
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Oliver Tolmein
Im politischen Alltagsgeschäft gibt sich die AfD mit Blick auf Menschen mit Behinderungen als sozial. Sie vergibt sogar punktuell sozialpolitisch irrelevante Wohltaten an einzelne Gruppen von(nicht-migrantischen) Menschen mit Behinderungen. Doch dieser symbolpolitische Ansatz ist kein Grund zur Beruhigung. Er lässt sich reibungslos mit dem Projekt der AfD vereinbaren, diskriminierungsfreie Beschulung weitgehend zu blockieren und als Irrweg zu denunzieren. Das strategische Ziel: eine Absage an eine menschenrechtlich geprägte, auf Gleichheit setzende Politik für alle unerwünschten, als Belastung empfundenen und erklärten Gruppen.
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Maria Martha Gerdes
Bereits seit geraumer Zeit besteht der Wille, das Staatsangehörigkeitsrecht zu instrumentalisieren, um Menschen über ihre doppelte Staatsangehörigkeit loszuwerden. Aber auch die etablierten Volksparteien diskutieren offen darüber, wie sich kriminalpolitische Probleme staatsangehörigkeitsrechtlich lösen lassen könnten. Auch wenn mit der Novellierung des Staatsangehörigkeitsrechts im März 2024 die meisten Verlustgründe aus dem StAG gestrichen wurden, bleibt mit dem Terrorismusverlustgrund § 28 Abs. 1 Nr. 2 StAG eine Regelung übrig, die hohes Diskriminierungspotenzial aufweist.
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Anna Katharina Mangold, Nick Markwald
Rechte Kräfte in den USA, Polen und Ungarn führen in Echtzeit vor, was trans*Menschen auch in Deutschland drohen könnte, wenn die AfD an die Regierung käme. In Ungarn ist es inzwischen unmöglich, den rechtlichen Geschlechtseintrag oder vergeschlechtlichte Vornamen im Laufe des Lebens zu ändern, also irgendeine Veränderung der staatlich erfassten Informationen über das eigene Geschlecht zu bewirken. Im US-Bundesstaat Idaho wurde dieses Jahr ein Gesetz verabschiedet, das rechtlich definiert, dass es bei Menschen ausschließlich die beiden Geschlechter Männer und Frauen gäbe und dieses Geschlecht bereits vor oder bei der Geburt erkennbar sei. Diesem Drehbuch will auch die AfD folgen, wenn sie an die Macht käme.
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Doris Liebscher
Antidiskriminierungsrecht ist keine Selbstverständlichkeit, es wurde erkämpft. Einmal erkämpft, ist Antidiskriminierungsrecht ein unabdingbares Mittel, um das politische Versprechen gleicher, selbstbestimmter Teilhabe – eine Gelingensbedingung von Demokratie – tatsächlich durchzusetzen. In Deutschland ist dieses Versprechen noch nicht eingelöst: Es klaffen erhebliche Lücken im Diskriminierungsrechtsschutz und der Ausbau eines flächendeckenden Angebots von Antidiskriminierungsstellen hat erst begonnen. Beides wird nicht nur durch die AfD behindert.
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Anna-Mira Brandau
Es gibt Vorschriften des Grundgesetzes, die wirken so nüchtern und trocken, so technisch und inspirationslos, dass es einiges an Phantasie bedarf, um ihre ganze Wirkmacht zu begreifen. Art. 83 GG ist eine solche Vorschrift. Anders als diese kurze Norm vermuten lässt, ist die darin begründete Verwaltungskompetenz der Länder nicht nur ein langweiliger Baustein der föderalen Kompetenzverteilung. Ein Blick ins Bayern der späten 1980er-Jahre zeigt, welche diskriminierenden und stigmatisierenden Auswirkungen dies für einzelne Bevölkerungsgruppen haben kann.
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Jannik Jaschinski
Kommen autoritäre Populist:innen an die Regierung, ist zu befürchten, dass sie über das Ausländer- und Staatsangehörigkeitsrecht hinaus die gesamte Bandbreite verwaltungsrechtlicher Repression nutzen könnten, um migrantisierte Personen und ihre soziale Infrastruktur zu schikanieren. Sie müssen dafür nicht auf unbestimmte Generalklauseln zurückgreifen, sondern können alltägliche, spezielle Eingriffsbefugnisse für eine schmerzende Taktik der „tausend Nadelstiche” missbrauchen. Die Strategien dafür sind längst geschaffen und im Einsatz.
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Klaas Müller
Die Verwaltung hat gegenüber Asylbewerber*innen in Deutschland im Wesentlichen zwei Gesichter: Zuerst zeigt sich das Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, das die Asylbegehren prüft. In der Zeit, die dafür oft ins Land streicht, treffen sie zweitens in vielen aufenthalts- und sozialrechtlichen Belangen auf kommunale Behörden. Insbesondere sind sie im existenziellen Sinne auf das Asylbewerberleistungsrecht angewiesen, das die Sozialbehörden der Landratsämter umsetzen. Was passiert, wenn autoritäre Populist*innen, die einer rassistischen Ideologie verhaftet sind, diese Behörden steuern?
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Isabel Kienzle, Rhea Nachtigall
Trotz breitem sozialwissenschaftlichem Konsens, dass die Übernahme rechter Themen Wähler*innen nicht zurückholt, greifen demokratische Parteien zunehmend rechte Narrative und Forderungen auf. Wenn Rechtsextreme aufenthaltsrechtliche Normen auslegen und anwenden, steht zu befürchten, dass anstelle von Normzweck sowie grund- und menschenrechtlicher Erwägungen sachfremde, migrationsfeindliche Überzeugungen die Rechtsanwendung leiten. Die bundesgesetzlichen Vorgaben laufen dabei Gefahr, umgangen und ihre Spielräume missbraucht zu werden.
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Marie Müller-Elmau, Eva Maria Bredler
Wer die liberale Demokratie zurückbaut, baut auch reproduktive Rechte zurück. Denn autoritär-populistische Parteien glauben an die Idee eines „reinen Volkes“, das sich als solches reproduzieren soll. Das ist Teil des autoritär-populistischen Playbooks, nach dem Parteien in den USA und in Polen schon erfolgreich regiert haben. Doch Abgrenzungsgesten funktionieren hier nicht: Das gleiche kann in Deutschland passieren.
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Vanessa Wintermantel
Die größte Gefahr des autoritären Populismus für die liberale Demokratie besteht darin, dass er die politische Gleichheit aller Bürger*innen zu verneinen versucht. Häufig wird die liberale Demokratie mit ihren Institutionen und Verfahren gleichgesetzt. Was die liberale Demokratie im Kern auszeichnet – dass sie ihren Bürger*innen den Status als freie und gleiche Mitglieder des politischen Gemeinwesens gewährt – gerät so manchmal in Vergessenheit. Dabei ist es gerade dieses demokratische Grundprinzip, das autoritäre Populist*innen in Deutschland und darüber hinaus heute angreifen.
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Berkan Kaya
Der Begriff des Volkes ist zentral für unser Grundgesetz – und ist es auch seit jeher für rechte Parteien und Bewegungen. Auch die Funktionär*innen, Mitglieder und Anhänger*innen der „Alternative für Deutschland“ (AfD) beziehen sich immer wieder positiv auf den Begriff des Volkes und legen nahe, dass es ein „eigentliches“, über die Gemeinschaft aller Staatsangehörigen hinaus gehendes Volk gebe, das es zu erhalten gelte. Das Grundgesetz zieht dem Volksbegriff allerdings Grenzen.
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Vanessa Wintermantel, Klaas Müller
Diesen Sonntag finden die Landtagswahlen in Thüringen und Sachsen statt. Stärkste Kraft könnte in beiden Ländern eine autoritär-populistische Partei werden, die gegen Menschenwürde und Demokratieprinzip verstößt und die rechtliche Gleichheit der Staatsangehörigen in Frage stellt. Welche Szenarien der Diskriminierung könnten auf Thüringen und Deutschland zukommen, wenn die AfD in Regierungsverantwortung versuchen würde, diese politischen Bestrebungen umzusetzen?
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Nils Lund
In seinem Beitrag vom 13. August beleuchtet Thomas Groß die Rechtsprechung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts zu Sitzblockaden und ihre Bedeutung für die Bewertung von Protestaktionen der Letzten Generation. Es widerspräche der Normhierarchie, wenn der einfache Gesetzgeber berechtigt wäre, als „friedlich“ qualifiziertes Verhalten mit dem entgegengesetzten Begriff der „Gewalt“ zu belegen. Dem ist entgegenzuhalten, dass die Rechtsprechung der Karlsruher Richterinnen und Richter seit Jahrzehnten von der Einsicht geprägt ist, dass eine Versammlung, die nach strafrechtlichen Maßstäben Gewalt ausübt, nicht zwangsläufig unfriedlich i.S.d. Art. 8 Abs. 1 GG ist.
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Thomas Groß
Es widerspräche der Normhierarchie, wenn der einfache Gesetzgeber berechtigt wäre, ein verfassungsrechtlich als „friedlich“ qualifiziertes Verhalten mit dem entgegengesetzten Begriff der „Gewalt“ zu belegen. Wenn „Gewalttätigkeiten“ charakteristisch für die Unfriedlichkeit einer Versammlung sind, dann kann eine friedliche Versammlung nicht umgekehrt als „Gewalt“ qualifiziert werden.
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Friederike Löbbert
Jutta Limbach is remembered as the first female president of the German Constitutional Court. In her career she served as Senator for Justice for the Government of West Berlin from 1989-1994 and prior to that as a Professor at the Free University of Berlin. But there is so much more to be said about a woman who for so many years was the face of Germany's highest court. This post has tried to focus on a period of her professional life that has not yet been very visible to the public.
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Yaniv Roznai
Constitutions are linked both to the past and to the future. A central constitutional mechanism in the attempt to mark a dividing line between the past and the future, to represent a new era are unamendable provisions. Unamendable provisions, in this sense, play a “negative” role, serving as a lasting reminder of recent past devastations and as a constitutional/institutional attempt to transform and never return to past injustices. It is within this framework of ‘never again constitutionalism’ I wish to examine one of the most unique and interesting unamendable provisions in the world: the protection of ‘Liberty of the press’ in the Mexican Constitution of 1824.
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Wouter Vandenhole
Migration is one of the frontier areas for rethinking the way in which human rights obligations are typically allocated. Not only is migration externalised and privatised, it is also a consequence of structural global inequalities. But complexity cannot be an excuse for lack of human rights accountability. Nor is there an unchecked mission creep: if human rights are indeed universal, there is no other option but to fill post-territorial gaps in human rights protection.
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Joyce De Coninck
Human rights law traditionally governs a three-part relationship which connects the individual, the state, and its territory. The design of the EU’s Integrated Border Management (IBM) governance model eschews the applicability and enforceability of international and European human (fundamental) rights law by significantly reconfiguring the relationship between each of these three prongs. This contribution maps how these three traditional triggers for the applicability of human rights law are increasingly evaded in EU IBM policies, the responses to these evasion techniques and how a relational turn in the determination of human rights responsibility may be inevitable.
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Eugénie Delval
When feasible, third-country nationals request within EU Member States’ diplomatic or consular representations a visa on the basis of their need of international protection, in order to be granted legal access to the issuing State’s territory precisely to apply for international protection upon arrival. The focal point is whether States can be required to issue these visas in order to comply with their human rights obligations. This contribution demonstrates that the European Court of Human Rights holding that States do not hold any obligation in the context of humanitarian visa proceedings is unconvincing.
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David Abraham
There are few questions that have proven themselves more fruitless to pose than “What Are the Lessons of the Holocaust?” For very many Jews, and certainly for the Israeli state, the lesson, to be realized in law and policy, is “Never Again–to Us”. The more liberal or universalist lessons are a call for civil courage, democratic self-defense and early awareness of the possibility of dictatorship and mass murder, “Never Again–to Anyone. The tension between these two perspectives is found everywhere the matter is considered, even in Israel and even symbolically.
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Ruben Wissing
The search for a more equitable and legally binding responsibility distribution mechanism in global refugee protection starts with the question what responsibility states bear for the protection of refugees and other forced migrants outside of their territory. Here I discuss two potential avenues within international law: the operationalised international law principles of cooperation and solidarity, based on their application in climate cases; and the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) doctrine from international humanitarian law. The distribution mechanism they both apply might be useful to establish and define extraterritorial protection obligations of states towards refugees.
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Nicolas Angelet
This contribution determines to what extent the international law obligations of due diligence, the no harm principle or the principle sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas can be relied upon today to advance extraterritorial obligations of states towards migrants. Crucially for this purpose, the due diligence obligation is not limited to individuals within the jurisdiction of a State. Rather, States must ensure that activities within their jurisdiction do not cause serious harm to individuals in the territory of another State or to common interests of the international community.
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Pratap Bhanu Mehta
India’s modern history has been profoundly shaped by a concern that nationalism can lead to mass violence and atrocity, if not genocide. This preoccupation was also shaped by the experience of World War II. Indian politicians and thinkers often referred to the experience of Nazism in making the case for India to intervene and prevent an impending genocide in what was then East Pakistan. While the intervention led to the creation of an independent state of Bangladesh, it was also a case in which invocation of the holocaust and “Never Again” was apt.
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Salvo Nicolosi
States use mechanisms such as visas, maritime interdiction operations, pushback practices to unsafe countries to prevent migrants from reaching their shores, applying for asylum, or invoking fundamental rights guarantees. This raises the question of whether and to what extent States have extraterritorial obligations towards migrants who have not yet reached the territory of destination countries. By focusing on recent practices in the Mediterranean, this post addresses this overarching question.
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Ruben Wissing, Ellen Desmet
The question of extraterritoriality has found a very particular application in contexts of migration. This renders the questions of which state has to fulfill human rights obligations while a migrant is on the move and to what extent very pressing ones. This symposium examines what the existing criteria for attribution exactly mean for states’ extraterritorial obligations and responsibility in a migration context and whether arguments from other fields of law could either inspire or be implemented beyond their respective borders.
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Barak Medina
The trauma of Auschwitz continues to reverberate in the collective consciousness of Israelis and manifests in Israeli laws across several primary domains. However, the primary impact of the Holocaust trauma on Israeli constitutional law has been the concerted efforts to prevent Israel from descending into a fascist, racist regime akin to Germany in the 1930s. The incorporation of the concept of Intolerant Democracy, which occupies a central role in Israeli constitutional law, was explicitly inspired by German history.
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Uladzislau Belavusau
For this symposium essay, I will focus on the Jewish past, with its tragedies extending beyond and preceding the Holocaust as a master narrative unfolded by mnemonic constitutionalism. Specifically, I will reflect on how citizenship laws – as the foundational cluster of constitutional law in liberal democracies, including the countries without a formal constitution – have built constitutional ontologies upon the Jewish past and the “never again” theme through three central examples involving “Jewish citizens”.
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Udo Knapp
The “Never Again” is the desperate evocation of something impossible. Nothing prevents people from expanding the arsenal of their crimes with ever newer, ever more artificial, more scientific methods and instruments, and from using them. Just as grass and flowers mercifully spread over the ruins of the ovens, the fields fertilized with ashes, all attempts to bear witness to the crimes, to keep memory alive as a warning, dissolve into the history of the victors, which has dominated everything else in all times of human history.
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Hualing Fu
This essay aims to provide a Chinese perspective on the question of traumas and the Never Again imperative. It will first place the question in the long history of constitution-making in China, taking the view that constitutional narratives are context-driven, shaped by particular historical processes, and addressing particular historical concerns of respective nation-states, each with its trauma and Never Again imperatives. This essay then brings the current 1982 constitution into focus, highlighting the trauma it is designed to address and assessing the sincerity and effectiveness of the commitment.
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Olga Ametistova
In the Soviet Union and later in Russia, reference to World War II played a central role in the decades after 1945. The “never again” narrative in Russia takes a very specific form: The focus is not on the Holocaust but on the Victory in the “Great Patriotic War” against fascism, the increase of power and status in the international system that this has brought, and the perpetuation of the present and timeless actuality of war in a mostly imperial and post-imperial context. The discourse on Victory against fascism undergoes a paradoxical development, from a way of commemorating collective trauma to the justification and glorification of new wars.
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Gilad Hirschberger
Holocaust historian Jan Tomasz Gross claimed in a 2015 article that the immigration crisis in Europe is inextricably linked to the way Europeans today contend with their group’s behavior during the Holocaust. What does the influx of mostly Muslim immigrants to Europe have to do with how Europeans treated their Jewish population eighty years ago? According to Gross, the answer lies in whether nations acknowledge their historical culpability, most notably in the case of Germany, or whether they actively try to deny any wrongdoing, such as in the cases of Poland and Hungary.
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Kim Lane Scheppele
Those who build new public law act with the past hovering over their shoulders. Rejecting regimes of horror explains much of the content of new constitutions. Aversive constitutionalism – in which constitutionalists overtly steer away from a country’s appalling pasts – guides how they understand these new texts. On balance, even among those who disagree over precisely how the past is memorialized as “never again” in new constitutions, evidence shows that the horrors of the past influence public law in the present much more than do the dreams of some ideal future.
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Joanne Murray
Looking at Canadian law, this blog posts argues that administrative agencies should be able to interpret and articulate unwritten constitutional principles when exercising their discretionary powers, and that these interpretations ought to be deferred to by courts. This would also encourage citizens to put forward their own interpretations of unwritten constitutional principles, fostering a participatory approach to constitutional interpretation.
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Joseph H.H. Weiler
“Never Again” is one of those slogans on which practically everyone can agree. How can one not? (Unless you belong to the flat-earth Holocaust-denial lunatic fringe). When we use “Never Again” it is, of course, a shorthand to the enormity of German National Socialism. The pledge “Never Again” is absolute in time: Never again. It is absolute in space too: “That” cannot and should not ever take place anywhere. It is universal: It bridges Left and Right, North and South, Rich and Poor. Standing at the barricades under the “Never Again” banner is both powerful and self-empowering. But herein lies its potential for abuse. What exactly is the “that” which must never happen again?
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Mattias Kumm, Liav Orgad
“Never again” is, first and foremost, a story. It’s a story about our collective fears, anxieties, and aspirations, those moments and events that we have promised ourselves that will never be repeated. The Jewish story is interwoven with the Holocaust—the killing of six million Jews in Europe and the urgency of the re-establishment of a Jewish state to solve the problem of Jewish homelessness. Yet the constitutional and international meaning of “never again” depends on one’s position and point of view, and it changes over time. The chain reaction that began with the horrors of WWII continues to drive constitutional and international agendas. It is clear that “history talks,” but in which direction?
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Dionysios Pelekis, Malgorzata Kozak
Public Service Broadcasters (PSBs) are publicly organised and funded broadcasters, organised by each of the EU’s Member State with a great degree of discretion and under a unique legal framework. Politicised interventions and the decline of PSBs’ independence threaten their ability to adequately perform their role and offer citizens a high-quality public service which meets the public’s democratic and cultural needs. The politicisation of PSBs by national authorities, coupled with the increasing concerns about media freedom, shows that some type of regulatory intervention is necessary.
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Marta Sznajder
Among (too) many other things, the recently adopted European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) introduced an assessment of the impact of media market concentration on media pluralism and editorial independence. It thereby aims to address the growing economic threats media pluralism and freedom have been facing all across Europe. However, when considering recent media merger cases in Poland as well as the substantive and institutional competition law framework, it is uncertain whether the Act will provide efficient solutions.
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Baskaran Balasingham, Malgorzata Kozak, Tais A. Ruiz Palacios
The advent of the digital economy has brought many challenges to traditional business models, leading to new issues that go beyond pure market problems. This is also true for the news media industry since the emergence and rapid expansion of digital platforms like Google and Facebook. While the latter, in contrast to press publishers, do not produce any news content themselves, they have become digital news aggregators and first contact points for readers of online news. In this post, we reflect on the existing approaches towards addressing the bargaining imbalance between press publishers and digital news aggregators. We argue that the most adequate measure in addressing this imbalance would be a regulatory instrument such as a bargaining code.
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Katarzyna Klafkowska - Waśniowska
The adoption of the European Media Freedom Act broke new ground in the EU’s approach to media law. Amongst other goals, the EMFA seeks to address the risk of restricting media content by online platforms by envisaging the special, privileged, treatment of media service providers in the area of content moderation. This post discusses the extent of the privilege granted to media service providers and the relationship between the EMFA and the DSA.
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Jan Polański
On the surface level, we see private actors exercising more and more power over speech; on a deeper level though, we might be returning to a far older discussion about the interplay of private and public power, and the fate of an individual who lives in the crash zone between them. Given that the result of this clash largely comes down to choosing a proper regulatory policy, this contribution argues that when regulating market-situated speech particular caution should be exercised.
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Pauline Phoa, Anna Gerbrandy
Big Tech companies have power. One element of this power is discursive power, including in the public sphere, a cornerstone of democratic societies. In the current digitalized society, the public sphere has a significant online component. Discursive power may continue to grow, fuelled by AI developments, unless checked. To shape a possible legal response – we focus on European competition law – requires understanding the complexity of this power. Though competition law is focused on market power, we argue that it can and should have a role to play in curbing discursive power too, despite some inherent limitations.
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Maciej Bernatt, Anna Gerbrandy, Malgorzata Kozak, Pauline Phoa
What is ‘media’ in a digitalized society where boundaries between news, commercial and social content are increasingly blurred? What do we really mean by ‘media pluralism’? These are all key questions liberal democracies in Europe and beyond need answers to, given both political challenges and the rise of market power and Big Tech companies whose actions affect media markets. While the law will not solve all of the problems associated with these developments, it can help in imposing limits on the way in which political and market power is used. This necessitates a sustained and informed debate as to what the existing legal framework offers and what additional legal responses are necessary.
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Ruth Houghton
If there is a global constitutional order, it is “unwritten”. We cannot point to a written constitution for global law. Rather, theories of global constitutionalism and processes of global constitutionalisation are derived from an amalgamation of sources across international law and domestic constitutional orders. This blog post reflects on these tensions within the debate on global constitutionalisation, and focuses specifically on democracy as an unwritten constitutional norm in global constitutionalism.
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Hannah Birkenkötter
Is the rule of law an unwritten principle for the UN system? Today, rule of law language has been gradually replaced by a new paradigm of ‘inclusivity’. The rule of law debate within the UN was centered on a thick understanding of the rule of law, highlighting substantive values rather than procedural guarantees. Absent a consented definition of the term, the rule of law was never considered to be an unwritten principle for the UN system.
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Diego Platz Pereira
Brazilian constitutional law is profoundly marked by the ideal of codification. In this context, the ‘unwrittenness’ of certain constitutional problems is usually not treated as such. This is especially intensified through the size and textual openness of the Brazilian Constitution. Yet unwritten constitutional normativity plays (and can play) arguably a decisive role in Brazilian constitutionalism. Could one then articulate unwritten constitutional law as a Brazilian constitutional category?
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Hillary Nye, Peter Oliver
Unwritten constitutional principles pose a number of interesting puzzles, some of which are unique to their unwritten status, some of which are shared with all principles, unwritten and written, legal and non-legal. Using examples from the Canadian constitutional system, this blog post examines what principles are before going on to consider how they work. Its observations are intended to be of general, cross-jurisdictional relevance.
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Se-shauna Wheatle, Nicholas Kilford
Unwritten principles serve crucial purposes in the UK’s constitution. For example, they provide guardrails for judicial interpretation of legislation, and they form or give rise to substantive rules about the limits of legislative, judicial and executive power. With a growing body of research on unwritten constitutionalism, it is worth considering why these issues matter, and what is at stake in the debate. This post considers two issues which it argues can only be properly understood once regard is paid to the unwritten principles and norms in the UK’s constitution: the limits of Westminster’s legislative power, and the nature of the UK’s territorial constitution.
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Vanessa MacDonnell
Canada's Constitution sits somewhere between the paradigms of a fully codified written and partially codified unwritten constitutional order. This blog post explains why the differentiation between the written and unwritten matters for our understanding of Canada's constitutional system with a view to terminological, institutional, proceduaral, and policial questions.
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Thomas Wischmeyer
Focussing on “writtenness” can sharpen our sensibility of how liberally the German legal system allows the Federal Constitutional Court, as well as other courts, to acknowledge legal norms or principles whose textual basis in the Grundgesetz is far from obvious – which in other jurisdictions might be put into the area of norm-free, principle-oriented argumentation, i.e. whose constitutional quality is being problematized.
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Ann-Sophie Hartmann
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which aims to eradicate all forms of discrimination based on sex and gender, is an indispensable treaty for women and girls worldwide. Given its profound impact, today’s sphere of international human rights law would look vastly different. But few people know that the CEDAW treaty was preceded by a 1967 draft by Annie Ruth Jiagge.
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Eric von Dömming
Schmerzgriffe verringern die Sichtbarkeit polizeilicher Gewalt. Diese ist dadurch schwerer in ihrer gesamten Tragweite zu erkennen. Für eine zunehmend gewaltsensible Gesellschaft ist das leichter zu ertragen – eine Tendenz, die sich nicht nur bei Schmerzgriffen beobachten lässt, sondern insgesamt bei staatlichem Gewalthandeln. Dabei sind Schmerzgriffe nicht unbedingt harmloser als andere Formen der Gewalt: Die Hebel- und Nervendrucktechniken können Nervenschäden, Gelenkschädigungen, Brüche und Zerrungen zur Folge haben. Vor allem aber verursachen sie ein intensives Schmerzgefühl und psychische Folgen, wie sie jede intensive Gewalterfahrung mit sich bringen kann.
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Andreas Ruch
Schmerzgriffe sind innerhalb einer polizeilichen Ordnungslogik praktikabel, da sie eine effektive und zügige Kontrolle des Versammlungsgeschehens ermöglichen. Bei friedlichen Versammlungen wie den Protestaktionen der Letzten Genration sind Schmerzgriffe jedoch abzulehnen, da sie rechtlich unzulässig sind. In diesem Kontext sind sie auf lange Sicht geeignet, das gesellschaftliche Vertrauen in eine fair und rechtsstaatlich handelnde Polizei zu beeinträchtigen.
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Benjamin Derin, Tobias Singelnstein
Als Trägerin des staatlichen Gewaltmonopols ist die Polizei eine Institution, deren Kontrolle im demokratischen Rechtsstaat besondere Bedeutung zukommt. Immer wieder zeigt sich, dass die bestehenden Mechanismen unzulänglich sind, um von Polizist:innen begangene Straftaten zu verfolgen und anderen Fehlverhalten nachzugehen. Für eine stärkere Unabhängigkeit in einschlägigen strafrechtlichen Ermittlungen würde eine gesonderte Ermittlungsbehörde sorgen – Vorbilder gibt es schon in anderen europäischen Ländern. Nicht-strafbaren Vorfällen und teilweise auch strukturellen behördlichen Defizite könnten externe Stellen nachgehen, die neben der Kontrolle auch Kommunikation und Mediation zur Aufgabe haben.
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Jörg Scheinfeld
Wer als Polizist einen Schmerzgriff rechtswidrig anwendet, macht sich wegen gefährlicher Körperverletzung im Amt strafbar. Dasselbe gilt für Polizisten, die sich am Einsatzort befinden, aber nicht eingreifen, um den rechtswidrigen Schmerzgriff zu beenden. Sie verwirklichen den Straftatbestand in der Variante des Begehenlassens.
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Bernd Heinrich
Gegen rechtswidrige Polizeieinsätze darf man sich wehren, auch mit dem „scharfen Schwert“ der Notwehr. Dies gilt jedenfalls dann, wenn der handelnde Beamte seine Kompetenzen bewusst überschreitet oder wenn er sich über die rechtlichen Eingriffsvoraussetzungen irrt. Wen die Polizei in offensichtlich rechtswidriger Weise mit sogenannten Schmerzgriffen konfrontiert, der darf sich also hiergegen verteidigen. Auch andere Personen dürfen dann einschreiten, den Betroffenen zu Hilfe eilen und den Schmerzgriff mittels Gewalt beenden (sogenannte Notwehrhilfe).
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Sarah Ahmad, Jochen von Bernstorff
Polizeiliche Schmerzgriffe bei einer Sitzblockade gegenüber sich absolut passiv verhaltenen Demonstrierenden verletzen deren Menschenrechte. Sie verstoßen nicht nur gegen das Verbot erniedrigender Behandlung aus Art. 3 der Europäischen Menschenrechtskonvention, sondern auch gegen die Menschenwürde, die zu achten und zu schützen nach Art. 1 Abs. 1 S. 1 Grundgesetz Aufgabe aller staatlichen Gewalt ist. Entgegen der teilweise von den Bundesländern vertretenen Position finden die Schmerzgriffe schon in den polizeirechtlichen Vorschriften über den unmittelbaren Zwang keine Rechtsgrundlage.
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Joachim Wieland
Die Berliner Polizei hat gegenüber Klimaaktivisten, die sich auf eine Straße gesetzt hatten, um diese zu blockieren, sogenannte Schmerzgriffe bzw. Nervendrucktechniken zunächst angedroht und sodann angewendet. Beide polizeilichen Maßnahmen, also Androhung und Anwendung, verstoßen gegen das Verhältnismäßigkeitsprinzip, weil das Wegtragen der Aktivisten ein milderes Mittel wäre. Je nach den Umständen des Einzelfalles kommt auch ein Verstoß gegen das Folterverbot in Betracht.
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Jochen von Bernstorff, Jörg Scheinfeld
Gewaltsames Handeln der Polizei kann nach den Polizeigesetzen der Länder, wenn es verhältnismäßig ist, als „unmittelbarer Zwang“ rechtmäßig sein und vielfach ist es auch erforderlich, um polizeiliche Aufgaben zu erfüllen. Ob dies auch für polizeiliche Schmerzgriffe gegen rein passiv Protestierende vor oder während der Räumung einer Straßenblockade gilt, erscheint jedoch zweifelhaft: Handelt es sich bei extremer Schmerzzufügung gegenüber den Betroffenen überhaupt um unmittelbaren Zwang im Sinne des Polizeirechts? Und kann diese Praxis tatsächlich noch als verhältnismäßig angesehen werden?
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Christian Raby
When you hear the name 'Louise Weiss', you may think of the European Parliament building in Strasbourg that bears her name, or of her election to the first European Parliament and her inaugural speech.
What may not come to mind is the woman Louise Weiss herself and the outstanding achievements throughout her life. This brief profile is a reminder that she should be remembered for her tireless search for peace, her tireless fight for women's rights, her endless humanitarian work and for being truly 'European'.
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Panos Merkouris
On 21 May 2024, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) delivered its much anticipated Advisory Opinion on Climate Change. This post zeroes in on one particular interpretative issue, and its wider ramifications for the development of international law, namely the Tribunal’s approach to Article 31(3)(c) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) (which enshrines the principle of systemic integration) in connection with the interpretation of UNCLOS. Although ITLOS did not elaborate in detail on its approach, as can be seen from its entire analysis, the Tribunal has demonstrated a clear and principled choice with respect to the content and application of Article 31(3)(c) VCLT and its customary counterpart.
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Humberto Cantú Rivera
The CSDDD is a game changer that forces a large number of European States to level the legislative landscape with regard to corporate responsibility for human rights and environmental impacts, as well as in relation to liability and access to justice. And yet, its reach throughout global “chains of activities” will most likely bring important hurdles for implementation including in relation to the scope of human rights covered in practice; the need for effective capacity-building in transnational chains of activities; the need for a more proactive dialogue and cooperation between the EU and other States; and last but not least, in ensuring consistency between the national implementation of the CSDDD and international and regional human rights obligations.
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Radu Mares
The EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) seeks improvements in companies’ societal impacts but carries risks of negative impacts, including on the developing countries where some supposed beneficiaries are located. Does the CSDDD recognise and mitigate such risks? The blog identifies provisions in the CSDDD that address the unintended consequences that mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence requirements might have in developing countries.
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Padma-Dolma Fielitz, Melina Girardi Fachin, Danielle Anne Pamplona
While rights holders are not expressly mentioned as a group of stakeholders in CSDDD, the adoption of this important legislation creates a significant opportunity to involve rights holders to define how the content of the stand-alone article on stakeholder engagement can be filled with legal meaning by soliciting them directly.
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Virginie Rouas, Julia Otten, Daniel Torán
The CSDDD requires companies to carry out due diligence on actual and potential human rights and environmental adverse impacts. This means companies have to identify harmful impacts in their value chains and take appropriate measures to prevent, mitigate, or bring them to an end. In this two-part blog post, we will look at which environmental impacts are covered by the CSDDD and how they are addressed. In this second part, we will discuss how the CSDDD negotiations influenced the design of its environmental provisions and identify missed opportunities. We will conclude by analysing what factors are important to ensure that transposition and implementation remain true to the CSDDD’s objectives.
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Stefano Zirulia
On 18 June 2024, the Court of Justice of the European Union will sit as a Grand Chamber in a hearing addressing the compatibility of the so-called Facilitators Package with the principle of proportionality set out in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFR). The Kinsa case (previously named Kinshasa) provides an opportunity for the CJEU to counteract the trend towards overcriminalisation of humanitarian action that has taken hold across the EU. This blog highlights the ways in which the Facilitator Package fails to take account of important fundamental rights and why the criminalization of solidarity that it has facilitated is not an inevitability but a political choice.
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Virginie Rouas, Julia Otten, Daniel Torán
The CSDDD requires companies to carry out due diligence on actual and potential human rights and environmental adverse impacts. This means companies have to identify harmful impacts in their value chains and take appropriate measures to prevent, mitigate, or bring them to an end. In this two-part blog post, we will look at which environmental impacts are covered by the CSDDD and how they are addressed. Our intention is to provide a starting point for the debate by summarising the outcome of the legislative process, explaining how we got there, and offering some thoughts on where we might go next.
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Finn Robin Schufft, Ceren Yildiz, Anna Aseeva
While the material scope of the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) fell behind civil society demands, it does mandate a degree of environmental due diligence that constitutes a tentative shift towards real corporate environmental accountability. Despite its conceptual restrictions, which are the result of a somewhat polarised legislative process, the CSDDD’s environmental annex provides a provision with potential for the protection of biological diversity: the reference to the Convention on Biological Diversity.
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Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, Jorge E. Viñuales
The difference between treating the oceans as a mere sink versus protecting them as a vital part of the environment has important implications under international law. These implications come to the fore when considering the relationship between the UNCLOS on the one hand and the UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement on the other. While the latter treaties in no way legitimize pollution of the marine environment, their focus on oceans as sinks could be misinterpreted to deprive UNCLOS and the customary rules it codifies of a meaningful role in addressing climate change.
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Marta Torre-Schaub
The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) issued an advisory opinion on May 21, 2024 in response to a request submitted by the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law (COSIS). While various aspects of the advisory opinion have already been discussed in this joint blog symposium, this post focuses on a feature of the opinion that has so far received little emphasis: the strong role of science. The scientific evidence presented by the tribunal provides a solid basis for its conclusions on State obligations to prevent, reduce, and control climate pollution.
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Piet Eeckhout
KlimaSeniorinnen has established a remedy which, in EU law, is not easy to locate and may actually be unavailable in light of restrictive CJEU case law. Whatever one’s views on this restrictive case law, it is a fact that the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights now obliges the CJEU to do as much as it can to accommodate the KlimaSeniorinnen remedy and to interpret the relevant TFEU provisions flexibly. One may assume that, sooner or later, the CJEU will be confronted with a KlimaSeniorinnen claim. If the CJEU were to declare such a claim inadmissible, it will put itself in the corner of courts refusing to engage with climate change policies. That would be unfortunate for a court that has long been at the forefront of legal progress.
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Cymie Payne
Can the new advisory opinion interpreting the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) move us beyond the lethargy of unmet climate change policy needs? The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea established the gravity of this question by stating that “climate change represents an existential threat and raises human rights concerns”. The Tribunal acted both boldly and conservatively by interpreting UNCLOS as an independent source of international legally binding obligations to address climate change and ocean acidification.
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Nele Meyer, Christopher Patz
The absence of a number of important human rights instruments from the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, notably for indigenous peoples’ and migrants’ rights, are serious omissions and must be rectified at the EU level during the first review of the directive. Given the status of the CSDDD as a directive, Member States also have the freedom to add these missing instruments during national transposition and should do so in order to further honour their commitments under the UNGPs.
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Mathilde Dicalou, Gabrielle Holly
National Human Rights Institutions are a critical but often overlooked actor in the context of the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. As we enter the transposition and implementation phases, National Human Rights Institutions can leverage their unique mandate as human rights experts in their jurisdictions to act collectively and individually to ensure that transposition laws meet human rights standards for an effective implementation.
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Claire Bright, Céline da Graça Pires, Michaela Streibelt, Daniel Schönfelder
This blog post offers an initial comparative glimpse of the most important changes that the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) will bring for the respective mandatory human rights and environmental (HREDD) legislation in Germany and France. While both the French Duty of Vigilance Law and the German Supply Chain Act already require effective HREDD, the CSDDD goes a long way in strengthening the requirements and bringing them more in line with international standards.
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Markus Krajewski
Mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation such as the new EU’s Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence (CSDDD) have received praise and critique in practice and scholarship. This contribution assesses the regime of administrative enforcement contained in the CSDDD and asks if it meets the standards of effective remedy.
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Christina Voigt
The Advisory Opinion handed down by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) on 21 May 2024 is truly remarkable. However, while ITLOS succeeded in noting the relevance of many other treaties and customary norms in international law, it fell short of a comprehensive and consistent approach to determining which other treaty norms would be relevant to the interpretation of UNCLOS and how. Establishing coherence by “taking into account external rules” means more than a general reference or a pick-and-choose approach to some relevant norms in an external treaty, while not to others.
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Nicolas Bueno, Franziska Oehm
The civil liability provision of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) in Article 29 has been highly debated during the entire drafting and negotiation process of the Directive, but it held on. Where harm occurs, will Article 29 CSDDD fulfill its function to provide a right to remedy for the affected individuals and legal clarity for the companies at the same time?
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Anton Zimmermann
One of the novel features of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive is a private law liability for damages caused upstream in the supply chain. However, liability under substantive law is worthless without procedural rules that allow for its enforcement. Within the context of supply chain liability there are at least two major procedural problems. First, victims affected by supply chain mishandlings might be unable to afford proceedings in Europe. Second, proving that a company has not exercised a sufficient level of diligence can be difficult. Art. 29 para. 3 CSDDD seeks to address those issues.
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Armando Rocha
While no advisory opinion can solve the climate crisis, the ITLOS decision does provide an important push for action, both globally and at the national level. It cleared the way for the ICJ’s forthcoming opinion on climate change, demonstrating how a clear and solid line of arguments can be developed. Although the ICJ may decide differently due to variations in the questions posed and treaties interpreted, it is unlikely to diverge significantly from the ITLOS narrative or reject its findings on related topics.
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Caroline Omari Lichuma
The Article 13 EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive is home of the meaningful engagement provision. It is significantly more robust than similar provisions in national due diligence legislation in France, Germany and Norway. Despite the fact that a number of differences between EU CSDDD and these national laws is likely to give rise to some “harmonization pains”, one silver lining exists: stakeholders gain some leverage.
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Romany M. Webb
The ITLOS advisory opinion does little to resolve the long-standing uncertainty regarding the legal status of marine geoengineering activities. On the contrary, the opinion raises more questions than it answers. ITLOS seems content to leave those questions to others. Indeed, in the advisory opinion, ITLOS noted that “marine geoengineering has been the subject of discussions and regulations in various fora,” including the London Convention and Protocol. But after nearly twenty years, the regulatory framework for marine geoengineering adopted by the parties to the London Convention and Protocol is still not, strictly speaking, legally binding. Perhaps the advisory opinion will spur the parties into action.
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Franziska Oehm
There is a lot to unpack in the now final text of the Directive. The German Institute for Human Rights offers initial analysis in this blog symposium, which starts with this contribution. The contributions engage with the final text of the Directive and give some initial guidance for interpretation and transposition requirements. Topics covered include a critical reflection on the neo-colonial context of the the law-making process, access to justice and administrative supervision measures for rightsholders, the scope of human and environmental rights that are covered by the Directive as well as the transposition phase with comparative analysis in the context of existing national due diligence legislation, its extraterritorial reach and the involvement of National Human Rights Institutions.
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Jacqueline Peel
By advancing a more holistic vision of climate-relevant international law—one that seeks to harmonise but also allow for complementary interaction amongst the obligations set under different regimes—the ITLOS advisory opinion offers hope. It holds out the promise of a synergistic international legal response to climate change that better maps to the integrated and interconnected nature the ecosystems at stake and to the multi-pronged regulatory effort that will be needed to safeguard our climate system.
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Verena Kahl, Franziska Bachmann
Dr. Elisabeth Selbert, who took her A levels in self-study and completed her law degree in six semesters, did her doctorate – ahead of her time – on the principle of irretrievable breakdown of marriage. As a member of the Parliamentary Council, she was one of the four ‘mothers’ of the German Constitution. The inclusion of ‘Men and women shall have equal rights’ in Art. 3 (2) of the Basic Law (‘Grundgesetz’) is her merit. On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the ‘Grundgesetz’, this contribution aims to portray her life, achievements and impact in a short profile.
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Korey Silverman-Roati, Maxim Bönnemann
On May 21, 2024, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) delivered a long-awaited Advisory Opinion on climate change and international law. This marks the first time that an international tribunal has issued an advisory opinion on State obligations regarding climate change mitigation. The Advisory Opinion addresses several key questions regarding application of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in the context of climate change. There is much to explore in terms of both the content of the ITLOS advisory opinion and its potential implications for global, regional, and local efforts to combat climate change. To facilitate discussion and the exchange of ideas, the Sabin Center's Climate Law Blog and Verfassungsblog are partnering on a blog symposium on the ITLOS opinion. In this first, introductory blog, we outline the background to the advisory opinion and highlight some of the key takeaways from it.
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Catherine Higham, Isabela Keuschnigg, Tiffanie Chan, Joana Setzer
On 9 April the European Court of Human Rights issued its first ever comprehensive decision in a climate litigation case. The ECtHR has set out clear directions for member states to follow to align their climate policies with human rights obligations. Domestic legislators across Europe must give these requirements serious consideration to ensure their climate laws not only meet these minimum standards but also effectively contribute to global climate goals. This is imperative for both environmental sustainability and the protection of fundamental human rights that climate change is affecting.
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Lauritz Wilde
Bertha Maria Júlia Lutz was an acknowledged scientist, a women’s rights activist, a politician, and a diplomat. Mostly known for being one of four women to sign the United Nations Charter in 1945 and assuring the inclusion of the rights of women in its preamble, she also played a vital role in attaining women’s suffrage in Brazil.
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Miriam Cohen, Vladyslav Lanovoy, Camille Martini, Armando Rocha, Maria Antonia Tigre, Eneas Xavier
The recent rulings on climate change by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) are—as others have pointed out in this blog symposium—both “historic and unprecedented” for various reasons, not least regarding the question of reparation for climate change-related harm. While redress is a pivotal question to think through in relation to climate change, it has, somewhat surprisingly, received less attention from scholars and has not yet been directly addressed by international courts and tribunals. In this regard, Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland might be considered a missed opportunity on the part of the ECtHR.
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Dina Lupin, Maria Antonia Tigre, Natalia Urzola Gutiérrez
This blog post discusses the relevance of the KlimaSeniorinnen case to the discussion of vulnerability and intersectional gender in climate litigation. To date, very few climate cases have addressed the gendered dimensions of climate change and there was some hope that this case would. However, as this post argues, despite the fact that KlimaSeniorinnen is a case about the impacts of climate change on elderly women, the Court fails to meaningfully engage with gender as a determinant of the harms suffered by individuals. Gender remains an overlooked issue in climate litigation.
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Vladislava Stoyanova
In Verein Klimaseniorinnen Schweiz and Others v Switzerland, the European Court of Human Rights makes many general statements about the nature of climate change and different actors’ roles in addressing it. Many points have been addressed in this blog symposium. In my blog post, I turn to a more technical aspect of the judgment, namely the question of causation. I will untangle the analytical gymnastics that the Court performs regarding this question. I will argue that the reasoning regarding causation is confusing and that it is not clear how specifically the ‘real prospect’ test is applied for finding a breach.
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Geraldo Vidigal
A key and underrated aspect of the recent triad of climate rulings of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is that the ECtHR has brought to the fore the role of trade-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in states’ carbon footprints. While most international climate agreements focus on the reduction of domestic GHG emissions, in the Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland Judgment (KlimaSeniorinnen), the ECtHR found ‘attributable’ to Switzerland the GHG emissions taking place abroad, ‘embedded’ into goods (and possibly services) ‘consumed’ in Switzerland. As I will argue, the ruling appears to require Switzerland to adopt a climate-oriented trade policy.
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Charlotte Blattner
Especially in Switzerland, the KlimaSeniorinnen ruling has been met with sharp criticism. The rightwing Swiss People’s party (Schweizerische Volkspartei, SVP) (predictably) accused the Court of judicial overreach and demanded that Switzerland leave the Council of Europe. The ECtHR decision directly addresses separation of powers and the role of the judiciary in adjudicating human rights, specifically in the context of climate change. This post unpacks the decision and argues that concerns about ECtHR overreach are unwarranted. It shows how the judgment forms an integral part of democratic governance (particularly in Switzerland) whilst being conducive to better laws and policies.
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Anaïs Brucher, Antoine De Spiegeleir
By recognizing the responsibility they have toward future individuals who will be standing in their shoes, current decision-makers are encouraged to adopt long-term perspectives and consider the broader implications of their actions beyond the immediate. This responsibility is echoed in numerous statements by the ECtHR in its rulings about how it understands its own role in European society and the world, and about the deference it believes it owes to domestic decision-makers on the one hand, and to its own past and future work on the other hand. In this light, the ECtHR has struck a pragmatic yet slightly cynical balance between the great demands it was faced with and the great responsibilities it owes to European citizens, to other institutions, and to itself.
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Anmol Jain
More than 35 parties have come together to form a big-tent united opposition bloc called the ‘Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance’ (“INDIA”) to jointly fight the BJP in the 2024 General Elections. They believe that if the opposition could field a single common candidate against every BJP candidate, they could potentially defeat the BJP or at least challenge its ambitious goal of winning a supermajority. The strategy of uniting the opposition against an electorally strong and populist leader is not uncommon, both for India and globally. In the following paragraphs, I’ll discuss how this strategy has played out in the recent past and what lessons INDIA could learn from such a global experience.
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Jannika Jahn
The judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the case Verein KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland is a striking example of the Paris effect: the influence of the non-binding collective goals of the Paris Agreement (PA) on the interpretation of domestic constitutional law or international human rights law in climate litigation. The Court’s decision proves to be an essential element in triggering the necessary democratic debates on which the PA relies “from the bottom up”. Reinforcing the procedural limb of Art. 8 ECHR will be an essential step towards further strengthening democratic decision-making in the societal transition to climate neutrality.
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Vrinda Narain
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may have officially declared war on the hijab in 2022, but the Hindu right’s battle strategy has been set in place since at least 2014 when the BJP rose to power under the leadership of Narendra Modi. A tenacious master of populism, the BJP has successfully altered the mainstream Hindu perception of the Muslim as a threat to secularism. Within this imaginary, Muslims are believed to constantly seek exemptions from the secular regulations constraining the Hindu community.
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S Irudaya Rajan, Anand Sreekumar
With a staggering 450 million internal migrants (as of the 2011 census), migration has become integral to the political economy of India. India also has the largest diaspora in the world, numbering 18 million people. The modes, institutions, and ideological underpinnings of migration governance vis-à-vis both internal and international migration have witnessed substantial shifts and continuities ever since the ascendance of the NDA (National Democratic Alliance) led Modi government in 2014.
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Gaurav Mukherjee
Since the election of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in the federal elections in India in 2014, the country’s performance in key indicators of democratic quality has suffered. Over the course of its two terms in power, the party has sought to subvert key institutions for accountability, enact an ethno-cultural majoritarian electoral agenda, and use federal law enforcement agencies against their political opponents. While there is extensive literature on the erosion of civil-political rights in the past ten years, the effects of the BJP government on social rights like education and healthcare remain under-explored. Therefore, in this post, I explore three striking dimensions of primary educational policy under the BJP government.
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Marta Torre-Schaub
On April 9, 2024, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled on three applications concerning the fight against climate change and the positive obligations of the signatory states of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in this respect. This blog post analyzes the Carême decision in which the Court declared inadmissible an application brought by a former mayor of a French town on the grounds of incompatibility ratione personae with the provisions of the Convention within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 (§ 88). In my view, this is an ill-developed decision, which could dangerously imply a regression in environmental matters.
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Giuseppe Donato
Party bans do not represent a serious threat to neo-fascist movements in Italy. Despite a constitutional provision and an ordinary law regulating the issue, their use has so far been limited to associations of minor size and relevance.
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Johannes Reich
The facts of Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland were categorically different from the ECtHR’s previous environmental case law. The Court therefore decided to incorporate important parts of International Climate Change Law into the ECHR. From an institutional perspective, this approach, which is not without its weaknesses, amounts to the ECtHR’s attempt to maintain the relevance of the Convention in the midst of the climate crisis, while, at the same, carefully striving to respect the realm of politics.
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Violeta Moreno-Lax
The criminalisation of humanitarianism has become pervasive in the EU over the last two decades. Overbroad definitions of the crimes of facilitation of irregular entry, transit and stay produce well known noxious effects on the human rights of migrants and civil society organisations. Nevertheless, the tendency has been to tighten the rules rather than contesting the EU’s failure to pursue a migration control system that is ‘fair towards third-country nationals’ and constructed ‘with respect for fundamental rights.’ In this blogpost, I argue that the EU legislator’s disregard for the human rights impacts of the facilitation regime constitutes an abuse of power. Legislative measures that have the effect of subverting legally enshrined principles (Arts 2, 6 & 21 TEU) and suppress the rights of civil society and the migrants with whom they engage are incompatible with core democratic premises.
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Gauri Pillai
For a piece mapping India’s push-and-pull on reproductive rights – the expanse of its protection and the edges it comes up against – history is a good place to start. Rights in the reproductive sphere are relatively new to India. While India enacted a seemingly liberal abortion legislation as early as 1971, concerns about women’s rights were hardly the drivers behind it. Women’s bodies were a means to achieve the State’s end of population control. It is difficult to justify if women were truly seen as rights-holders. Did this change in recent years?
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Patrick Abel
The climate rulings of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) are landmark decisions. However, it is not obvious what they mean precisely for the State parties of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Have we witnessed, in Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz, a landslide victory for the activists that will revolutionize domestic climate law? Or do the two other decisions in which the Grand Chamber dismissed the applications preponderate?
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Corina Heri
We may not readily describe Duarte Agostinho as a success. But it does offer an excellent opportunity to clarify what we mean by ‘success’ in this context. Arguably, this depends on our expectations – whether that’s to generate attention, trigger mobilization, seek judicial engagement with an issue, clarify the law, or pursue a given outcome, among others.
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Saptarshi Mandal
The last ten years have witnessed the gradual collapse of democracy and constitutionalism in India. Where do LGBT rights figure in all this? I contextualize the wins and the losses and discuss why LGBT rights in India are not “under attack” as they have been under authoritarian governments elsewhere.
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Ratna Kapur
In the context of the rise of the global right, feminist debates on gender and sexual rights can and have at times slipped into a left and right ideological divide. In reflecting on the ways in which gender equality has been addressed in the context of Indian constitutional law over the past two decades, what emerges is a more complex picture.
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Armando Rocha
States’ extraterritorial jurisdiction was one of the hot topics decided by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Duarte Agostinho. Strictly speaking, the “lack of it” led the ECtHR to declare the complaint inadmissible with respect to all defendant States except Portugal. This finding is in line with previous ECtHR case law but highlights a gap in human rights protection and creates a mismatch between the ECtHR’s case law and that of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).
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Cengiz Barskanmaz
Der Rassismus- und Antisemitismusvorwurf dient als wesentliches Argument für ein Verbot der AfD. Aus rassismuskritischer Perspektive geht die Verbotsdebatte allerdings fehl. Sie erschöpft sich in einem symbolischen Antirassismus, der eine ebenso symbolische Antirassismuspolitik fördert, die an der Realität vulnerabler Gruppen vorbeigeht. Zudem externalisiert die Debatte um das AfD-Verbot den Rassismus der sogenannten Mitte und wirbt für einen rechtsstaatlich und demokratietheoretisch bedenklichen repressiven Antirassismus.
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Abhinav Sekhri
The value a society and its laws place on protecting free speech is arguably most keenly felt where that speech takes a critical turn. Which is why the history of this field is littered with prosecutions and penalties being levied against problematic speech, inviting courts to draw the lines between what is protected and what is not. The past ten years in India demonstrate that when faced with speech that is critical of government policy or state action, the state has become increasingly hesitant to let it remain on air. What is perhaps most alarming for the health of democracy is that, in most cases, there is often a synergy across the three arms of the State that curbing problematic speech is the best course of action to follow.
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Chris Hilson
Although the KlimaSeniorinnen judgment discusses a number of rights of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), including Article 6 (right of access to a court), Article 2 (right to life), and Article 13 (right to an effective remedy), the focus of this blog post is on its discussion of Article 8 (right to private, home and family life). The question raised by that discussion is whether the judgment is one that will “frighten the horses” and lead to oppositional cries of judicial overreach around the separation of powers, or if it is more an unexceptional case of “move on, nothing to see here.” My argument is that the judgment is mostly the latter but that it has what, in computer gaming terms, is known as an “Easter egg” – a hidden element included by the developers to surprise and reward those who look carefully. That could turn out to be more controversial.
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Farrah Ahmed
In 2019, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party returned to power in India. The Bharatiya Janata Party oversaw the enactment of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 (‘CAA’) which gave Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian (but not Muslim) migrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan a fast-tracked pathway to Indian citizenship. This post argues that the CAA is unconstitutional, and uses it as an example to clarify two important under-theorised Indian constitutional principles: anti-subordination and arbitrariness.
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Sandra Arntz, Jasper Krommendijk
The three much-awaited judgments rendered by the European Court of Human Rights on 9 April 2024 are truly historic and unprecedented. In Verein Klimaseniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland, the Grand Chamber established that climate change is 'one of the most pressing issues of our times' and poses a threat to human rights. With this ruling, the Court confirmed that States have a positive obligation to adopt measures to mitigate climate change under Article 8 ECHR, the right to family and private life. The judgments will undeniably set the tone for climate litigation in the years to come. It will impact both litigation and other procedures before other international courts.
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Maxim Bönnemann, Maria Antonia Tigre
In a transformative moment for European and global climate litigation, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled today that the state has a positive duty to adopt, and effectively implement in practice, regulations and measures capable of mitigating the existing and potentially irreversible future effects of climate change. In Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and Others v. Switzerland (“KlimaSeniorinnen”), the Court held that by failing to put in place a domestic regulatory framework for climate change mitigation, the Swiss government violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the right to respect for private and family life. The judgment is a milestone for human rights protection.
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Maansi Verma
India is undergoing a “deliberation backsliding”. Since the current government was elected to office in 2019, only 13% of all government bills introduced in Parliament were referred to Parliament Committees for detailed study, scrutiny and stakeholder consultations. While the deliberation deficit is concerning with respect to ordinary government bills, it becomes alarming with respect to bills which seek to amend the Indian Constitution. In this blog post, I argue that the promise of deliberative democracy in India is coming undone, which sets back the project of constitutionalism in India.
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Louise Tillin
As India’s new dominant party system coalesced after 2014, the country entered a phase of centralisation. India has always had federalism with a strong centre, but from the late 1980s to the mid-2010s, political and economic regionalism and national coalition governments encompassing national and regional parties produced an appearance of deepening federalisation. Since 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) became the first party in over 25 years to win an outright parliamentary majority, the twin pillars of political centralisation under a dominant party system and economic concentration, have once again drawn attention to the contested nature of India’s federal contract.
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Katharina Hölzen, Nina Alizadeh Marandi
Wenn über die wehrhafte Demokratie gestritten wird, ist der Ruf nach einer starken Zivilgesellschaft nicht fern. „Verfassungsschutz von unten“, „wehrhafte Demokratie light“, „ziviler Verfassungsschutz“, „intellectual militancy“ oder „konfliktfähige Zivilgesellschaft“ lauten die Forderungen. Fast alle Diskussionsbeiträge der laufenden Debatte haben gemeinsam, dass sie die Zivilgesellschaft in die Pflicht nehmen. Dabei ist es der Staat, der primär in die Verantwortung genommen werden muss. Sowohl Verfassungsrecht als auch Unionsrecht konkretisieren eine staatliche Pflicht zum Demokratieschutz. Entsprechend ist es staatliche Aufgabe, zivilgesellschaftliche Räume zu stärken und zu schützen.
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Julia Clara Lips
Dr. Anna Julia Cooper was born into slavery at a time, when the 1831 Act prohibited the teaching of literacy to enslaved people in North Carolina in order to prevent rebellion and emancipation. Despite this, she was the fourth (known) Black female Ph.D. and the first African American woman to receive a doctorade from the Sorbonne University. She is still considered a mother of Black feminism and a formidable writer, activist, and educator.
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Andrew O'Donohue, Cem Tecimer
In July 2008, in an intensely debated and enormously consequential case, Turkey’s Constitutional Court weighed whether to close the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and ban its 71 leading members, including then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Six of the eleven justices voted in favor – falling just one vote short of the super-majority required to dissolve the AKP and bar its leaders from politics for five years. More than 15 years after the AKP closure case, Turkey has experienced significant democratic backsliding, and Erdoğan has secured a third term as president, extending his tenure in office into 2028. Although the tools of “militant democracy” may be useful, the Turkish case suggests that targeted legal interventions, rather than sweeping party bans, may be more effective at safeguarding democracy.
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Indira Jaising
The Indian Constitution is as much a culmination of the ideas of the freedom movement against colonial powers as it is of the achievement of a social revolution through law. Our Constitution, which was inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, thus, not only provided for political freedom from foreign rule and established a democratic republic, but it also provided a road map to undo the deeply entrenched hierarchies, inequalities, and social exclusions in our society and therefore for a social transformation. Much of the civil society interventions of the last seven decades have been to work for redeeming the promise of the constitution inside and outside courts.
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Tanja Herklotz, Anmol Jain
Having been governed by Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the last ten years, India will hold elections in the following weeks. We use this moment as an opportunity to reflect upon the last decade and assess how the Hindu nationalists have impacted Indian constitutionalism. To do so, we have asked legal scholars and practitioners to reflect upon the developments in particular areas of Indian constitutional law over the last decade. This blog post will provide an introduction to the symposium.
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Lluís Subiela
Party banning was developed in Spain in 2002, with the aim of combating the terrorism of ETA (1958-2018), an extreme left-wing and separatist Basque organisation that murdered more than 800 people. This instrument proved useful in defeating the terrorist group and its network of support organisations, including several parties. Today, there are strong separatist or pro-independence movements in Catalonia, the Basque Country and, to a lesser extent, Galicia, and other regions. Faced with this, there are parties that have proposed using the mechanism of banning parties. But is this viable, and would it be useful?
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Mark Eccleston-Turner
It is unsurprising that equity has featured so prominently in the Pandemic Treaty negotiations – the Treaty is a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was characterised by gross inequality between high-income and LMICs. For all the talk at the start of the Treaty negotiation process of equity, of doing things differently in the future, it appears that very little will change. If it works, and there are very good reasons to believe that it will not work, it will at best make sure that a small proportion of vaccines end up where they need to be, and the rest will continue to go to the highest bidder, regardless of need, equity, or justice.
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Andrea Gatti
Images of hundreds of men gathering outside the former headquarters of the Italian post-fascist party (Movimento Sociale Italiano – MSI), giving the Roman salute in Acca Larentia (Roma) on the 8th of January 2024, have sparked numerous controversies in Italy. The Roman salute was paired with the Fascist ritual of the “roll call”, whereby a leader calls out the name of a fallen soldier and his comrades shout “presente!”. While one would expect the President of the Senate, facing an incident that stirred political controversy, to reason in more institutional terms rather than strictly legally, La Russa was partially correct in stating that the current Italian legal framework is (still) not sufficiently clear and coherent on the matter.
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Helmut Philipp Aust, Felix Schott
While the majority of the contributions to this blog symposium tackle issues of global justice, distributive justice and the impact of a decolonial perspective on global health law, our approach might seem to stand out at first sight: Our contribution is interested in the legal form the new Pandemic Agreement will take. Attention to the formal dimension of the reform process might seem remote from the substantive issues of the other contributions. However, we would like to argue in this short piece that the decision for a certain legal architecture can very well have repercussions on the question to what extent the new instrument can deliver on its promise to pursue equity and hence to arguably overcome divisions still entrenched in the international community.
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Mehrdad Payandeh, Tina Stavrinaki
States parties to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination must improve their public health systems by measurably advancing racial equality in law and in practice. As the world moves forward in understanding the structural dimension of racial discrimination in all areas of life, the General Recommendation No. 37 on racial discrimination in the enjoyment of the right to health can serve as a quasi-global instrument towards a more equitable and inclusive landscape for the realization of the right to health for all.
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Günter Frankenberg, Wilhelm Heitmeyer
Ein Dilemma zeichnet sich durch einen Entscheidungszwang zwischen mehreren Varianten aus, ohne dass es eine unzweifelhaft richtige Lösung gibt. In ein Dilemma scheint auch die Abwehr des „Autoritären Nationalradikalismus“ der AfD zu führen. Die AfD zu verbieten, um ihre auf Destabilisierung gesellschaftlicher und staatlicher Institutionen und „Systemwechsel“ angelegte Politik zu unterbinden, wäre ebenso misslich wie die Augen vor ihrer Gefährlichkeit, ihren Erfolgen und Wahlaussichten zu verschließen und allein auf die demokratische Resilienz der Bevölkerung zu vertrauen.
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Fatou Sillah, Andreas Fischer-Lescano
The coronavirus pandemic has once again shown that scarcity and distribution are political problems. It is only through distribution that resources, finite in principle, are separated into scarce and non-scarce goods. So how can this unfair distribution of resources be countered?
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Augustin Berthout
Traditionally, it is Germany, not France, which is presented as the model example of militant democracy. Among the various provisions of the German Basic Law, Article 21 (2), setting out the procedure for banning political parties, is perhaps one of the clearest expressions of the basic constitutional decision in favour of a streitbare Demokratie. Nevertheless, setting concepts aside and examining empirical data, it is interesting to note that Germany has banned fewer political parties than France since the end of the Second World War.
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Lilli Hasche
Many stakeholders agree that the WHO has not been able to adequately address the political and social problems, global health emergencies triggered or exacerbated by epidemics and pandemics, malnutrition, and access to clean water in recent years. Against this backdrop, there is a widespread call for more equity and solidarity in the global health system. Most of the proposals concerning the reform of the WHO deal with the possible goals and outcomes of such a reform. However, it is just as important to consider how such a reform should be carried out so that the ambitious goals are not compromised by the implementation process itself.
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Sarah Schulz
Die Recherchen von correctiv über ein Treffen von AfD-Mitgliedern, Identitären und Mitgliedern der Werteunion in Potsdam haben einen Stein ins Rollen gebracht. Viele Menschen, die bisher schwiegen, aber dennoch mit Sorge auf eine erstarkende extreme Rechte blickten, konnten nun ihrer Meinung Ausdruck verleihen. Gerade in kleineren Gemeinden sind diese Kundgebungen und Demonstrationen ein ermutigendes Zeichen. Neben den vielen Demonstrationen findet auch die Forderung nach einem AfD-Verbot mehr Gehör. Von einem Parteiverbot darf man sich jedoch nicht mehr erhoffen als eine institutionelle Atempause – allerdings nicht in diesem Wahljahr.
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Anne Peters
The projected WHO Pandemic Agreement, as currently under negotiation, will most likely contain a detailed prescription of a One Health approach (Art. 1(d) and Art. 5 of the INB negotiating text of 30 October 2023). This contribution examines the legal potential of a One Health approach for laws and policies towards animals raised, kept, and slaughtered for providing meat, milk, fur, and other body products for human consumption. My main argument will be that, taken seriously, the idea of One health defies a hierarchy between the health of humans, animals, and ecosystems. The inner logic of One Health is to exploit the positive feedback loops between safeguarding human, animal, and ecosystem health. This approach should modify the still prevailing unreflected and unchecked prioritisation of measures in favour of human health at the expense of and to the detriment of animal health and life. I will illustrate my claim with two policy examples.
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Michaela Hailbronner
Die Debatte um Parteiverbote scheint festgefahren. Auf der einen Seite stehen jene, die Parteiverbote grundsätzlich ablehnen. Auf der anderen Seite stehen jene, die dringend ein Parteiverbot fordern, möglicherweise verbunden mit einem Verfahren auf Grundrechtsverwirkung gegen einzelne Politiker. Sinnvoll erörtern lässt sich die Frage der Parteiverbote aber letztlich nur im Kontext mit anderen Strategien und Mechanismen.
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Gonçalo de Almeida Ribeiro
Contrasting the constitutional limitations on the freedom to establish political parties in Italy and Germany brings out two quite different conceptions of militant democracy: one is particularistic, retrospective, and provisional – preoccupied with the transition to democracy; the other is universalistic, prospective, and enduring – concerned with the degeneration of democracy. The Portuguese Constitution, true to its eclectic character and multiple influences, steers a seemingly middle course between these polar options.
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Adam Strobeyko
The sharing of pathogen samples and their associated genetic sequence data (GSD) is crucial for global pandemic prevention, preparedness and response. It enables global surveillance, risk assessment and the research and development of pandemic-related products. The sharing of related benefits is also seen as key to ensuring more equitable global access to the fruits of science. These issues, collectively known as Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS), remain a major point of contention in the ongoing Pandemic Agreement negotiations. In this post, I explore potential scenarios regarding the establishment or absence of the new PABS System, and their implications under international law.
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Wolfgang Merkel
Die in Westdeutschland populäre Formulierung „Keine Toleranz den Feinden der Toleranz“ ist eine kurze Synthese von Zitaten Karl R. Poppers und des deutschen Politikwissenschaftlers Dolf Sternberger. Sie gehört seit den fünfziger Jahren zum Sprachschatz der wehrhaften Demokratie. Gegenwärtig erlebt sie eine neue Renaissance. Getrieben wird sie dieses Mal nicht von Konservativen, sondern paradoxerweise von jenem grün-linken Lager, das in den siebziger Jahren selbst Objekt illiberaler Observierung und beruflicher Diskriminierung war.
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Hermann Heußner, Arne Pautsch
Die Diskussion um ein Parteiverbot ist begleitet von politischen Bedenken vor allem hinsichtlich eines Scheiterns, das bei einem Antrag gegen die Gesamtpartei zumindest nicht ausgeschlossen werden kann. Doch bereits wenige Anpassungen im BVerfGG könnten ermöglichen, dass ein Verbotsantrag auch hinsichtlich der Teilorganisation einer Partei gestellt werden kann. Dasselbe gilt für den Ausschluss von der staatlichen Finanzierung.
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Jelena von Achenbach
Since at least the 1980s, private actors and market-based mechanisms have played an increasingly important role in the provision of public goods and services and the pursuit of public policy objectives in general. A market approach is also widely used in the field of public health. In effect, the PPP approach, as illustrated by COVAX, can work to structurally protect the interests of (a majority) of the high-income countries. While PPPs in global health may do a lot of good things, their private law, contractualist nature and structures safeguard formal state sovereignty and voluntarism, predominantly benefitting high-income donor countries
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Tine Hanrieder, Julian Eckl
In their latest ‘WHO transformation’ (which began in 2017), the WHO hired at least six consulting firms, praised by the Director-General as the ‘best firms in the world’. Despite their prominent role in WHO processes and reform efforts, there is a clear accountability gap in their role at WHO. Consultant engagement contributes to a trend towards informal governance and public-private collusions in an organization that looks less and less like a public authority.
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Angela Bourne
In the latest episode in a decades-long conversation about militant democracy, the growing electoral success and radicalization of Alternative for Germany have relaunched debates about the appropriateness of restricting the political rights of those who might use those rights to undermine the liberal democratic order. While it is typical for dictatorships to ban parties, democracies also do so, but for different reasons and with compunction. Party bans respond to varying rationales which have evolved over time. However, a ban on the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany would be out of step with more general patterns of opposition to such parties in Europe.
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Anna Holzscheiter
With an estimated 6,9 million deaths and with its enormous scale of economic, social and political collateral damages, the COVID-19 Pandemic has created excessive momentum for re-considering the rules and procedures governing global health – or has it? In this blog contribution, I will discuss the promises and pitfalls of current law-making and law-amending efforts that seek to strengthen pandemic governance post COVID-19 by reflecting on three distinct features of global health as an area of international cooperation.
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Lilli Hasche, Jelena von Achenbach, Andreas Fischer-Lescano
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed systemic problems in the global health system. It revealed that the global health system perpetuates global health inequalities rather than effectively reducing them: The international community, particularly the countries of the Global North, failed to make COVID-19 vaccines widely available to the populations of the world's poorest countries. This blog debate takes stock of the reform debate about a just and decolonizing transformation of the health system. Bringing together scholars from various disciplines, the contributions of this debate ask what a fair global health system could look like and what role the law plays in it.
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Michael Koß
Oft firmiert die Annahme, dass soziale Ungleichheit politisch umso umstrittener sei, je weiter die Angleichung zwischen den verschiedenen gesellschaftlichen Gruppen vorangeschritten ist, nach ihrem Entdecker als das Tocqueville-Paradox. Im Hinblick auf ein mögliches Verbotsverfahren gegen die AfD ließe sich weniger bildungsbürgerlich, aber durchaus treffend auf ein „Herr Tur Tur-Paradox“ verweisen. Ähnlich wie der Scheinriese aus dem Kinderbuch Michael Endes wirkt das Instrument des Parteiverbots aus der Entfernung sehr imposant – und schnurrt dann aber immer mehr zusammen, je besser sich die Eröffnung eines Verbotsverfahrens vor dem Bundesverfassungsgericht begründen ließe.
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Uwe Volkmann
Die derzeitige Diskussion um ein Verbot der AfD ist ein anschauliches Beispiel dafür, wie sich die Wahrnehmung auch ganz grundlegender verfassungsrechtlicher Institute im Laufe der Zeit verändern kann. Bis in die siebziger und achtziger Jahre des letzten Jahrhunderts war das Parteiverbot bei vielen geradezu verschrien; es galt zusammen mit den Notstandsgesetzen und dem Radikalenerlass als weiteres Repressionsinstrument eines autoritären Staates, als sichtbarer Beleg für dessen immer nur vorgeschobene Liberalität. Aber ob man den Antrag stellt oder nicht, ist eine schwierige Abwägungsentscheidung, die man auch nicht dadurch unterlaufen kann, dass man sie zu einer rechtlichen erklärt oder sie in der Verfassung schon vorweggenommen sieht.
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Vincent Réveillère
It may sound trivial, but I argue that the technicalities of EU law have been neglected and that an in-depth inquiry is lacking. To see why such an inquiry might be interesting, we must go beyond the traditional understanding of legal technicalities and see them as protagonists in their own right. We need to focus on lawyers’ knowledge practices and to inquire into the transformative power of legal technicalities.
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Sabine Mair
Although EU law touches on several profound and complex ontologies of ways of living and being in the European polity, these meanings are usually not reflected in how lawyers and legal scholars ‘speak’ EU law. The reason for this is that EU law is formulated in a strikingly abstract and univocal way, leaving little room for an in-depth consideration of the different interpretations of the law by reference to the various values and conceptions of the individual and social institutions that it underlies.
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Toni Marzal
Can there be a cultural study of EU law? The notion of legal culture is notoriously tricky. It is both omnipresent and yet seemingly ungraspable. Can we nevertheless hope to dispel the mystery of legal culture, and seize this notion as an object of study? And can it provide a method to improve our understanding of EU law?
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Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche
I chose for years to consider migrations and borders from a pluridisciplinary perspective. Such a pluridisciplinary approach reveals to be demanding: it needs both to be developed with discipline, and to be opened to wanderings. You have to accept to be confronted with personal controversies, to be faced with internal discourse on the method.
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Antoine Bailleux
Through the representations of Europe that it conjures up and conveys, the European Court of Justice significantly influences the EU’s self-perceived identity. In that sense, it contributes to the shaping of a European polity, i.e. a European political community united by shared representations about its history and identity.
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Agustín José Menéndez
Whereas law-in-context analyses of Community law were relatively rare in the early 1990s, they seemed to flourish from that point onwards. Unsurprisingly, even “mainstream” journals, such as the Common Market Law Review, now strive to attract pieces that combine legal analysis with social, political or economic insights. Does that mean that we are all “contextualists” now? Not in my view.
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Hanna Eklund
In 1957, when the Treaty of Rome was signed and founded what later became the European Union (EU), four out of six of the original Member States were colonial powers. An important methodological question for EU law research is how this historical fact has affected the development of EU law. I argue that answering the question of how Europe’s centuries long history of colonialism has shaped EU law is not just a historical exercise but also a starting point for an examination of EU law of today.
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Lionel Zevounou
The use of the terms 'decolonial', 'postcolonial' and 'race' has become fashionable, particularly in Anglo-American legal scholarship. However few legal scholars in recent years have ventured into postcolonial approaches to European Union law. I will argue that one cannot understand the history and law of the European Union if one fails to understand and acknowledge colonialism.
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Joana Mendes
The conceptual apparatus that frames our knowledge of EU administrative law today has its origins in the legal scholarship that established a new field in the turn of the 1980s and during the 1990s. This scholarly field owes much of its uncontested existence to a series of major handbooks, which systematized materials that hitherto had been sparse and scattered, first in German, then in English and later still in French. Revisiting the past may provide some clues as to the role legal scholars can and should have in a period in which we may be witnessing an epochal transition in Europe.
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Francis Snyder
Law in Context (LIC) was a revolution in EU law studies. It began in the 1980s and ‘90s and its effects continue today. This blogpost sketches selected basic landmarks. Inevitably it is a personal perspective, because if the short history of LIC shows anything, it is that there are almost as many views of ‘context’ as there are LIC scholars. To fully understand the LIC movement, it is essential to consider it in context; furthermore, despite changes in context, LIC remains pertinent today.
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Massimo La Torre
European law is a very strange creature. It is something that has been created, produced, mostly by jurisprudence and doctrine, and this makes European law especially challenging and interesting for scholars, because it has been, in many respects, a product of scholars. How should we approach the study of European law? How could we approach in a sensible way the study of European law?
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Loïc Azoulai
EU legal studies suffer from a disconnect with social reality. If we need a method, it is one that allows us to reconnect with European societies as a bustle of unsettled forms of life, from both an existential and social perspective. Departing from classic institutional and constitutional approaches to EU law, while endorsing the critical turn in the EU legal studies, I will argue in favour of a new “anti-transcendental” perspective.
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Jan Komárek
Turning the existential crisis of Europe into critical knowledge, called for by Loïc Azoulai, requires – among other things – critical scholars. The question is, however, whether the present conditions allow for such people to emerge. I discuss only four of the many obstacles that critical scholarship faces today and conclude with a call for something that might be called “critical scholarship about legal scholarship”.
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Vincent Réveillère
Methodological issues pervade contemporary debates in EU law. There are many reasons for this. Some are specific to the subject matter of EU law itself. The multiple crises that the European Union is experiencing lead EU law scholars to question their classical conception of EU law: a law of integration that should more or less naturally lead to a constitutional or federal order. These crises may also lead scholars to question their relationship with the European institutions, which have been central to the development of the core concepts of EU law and of EU law as a disciplinary field.
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Franziska Bachmann
Based in Casablanca, Hélène Cazes Benatar not only assisted a great number of refugees fleeing from Europe to North Africa, but also helped with the liberation of internees in Saharan forced labor and internment camps run by the Vichy regime. Her social, political and even clandestine activities were significant and extend far beyond the Jewish community until well after the Second World War.
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Natali Helberger, Pamela Samuelson
On both sides of the Atlantic, policymakers are struggling to reign in the power of large online platforms and technology companies. Transparency obligations have emerged as a key policy tool that may support or enable achieving this goal. The core argument of this blog is that the Digital Services Act (DSA) creates, at least in part, a global transparency regime. This has implications for transatlantic dialogues and cooperation on matters concerning platform governance.
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Giacomo Menegus
As climate protests are mounting across Italy, there is a corresponding escalation in repressive responses from public authorities. This trend is not unique to Italy but is rather widespread throughout Europe, as evidenced by frequent reports in national newspapers and posts on this blog. What sets Italy apart from other European nations is the spectacular increase in the use of preventive measures by the public security administration.
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Anuscheh Farahat
The constant portrayal of migration as an exceptional and problematic phenomenon fuels public anxieties and makes deterrence and harshness seem like the only effective political approaches to managing global migration. By contrast, positive visions of how a society of immigration needs to look like for all members of society to benefit are scarce. Yet to counter apocalyptic scenarios, we need not only such a positive vision but also a theory of societal action that helps to realize it. This blog post offers such a vision and theory that is grounded in the normative and legal framework of the European Union. It argues that we should conceptualize the European society as an inclusive, participatory, and self-reflexive community that is based on constitutional principles as enshrined in Art. 2 TEU. To realize this vision, we must understand practices of claiming and defending human rights not as an overreach into the political latitude of the legislator but as a joint practice of (political) community-building.
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Dana Schmalz
The governance of migration, in particular of asylum migration, is caught in the contrast between the political relevance of numbers, and the individuum-based structure of the law. For politics, it matters how many persons arrive, require shelter, enter procedures. For the legal assessment, however, numbers mostly do not matter: The right not to be rejected at the border, the right to access an asylum procedure and to shelter during that procedure are individual rights that are independent from the overall number of arrivals. This contrast is visible in periodical debates about a maximum number of asylum seekers per year, or proposals to abolish the individual right to protection altogether. Such proposals disregard that individual rights to protection are enshrined not just in constitutional law, but also in European and international law, and for good reason. However, it is worth taking the perspective of numbers seriously – while respecting the individual right to protection.
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Cathryn Costello, Stefano Zirulia
The CJEU has pending before it a crucial case on the criminalisation of seeking asylum and assistance to those seeking protection. At this critical juncture, this blog post highlights a sample of important decisions in which courts, giving effect to constitutional and international legal principles, set legal limits on this form of criminalisation. These cases reflect not only the appropriate legal limits, but also acknowledge the character of irregular migration and smuggling. Rather than framing individuals as dangerous illegal migrants and exploitative smugglers, they reassert the humanity of both those in search of refuge and opportunity, and those that assist them.
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Catherine Briddick
A few months ago the UK’s Supreme Court held that the Secretary of State’s policy to remove protection seekers to Rwanda to have their claims determined there was unlawful. The British government responded to this decision with a Treaty and Bill that seek to legislate the fiction, or indeed, the falsehood, of Rwanda’s safety. This move demonstrates the fragility of the rule of law, both domestically and internationally. Addressing the latter, this essay shifts focus from domestic challenges to international ones, exploring whether STCs could be contested as ‘forbidden treaties’.
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David Owen
Why are the reasons given in support of the declared aim of the current asylum policies in the UK, EU and USA of breaking the business model of smugglers expressed in humanitarian terms? It is, no doubt, tempting to simply dismiss this humanitarian rhetoric as hypocrisy, as the compliment that vice pays to virtue. Yet however justified that dismissal may be in particular cases, to turn away too quickly from this phenomenon would be to miss something of political significance in its form and to fail to register the historical entanglement of humanitarianism and border externalisation.
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Maximilian Pichl
The year 2023 was not a good year for the rights of asylum seekers. The decision about a new legal framework for the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) was described as a "historic moment" (Ylva Johansson), but in fact works as a programme of disenfranchisement. If the pursuit of progressive positions are blocked in the political arena, actors shift their strategies to the judicial field. Even before the summer of migration 2015, successful legal struggles had a significant impact on European migration policy. Push-backs on the high sea were prohibited and transfers of asylum seekers to inhumane conditions under the Dublin system were prevented. The draft for the new CEAS are characterised by attempts to circumvent the consequences of these judgements. In this blogpost, I will discuss what the future of legal struggles within the framework of the new CEAS might look like.
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Jürgen Bast
Restricting the freedom of movement of unwanted asylum seekers is the conceptual core of the CEAS reform package politically agreed upon by the EU’s legislative institutions in December 2023. Large groups of the people seeking international protection in the EU will be subject to so-called border procedures. Their claims will be processed while being ‘kept at or in proximity to the external border or transit zones’ (Commission proposal) in order to prevent their onward movement and to facilitate ensuing deportations. Introducing such confinement measures will be mandatory for all Member States, provided that an asylum seeker meets certain criteria, in particular a low rate of success of earlier protection claims made by his or her fellow nationals, calculated on an EU-wide average. Why did we fail to make asylum-seekers’ right to free movement relevant in context of the CEAS reform?
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Joyce De Coninck, Giulia Raimondo
This contribution highlights how European border management disrupts conventional state-centric understandings thereof, while fostering impunity for human rights violations in its enforcement. EU borders are increasingly controlled in a supranational fashion by a panoply of different actors with different legal mandates and obligations, expanding within and beyond the physical frontiers of Member States. In addition, new technologies and the political turn to the logic of ‘crisis governance’ are contributing to changing the traditional practice of border controls, with a multiplicy of actors being involved in a complex dynamic of securitization. The actors, practices and the legal framework governing European border controls are rapidly changing; yet underlying linear and territorial assumptions and liability regimes remain unchanged perpetuating serious human rights shortcomings.
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Aleksandra Ancite-Jepifánova
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, alongside with the EU’s confrontation with Russia’s ally Belarus, however, has deeply impacted the securitisation of migration within the EU. Highly politicised conflict-related securitisation narratives have rarely found their way so swiftly into Member States’ domestic migration and asylum laws, leading to open and far-reaching violations of EU and international human rights law. Hardly ever before have ill-defined concepts and indiscriminate assumptions been so broadly accepted and used to shift from an individual-focused approach to blanket measures stigmatising, dehumanising and excluding entire groups. And rarely before have radical changes of this kind received so little criticism - a deeply unsettling and dangerous trend.
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Sarah Ganty, Dimitry Vladimirovich Kochenov
Since 2015, more than 27.500 innocent people died or ‘went missing’ in the Mediterranean. They drowned by themselves thanks to villain smugglers, the Council submits; accountability for the death toll is a complex matter, the Court of Justice finds; besides the geopolitical times are complex – the Commission is right. But what an accident: mare nostrum, a great thoroughfare, turned itself into a racialized grave. Yet, these deaths at EU borders, just as mass abuse and kidnappings by EU-funded and equipped thugs in Libya do not happen by chance. The EU-Belarus border is another locus of torture and violence. All this is a successful implementation of well-designed lawless policies by the Union in collusion with the Member States. In this post, we map key legal techniques deployed by the designers of the EU’s death machine.
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Anja Bossow
2023 was, to put it mildly, a terrible year for (im)migrants and their human rights. With the declared end of the Covid pandemic came an end to the exceptional border policies it had led to which had further restricted already weakened migrants’ rights. Yet governments have largely chosen to replace them with legal frameworks that incorporated many of the same rights negating policies and ideas- except for this time they put them on a permanent legal basis. Liberated from their initial emergency rationales, asylum bans have now joined outsourcing and overpopulated mass detention camps as standard methods of migration governance. What is the role of legal scholarship and discourse at a time where governments seem increasingly comfortable to eschew many long-standing legal rules and norms, often with majority support?
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Niva Elkin-Koren
Over the past decade, access to data (A2D) in digital platforms has emerged as a significant challenge within the research community. Researchers seeking to explore data hosted on these platforms encounter growing obstacles. While legal policies in the US have generally focused on establishing safeguards for researchers against the restrictions on access imposed by private ordering, the recent EU Digital Service Act (DSA) introduces a legal framework, which enables researchers to compel platforms to provide data access. These complementary legal strategies may prove instrumental in facilitating A2D for research purposes.
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Rachel Griffin, Erik Stallman
Policymakers and the public are increasingly concerned about a lack of transparency and accountability in content moderation. Opaque and incontestable content moderation decisions have potential impacts on freedom of expression and media freedom, and well-known issues of discrimination and bias. Our focus here is on how Article 20 DSA can and should be interpreted going forward. Specifically, does Article 20 require a human content moderator to review every content moderation decision on request? And should it?
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Eleonora Rosati
One of the most-publicized innovations brought about by the Digital Services Act (DSA or Regulation) is the ‘institutionalization’ of a regime emerged and consolidated for a decade already through voluntary programs introduced by the major online platforms: trusted flaggers. This blogpost provides an overview of the relevant provisions, procedures, and actors. It argues that, ultimately, the DSA’s much-hailed trusted flagger regime is unlikely to have groundbreaking effects on content moderation in Europe.
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Martin Husovec, Jennifer Urban
The Digital Services Act (DSA) is a comprehensive effort by the European Union (EU) to regulate digital services. Many on-lookers in Europe and beyond its borders wonder about whether the DSA will influence activities outside of Europe via a “Brussels Effect.” In this contribution, we argue that when it comes to extraterritorial spill-over effects of the DSA that are driven by economic incentives or de facto standardisation and private ordering.
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Martin Senftleben
Article 14(4) of the Digital Services Act (DSA) places an obligation on providers of intermediary services, including online platforms hosting user-generated content (see Article 3(g) DSA), to apply content moderation systems in “a diligent, objective and proportionate manner.” Against this background, the approach taken in Article 14(4) DSA raises complex questions. Does the possibility of imposing fundamental rights obligations on intermediaries, such as online platforms, exempt the state power from the noble task of preventing inroads into fundamental rights itself? Can the legislator legitimately outsource the obligation to safeguard fundamental rights to private parties?
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Giancarlo Frosio, Christophe Geiger
The DSA exemplifies the EU's efforts to create a fairer, more responsible digital environment. Through the DSA, the EU appears to be advancing a process of constitutionalisation of Internet governance, as an important milestone in the evolving landscape of “digital constitutionalism”, aiming to establish a unified framework of rights, principles, and governance norms for the digital space, while also contributing to the development of new governance structures and regulatory bodies dedicated to effectively safeguarding fundamental rights online.
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Eric Goldman, Sebastian Schwemer
Among other things, the new DSA requires platforms to provide “due process”-like protections for user-authors. This regulatory approach is an important Internet Law development, but it’s not completely novel. The DMCA also contains several due process-like protections for user-authors. This post identifies some of the DMCA’s due process elements, compares them to the DSA’s analogous provisions, and discusses the lessons from the DMCA for the DSA. Though the DSA uses a different policy paradigm than the DMCA, it’s unclear if it will achieve better outcomes.
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Rebecca Tushnet
Recent laws in the US, along with the Digital Services Act (DSA), seek to provide “due process” for individual content moderation decisions. Due process, understandably enough, often contains a component of treating like cases alike. It seems to follow, then, that if two relevantly similar users are treated differently, there is a problem of inconsistency, and that problem might be addressed by requiring more “due process” in the forms of appeals and clear rules and explanations of those rules to offenders. But it is said that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. In internet regulation, it is a damaging goal if taken as a mandate to make individual decisions uniformly consistent with each other.
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João Pedro Quintais
On 17 February 2024, the Digital Services Act (DSA) became fully applicable in Europe. The DSA's new approach fundamentally reshapes the regulation and liability of platforms in Europe, and promises to have a significant impact in other jurisdictions, like the US, where there are persistent calls for legislative interventions to reign in the power of Big Tech. This symposium brings together a group of renowned European and American scholars to carry an academic transatlantic dialogue on the potential benefits and risks of the EU’s new approach.
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William Partlett
Russia’s failure to become a democracy after the collapse of the Soviet Union is not an inevitable product of its history. On the contrary, it has been shaped by the adoption of a constitutional system of centralised power in the office of the president. Long term democratic reform will require more than just Putin leaving the office of the presidency. Avoiding a system of ‘Putinism without Putin’ will also require a new Russian constitutional foundation that breaks with centralisation and reshapes the later structural chapters of the constitution to balance power between institutions.
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Dmitry Dubrovskiy
The growing mistrust towards the West in Russia since the early 2000s, as well as general disillusionment with the results of political transition and economic reforms, along with the aggressive anti-human rights propaganda of the Russian regime for a long time, has led to a perception of human rights as a "Western theory" that does not fit the Russian people. This context made it easy in the 2010s to weaponize human rights in the Kremlin’s foreign policy rhetoric and subsequent direct aggression; the rhetoric of "protecting human rights" became the justification for both the annexation of Crimea and the initiation of full-scale aggression against Ukraine.
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Verena Kahl
In conversations on missing female voices in the traditional development of international law a repetitive argument given as an explanation for the absence of women as active designers and contributors to international law is that it was simply unusual to find women in certain professions at that time due to the assignment of gender roles and corresponding conduct and activities considered as adequate. There is certainly a great deal of truth in this explanation. Nevertheless, the argument that the absence of women was a normal side effect of the traditional social circumstances at that time could also serve as an excuse to overlook, ignore and make women invisible, who have actually played a crucial role as active designers of the international legal order. One of them is Christine de Pizan.
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Nikolai Bobrinsky
Three decades after the adoption of the Russian Constitution, we must admit that it has not become an effective safeguard against the usurpation of power and state terror. The conditions under which the Russian Constitution could have served as a secure barrier to the revival of authoritarianism and state terror is a profound question warranting a separate discussion. I suggest that we should look a few steps ahead and imagine an optimistic scenario of a new attempt to establish democracy and rule of law in Russia – regardless of how improbable such a scenario may seem at present. One of the priorities of such an attempt will be to overcome impunity for the perpetrators of crimes of the Putin regime.
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Bill Bowring
The question should perhaps be “what went right?”. I argue that for more than 30 years, as a result of a key provision in the Constitution, and the work of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation (CCRF) there were many positive changes to Russian law and practice. These advances were only possible as a result of Russia’s membership of the Council of Europe and ratification of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). But that chapter in Russia’s constitutional history has been closed.
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Olga Podoplelova
In the early 1990s, the Constitutional Court of Russia (RCC) was viewed as an important institution for protecting human rights and facilitating the democratic transition. However, the good intentions of the constitutional drafters were insufficient to overcome the country’s totalitarian legacy and practices. An examination of the RCC’s evolution over three decades reveals two significant trends: Firstly, the RCC transformed into a machine for legitimizing laws designed to dismantle political competition, civil society, and civil liberties. Secondly, this dynamic did not prevent the RCC from losing its independence and political weight after the constitutional amendments of 2020. In this blog post, I will provide a brief overview of the RCC’s most controversial decisions over the past 30 years, along with the measures taken to destroy independent constitutional review in Russia.
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Marianna Muravyeva
Since the beginning of Russia’ aggression against Ukraine, the government’s rhetoric has become more conservative and nationalistic. In 2022-2023, Russia witnessed the introduction of a slew of oppressive legislation directly violating human rights. Against the backdrop of Putin’s focus on the fight against the ‘enemies’ and Russia’s isolation due to ‘fighting for the right cause’ women once again became the target of regulation with a steady and consistent assault on their human rights, particularly reproductive rights. Moreover, as women actively participate in anti-war protests, the authorities have been treating women more harshly during arrest, trial and sentencing as various reports show. Nevertheless, women continue to fight for their rights and freedoms in courts and on the streets, hoping for change.
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Anita Nissen
Since 2019, anti-Islam non-parliamentary activists have explored the limits to freedom of speech in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands through their provocative Quran desecration acts. Using the non-parliamentarian arena to exercise power from a position of minority, the far-right activist Rasmus Paludan and his party were able to effectively push the Danish constitutional boundaries, while at the same time affecting the geopolitical situation. While the protests so far only have had legal repercussions regarding blasphemy and freedom of speech in Denmark, it clearly demonstrates that non-parliamentary far-right activists also hold certain legislative powers.
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Aziz Z. Huq, Tom Ginsburg
In Germany and the United States, political factions have emerged in the last decade that have challenged some of the core institutions, conventions, and norms of liberal democratic life. In both countries, subnational units of government—states or municipalities—have operated as staging grounds for parties or factions of parties that reject some or all necessary elements of democratic practice. While they have used different institutional tactics to this end, many basic elements of political strategy can be observed across the two cases.
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Caroline von Gall
The case of Valery Zorkin, chairman of the Russian Constitutional Court, shows how elites prioritize their own survival and therefore do not oppose a repressive and aggressive regime, most likely because they fear revenge from liberal peers and victims of the system. And since the war against Ukraine, elites have another reason to stay loyal. For those who fear being held responsible for a war of aggression and war crimes, Putin is the only “guarantor of stability.”
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Vladimir Gel’man
The negative effects of the 1993 conflict prevailed over the benefits from the end of a confrontation. Its outcomes raised a major barrier to the democratization of Russia and paved the way for the use of violence as a means of preserving power. This conflict contributed to the maximization of presidential power and to the weakening of checks and balances in the constitution, which included significant authoritarian potential. The political order established in Russia after the 1993 conflict largely determined the subsequent trajectory of Russian political evolution and its drift towards a personalist authoritarian regime.
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Anna-Sophie Heinze
Die AfD ist die erste (populistische) Rechtsaußenpartei in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, der der Einzug in alle 16 Landtage, den Bundestag sowie das Europäische Parlament gelang. Bis heute gibt es keine „Zauberformel“ im Umgang mit ihr, wenngleich die anderen Parteien mit der Zeit viel über ihre parlamentarische Arbeitsweise und populistische Funktionslogik gelernt haben. Ein Grund dafür liegt darin, dass die AfD das Parlament als Bühne nutzt, um sich – auch und vor allem außerhalb der Parlamente – als Opfer der „Altparteien“ und als einzige „wahre Opposition“ zu inszenieren. Dazu arbeitet sie mit gezielten Provokationen und bricht formelle sowie informelle parlamentarische Spielregeln.
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Matthias Lukan
In Österreich sind bereits seit Mitte der 1980er-Jahre obstruierende Aktivitäten der Oppositionsparteien im parlamentarischen Verfahren zu beobachten. Der Gesetzgeber und die parlamentarische Praxis haben seit den 1980ern unterschiedliche Instrumente entwickelt, um der Gefahr der Obstruktion der parlamentarischen Tätigkeit im Nationalrat[1] durch die missbräuchliche Ausübung von Minderheitenrechten zu begegnen, ohne gleichzeitig Minderheitenrechte völlig auszuschließen. Diese Abwägung ist nicht in allen Fällen geglückt und effektiv. Der Gedanke, dass im parlamentarischen Verfahren im Widerstreit von Mehrheit und Minderheit über unterschiedliche Interessenlagen ein politischer Konsens entstehen kann und soll, scheint dabei zusehends in den Hintergrund zu treten.
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Paul J. Glauben
In der Praxis einer parlamentarischen Demokratie übernimmt die Kontrollfunktion in erster Linie die Opposition. Nach der ständigen Rechtsprechung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts muss parlamentarische Kontrolle verfahrensrechtlich so gestaltet sein, dass sie effektiv ist. Anders als bei der Teilnahme an der Gesetzgebungs- und Kreationsfunktion, etwa bei der Änderung des Grundgesetzes bzw. der Landesverfassungen oder bei der Verfassungsrichterwahl kann eine Sperrminorität bei der parlamentarischen Kontrolle nur wenig obstruieren. Dennoch bieten die parlamentarischen Kontrollinstrumente, insbesondere das Untersuchungsrecht, Möglichkeiten, die parlamentarische Arbeit zu beeinträchtigen.
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Henrike Schulte
Wie Menschen haben auch Verfassungen einen blinden Fleck. Bis zu einem gewissen Maß sind sie blind für die inhaltliche Ausrichtung einer Partei. In diesem Bereich können sie herannahende Gefahren nicht erkennen. Hat es eine autoritär-populistische Partei einmal geschafft, Abgeordnete ins Parlament zu entsenden, schützt und unterstützt die Verfassung die „Gefahrenquelle“ sogar noch, statt sie abzuwehren. Der dagegen von Abgeordneten teilweise praktizierte „zivile Ungehorsam“ in Form von Boykotten und Ausschlussmaßnahmen befindet sich daher häufig nahe am Rechtsbruch und schadet der Sache letztendlich mehr, als er ihr zuträglich ist.
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Lukas C. Gundling
Was passiert, wenn die politischen Verhältnisse in Thüringen dazu führen, dass die vakanten Richter*innenposten am Thüringer Verfassungsgerichtshof über längere Zeit unbesetzt bleiben und deshalb das Gericht funktionsunfähig wird? Die Amtsfortführung eines Mitglieds des Thüringer Verfassungsgerichtshofs ist nicht unbegrenzt möglich. Eine solche Situation würde den Verfassungsstaat zumindest in eine Krise stürzen können, bedenkt man die vielen Aufgaben des Thüringer Verfassungsgerichtshofs, die ihm durch Verfassung und Gesetz zugewiesen sind. Dieses Problem ließe sich lösen, wenn man als Auffangregelung für eine blockierte Nachwahl den Mitgliedern des Gerichtshofs die Ergänzung selbst überlässt.
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Liz Hicks
This post considers the latest episode of Australia’s engagement with civil disobedience under its constitutionally ‘implied freedom of political communication’ — Kvelde v New South Wales (‘Kvelde’). In Kvelde a judge of the New South Wales Supreme Court followed the tendency of some High Court judges of reducing the democratic value of civil disobedience to binary terms: if a form of political speech is already illegal, the Court will not engage with further legislative acts seeking to increase penalties for it. I describe this as the ‘binary approach.’ I argue that the binary approach reflects a particular judicial theory of political change not necessarily prescribed by the freedom, that is also out of step with historical Australian political practices.
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David Kuhn
Nicht erst, aber doch ganz besonders seit dem Erstarken der AfD stellt sich die Frage, wie mit einer obstruktiven Minderheit umzugehen ist. Sie politisch zu beantworten, fällt nicht leicht. Verfassungsrechtlich ist die Lage zumindest im Ausgangspunkt klarer: Das Wirken als parlamentarische Opposition fällt unter den Schutz der Verfassung, die nicht grundsätzlich zwischen „guter“ und „schlechter“ Opposition differenziert. Ein Freibrief geht damit indes nicht einher. Im Umgang mit obstruktiven oder gar antidemokratischen oppositionellen Kräften ist das Parlamentsrecht demnach nicht machtlos, aber auch nicht als erstes und einziges am Zug.
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Sophie Schönberger
Parlamentarische Obstruktion ist in den letzten Jahren in der deutschen Rechtswissenschaft ein wenig zum Modebegriff geworden. Dieser Trend mag in gewisser Weise schlicht dem Erstaunen und der Erschütterung darüber geschuldet sein, wie sich in vergleichsweise kurzer Zeit der Ton in deutschen Parlamenten verändert hat. Um das, was in der aktuellen Debatte gerne mit Obstruktion beschrieben wird, besser begreifen zu können, schlage ich daher eine analytische Trennung in drei Phänomene vor.
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Michael Koß
Die Urszene der parlamentarischen Obstruktion spielte sich am 31. Januar 1881 im britischen Unterhaus ab. Zur Debatte stand ein Zwangsgesetz (Coercion Bill), das es in Irland erlauben sollte, säumige Schuldner aus ihren Häusern zu vertreiben. Obwohl mehr als 150 Jahre alt, ist diese Episode bis heute überaus instruktiv für das Verständnis parlamentarischer Obstruktion. Im Fall systematischer parlamentarischer Obstruktion ist eine Majorisierung der Parlamentsregeln unabdinglich – andernfalls droht der Zusammenbruch der legislativen Demokratie.
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Sven Hölscheidt
Es gibt wirksame Mittel, Sand ins Parlamentsgetriebe zu streuen, also das parlamentarische Verfahren zu verzögern oder sogar Beschlüsse zu verhindern. Obstruktion gehört zum Parlamentarismus. Sie ist in einem Parlament leicht zu praktizieren, aber schwer zu bekämpfen. Bislang werden Obstruktionsmittel von parlamentarischen Minderheiten, vor allem von Oppositionsfraktionen, genutzt. Je größer die Oppositionsfraktionen sind, desto mehr Obstruktionsmittel stehen ihnen zur Verfügung.
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Carolin Lerch, Friedrich Zillessen
Eine autoritär-populistische Partei nutzt ihre demokratischen Rechte, um die demokratischen Rechte anderer abzubauen. Das tut sie im Namen des “Volkes”, das sie anfangs durch Wahlen legitimiert. Einmal an der Macht, bedient sie sich mit der Legitimation der Wähler*innen legaler Methoden, um ihre Pläne “im Pluralismus der legitimen Rechtsformen zu verstecken”. Mit entsprechender Mehrheit kann sie die Verfassung durch Verfassungsänderungen weniger demokratisch machen. Aber auch ohne eine solche Mehrheit oder Regierungsbeteiligung können autoritär-populistische Parteien Demokratie und Rechtsstaat auf Bundes- oder Länderebene auf vermeintlich verfassungsgemäßen Wege untergraben.
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Philipp Sauter
Seitdem die Schuldenbremse durch das Bundesverfassungsgericht in seinem wegweisenden Urteil vom 15. November 2023 scharfgestellt worden ist, steht die Ampel vor der Herausforderung, einen Haushalt aufzustellen, der den Anforderungen des Klimaschutzes gerecht wird. Sowohl das Urteil als auch erste Reformüberlegungen wurden auf diesem Blog bereits kritisch erörtert (etwa hier und hier). Dieser Beitrag beleuchtet dagegen, inwieweit die Auslegung der Schuldenbremse durch das Bundesverfassungsrecht in einem Spannungsverhältnis mit Deutschlands Verpflichtungen aus dem internationalen Klimaschutzrecht steht. Dabei zeigen sich drei Konfliktlinien, die sich ohne eine Reform der Schuldenbremse noch vertiefen und zuspitzen werden.
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Luca Steinbeck
Bereits jetzt ist absehbar, dass die Hochwasserschäden in mehreren Bundesländern, insbesondere in Niedersachsen, hohe Wiederaufbaukosten nach sich ziehen werden. Auf die Frage, ob die aktuelle Situation ein abermaliges Aussetzen der Schuldenbremse rechtfertige (im Hinblick auf die Ahrtal-Flutkatastrophe 2021 unlängst auch von Robert Pracht diskutiert), stellte Regierungssprecher Steffen Hebestreit klar, dass sich der Bund – zu gegebener Zeit – „vor seiner Verantwortung nicht drücken“ werde, „wenn ein Schadensereignis von nationalem Ausmaß mit hohen Schadenssummen zu bewältigen wäre.“ Der vorausgehenden Frage, ob überhaupt eine Kompetenz des Bundes zur Finanzierung flutbedingter Wiederaufbauhilfe besteht, wurde in der aktuellen Debatte bislang nicht nachgegangen. Nach hier vertretener Ansicht muss dies auf Grundlage der bundesstaatlichen Kompetenzverteilung in den meisten Fällen verneint werden.
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Simon Diethelm Meyer
Das Haushaltsurteil des Bundesverfassungsgerichts vom 15. November 2023 hat die Bundesrepublik Deutschland über Wochen in Atem gehalten und die Ampel-Koalition in eine Krise gestürzt. Bei der bisherigen Diskussion wenig beleuchtet wurde die Frage, ob Bürger Verstöße gegen die Schuldenbremse im Wege einer Verfassungsbeschwerde nach Art. 93 Abs. 1 Nr. 4a GG rügen können. Wendet man die in der Rechtsprechung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts anerkannten Institute des Anspruchs auf Demokratie (Art. 1 Abs. 1 i.V.m. Art. 20 Abs. 1 GG, Art. 38 Abs. 1 S. 1 GG) und des intertemporalen Freiheitsschutzes (Art. 2 Abs. 1 GG) konsequent an, hat jeder Bürger einen grundrechtlichen Anspruch auf Einhaltung der Schuldenbremse. Diesen Anspruch kann jeder einzelne Bürger im Wege der Verfassungsbeschwerde zum Bundesverfassungsgericht durchsetzen. Eine solche „Schulden-Verfassungsbeschwerde“ könnte schon bald zu einem Haushaltsurteil 2.0 führen.
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Christine Landfried
Mit etwas zeitlichem Abstand werden die weitreichenden Folgen des Haushaltsurteils des Bundesverfassungsgerichtes sichtbar. Das Urteil zeigt die Gefahren der Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit für die Demokratie, die wir trotz der positiven Wirkung dieser Institution für die Herrschaft des Rechts im Blick behalten sollten. Die Gestaltungsfreiheit und Innovationskraft des demokratisch legitimierten Gesetzgebers können nämlich durch verfassungsgerichtliche Vorgaben zu sehr eingeengt werden. Die Politik verstärkt die Macht des Verfassungsgerichtes, wenn führungsschwache Regierungen auf Entscheidungshilfe aus Karlsruhe warten oder die Opposition unmittelbar nach einer Abstimmungsniederlage im Parlament ihre Politik mit verfassungsgerichtlichen Mitteln fortsetzt. Die Bundesverfassungsrichter wiederum tragen ihrerseits zu einer übermäßigen Verrechtlichung der Politik bei, wenn sie ihre Kompetenzen überschreiten.
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Jens Südekum
Germany is not facing a debt crisis, but rather a serious budget crisis triggered by the ‘debt brake’ ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC). This crisis is deeper than the 60 billion in unused "Corona debts" being shifted to a climate fund, as reported in the media. More fundamentally, the court has mandated that the federal budget strictly adhere to the "principle of annuality" (Jährlichkeit). This is the most significant impact of the court's ruling, and from an economic perspective, it is quite perplexing.
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Robert Pracht
Ausweislich der Statements in der Pressekonferenz vom 13.12.2023 will die Bundesregierung – vorbehaltlich eines gegenteiligen Prüfungsergebnisses – für das Haushaltsjahr 2024 eine Naturkatastrophe beziehungsweise außergewöhnliche Notsituation im Hinblick auf die Ahrtal-Flut 2021 in Teilen von Rheinland-Pfalz und Nordrhein-Westfalen ausrufen. Die verfassungsrechtliche Analyse im Spiegel der Anforderungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts aus seinem Urteil vom 15.11.2023 ergibt, dass eine solche Vorgehensweise nicht von Art. 115 Abs. 2 Satz 6 GG gedeckt ist.
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Ulrich K. Preuß
Ein Staat, dessen Regierung am Ende des Jahres nicht ein und aus weiß, wie sie einen verfassungsgemäßen Haushalt für das unmittelbar bevorstehende Folgejahr aufstellen kann, befindet sich in einer veritablen Staatskrise. Nein, was wir erleben, ist nicht lediglich die Krise einer Regierung und der sie tragenden Koalition – es handelt sich tatsächlich um eine Staatskrise. Bis nach Dubai in die Weltklimakonferenz der UN strahlte sie in den letzten Tagen aus, wo Zweifel an der deutschen Fähigkeit geäußert wurden, eingegangene oder angekündigte Verpflichtungen gegenüber der Weltgemeinschaft erfüllen zu können.
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Günter Frankenberg
Wer – als Gericht – strenge Maßstäbe an Gesetzesbegründungen anlegt, Darlegungspflichten verschärft und einer Regierung auf dem, weiß Gott, steinigen Weg zur Transformation der Wirtschaft in die Parade fährt, muss sich an diesen – seinen eigenen – Maßstäben messen lassen und eine von Kriterien geleitete, geordnete Präzisierung des Außergewöhnlichen einer Notlage vorlegen. Daran scheitert der Zweite Senat. Das wäre unter Umständen nicht weiter aufgefallen, hätte sich der Zweite Senat darauf verstehen können, wenigstens die Nichtigkeit des Zweiten Nachtragshaushaltsgesetzes zurückzustellen und den Darlegungsangeboten der Regierung(smehrheit) zu Krisenkonnexität und Krisenbewältigung näher zu treten.
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Jakob Hohnerlein
Das Urteil des BVerfG vom 15.11.2023 zum Zweiten Nachtragshaushaltsgesetz 2021 stellt die Ampelkoalition vor enorme Herausforderungen. Wichtige Förderprogramme zum Übergang in eine möglichst emissionsfreie Wirtschaftsweise sind akut gefährdet. Da ist es wenig verwunderlich, dass das Urteil auch kritische Reaktionen ausgelöst hat. Ich halte es im Ergebnis ebenfalls für bedenklich, dass schuldenfinanzierte Investitionen in den klimaverträglichen Umbau der Wirtschaft kategorisch ausgeschlossen werden. Ich sehe aber nicht, dass dieses Ergebnis auf der Ebene der Verfassungsinterpretation zu vermeiden gewesen wäre. Vielmehr wird deutlich, dass die Regelung des Art. 115 Abs. 2 GG dringend auf den Prüfstand gehört. Die Verfassung sollte die politischen Akteure nicht auf eine einseitige Sicht der Wirtschaftspolitik und ein verkürztes Verständnis von Generationengerechtigkeit festlegen.
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Lennart Laude, Nicolas Harding
Die neuen Vorgaben des Bundesverfassungsgerichts zur Schuldenbremse dürften viele Landeshaushalte in Schwierigkeiten bringen. Eine Analyse verschiedener Landeshaushalte zeigt darüber hinaus, wie beliebig die demokratischen Parteien je nach Regierungs- oder Oppositionsrolle mit der Schuldenbremse umgehen. Besteht die Schuldenbremse in ihrer aktuellen Fassung fort, führt das für die Länder zu Jahren verfassungsgerichtlicher Streitigkeiten und unsicherer Haushalte.
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Lukas Märtin, Carl Mühlbach
Am 15. November 2023 hat das Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG) zum ersten Mal über die Vorschriften der Schuldenbremse im Grundgesetz entschieden. Das nun ergangene Urteil verdeutlicht erneut, dass die aktuelle Ausgestaltung des Staatsschuldenrechts in eine finanzrechtliche, vor allem aber finanzpolitische Sackgasse führt. So setzt sich im Urteil durch die restriktive Auslegung der Schuldenbremse die Entpolitisierung des parlamentarischen Haushalts- und Budgetrechts, die „Königsdisziplin des Parlaments“, fort. Daneben beschränkt das Urteil auf erhebliche Art und Weise die Handlungsfähigkeit des Staates und versetzt auch der Wehrhaftigkeit der Demokratie einen Dämpfer. Letztlich ist die Schuldenbremse, wie sie sich nun durch das Urteil darstellt, ein Todesstoß für politisches Denken in langfristigen Zusammenhängen – obgleich dieser Gedanke vom BVerfG erst vor zwei Jahren im sogenannten Klima-Beschluss prominent angebracht wurde.
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Lennart Starke
Das Urteil des Zweiten Senats des Bundesverfassungsgerichts erweist der politischen Handlungsfähigkeit und der Generationengerechtigkeit einen Bärendienst. In enger Auslegung der Haushaltsverfassung schränkt es die Möglichkeitsräume langfristig ausgerichteter Politik ein, ohne einen Kompromissweg vorzuzeichnen. Die Richterinnen und Richter haben die Chance verpasst, die haushaltsverfassungsrechtliche Dogmatik in Anknüpfung an den Klimabeschluss – wohlgemerkt des Ersten Senats – fortzuentwickeln und Leitplanken für das Verhältnis von Klimaschutz und Haushaltsverfassung zu formulieren. Das Urteil lässt sowohl Fingerspitzengefühl als auch Weitsicht vermissen, die ein so sensibles Thema wie die Generationengerechtigkeit im Gesamtgefüge verfassungsrechtlicher Normen insbesondere in von Umbrüchen geprägten Krisenzeiten erfordert.
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David Schwarz
Das Verfahren um den zweiten Nachtragshaushalt 2021 gab dem Bundesverfassungsgericht die Gelegenheit, grundlegende Fragen des Finanzverfassungsrechts rund um die Schuldenbremse zu klären. Die Entscheidung, das Gesetz zu kassieren, war die juristisch einzig richtige ‒ und beraubt die deutsche Politik einer schützenden Selbsttäuschung.
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Till Valentin Meickmann
Das Zweite Nachtragshaushaltsgesetz 2021 ist mit dem Grundgesetz unvereinbar und nichtig. Das hat der Zweite Senat des Bundesverfassungsgerichts heute in einem wegweisenden Urteil festgestellt. Das Gericht hat das Nachtragshaushaltsgesetz 2021 überzeugend aus drei Gründen für nichtig erklärt. Erstens ist der Veranlassungszusammenhang zwischen der Neuverschuldung und daraus zu finanzierenden Maßnahmen nicht hinreichend dargelegt und begründet worden, zweitens stehen die Haushaltsgrundsätze der Jährlichkeit, Jährigkeit und Fälligkeit der faktisch unbeschränkten Übertragung von Kreditermächtigungen auf kommende Haushaltsjahre entgegen und drittens können Nachtragshaushalte nicht rückwirkend erlassen werden.
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Philipp Schönberger, Katharina Naujoks
In der Diskussion über den Vorwurf der Bildung einer kriminellen Vereinigung (§ 129 StGB) gegen die „Letzte Generation“ vertraten prominente Stimmen die Ansicht, der Straftatbestand setze seit einer Reform von 2017 keine erhebliche Gefahr für die öffentliche Sicherheit mehr voraus. Diese Behauptung lässt sich zwar eindeutig widerlegen, hat aber dennoch für Verwirrung über Gültigkeit und Inhalt des ungeschriebenen Tatbestandsmerkmals gesorgt. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit dessen Anforderungen ist dringend erforderlich. Nicht nur die jüngsten Entwicklungen in den Verfahren gegen die „Letzte Generation“ machen die praktische Bedeutung einer vermeintlichen juristischen Feinheit deutlich. Die Frage der „Erheblichkeit“ ist darüber hinaus auch für die größere Frage relevant, wie eine liberale Demokratie mit disruptiven Klimaprotesten umgeht.
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Nikolas Eisentraut
Neben dem für die Sexarbeit zentralen ProstSchG findet sich in der Gewerbeordnung mit § 33a eine Norm, die die geschlechtsbezogene „Schaustellung von Personen“ ordnungsrechtlich strukturiert. Sie verdient in der Debatte um die Regulierung von Sexarbeit Beachtung, weil sie illustriert, wie ein unbestimmter Rechtsbegriff zum Austragungsort der moralisch aufgeladenen Debatte um Sexarbeit werden kann.
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Teresa Katharina Harrer
Die (straf-)rechtliche Regulierung der Prostitution/Sexarbeit ist seit Jahren nicht nur in feministischen Kreisen hoch umstritten. Insbesondere die Diskussion um die Einführung eines Sexkauf-Verbots nach schwedischem Vorbild kommt nicht zum Erliegen. Weniger heiß diskutiert werden die bestehenden strafrechtlichen Vorschriften, die die Prostitution betreffen. Dabei lohnt sich der Blick in den 13. und 18. Abschnitt des StGB, denn hier wird der ambivalente Blick des Gesetzgebers auf das Phänomen Prostitution/Sexarbeit einmal mehr deutlich.
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Shari Gaffron
Sexarbeiter:innen sind seltener krankenversichert als andere Erwerbstätige. Ursächlich ist eine komplexe Gesamtsituation, die unter anderem von einer erhöhten Anfälligkeit des Prostitutionsgewerbes für sozialversicherungsrechtliche (Schein-) Selbstständigkeit geprägt ist. Im Ergebnis reicht die Einführung des Informations- und Beratungsgesprächs nach dem ProstSchG als Maßnahme nicht aus, um den Zugang zu angemessener Absicherung im Krankheitsfall zu sichern.
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Malgorzata Kozak
The issue of financing political campaigns has been a topic of discussion for a while, especially against the background of the ongoing deliberations within the EU surrounding the adoption of the draft Political Advertisement Act (PAA). The recently concluded Polish parliamentary campaign and the assistance offered by State Owned Companies, along with the weak level of oversight on these actions, have highlighted certain shortcomings in the proposed framework that remain unaddressed in the current EU draft legislation. In particular, I argue that the PAA does not adequately regulate the methods and extent of financing for political campaigns such as microtargeting and mistakenly assumes the independence of regulatory bodies tasked with enforcing its requirements. An independent institutional system warranted by the European Commission to enforce the proposed rules is pivotal for PAA to achieve its goals.
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Margarete von Galen
Der Gesetzgeber wollte mit dem ProstSchG einen Rechtsrahmen schaffen, der dem erforderlichen Schutz der Prostituierten gerecht wird. Neben anderen Unklarheiten bleiben allerdings Fragen im Zusammenhang mit dem Bauplanungsrecht, die in Praxis und Rechtsprechung nicht abschließend gelöst sind. Prostitution war und ist von Missverständnissen begleitet, die sich zum Nachteil der Branche auswirken. Prominentes Beispiel ist die Verwendung des Begriffs der „milieubedingten Unruhe“ im Bauplanungsrecht. Obwohl mit dem ProstSchG ein ordnungsrechtlicher Rahmen geschaffen wurde, setzen sich bauplanungsrechtliche Unklarheiten innerhalb dieses Rahmens fort.
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Ronja Westermeyer
Als maßgebliche Rechtsquellen der Sexarbeit sind nicht nur die speziellen, die Sexarbeit regelnden Gesetze, das Prostitutionsgesetz von 2007 und das Prostituiertenschutzgesetz von 2017 von Bedeutung, sondern auch allgemeinere, verwaltungsrechtliche Instrumente. In der Praxis sind Sperrgebietsverordnungen besonders relevant. Diese verbieten als Rechtsverordnungen die Ausübung der Sexarbeit in bestimmten Gemeindegebieten oder auch in ganzen Gemeinden vollständig oder zeitlich bzw. örtlich begrenzt. Die derzeitige praktische Umsetzung verletzt die Berufsfreiheit der Sexarbeiter*innen und steht im Widerspruch zum Regulierungskonzept des ProstG und des ProstSchG.
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Demet Demir
Mit der Einführung des ProstSchG im Jahr 2017 hat der Gesetzgeber in Deutschland neue gesetzliche Verpflichtungen verabschiedet, die die Situation der Prostituierten verbessern und sie vor Ausbeutung und Gewalt schützen sollen. Eine zentrale Bestimmung zur Umsetzung des intendierten Schutzes ist die Anmeldepflicht nach § 3 Abs. 1 ProstSchG, die in mehrfacher Hinsicht eine Belastung für die Anmeldepflichtigen bedeuten kann. Aus einer intersektionalen Perspektive zeigt sich, dass dieser Verpflichtung das im Diskurs verankerte klassistische und rassistische Narrativ der nicht selbstbestimmten migrantischen Sexarbeiterin nicht nur vorausgeht, sondern zugrunde liegt.
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Stephan Rixen
Ein Jahr nach Inkrafttreten des Prostituiertenschutzgesetzes (ProstSchG) bot sich mir die Gelegenheit, einen längeren Überblicksbeitrag zum seinerzeit noch recht neuen Gesetz zu verfassen. Ich wählte für den Aufsatz eine Überschrift, mit der ich heute etwas hadere: „Gewerberecht der Sexualität: Das Prostituiertenschutzgesetz“. Auf der Suche nach einer (scheinbar) griffigen Überschrift habe ich die Ambivalenz dieser Überschrift nicht verkannt, sondern gesucht. Die irritierenden Assoziationen, die sich ergeben, wenn die Kommerzialisierung („Gewerbe“) von Sexualität zum Thema rechtlicher Regulierung wird, habe ich eher als rhetorische Herausforderung begriffen, ohne die brutalen Schattenseiten der Sexarbeit hinreichend zum Problem zu machen.
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Stefanie Killinger
Die Debatte über die Regulierung von Prostitution wogt zwischen zwei feministischen Positionen zu Prostitution selbst hin und her, die miteinander unvereinbar sind. Diese Positionen markieren die äußeren Punkte auf einer Skala, die von Verbot bis Liberalisierung reicht. Auf dieser Skala lassen sich geltendes Recht wie Reformvorschläge verorten. Das geltende Prostituiertenschutzgesetz liegt zwischen den Punkten und unternimmt den Versuch der Vermittlung. Trotz seiner Vollzugsdefizite ist es die bessere Alternative, wenn es wirklich um den Schutz von Prostituierten gehen soll.
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Sina Fontana, Pia Lange, Dana-Sophia Valentiner
Die rechtspolitische Debatte über Sexarbeit ist stark ideologisch und moralisch aufgeladen sowie durch stereotype Vorurteile von Sexarbeiter*innen als Opfer gesellschaftlicher Verhältnisse und männlicher Herrschaftsansprüche geprägt. Die Lebenssituation und die Arbeitsbedingungen von Sexarbeiter*innen in Deutschland sind allerdings sehr vielfältig. Dieser Vielfalt – über den Sachbereich verschiedener Rechtsgebiete und den Kreis denkbarer Adressat:innen hinweg – gerecht zu werden, ist eine der größten Herausforderungen für die Regulierung der Sexarbeit. Die Beiträge des Symposiums „Regulierung der Sexarbeit in Deutschland – 6 Jahre Prostituiertenschutzgesetz“ beleuchten aus einer intradisziplinären Perspektive verschiedene Aspekte des Rechts der Sexarbeit und ziehen gleichzeitig eine Zwischenbilanz zum Prostituiertenschutzgesetz.
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John Simte
A constitution bench (five-judges) of the Supreme Court of India recently concluded the hearings related to the the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution and the bifurcation of the State of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) into two Union Territories. How the Supreme Court finally decides this instant case will have far-reaching constitutional implications. In particular, the basic structure challenge pressed upon by the Petitioners, is likely to determine the future of India’s democratic federal architecture and the structural balance of power between the Union and states.
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Anna Wójcik
Over the last ten years, PiS has not only systematically dismantled Poland’s rule of law, but also strategically corroded the country’s media freedom. It has successfully politicized Poland’s media regulators, abused public service media for propaganda purposes, captured private media outlets and supported friendly private media, and created regulatory, legal and political obstacles for private media which criticized it. In this blogpost, I will detail three core steps that must be taken to restore media freedom in Poland in conformity with European standards. In particular, I argue for the restoration of the National Broadcasting Council (KRRiT), the constitutional media regulator, as an independent body; the dissolution of the „bonus” media regulator introduced by PiS, the National Media Council; and for reforming the status of Poland’s private media and the government’s approach to the media in general.
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Matthias Jahn, Fynn Wenglarczyk
Die Debatte um den richtigen Umgang mit zivilem Klimaschutzungehorsam von Klima-Aktivistinnen und Klima-Aktivisten bleibt im Fluss. Sichtweisen, die auf Basta-Legalismus („Recht muss Recht bleiben“) hinauslaufen, verstellen den Blick auf die strafverfassungsrechtlichen Implikationen, die mit der Verfolgung organisierten Klimaprotests als organisierter Kriminalität durch Vereinigungen einhergehen. Der robusten Strafverfolgung organisierten Klimaprotests wegen Gründung oder Beteiligung an einer kriminellen Vereinigung stehen in der Demokratietheorie wurzelnde Bedenken entgegen. Sie haben auf Ebene der Verhältnismäßigkeit staatlicher Reaktionen bislang noch keine ausreichende Beachtung gefunden.
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Witold Zontek
For years, there has been a debate about making the Polish Prosecutor's Office an authority that is arguably located between the classic uniformed services (the police), public administration (tax offices), and the judiciary. In Polish scholarly discourse, two positions prevail regarding the place of the prosecutor's office in the system of state organs - subordination to the executive, or quasi-independence based on an organic statute with the strong influence of parliament. In this blog, I will explain how PiS has exploited Poland's adoption of the former model, and evaluate the promise and perils of a proposal to cure the current defects by rendering Poland's prosecutor's office (more) independent.
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Maciej Bernatt
In the last eight years Poland experienced an illiberal shift. Key elements of constitutional democracy were undermined. The story is well-known to public law scholars, particularly with respect to judicial reforms. However, off most people’s radar have been the changes which increased the role of state-controlled and state-owned firms (SOEs) in the Polish economy which have supported Poland’s illiberal tendencies. Pre-election period is illustrative in this respect, with the ruling majority benefitting from various kinds of support from SOEs which undermined a level playing field. The Polish experience arguably sheds light on constitutional democracies’ weaknesses in effectively addressing the links between political and market power which can further democratic backsliding. In this blogpost, I will highlight why the existing legal framework, in particular remedies available in law aimed at imposing limits on the use of market power, i.e. competition law, are insufficient to address this risk and why a broader debate in public law is necessary in this respect.
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Maciej Taborowski, Paweł Filipek
Ensuring the integrity of elections is a foundational concern for any democratic state. Yet, it faces a grave challenge in Poland, emanating from the Chamber of Extraordinary Control and Public Affairs of the Supreme Court. Created in 2018 following controversial changes to the national judicial system and tasked with reviewing the validity of parliamentary elections, the Chamber fails to meet the essential criteria of an independent court. Confirmed by rulings of the European Court of Human Rights and the Supreme Court itself, the Chamber’s flawed origin and staffing, dependent on political influence and in departure from established rules of law, undermines its capacity to authenticate the fairness and legitimacy of elections. This echoes beyond Poland’s borders as well, since the Chamber’s defective status fails to meet European standards of effective judicial protection, thus raising concerns in the context of European integration. This blog delves into the Chamber’s position, examines its role in validating electoral process and its impact on the democratic legitimacy of Poland’s Parliament.
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Krzysztof Izdebski
The political co-optation of the Constitutional Tribunal has eliminated its role in Poland’s checks and balances. The judges, although associated with the ruling party, are conflicted and some of them refuse to rule, the number of proceedings has fallen dramatically, and the Tribunal's authority has all but disappeared. It is not enough now to pick it up, shake it off, straighten it out, and put it back to where it was in 2015. Instead, if the opposition wins the election, it must rebuild an institution that is both an effective constitutional player, capable of checking the government and a trustworthy and reliable avenue for Polish citizens to assert their constitutional complaints.
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Marcin Szwed
One of the most critical challenges in the process of restoring the rule of law in Poland after the period of ‘Law and Justice’ rule will be regulating the situation in the Constitutional Tribunal. After the unlawful election of three judges by the Sejm in November 2015 and the subsequent recognition of their judicial status by the new President of the Constitutional Tribunal, Julia Przyłębska, the Constitutional Tribunal lost its independence and authority. Instead of defending the Constitution and the rule of law, the Constitutional Tribunal often legitimizes controversial Government actions and openly questions the European standards. Rebuilding the Constitutional Tribunal's authority and restoring its proper functioning will undoubtedly be a challenging task. It must involve at least two actions: firstly, the removal of improperly elected individuals from adjudication and secondly, the regulation of the consequences of their judgments. In the following brief text, I will specifically address the latter issue, based on the report published by the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in June 2023.
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Barbara Grabowska-Moroz, Malgorzata Szuleka
The rule of law crisis in Poland consists of several elements – undermining the independence of courts, politicization of disciplinary proceedings against judges, and lack of legal certainty. None of them, however, raises so many doubts and concerns as the status of judges appointed or promoted upon the request of the politically captured National Council of Judiciary (NCJ).
In this blog post, we analyse the diverse composition of the group of judges appointed or promoted upon the motion of the NCJ from 2018. We also discuss the relevant jurisprudence of national and international courts and the current state of debate concerning this problem and possible solutions.
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Maciej Kisilowski
Reenergized by the former liberal prime minister and EUCO president Donald Tusk, Poland’s democratic forces are well positioned to deliver a stunning upset on Sunday. If this indeed materializes, we must resist the temptation to think of the critical post-election days and weeks as a regular democratic transfer of power. Instead, what will happen should be understood as an inherently perilous collapse of an authoritarian regime. Several legal and constitutional provisions are capable of being weaponized by the ruling PiS party to thwart the peaceful transfer of power.
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Grażyna Baranowska
On June 15, 2023, Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of Poland's PiS party, announced a rare referendum, ostensibly to allow the public to weigh in on crucial elements of Polish immigration policy, alongside the general elections. Yet, in reality, the referendum had little to do with migration and the opposition parties largely ignored the referendum's questions to avoid its deployment as an electoral campaign tool. As such, whatever voters will decide on Election day, it will tell us little about the state of Polish migration politics.
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Jakub Jaraczewski
Poland's rule of law crisis, spurred by the ruling coalition under Jarosław Kaczyński, has caused severe damage to its legal system and democratic foundations. The European Union has responded with infringement proceedings and withholding of funds, leading to some concessions from the Polish government. Yet, Poland's legal community and civil society have shown resilience, challenging these attacks in courts, advocating for democratic values, and maintaining a robust private media. As parliamentary elections loom, the question arises: can this resilience lead to a restoration of the rule of law?
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Kushagr Bakshi
Recently, the Indian Supreme Court finished hearing oral arguments on a batch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of The Constitution (Application to Jammu and Kashmir) Order, 2019 which extended all provisions of the Indian Constitution to Jammu and Kashmir. In the midst of the arguments, the Court pondered upon the nature of the relationship between the Constitution of India and the Constitution of Jammu and Kashmir. While the Court is unlikely to hand down an authoritative ruling on this relationship, the exchanges between the judges and lawyers offer us a valuable avenue to explore. By analysing the Jammu and Kashmir Constituent Assembly Debates, this piece examines the nature of the relationship envisaged by the two constitutions. I argue that the constitutional principle that undergirded the previously existing constitutional relationship between India and Jammu and Kashmir is heterarchy.
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Jevgeniy Bluwstein, Clémence Demay, Lucie Benoit
Since 2018, Swiss courts have become regular sites of criminal trials against climate activists who engage in various forms of non-violent protest to obtain effective climate action from their government and raise public awareness. Since the autumn of 2018, we have recorded approximately 30 non-violent forms of climate protest and civil disobedience across Switzerland, leading to at least 200 trials in Swiss criminal courts. In this contribution, we highlight three themes that have emerged in the trials of climate activists: First, the Federal Supreme Court has closed the door to the use of the necessity defense to justify civil disobedience in the name of the climate emergency. Second, at least some Swiss judges and courts are open to considering and applying the case law of the ECtHR. Third, the idea of civil disobedience remains deeply contested in the courts, as it is considered by the authorities to be antithetical to the Swiss model of democracy.
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María Salvador Martínez
A phrase like "Parliament decisions on its own behalf" has not been codified in Spanish legal and political discourse. Nevertheless, it is acknowledged that there are certain issues where political parties within parliament possess distinct interests that may influence their legislative choices. To counter the potential hazards involved, various elements have demonstrated varying degrees of efficiency in ensuring that decision are being made for the common good, despite the influence of party-specific concerns.
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Edoardo Caterina
It must be acknowledged: in Italy, a judgment such as that delivered by the German Federal Constitutional Court on 24 January 2023 on party financing is currently constitutional science fiction. The Italian constitutional judges have never theorised, unlike their German colleagues, the need for closer scrutiny in certain matters where a ‘conflict of interest’ of the legislature can be discerned. This also partly reflects a different understanding of their own role within the constitutional system.
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Christoph Konrath, Marcelo Jenny
Die Formulierung „Entscheidungen in eigener Sache“ ist in Österreich weder in der Rechts- noch in der Politikwissenschaft gebräuchlich. Die damit umschriebenen Elemente der Rechtsordnung und des politischen Systems werden jedoch seit langem diskutiert, besonders im Kontext der Kombination von Konkordanzdemokratie und der dominanten Rolle der politischen Parteien, die für Österreich typisch ist. Seit den 1990er-Jahren verlieren diese beiden Elemente an Einfluss. „Entscheidungen in eigener Sache“ lassen sich nicht mehr bloß mit Verweis „auf die Rechtslage“ rechtfertigen.
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Teresa Radatz
In Deutschland findet schon seit Jahrzehnten ein Diskurs statt, der bei seinem österreichischen Nachbarn anklopft, aber nicht wirklich angekommen ist: Jener über Entscheidungen des Parlaments in eigener Sache. Der fehlende rechtspolitische Diskurs lässt auf den ersten Blick vermuten, dass österreichische Abgeordnete nicht in eigener Sache entscheiden, sondern stets zum Gemeinwohl aller. Nüchtern betrachtet offenbart sich jedoch ein anderes Bild.
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Amal Sethi
Laws governing electoral issues (hereinafter electoral laws) are vital to representation in a democracy and its existence. This short post outlines why and how electoral laws should be subject to higher approval requirements and heightened judicial review.
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Antje Neelen
Die Finanzierung parteinaher Stiftungen wird häufig als Beispielsfall für eine Entscheidung des Parlaments in eigener Sache angeführt. Ein detaillierter Blick auf die Stiftungsfinanzierung zeigt, dass der Begriff der „Entscheidung in eigener Sache“ zwar nicht gut gewählt ist, die Materie aber für die Politikfinanzierung typische Kontrolldefizite aufweist, die häufig unter diesem Label diskutiert werden. Diese Kontrolldefizite gehen Hand in Hand mit anderen verfassungsrechtlichen Defiziten.
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Fabian Michl
Wenn Wahlgesetzgebung kritisiert wird, ist der Hinweis auf die „Entscheidung in eigener Sache“ rasch zur Hand. Wer will schon bestreiten, dass die Abgeordneten bei Wahlrechtsänderungen auch an ihre eigenen Wiederwahlchancen denken? Dass sie diese Chancen bei jeder Entscheidung im Blick haben sollten, um ihrer Verantwortung gegenüber den Wähler:innen gerecht zu werden, erscheint unerheblich: Denn beim Wahlrecht geht es nicht um irgendeine Sachfrage, sondern um die Regeln des demokratischen Prozesses, die – auch das kann niemand bestreiten – vor Manipulationen geschützt werden müssen.
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Daniel Hellmann
Als Odysseus auf seiner langen Heimfahrt an der Insel der Sirenen vorbeikam, mussten er und seine Männer Mittel und Wege finden, dem verzaubernden Gesang der Sirenen zu entgehen. Odysseus ließ sich fest an den Mast seines Schiffes binden, und seine Männer stopften sich Wachs in die Ohren. Vor einem ähnlichen Problem stehen Parteien und Politiker, wenn sie Entscheidungen in eigener Sache treffen, also Entscheidungen, in denen sie selbst die Regeln des politischen Wettbewerbs und damit ihres Machterwerbs bestimmen können.
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Michael Koß
Entscheidungen des Parlaments in eigener Sache – gibt es das im politischen System der Bundesrepublik? Vordergründig betrachtet mit Sicherheit, denn natürlich existieren Materien, die vor allem die im Parlament vertretenen Parteien angehen und gleichzeitig von diesen entschieden werden. Faktisch aber werden diese Materien in Deutschland aber – nach dem besten Wissen dieses Verfassers ausnahmslos – vom Bundesverfassungsgericht (mit-)entschieden.
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Ulrich Sieberer
Entscheidungen von politischen Akteuren „in eigener Sache“ werden in Öffentlichkeit und Wissenschaft zu Recht kritisch betrachtet. Führen diese nicht zwangsläufig dazu, dass politische Partien eigene Interessen verfolgen und damit Gemeinwohlüberlegungen auf der Strecke bleiben? Diese Frage stellt sich besonders bei Themen wie der Parteienfinanzierung, in denen Parteien gemeinsame Interessen haben und diese im Sinne einer Kartelllogik auf Kosten der Gesamtgesellschaft durchsetzen können. Ohne die Relevanz dieser Problematik abzustreiten, argumentiert dieser Beitrag, dass Entscheidungen in eigener Sache weniger problematisch sein können, wenn sie dem politischen Wettbewerb unterworfen sind.
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Heinrich Lang
Es ist ein auf den ersten Blick eigenartiger Befund. Während im Bereich der Exekutive und Judikative Entscheidungen in eigener Sache Gegenstand von Ausschließungs- und Befangenheitsregelungen sind und damit als Problem normativ umfangen und im Grundsatz auch problemadäquat gelöst werden, scheinen vergleichbare Normen für die erste Gewalt zu fehlen. Die damit zusammenhängenden Probleme werden plastisch dem Fragenkreis der Entscheidung in eigener Sache zugeordnet. Allerdings ist dieser namentlich von Hans Herbert von Arnim mitgeprägte Begriff missverständnisträchtig, gefahrgeneigt und umstritten.
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Arne Pilniok
Mit dem jüngsten Stakkato von verfassungsgerichtlichen Urteilen zur Politikfinanzierung und den Diskussionen um die Wahlrechtsreform ist der Topos der „Entscheidungen in eigener Sache“ wieder in den Fokus gerückt. Als juristische Kategorie sind sie durchaus ambivalent. Zugleich verweist die Formulierung von den „Entscheidungen in eigener Sache“ auf eines der zentralen Probleme im Recht der Politik: Wo strukturelle Kontrolldefizite entstehen können, sind rechtliche und institutionelle Reaktionen zur Sicherung des Gemeinwohls notwendig.
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Michaela Hailbronner
Parlamente entscheiden ständig in eigener Sache. Bei Themen wie dem Wahlrecht oder Abgeordnetendiäten ist dies auch kaum anders denkbar. Wer soll auch sonst entscheiden? Angesichts dessen kann der Begriff der "Entscheidungen in eigener Sache", den das Bundesverfassungsgericht als Argument für eine verschärfte gerichtliche Kontrolle einsetzt, in der Tat populistisch erscheinen: als Ausdruck des Misstrauens gegenüber denen "da oben" oder eben "in Berlin".
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Jelena von Achenbach
Die Demokratie kann sich nicht selbst aus dem Weg gehen: Sie muss sich selbst organisieren. Die Rechte, Institutionen und Verfahren, die demokratische Selbstbestimmung ermöglichen, sind nicht natürlich vorfindbar. Jemand muss sie als freiheitlich-gleichheitsgerechte Rechtsform der kollektiven Willensbildung und des kollektiven Handelns machen. Also stellt sich die Frage: wer macht sie?
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Martin Morlok
Entscheidungen in eigener Sache sind Akte der Selbstbestimmung. Zum Problem werden sie erst dann, wenn sie auch andere betreffen, wenn sie zugleich auch Entscheidungen über andere darstellen. Dies ist regelmäßig der Fall bei Entscheidungen der organisierten Staatlichkeit. Diese beanspruchen Verbindlichkeit gegenüber ihren Adressaten, sie stellen einen Gehorsamsanspruch an diese. Solche verbindlichen Entscheidungen begründen ein Legitimationsproblem.
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Sophie Schönberger
Demokratische parlamentarische Entscheidungen beruhen in einer idealtypischen Perspektive darauf, dass das Gemeinwohl durch den deliberativen politischen Prozess herausgearbeitet und verwirklicht wird. Anders als im Bereich der Administrative und Judikative soll die Gemeinwohlorientierung hier also gerade nicht durch eine Entpolitisierung, sondern umgekehrt durch eine umfassende Politisierung erreicht werden. Aufgrund der Pluralität des Gremiums sollen sich dabei die gegenläufigen politischen Interessen ausgleichen und insgesamt zu einem gemeinwohlförderlichen Ergebnis führen. Dieses Modell der Gemeinwohlfindung im politischen Prozess kommt jedoch an seine Grenzen, wenn nicht über allgemeine gesellschaftliche Fragen, sondern spezifisch über die Bedingungen des politischen Systems selbst verhandelt wird.
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Adam Wagner
Disruptive environmental protest has become a hugely controversial issue in the UK, both politically and legally. It is likely to be a wedge issue in the upcoming General Election. Both major political parties are talking tough on the issue, and the government has instituted draconian new laws. The courts, for their part, are permitting ever more 'Mega Persons Unknown injunctions' and imposing increasingly longer prison terms for peaceful – but disruptive – protests. Part of this is an international trend, caused by the indisputable evidence of global warming and the increasingly activist environmental movement. But from a UK practitioner’s perspective, it is deeply worrying that there are now a large number of peaceful protesters in the prison system, or facing huge bills for legal costs, or both.
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Liz Hicks
In Germany, disruptive protest demanding climate change mitigation policies has provoked popular and constitutional discussion. Commentators have questioned whether acts of illegality committed as civil disobedience should be treated distinctly from ‘ordinary’ criminality and punished more leniently. In other parts of the world, however, legislative activity has singled out the illegality involved in civil disobedience to the opposite end. Legislatures have introduced laws that radically increase penalties for existing offences involved in disruptive protest and blockades, conferred new powers on police, and created new offences for previously legal forms of protest. In this post I explore an Australian legislative trend of the last decade that specifically targets environmental civil disobedience by imposing additional criminal penalties upon its exercise. The Australian case study is a cautionary tale of what can follow a failure to recognise democratic value in civil disobedience and treat it with constitutional nuance.
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Alberto Barrio
The platform work directive proposal presents important implications for the implementation of social security schemes (e.g. those relating to unemployment or incapacity). In particular, it required digital labour platforms to declare and inform social protection authorities of the work performed through the platform and to share with them relevant data, among other aspects. It is important that these implications are maintained in a final instrument, as suggested by the Parliament in its position for trilogue negotiations.
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Hannah Espín Grau, Tobias Singelnstein
Bereits seit längerer Zeit kommen in (Teilen) der Polizei Techniken der Gewaltanwendung zum Einsatz, die als Schmerzgriffe bezeichnet werden. In der englischsprachigen Debatte werden diese Techniken unter dem Schlagwort „pain compliance“ diskutiert, was deutlich macht: Durch Schmerzen soll Gehorsam durchgesetzt werden. Rechtlich stellen sich Schmerzgriffe als problematisch dar, da sie vor allem auf eine Willensbeugung der Betroffenen durch (Angst vor) Schmerz abzielen. Die polizeiliche Praxis überformt zudem die rechtlichen Vorgaben zur Anwendung von Schmerzgriffen zugunsten einer effizienten polizeilichen Einsatzdurchführung. Sozialwissenschaftlich bzw. kriminologisch können Schmerzgriffe daher als Normalisierung und Verselbständigung polizeilicher Gewaltpraxen verstanden werden.
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Silvia Rainone
The Commission’s proposal for a Platform Work Directive contains a number of provisions recognising collective labour rights for platform workers, mostly revolving around information and consultation rights for workers’ representatives. This suggests that, at least in principle, extending workplace representation and industrial relation practices to the platform economy is part of the Commission’s policy agenda. However, this blogpost argues that even if certain collective labour rights are formally recognised, the proposed directive does not offer adequate basis for their effective exercise. Trade union organising, collective bargaining and workplace democracy do not find sufficient support in the directive, thus limiting their development within the platform economy.
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Joanna Bronowicka
The Commission's proposal of the new platform labour directive came with a core promise to platform workers in the EU: to recognize the impact algorithmic management has on their working conditions. In doing so, the directive seeks to clarify and strengthen data rights of workers, regardless of whether they are classified as employees or not. This blog post argues that the main achievement of the proposed Directive is to clarify and reframe existing norms about automated decision-making in a way that shifts attention from data to working conditions. While the specific proposed provisions do not go far beyond norms already established in the General Data Protection Regulation, they are reframed in a way that clarifies that digital labour platforms have the responsibility to ensure fairness, transparency and accountability when making decisions that rely on algorithms.
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Eva Kocher
With the Council position of 12 June on the proposal for a EU Directive on improving working conditions in platform work, a presumption of employment status for digital platform work is now becoming the subject of trilogue negotiations. A lot could be said about the proposal, the process, and the innovation that would come with an EU Directive on platform work as such. This comment focuses on one central part of the proposal: the presumption of employment. The Commission’s and Council’s proposals suggest a well meant, but timid instrument. Given the already limited scope of te proposals in their definition of “digital labour platforms”, only the Parliament’s position that does not condition the presumption to any additional criteria is able to convince.
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M. Six Silberman
On 9 December 2021, the European Commission announced its proposal for a Directive on improving working conditions in platform work—the ‘Platform Work Directive.’ The Directive’s main goals are to reduce false self-employment among persons performing platform work, to regulate algorithmic management on digital labour platforms, and to provide legal certainty for platforms. This blog post focuses on an element of the proposed Directive that has gone relatively unremarked in the scholarly and policy debates so far: the definition of ‘digital labour platform.’
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Valentin Niebler
The proposals for an EU Directive on platform work have been subject to much debate, and will continue to do so during the now announced trilogue negotiations in Brussels. What often remains blurry in this debate are the subjects of the legislation: Who is working on platforms? Are we talking about leisurely side arrangements, freelance entrepreneurs, or wrongly employed full-time earners? Empirically, we find a very broad spectrum of digital labour platforms, from online crowdworking platforms to the organisation of offline work such as care, repair or cleaning. This blog post examines the realities of platform labour and kicks off the new symposium 'Final Call for Digital Workers Rights in the EU'.
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Andreas Gutmann, Tore Vetter
Die Versammlungsfreiheit gerät unter Druck. Immer öfter versuchen staatliche Behörden in verblüffender Verkennung verfassungsrechtlicher Prinzipien dieses Grundrecht zu entkernen. Der neueste Akt dieser Entwicklung stammt aus Baden-Württemberg. Per Allgemeinverfügung vom 7.7.2023 verbietet die Stadt Stuttgart bis zum Ende des Jahres Blockadeaktionen der Klimabewegung, bei denen sich Aktivist*innen auf die Straße kleben oder anderweitig mit der Straße oder anderen Personen verbinden. Was zunächst als lokale Randnotiz erscheinen mag, erweist sich beim näheren Blick als Lehrstück eines sowohl zweck-, als auch rechtswidrigen Umgangs des Staates mit Klimaprotesten.
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Stefan König
Um den Aktivist:innen der „Letzten Generation“ mit den Mitteln des Strafrechts zu Leibe zu rücken, schwingt die Generalstaatsanwaltschaft in München die große OK-Keule unter Einsatz des § 129 StGB. Die Staatsanwaltschaft Berlin scheint sich jetzt in die entgegengesetzte Richtung zu bewegen. Sie greift in die strafprozessuale Mottenkiste und will das „beschleunigte Verfahren“ (§§ 417 ff. StPO) zum Einsatz bringen, ein zur Aburteilung Kleinkrimineller vorgesehenes Verfahren. Dazu sind Sonderabteilungen beim Amtsgericht Tiergarten geschaffen worden, die zur besonderen Verwendung durch die Staatsanwaltschaft Berlin eingerichtet sind. Das lässt den Eindruck von „Ausnahmegerichten“, eine Verletzung des Rechtes auf den gesetzlichen Richter (Art. 101 GG) und eine Beeinträchtigung der richterlichen Unabhängigkeit entstehen.
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Mathias Hong
The climate protection ruling of the German Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe of 2021 is a historic decision. It is on a par with the Court's major landmark decisions such as Lüth, Elfes, or Brokdorf. It updates the fundamental value of equal freedom: Freedom includes future freedom and, as a right to intertemporal freedom, can demand a proportional distribution of freedom opportunities over time.
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Lena Herbers
Spätestens seit dem Frühjahr 2022 ist ziviler Ungehorsam in Deutschland wieder in aller Munde. Die Justiz, Wissenschaft und die politische Öffentlichkeit sind durch die Protestaktionen insbesondere der „Letzten Generation“ mit dynamischen Entwicklungen konfrontiert. Immer im Raum, aber selten ausgesprochen, steht dabei die Kernfrage: Wann ist es gerechtfertigt, Gesetze zu brechen, um für ein höheres Ideal einzustehen? Ein Blick in die Geschichte sozialer Bewegungen zeigt: Dann, wenn es um existenzielle Krisen geht.
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Mathias Hong
Der Klimaschutzbeschluss des Bundesverfassungsgerichts von 2021 ist eine historische Entscheidung. Sie kommt an Bedeutung den großen Leitentscheidungen des Gerichts gleich, etwa dem Lüth-Urteil, dem Elfes-Urteil oder dem Brokdorf-Beschluss. Sie entwickelt den Grundwert der gleichen Freiheit weiter und erkennt, auf den Klimaschutz begrenzt, ein Grundrecht auf Nachhaltigkeit an: Freiheit schließt künftige Freiheit ein. Als intertemporale Freiheit kann sie eine verhältnismäßige Verteilung von Freiheitschancen über die Zeit verlangen. Die Entscheidung zeigt einmal mehr, dass Grundrechtsgerichte Rechte zugleich „erfinden“ und „finden“ können: Sie hat die intertemporale Freiheit – im Entdeckungskontext – schöpferisch-innovativ erfunden, sie aber zugleich – im Rechtfertigungskontext – als überzeugende Verfassungsauslegung im positiv geltenden Verfassungsrecht gefunden.
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Lisa Beer
In Zeiten planetarer Krisen (z.B. Klimawandel und Verlust der Artenvielfalt) können Rechtsvorschriften zur Verwirklichung von Nachhaltigkeitszielen erhebliches Steuerungspotenzial entfalten. Dies gilt insbesondere für Vorschriften des Gesellschaftsrechts, da Unternehmen sowohl bei der Verursachung als auch bei der Bewältigung ökologischer (und ebenso sozialer) Probleme eine entscheidende Rolle spielen. Aus diesem Grund finden immer mehr „nachhaltigkeitsbezogene“ Vorschriften Eingang in Gesellschaftsrechtsordnungen, die ein breites Spektrum von Regulierungsstrategien abbilden. Einige Staaten verfolgen neben der Statuierung von Offenlegungs- und Sorgfaltspflichten einen Ansatz, der in Deutschland durch einen im Jahr 2020 vorgelegten Gesetzentwurf über eine „GmbH mit gebundenem Vermögen“ (GmbH-gebV) aufgegriffen wurde: Die Einführung einer gesellschaftsrechtlichen Vermögensbindung (asset lock).
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Andreas Nitschke
„Als Polizistin bei der Letzten Generation“ – so betitelte ZEIT Online gestern einen Bericht über eine Hauptkommissarin, die in ihrer Freizeit die Letzte Generation unterstützt. Der Fall sorgt für Aufsehen – und rückt eine Frage in den Mittelpunkt, die in der bisherigen Diskussion über die Letzte Generation bislang keine Beachtung gefunden hat: Dürfen sich Beamt:innen für diese Bewegung engagieren?
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Andreas Buser
In Deutschland ist in den letzten Jahren eine lebhafte juristische Diskussion zur Begrünung des Grundgesetzes entbrannt. Die Einführung des Konzepts der planetaren Grenzen in das Grundgesetz findet sich jedoch bisher, soweit ersichtlich, nicht unter den Reformvorschlägen. Die explizite Einführung einer planetaren Dimension ins Grundgesetz hätte aber mehrere Vorteile.
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Felicitas Sommer
Das Klimaschutzregime wäre ein gänzlich anderes, wenn wir es vom Boden her denken würden. Böden sind es, auf denen die Aktivitäten stattfinden, die Treibhausgase emittieren und jene Ökosysteme zerstören, welche so grundlegend benötigt werden, um Leben zu erhalten, CO2 zu binden und die Erde zu kühlen. Nur weil wir den Klimawandel zu einem bodenlosen Thema gemacht haben – sozusagen rechnerisch in die Atmosphäre verschoben haben - können wir ignorieren, dass der Boden die relevanteste Ressource zur Eindämmung des Klimawandels und der Ökosystemkatastrophe ist und für eine nachhaltige Transformation die Beschaffenheiten lokaler Ökosysteme mitgedacht werden muss.
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Isa Bilgen
Mit dem Klima wandelt sich auch notwendig die offene Gesellschaft. Und mit ihr wandelt sich wiederum auch die Verfassung(-sinterpretation). Periodisch wiederkehrende Gesundheits- und Sicherheitskrisen fordern eine dynamische Reaktion des Grundgesetzes auf mit ihnen einhergehende Probleme. In andauernden Krisen wie der Umweltkrise muss die Verfassung gleichzeitig in vielerlei Hinsicht nachhaltig sein. Dabei muss das, was wir unter Freiheit, Klima‑, Umwelt- oder Tierschutz verstehen, immer im Wandel bleiben.
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Lucia Sommerer
Genau jetzt, während wir zum Auftakt der zweiten Jahreskonferenz Junges Nachhaltigkeitsrecht in diesen altehrwürdigen Räumen der Universität Halle sprechen, findet vor dem Landgericht Halle ein Schadensersatzprozess statt. DHL verklagt Klimaaktivist:innen, junge Menschen so alt wie Sie, die die Zufahrt zum Flughafen Leipzig mit Sitzblockaden versperrt hatten, wodurch der Transport von Paketen behindert und DHLs Profite eigenen Angaben zu folge um Millionenbeträge gemindert wurden. In doppelter Hinsicht steht dabei die Zukunft junger Menschen auf dem Spiel: mit Blick auf die Klimakrise und mit Blick auf die drohende finanzielle Schuldenlast bei Unterliegen im Prozess. Schon dieser Fall zeigt die zentrale Rolle des Rechts für Fragen der Nachhaltigkeit auf.
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Katharina Gelbrich
Rechtspolitische Ansätze versuchen in Zeiten der planetaren Krisen mehr und mehr, Verbraucherschutz und ökologische Nachhaltigkeit unter einen Hut zu bekommen. Dies zeigt sich an zahlreichen Gesetzesvorschlägen der EU, wie zum Beispiel den Vorschlägen für eine Ökodesignverordnung und der Richtlinie zur Stärkung der Verbraucher beim ökologischen Wandel, sowie z.B. an der Verbindung der Themen Umwelt, Naturschutz, nukleare Sicherheit und Verbraucherschutz unter dem Dach eines Bundesministeriums. Kritisiert wird dabei häufig, dass es sich um grundsätzlich gegensätzliche Interessen handelt und ökologische Nachhaltigkeit nur zulasten der Verbraucher*innen gefördert werden kann (z.B. Teuerungen, Abbau des Schutzniveaus), während der Verbraucherschutz die weitere Zerstörung des Planeten unweigerlich fördert. Tatsächlich ist an vielen Stellen aber schon jetzt eine Verbindung beider Ziele möglich.
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Carolin Heinzel
Faktisch sind Frauen* stärker von den Auswirkungen durch die Überschreitungen der planetaren Grenzen, insbesondere des Klimawandels und der damit verbundenen Naturkatastrophen, betroffen. Obgleich nicht alle Frauen* und keineswegs nur Frauen* tangiert sind, ist eine sog. genderspezifische Vulnerabilität messbar, da sich Gender oft mit anderen Merkmalen wie einer schlechteren sozio-ökonomischen Stellung oder einem erschwerten Zugang zu Ressourcen z. B. Land und Finanzmitteln überschneidet. Frauen* sind aber nicht nur passive Betroffene, sondern übernehmen auch aktiv Führungsrollen zugunsten von Klimaschutz und Klimawandelanpassung, beispielsweise im lokalen Wassermanagement oder in der Rechtsdurchsetzung.
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Charlotte Maier
Die Mediation greift im Gegensatz zur gerichtlichen Konfliktlösung auf eine jüngere Historie und weniger Praxisfälle zurück. Dennoch hat sie der gerichtlichen Konfliktlösung einen wesentlichen – und angesichts der rasant voranschreitenden Umweltzerstörung vielleicht sogar entscheidenden – Aspekt voraus: Mediation kann Ökologie. Sie ist ein Konfliktlösungsverfahren, das in seiner konsequenten Anwendung originär zur Erhaltung der Lebensgrundlage beiträgt. Denn die Mediation, die als Verfahrensziel den Interessenausgleich der Konfliktbeteiligten anstrebt, weiß um die Notwendigkeit der Beteiligung aller vom Konflikt Betroffenen für die Gewährleistung einer ökologisch nachhaltigen Konfliktlösung. Damit hat sie eben nicht nur die menschliche Spezies, sondern auch die Tier- und Umwelt im Blick.
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Natalija Bitiukova
On 25 May 2023, we mark the fifth anniversary of the General Data Protection Regulation’s (GDPR) full application in the European Union (EU). While the Regulation is primarily known for its impact on business, it also fostered significant changes to data processing by media outlets, which are often overlooked in discussions about data protection. This blog post analyzes what is commonly called the ”journalistic exemption” under Article 85 of the GDPR that requires Member States to regulate the extent to which GDPR applies to journalists and others writing in the public interest. Further, this contribution reflects on how exactly that journalistic exemption is implemented across the Member States, and considers the problematic consequences of the GDPR’s uneven application to the media sector, including instrumentalization of GDPR in the strategic litigation (SLAPPs) against journalists.
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Romy Klimke, Leah Wetenkamp, Clemens Dahlke
Nicht nur der Klimawandel, auch der immense Verlust der Artenvielfalt und die globale Umweltverschmutzung haben sich aus ihren fachspezifischen Nischen in das Zentrum der medialen und gesellschaftlichen Aufmerksamkeit bewegt. Kaum ein Tag vergeht, an dem uns aktuelle Nachrichten nicht an die großen planetaren Krisen - oder noch treffender, wie viele meinen: Katastrophen – erinnern. Es verwundert daher nicht, dass diese globalen Herausforderungen auch im Fokus des Forums Junges Nachhaltigkeitsrechts stehen, welches vom 16. bis 17. Juni an der Martin-Luther-Universität in Halle (Saale) seine zweite Jahrestagung abhält. Welche potentiellen Lösungen das Nachhaltigkeitsrecht in Theorie und Praxis bereithält, werden wir in den folgenden Tagen nicht nur in Halle (Saale), sondern auch im Rahmen dieser Verfassungsblog-Debatte zur Diskussion stellen.
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Paulina Milewska
Media freedom has many dimensions. Whereas the EMFA deals directly with media oversight bodies and the likes, the proposed anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) directive weighs into a more niche but crucially important topic: the silencing of journalists through bogus litigation. Such bogus litigation - or SLAPPS - does not intend to „win” cases but to slowly but steadily dry out journalists financially, emotionally, and socially. Currently, the Council of the European Union and the European Union Parliament are working on their proposals of the directive. It is crucial that the Commission’s proposal will not be watered down.
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Tobias Mast
The EU's legislative activity in the area of media and platform regulation is currently unfolding at an unprecedented pace. The thematically broad EMFA builds in many places on recently adopted legal acts whose interpretation is still unclear. This leads to parallelisms and overlaps as well as unclear and convoluted references, which can only be briefly outlined here and should be clarified in the trilogue negotiations.
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Anna Wójcik
The European Media Freedom Act, primarily designed to safeguard the EU media market, can also serve as an important tool in preserving the rule of law in member states such as Hungary and Poland, that have experienced an alarming assault on media freedom and pluralism in the past decade. This contribution critically evaluates the potential of the proposed European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) for addressing the ongoing issues in media freedom in Poland and Hungary.
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Stefan Schlegel, Odile Ammann
Die Idee, dass die Form eines Artefaktes nach dessen Funktion gestaltet werden müsse, ist seit dem Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts eine zentrale Design-Maxime: Form follows function. Wo die Formen sich aber verändern, zum Beispiel, weil sich ein Produkt neu in digitaler Form erstellen lässt, muss die Frage erlaubt sein, ob es nicht noch andere als seine bisherigen Funktionen erfüllen kann. Menschen sind aber besser darin, aus der Funktion Formen abzuleiten, als aus Formen Funktionen. Daher lohnt es sich, die Frage nach alternativen Funktionen ganz gezielt zu stellen. Wir wollen das nachfolgend für das Produkt der rechtswissenschaftlichen Kommentare tun.
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Jannis Lennartz
The extent of (private) media regulation depends on the willingness to trade private for public power. This blogpost takes the Commission's EMFA proposal as an opportunity to question the assumptions about media, markets, and politics behind it. It finds that the Commission’s approach treats private like public media: First, it functionalizes the fundamental rights of private individuals and companies in terms of their public benefit; second, it imagines the conditions of qualitative journalistic work as those of civil servants.
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Judit Bayer, Kati Cseres
Besides important substantive provisions, the EMFA proposal contains various mechanisms concerning the role of national regulatory authorities, the newly established European Board for Media Services (Board) and the Commission. However, this blogpost argues that the proposed tools fail to effectively improve the already available enforcement mechanisms in EU law. We offer three recommendations to improve enforcement of media law and policy in the EU, while remaining within the boundaries of the competences as established by the EU Treaties.
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Christina Etteldorf
Enacting a regulation, which is directly applicable throughout the EU, with such a focus would undoubtedly entail a far-reaching interference with the cultural sovereignty of the Member States, documented inter alia in Art. 167(4) TFEU and the Amsterdam Protocol concerning public service broadcasting. This requires a careful concretisation of existing obstacles to the internal market, their actual overcoming by the proposed rules and a consideration of cultural interests and traditions of the Member States. In its current shape, the EMFA, irrespective of its noble goal, does not meet these requirements. Therefore, most of the EMFA’s substantive rules do not solidly rest on a legal basis, making the proposal partly incompatible with Union law.
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Fin-Jasper Langmack, Anna-Mira Brandau
Die Aktionen der „Letzten Generation“ haben den gesellschaftlichen und juristischen Diskurs der letzten Monate geprägt. So engagiert die juristische Diskussion jedoch geführt wird, so sehr verharrt sie ganz überwiegend noch im nationalen Recht. Die zuständigen deutschen Strafrichter:innen werden sich jedoch auch dem Blick nach Straßburg nicht entziehen können – die Blockadeaktionen der „Letzten Generation“ stehen unter dem Schutz der in Artikel 11 Abs. 1 EMRK kodifizierten Versammlungs- und Vereinigungsfreiheit. Dieser Schutz steht einer strafrechtlichen Sanktionierung der Aktionen nicht grundsätzlich im Weg; eine Rückbesinnung auf die menschenrechtliche Dimension der Proteste kann und sollte aber ein Korrektiv für allzu ausgeartete Kriminalisierungs- bzw. Selbstjustizfantasien darstellen.
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Felix Hanschmann
Die Aufregung in Medien und Politik war ebenso groß wie schnell verflogen. Vertreter*innen der "Letzten Generation vor den Kipppunkten", so wurde berichtet, wollten an Schulen aktiv werden und Schüler*innen für Aktionen mobilisieren. Zum Glück trafen sie damit aber auf den „klaren Widerstand“ der Kultusminister*innen, die sich mutig der „Rekrutierung“ entgegenstellen. In Hamburg forderte die CDU in der Bürgerschaft, dass den Schulen verboten wird, in irgendeiner Weise mit Aktivist*innen der Letzten Generation zusammenzuarbeiten. Sich pauschal gegen die Einladung von Vertreter*innen der „Letzten Generation“ auszusprechen verkennt gleichermaßen die Aufgaben von Schulen wie auch die rechtlichen Bedingungen für die Beteiligungsmöglichkeiten externer gesellschaftlicher Kräfte in der Schule.
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Jochen von Bernstorff
Wegen der in vielen Staaten der Welt zunehmenden Repressionen gegenüber friedfertigen Protestbewegungen, die vor allem auf Sitzblockaden zurückgreifen, hatten der UN-Menschenrechtsausschuss und auch der UN-Sonderberichterstatter sich in den letzten beiden Jahren wiederholt zu den menschenrechtlichen Standards im Umgang mit störenden Protestformen geäußert. Die dort identifizierten Gefahren für das Menschenrecht auf Versammlungsfreiheit sind auch für die deutsche Situation aufschlussreich.
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Samira Akbarian
Seit den Hausdurchsuchungen in 15 Wohnungen von Mitgliedern der „Letzten Generation“ hat sich die öffentliche Diskussion um die Aktionen der Gruppe noch einmal intensiviert. Im Zentrum steht dabei der Begriff des „Zivilen Ungehorsams“. Obwohl das dahinterstehende Konzept auf viel, auch auf viel berechtigte, Kritik stößt, möchte ich zeigen, dass „ungehorsames“ Protestverhalten die Funktion erfüllt, Ungleichgewichte in den Möglichkeiten politischer Einflussnahme auszugleichen. Ziviler Ungehorsam kann dabei eine integrative Funktion erfüllen; er kann aber auch die diskursiven Verhältnisse aufbrechen und zu gesellschaftlichen und politischen Veränderungen anstoßen. Zudem zeichnet er sich dadurch aus, dass er Visionen einer normativen Zukunft entwickelt und insofern einen Beitrag zur Entwicklung der politischen Gemeinschaft und ihrer Verfassung leistet. Die weltweit zunehmende Kriminalisierung von Protestaktionen missachtet diese demokratische und rechtsstaatliche Bedeutung zivilen Ungehorsams.
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Klaus Ferdinand Gärditz
Die aus der Mottenkiste der politischen Theorie entliehene Figur des „zivilen Ungehorsams“ in ihrer schillernden Unbestimmtheit ist kein grundrechtsdogmatisch plausibles Argument. Es gibt keine habermaskonforme Auslegung des Grundgesetzes. Ein dysfunktionales Einsickern in das Vokabular der Verhältnismäßigkeit wäre folgenreich und hat das Potential, die Mechaniken angemessenen Interessenausgleichs auszuhebeln, auf den wir alle gerade dann angewiesen sind, wenn wir erfolgreich die Wende in die Klimaneutralität organisieren wollen. In Zeiten, in denen sich die Institutionen des liberal-demokratischen Rechtsstaats immer aggressiveren Anfechtungen ausgesetzt sehen und sich robust behaupten müssen, wird die durchsetzbare Verpflichtung aller Akteure auf die demokratische Legalität zu einem kostbaren Gut. Man sollte es keinem autoritären Illegalismus opfern.
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Michael Kubiciel
Die Ermittlungen wegen § 129 StGB gegen die Letzte Generation haben zu einem sehr frühen Zeitpunkt begonnen und stehen auf einer rechtlich alles andere als sicheren Grundlage. Die Strafverfolgungsbehörden manövrieren an der Grenze des Tatbestandes. Dies heißt aber auch, dass alle, die die Letzte Generation als Mitglied unterstützen, sich der Gefahr von Ermittlungsmaßnahmen aussetzen, also an der Grenze dessen agieren, was man sich selbst guten Gewissens zumuten möchte und kann. Schon die Ermittlungen wegen § 129 StGB haben damit eine prohibitive Wirkung.
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Thorsten Koch
Der Anwendungsbereich von § 129 StGB wirft mehr Fragen auf, als er klare Antworten gibt; dabei kreist die strafrechtliche Diskussion erkennbar um das „Ob“ und „Wie“ der Begrenzung eines zu weit geratenen oder jedenfalls als zu weit empfundenen Tatbestands. Daraus resultiert offenbar auch, dass die Frage, inwieweit die Unterbrechung von Routinen und täglichen Abläufen durch Aktionen der „Letzten Generation“ sich unter diese Norm subsumieren lässt, allgemein als offen angesehen wird. Schon diese Gegebenheiten legen jedoch nahe, dass es geboten ist, den gordischen Knoten strafrechtsdogmatischer Erwägungen mit dem scharfen Schwert des Verfassungsrechts zu durchschneiden: § 129 StGB ist in seiner derzeitigen Form verfassungswidrig!
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Katrin Höffler
… so lautet der Titel eines Aufsatzes von Habermas, erschienen 1983. Genau diesen Testfall erleben wir derzeit. Es scheint, als ob „der Rechtsstaat“ – nach Wochen des intensiven Protests durch die „Letzte Generation“ in Berlin – nun „andere Saiten aufziehen“ möchte, und erneut nach dem Strafrecht greift, genauer gesprochen nach einem Tatbestand des ohnehin nicht unproblematischen Präventivstrafrechts.
Meine These ist jedoch, dass der Versuch, die Klimaproteste „wegzustrafen“, den Rechtsstaat zwangsläufig schwächt, anstatt ihn zu stärken. Da politischer Protest im Ausgangspunkt als wesentliches Element einer demokratischen Kultur ausgehalten werden muss, ist auch der Umgang mit unter Umständen strafbaren Aktionen im Zuge des politischen Protests - freilich im Rahmen des Legalitätsprinzips - mit Augenmaß zu wählen, um diesen Grundsatz nicht zu konterkarieren.
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Klaus Ferdinand Gärditz
Die freie öffentliche Auseinandersetzung über Ziele der Politik ist nur möglich, wenn sich diese auf kommunikative Mittel beschränkt und nicht Rechte anderer verletzt. Freiheit ist in einer Rechtsgemeinschaft immer konditioniert, auch die politische. Illegale Druckmittel und Emphasizer symbolisch einzusetzen, um dem eigenen Anliegen ersehnte schnelle Sichtbarkeit zu verschaffen, ist gerade ein Angriff auf die Kommunikationsstruktur des demokratischen Prozesses, der erst die politische Gestaltung des Miteinanders auf der Grundlage der gleichen Freiheit aller sichert. Die Selbstprivilegierung, sich kraft erfühlter höherer Einsicht oder aus narzisstischem Sendungsbewusstsein über die gleiche Freiheit der anderen zu stellen, die für ihre – zunächst einmal ebenfalls legitimen – Anliegen um Mehrheiten werben müssen, ist anti-demokratisch, anti-egalitär und letztlich autoritär. Weder Gesetzgeber noch Strafverfolgungsbehörden und Gerichte sind verfassungsrechtlich in der Pflicht, dies im Rahmen der Verhältnismäßigkeit zu honorieren.
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Fynn Wenglarczyk
Mit den bundesweiten Hausdurchsuchungen gegen Mitglieder von „Letzte Generation“ erreicht der gesellschaftliche Konflikt um die Klima-Proteste nach der Verurteilung erster Aktivist*innen zu Freiheitsstrafen ohne Bewährung die nächste Eskalationsstufe. Nicht mehr nur die Einzelaktionen werden als strafbares Verhalten delegitimiert, sondern die Klima-Gerechtigkeitsbewegung im Ganzen, soweit sie sich in Zusammenschlüssen organisiert, die auf zivilen Ungehorsam als Protestform setzen. Das „Feindbild Klimaaktivismus“, es nimmt mehr und mehr Kontur an.
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Christian Thönnes, Stefan Salomon, Elspeth Guild, Evelien Brouwer
This debate series is dedicated to Ligue des Droits Humains – a case in which the Court of Justice of the European Union decided on the fate of one of the main drivers of this development: the Directive on on the use of passenger name record (PNR) data for the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of terrorist offences and serious crime. The PNR Directive, being one of the first major EU-wide examples of predictive policing, is not just interesting in itself. It exemplifies the emergence and gradual consolidation of a new security architecture in Europe.
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Imelda Maher, Joelle Grogan
Trade, sovereignty, rights and freedoms, courts, and constitutional change are lenses through which we can examine how two politically, culturally, and linguistically inextricably linked common law countries have defined their diverging relationship with the EU. 50 years on the divergence is complete. The UK is now a third country, charting a future outside the EU, while Ireland remains one of 27 Member States reporting high levels of trust and support for the EU. Hence 50 years on we have both the desire for closure (for the UK) and continuity (for Ireland). In fact, we argue that closure and continuity are necessary for the relations between both states and their relationship with the EU now and in the next half century.
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Colm O'Cinneide
Fifty years after Ireland and UK joined the EEC together in January 1973, the two states find themselves on radically different European trajectories. Both are common law countries with shared traditions of parliamentary governance and strong cultural links to the wider Anglosphere. However, in Ireland there is broad elite and popular support for maintaining alignment with the requirements of EU and ECHR law – while, in the UK, such European influences trigger a sharp allergic reaction. What explains this dramatic divergence? The answer perhaps lies partially in the differing ‘constitutional imaginaries’ of Ireland and the UK, and how EU and ECHR alignment is understood to impact on the exercise of popular sovereignty in both states.
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Michelle Everson
50 years after accession of Ireland and the UK to the EEC and seven years after the disastrous Brexit referendum, Ireland still sits pretty in the EU, but the UK and its Constitution have been called into possibly fatal doubt, especially as regards their integrative capacity, or continuing ability to bind distinct political classes and the nations of the Union to one another. Writing in early 2023, amidst the ruins of a Brexit reality, if not the end of the Brexit delusion, this short commentary foresees – possibly foolishly – a radical future of independent nations within a loose ‘Confederation of the Isles’, wherein Ireland might share some (symbolic) competences with Scotland, England and Wales, enabling a peaceful a prosperous coexistence within the North-western European archipelago.
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Alison Young
The UK’s membership of, and later exit from, the EU has had a dramatic effect on the UK constitution. It also provided a catalyst for further change. These demonstrate the relative ease with which the UK constitution can be modified, reinforcing the UK’s characterisation as a predominantly political, flexible constitution. This post will argue that these transformations illustrate something more fundamental that applies to all constitutions – be they predominantly codified or uncodified, with or without the ability of the courts to strike down unconstitutional legislation.
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Colin Murray
The Westphalian state provides for an all-but ubiquitous building block of governance. It stacks neatly into dominant accounts of multi-level governance, with all states being presented as nominal equals on the plain of international law. Where reasons of scale or the needs of diverse societies require, sub-state levels of governance can be introduced into the equation. Multiple states, moreover, can pool aspects of their law and decision making where they see the advantages of so doing, resulting in regional supra-national bodies such as the EU.
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Niamh Nic Shuibhne
On New Year’s Day in 2002, my late uncle, visiting us in Kerry at the time, walked to the local shop and came back with a pristine €5 note for everyone in the house. Spend it, keep it, do whatever you like with it; but this, he said, is history. Ireland adopting the euro as its currency marked one of the most significant divergent choices in the history of British and Irish membership of the European Union. The dense and complicated ties between the two states were otherwise reflected in so many ways across their EU membership profiles, from their coterminous application paths to shared exemptions from certain legal obligations.
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Suzanne Kingston
As with any relationship, significant anniversaries offer us an opportunity to take stock. Looking backwards allows us not only to appreciate how far we have come, but also, perhaps, to reflect on the direction in which we might be heading. To date, upwards of 2,200 judgments of the Irish courts have considered EU or Community law in some form. Against this context, this short contribution reflects on the reception of EU law in the Irish courts since 1973.
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Elaine Fahey
In this short piece, I will outline a few of the extremes of the Irish relationship with Europe that I have personally studied or encountered and its impact in my view. Many years ago, I wrote a dissertation on the relationship between EU law and the Irish legal order, on the unravelling dynamic since accession, focussing upon the preliminary reference data. I felt it was a deserving topic precisely because there was so little interest as to the relationship between EU law and Ireland. Ireland was uniformly always excluded from major US and EU political science studies that have been iconic in shaping views on EU integration.
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Federico Fabbrini
In 1973, Ireland joined what would become the European Union (EU) in the first ever enlargement of the project of European integration. To say that 50 years of EU membership have been transformative for Ireland is an understatement. By all benchmarks considered, Ireland is a radically different country today than it was when it joined the EU. Abortion provides the best example of this.
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Olga Ceran, Ylenia Guerra
On 15 December 2022, the Council’s suspended various EU budgetary commitments towards Hungary, the first application of the so-called Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation. The measure also froze access to Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe funds for 21 Hungarian universities that remain under the management of public interest trusts, thereby effectively denying access to these funds to a large pool of scholars and students. The decision raises important questions regarding the scope of protection afforded to final beneficiaries of EU funds. We suggest that a deeper engagement with the rights and interests of final beneficiaries in the context of the Conditionality Regulation necessitates a reconceptualisation of the EU’s understanding of and responsibility for academic freedom.
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Janine Silga
This contribution will briefly assess Ireland’s participation in the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) after ‘Brexit’. It will first review the way in which the ‘opt-in/opt-out’ arrangements still apply to Ireland, before considering how Ireland’s position might have evolved after Brexit. In this respect, it will feature some recent cases of the CJEU. Although Ireland considers the UK to be a safe third country for refugees, it is likely that their respective asylum policies will diverge even further, owing to their now very different positions with respect to EU law and especially the CEAS.
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Iyiola Solanke
It can generally be agreed that the purpose of sovereignty is to enable a government to protect the best interests of its citizens. To what extent did UK membership of the EU preclude this? In the context of the EU, the discussion on sovereignty tends to focus on quantity – the greater the scope of action of the EU and its institutions, the lower the sovereignty of the member states. From this perspective, sovereignty is a zero-sum affair – less means less. However, sovereignty can also be assessed from a qualitative perspective, with a focus on its quality, or character, rather than its scope.
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Mark Bell
In reflections on fifty years of membership, the employment of women is often identified as a tangible example of how membership changed Ireland. Concretely, in the years immediately following accession, the state was required to enact legislation on equal pay and equal treatment for women and men in employment. This narrative tends to place emphasis on EU law as a cause of law reform in Ireland. 50 years on, both Irish and EU equality law have expanded significantly.
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Gavin Barrett
Costello v. Government of Ireland and others is one of the most significant recent Irish Supreme Court rulings concerning EU law. The case involved a member of parliament seeking to restrain the Irish government from ratifying the 2014 EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) on grounds of alleged unconstitutionality. Costello’s most long-lasting impact is likely to be its introduction of the concept of constitutional identity into Irish constitutional jurisprudence.
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Damian Chalmers
In thinking about sovereignty within the United Kingdom, it is helpful to separate out two ways in which sovereignty has historically been identified in both the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Sovereignty is, first, a power over others, most notably absolute and final authority over a territory. If this allows those holding it to achieve considerable things, it also generates apprehension as it allows them to do many things to others. Sovereignty is, secondly, a constitutive power.
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Gráinne de Búrca, Kenneth Armstrong
In our analysis below, we examine the convergent and divergent paths of Ireland and the UK on the theme of integration and disintegration in three stages. The first considers the constitutional context and framework within which each of the two countries chose to embark on the path of European integration by acceding to the EEC in the early 1970s. The second examines several key policy choices made by the two states along a continuum between integration and disintegration, as part of a more differentiated, post-Maastricht EU. The final stage examines the implications of Brexit for the UK and Ireland following Britain’s departure from the EU.
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Joelle Grogan, Imelda Maher
In 1973 and on the third attempt, Ireland and the United Kingdom (UK) with Denmark acceded to the European Communities, while Norway opted not to join following a referendum. For Ireland and the UK, the half-century since has brought about remarkable social, economic, demographic, political, and legal changes in both states leading to the UK leaving the EU in 2020 and Ireland remaining a Member State. Given the shared anniversary and divergent responses to EU membership in the context of strong (if complex) ties between the two states and a shared common law tradition, a reflection on the 50th anniversary of their accession to what is now the European Union (EU) is timely.
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Devyani Prabhat
In recent years, cancellation of British citizenship has become a high-profile issue. This is not least because of the case of Shamima Begum, who left the UK as a 15-year-old British schoolgirl for Syria in 2015. Upon being found in a camp in Syria four years ago, the Home Secretary removed her British citizenship soon thereafter, leaving her de facto stateless. After protracted litigation surrounding a number of preliminary issues, three weeks ago, Begum lost her appeal against the decision in front of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission’s (SIAC). The Commission’s refusal to allow her appeal is remarkable for the nearly unlimited degree of discretion it appears to grant the Home Secretary in cancellation cases, even where human rights are at stake.
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Christina Neier
Liechtenstein is far away from a comprehensive decriminalisation of abortion. The termination of pregnancy is still regulated by the Criminal Code and the person who performs the abortion will be prosecuted. Only the pregnant person acts legally when terminating an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy. But it took until 2015 for pregnant persons to be granted a (limited) right to self-determination, and there is still a lack of sufficient legal, medical and social support. In a difficult and psychologically stressful situation, pregnant persons must seek treatment abroad – not because they want to, but because they have to.
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Eva Maria Bredler, Valentina Chiofalo
Am Ende des Symposiums wird sichtbar: Abtreibungen zu kriminalisieren bildet im Vergleich zu den ausgewählten Ländern nicht die Regel (I.). Das bedeutet allerdings nicht, dass eine Entkriminalisierung jegliche faktischen Zugangshürden aus dem Weg räumt. Der Blick ins Ausland lohnt sich deshalb auch unabhängig von der Frage der Entkriminalisierung, um potentielle Fallstricke für die Versorgungslage zu analysieren (II.). Die Entkriminalisierung des Schwangerschaftsabbruchs bereitet jedoch, so legt der Rechtsvergleich nahe, den Weg, um strukturelle Hindernisse abbauen zu können. Eine bedeutende Rolle können dabei aktivistische Bewegungen spielen (III.).
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Eva Maria Bredler, Valentina Chiofalo
This blog post concludes the symposium “Comparative Legal Perspectives on Abortion”. The symposium traced the regulation of abortion and accompanying activist movements in Argentina, Uruguay, Canada, Iceland, Northern Macedonia, Tunisia, South Africa, India, and South Korea. Now we want to turn our gaze from the outside back to the inside: What is to be gained for the German debate on abortion law?
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Sunhye Kim
On 11 April 2019, South Korea’s Constitutional Court ruled that the ban on abortion was unconstitutional. As a result, South Korea’s legislature had to revise its 66-year-old anti-abortion law by 31 December 2020. This historic decision was made possible in response to the advocacy of a number of feminist groups, doctors’ organizations, disability rights groups, youth activists, and religious groups in South Korea. Although the overall goal of reproductive justice movements was to change the law that threatened women’s health and lives through the criminalization of abortion, one of the main steps of the movements toward that goal was to challenge the previous framework of pro-choice versus pro-life.
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Irene Maffi
Although abortion in Tunisia has been legal for 50 years and offered for free in government facilities, the revolution of 2011 and the following democratization process have paradoxically put into question the access to this service. The Islamists’ victory and the conservative turn of local society in the 2000s have led to a step backwards in the domain of women’s rights including sexual and reproductive rights. Together with Turkey, Tunisia is the only Islamic-majority country that authorizes abortion for social reasons.
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Jula Hughes, Jessi Taylor, Christine Hughes
In Canada, abortion is not a criminal offence. There are no legal restrictions on abortion, including no restrictions with respect to gestational age or on the reasons for which a pregnant person may choose to have an abortion. As lawful medical procedures, abortions fall under provincial jurisdiction over health and there is some regulatory variability between provinces. Information about abortion access is similarly affected by provincial jurisdiction over education. Prior to decriminalization, advocacy on abortion access was national in scope, but since 1988, most activism has been focused on access and funding and has been provincial or even local.
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Silja Bára Ómarsdóttir
In 2019, Iceland passed a new law on the termination of pregnancy. Passed with a solid majority and the support of a cross-political coalition, the new law provides pregnant people with the right to decide on a termination, without having to get prior permission from medical personnel, as had previously been the case. The law was a huge step forward to ensure the protection of sexual and reproductive rights in Iceland, but there still remains room for improvement, for example with regard to the rights of trans people and the access of uninsured people to the service. The success of the legislation was also remarkable for the cross-political support it enjoyed, largely based on women’s solidarity as 18 of 22 women in parliament, from nearly all parties, supported the law.
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Lucía Berro Pizzarossa
Uruguay gained international praise in 2012 when it passed one of the most liberal abortion laws on the continent. While the law undoubtedly represents a step in the right direction, ten years have passed, and the law and its implementation could not live up to the expectations. The Uruguayan abortion law over-medicalizes, paternalizes, and imposes a series of very burdensome requirements on people wishing to access abortion services, in violation of human rights law.
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Daniela Antonovska
In North Macedonia, abortion law changes when the government does. The practices of the past years vividly demonstrate that abortion is not only a private matter but also a political issue. Depending on whether right or left-wing parties are in power, the law on abortion fluctuates between difficult-to-access and more liberal procedures.
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Alba Ruibal
On December 30th, 2020, the Argentinean Congress legalized abortion up to the 14th week. Its legalization in Argentina took place after the rising of the so-called green tide in 2018, which transformed the longstanding movement for abortion rights in the country into a mass phenomenon, and the abortion issue, which used to be a taboo, into a main topic of public discussion. The new law has been challenged through judicial actions without success so far, and it has changed the conditions for the implementation of lawful abortions throughout the country.
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Camilla Pickles
The Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act 92 of 1996 (Choice Act) provides the legislative framework that regulates access to abortion in South Africa. It is noted for its liberal stance on abortion and for this reason South Africa ‘serves as a global role model of reform in the area of abortion laws’. Despite its celebrated reproductive rights affirming approach, there are several on-ground issues that undermine the aims of the Act and the reproductive rights and health of those seeking abortion care. In this blog, I position the Choice Act within its historical and contemporary context which provides the necessary backdrop to demonstrate why the Act offers a ground-breaking approach to legislative regulation of abortion care. Thereafter, I explore some of the barriers to access and consider some key state efforts to overcome these issues, thus demonstrating a commitment to ensuring access to abortion care as part of the continuum of sexual and reproductive health care.
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Aparna Chandra
In the last two years, India has witnessed significant changes in the legal regulation of abortion. In 2021, Parliament comprehensively amended the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 (“MTP” Act) to ensure “access of women to safe and legal abortion without compromising on the safety and quality of care,” along with securing “dignity, autonomy, confidentiality and justice for women who need to terminate pregnancy.” Additionally, in September 2022, the Supreme Court of India delivered a path-breaking judgment on abortion, locating access to safe abortion within the fundamental rights to dignity, autonomy, privacy, and health. Despite these changes, the law and practice of abortion continue to deny pregnant persons access to safe and comprehensive abortion care.
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India Justice Project
Since the Indian state unilaterally abrogated the autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) in August 2019, human rights defenders (HRDs) have been confronted with an unprecedented closing of civic spaces, forcing them to restrict or stop their engagement. While HRDs have been subjected to state repression for more than 30 years since the onset of the 1989 insurgency in J&K, the developments in 2019 mark a turning point, both in strategy and methods employed by the Indian state.
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Aman
Through what was described with war-time imageries of a “constitutional surgical strike” and a “constitutional siege”, in August 2019 a radical change was made to what innocuously appeared earlier in the Constitution of India as Article 370. This blog post will attempt to problematise the use of the Indian constitutional framework in the engagement with Jammu and Kashmir. It will also hint towards an alternative role where the use of the Constitutional framework can, despite its limitations, make space for questions of self-determination, and contested sovereignties.
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Anam Sheikh
The administrative preventive detention law Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978 (PSA) is one of the most stringent laws to uphold in what is referred to as the “security of the state and the public order.” For decades, thousands of Kashmiris have been incarcerated under this law for expressing political views contrary to official state narratives. Creating a state of exception where people are not ordinary criminals but extraordinary criminals who pose a threat to the national integrity of the Indian state, the PSA has stripped countless individuals of their basic rights.
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Anna Wójcik
Як відомо, шляхи польського та угорського урядів розійшлися щодо відповідей на російсько-українську війну. Однак на внутрішньому рівні обидві країни продовжують покладатися на схожі структурні зміни в медіа-середовищі, які допомагають їм впливати на виборців і підривають чесність виборів. Реакція ЄС на кризу свободи та плюралізму 3MI в Угорщині та Польщі була більш стриманою та якісно відрізнялася від реакції на кризу суддівської незалежності або загрози академічним свободам та правам меншин.
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Anna Wójcik
The Polish and Hungarian governments have famously parted ways over responses to the Russo-Ukraine war. However, internally, both continue to rely on similar structural changes in the media environment that help them target voters and undermine elections fairness. The EU’s response to the media freedom and pluralism crisis in Hungary and Poland has been more restrained and also qualitatively different from its answer to the judicial independence crisis or threats to academic freedoms and minority rights.
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Jakub Jaraczewski
Якби наприкінці 2021 року мене запитали, які події визначатимуть кризу верховенства права в Європейському Союзі у 2022 році, я б відповів, що вибори в Угорщині стануть найвідповідальнішим моментом у боротьбі за цінності ЄС. 24 лютого 2022 року Володимир Путін зробив застарілими майже всі прогнози щодо європейської політики. Невиправдане, брутальне вторгнення Росії в Україну не лише зруйнувало понад 30-річну парадигму безпеки на континенті, але й мало масштабні наслідки для багатьох аспектів європейського життя, включаючи кризу верховенства права у двох державах-членах ЄС: Угорщині та Польщі.
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Jakub Jaraczewski
If somebody had asked me in late 2021 what events would define the rule of law crisis in the European Union in 2022, I would have said that the elections in Hungary would be the most crucial moment for the struggle for EU values. On 24 February 2022, Vladimir Putin made almost all predictions concerning European politics obsolete. Russia’s unjustified, brutal invasion of Ukraine not only obliterated an over 30-year-old paradigm of security on the continent but also had massive ripple effects on many aspects of European life, including the rule of law crisis in two EU Member States: Hungary and Poland.
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Jan Nicola Beyer, Beatriz Almeida Saab
Протиставлення кінетичної війни, яка розпочалася після повномасштабного вторгнення Росії в Україну 24 лютого 2022 року, та зіткнень у цифровому просторі показує, що обидві арени війни мали різні наслідки для країн-членів НАТО та ЄС. Якщо західні держави змогли значною мірою утриматися від фізичних бойових дій, обмеживши свою участь наданням зброї та військових матеріалів українським силам, то в цифровій сфері таке утримання виявилося неможливим.
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Jan Nicola Beyer, Beatriz Almeida Saab
Contrasting the kinetic warfare that broke out after Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 with confrontations in the digital space shows that both war arenas came with different implications for NATO and EU member states. While Western powers were able to largely abstain from physical hostilities, limiting their involvement to providing weapons and military material to Ukrainian forces, in the digital sphere such abstention was not possible.
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Nusaybah, Asfur
"We know where you live" is one of the most dreaded and threatening statements a Kashmiri can hear from the state armed forces. It can mean a number of things to an ordinary Kashmiri, including “we have information on you” and “we are watching you”. It can also be perceived as an immediate threat to the life and safety of the person given the absolute impunity enjoyed by the state armed forces.
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Nicolai von Ondarza
The accession of Ukraine to the EU would, like any other expansion, have profound implications on the Union’s institutions. Even putting aside the extraordinary circumstances of the accession process which started in the middle of a war, the accession of Ukraine would also raise relevant issues for the EU from a purely institutional perspective. The accession of Ukraine would, especially if taken together with Moldova and the countries of the Western Balkans, raise serious issues for the absorption capacity of the EU in all of its major institutions.
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Nicolai von Ondarza
Потенційний вступ України до ЄС, як і будь-яке інше розширення, матиме глибокі наслідки для інституцій Союзу. Навіть якщо не брати до уваги надзвичайні обставини процесу вступу, який розпочався в розпал війни, вступ України до ЄС також поставив би перед ним актуальні питання з суто інституційної точки зору. Вступ України, особливо разом з Молдовою та (частково) країнами Західних Балкан, підніме серйозні питання щодо поглинальної спроможності ЄС в усіх його основних інституціях.
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Roman Petrov
Мало хто очікував, що президент Зеленський і його уряд навіть подумають про членство в ЄС на тлі лавиноподібного вторгнення російської армії. Паралельно з прискоренням вступу України ЄС шукав нові форми політичної співпраці для зміцнення своєї стійкості та забезпечення взаємної солідарності в часи страшної безпеки та економічної кризи в Європі. Європейське політичне співтовариство містить кілька важливих переваг, які Україна має враховувати під час процесу вступу до ЄС.
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Roman Petrov
Very few people expected President Zelensky and his government to even think about EU membership amidst the avalanching invasion of the Russian army. In parallel with the accelerating speed of Ukraine’s accession, the EU was searching for new forms of political cooperation to strengthen its resilience and ensure mutual solidarity in times of intimidating security and economic crises in Europe. The European Political Community contains several important advantages to be considered by Ukraine against the backdrop of its accession process to the EU.
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Halyna Chyzhyk
Russia launched its big war against Ukraine at a time when Ukraine has started implementing a comprehensive and genuine judicial reform. Ukraine has not only managed to resist the attack but also kept implementing the reforms and strengthening democratic institutions. This article describes the Ukrainian experience of the functioning of the judiciary and reforming judicial governance institutions during martial law times.
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Halyna Chyzhyk
Росія розпочала свою велику війну проти України в той час, коли Україна розпочала впровадження комплексної та справжньої судової реформи. Україна не тільки змогла протистояти нападу, але й продовжила реалізацію реформ та зміцнення демократичних інститутів. У цій статті описано український досвід функціонування судової влади та реформування інститутів суддівського врядування в умовах воєнного стану. Ключові уроки та успішні рішення можуть стати маяком для всього регіону.
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Yuliya Miadzvetskaya
Драматичні події, що відбуваються в Україні, та зростання загроз безпеці самого ЄС призвели до міні-революції в санкційній політиці ЄС. Тепер набір санкцій ЄС включає деякі нові заходи, такі як заборона трансляції, які раніше були на розсуд національних органів влади. Ці зміни поставили ЄС перед дилемою щодо його політики санкцій щодо Білорусі.
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Yuliya Miadzvetskaya
The dramatic events taking place in Ukraine and growing security threats to the EU itself led to a mini-revolution in the EU sanctions policy. Now the EU sanctions toolbox includes some novel measures, such as broadcast bans, which were previously under the discretion of national authorities. These changes put the EU in a dilemma with respect to its sanctions policy towards Belarus.
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Niall Moran
21 лютого, напередодні вторгнення Росії в Україну, ЄС запровадив санкції проти п’яти осіб, пов’язаних з «так званими виборами» у Криму. Два дні потому, після перекидання Росією військ на Донбас, ЄС ухвалив далекосяжний пакет санкцій, який, серед іншого, розширив список підсанкційних осіб, включивши до нього 351 депутата російської Думи та 27 інших осіб. У цій публікації розглядається законодавство ЄС щодо санкцій проти фізичних осіб та його застосування у відповідь на війну в Україні.
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Niall Moran
On February 21, the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU adopted sanctions against five individuals linked to the “so-called elections” in Crimea. Two days later, following Russia’s deployment of troops to the Donbas region of Ukraine, the EU adopted a far-reaching sanctions package that, inter alia, expanded the list of sanctioned individuals to include all 351 members of the Russian Duma and 27 others. This post considers EU law on sanctions against individuals and how it has been applied in response to the war in Ukraine.
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Nikhil Mulani
Frequent internet shutdowns in the Indian region of Kashmir provide a valuable case study for how technology governance can become a tool of political control. The Indian government leads the world in these techniques, instituting 75 shutdowns over the course of 2022 alone. In this blog post, I argue that internet shutdowns have become a standard method for federal and state officials in India to silence those who dissent from the governing BJP agenda. The government’s repressive policies will further erode India’s democratic system unless legislators push back and create a more transparent and accountable system for technology governance in India.
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Bohdan Bernatskyi
Європейський Союз намагається вирішити питання війни Росії з Україною різними шляхами. Всього декілька прикладів: ЄС виділяє додаткові кошти на підтримку України, країни-члени надсилають зброю та військове спорядження, Брюссель очолює міжнародну кампанію з притягнення до відповідальності російських воєнних злочинців, і останнє, але не менш важливе – ЄС запровадив найбільший в історії пакет санкцій, щоб зашкодити Росії вести агресивну війну.
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Bohdan Bernatskyi
The European Union has been addressing the war in Ukraine against Russia in various ways. To name only a few, the EU has allocated additional funds to support Ukraine, Member States are sending weapons and arms equipment, Brussels is leading the international campaign to hold Russian war criminals accountable and, last but not least, the EU has imposed the largest sanctions package in its history to harm Russia’s ability to wage aggressive war.
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Lyal S. Sunga
Життєздатність верховенства права в Україні, Європі, а також у Росії чи будь-де у світі, може витримати навіть насильницький натиск там, де люди готові боротися за інститути та практику верховенства права, іноді з великим ризиком для себе. Якщо всі волелюбні країни будуть підтримувати одна одну повним і глибоким співробітництвом для просування миру, демократії, прав людини та верховенства права на всіх рівнях, як це робить ЄС з Україною протягом десятиліть, верховенство права, демократія та права людини будуть постійно зміцнюватися і давати людям все більше можливостей процвітати в умовах миру, безпеки та людської гідності.
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Lyal S. Sunga
The vibrancy of the rule of law in Ukraine, Europe, and for that matter in Russia or anywhere in the world, can survive even violent onslaught, wherever people are willing to fight for rule of law institutions and practices, sometimes at great risk to themselves. If all freedom loving countries support one another with full and deep cooperation to promote peace, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law at all levels, as the EU has done with Ukraine for decades, the rule of law, democracy and human rights will continuously strengthen and increasingly enable people to thrive in conditions of peace, security and human dignity.
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Jakub Jaraczewski
Russia’s unlawful invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 did not only alter the security paradigm in Europe. It also upended the legal landscape of the European Union and Ukraine, leading to the latter becoming a candidate for EU membership and influencing the ongoing rule of law crisis in Hungary and Poland. This debate focuses on various new legal challenges for the EU, its Member States and Ukraine that arose as a consequence of the Russian invasion. In order to present our debate to the most relevant audience, this symposium is published in both English and Ukrainian.
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Burhan Majid
The erstwhile State of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) enjoyed a special position in the political and constitutional landscape of the post-colonial Indian State. While the de-operationalisation (popularly referred to as ‘abrogation’) of Article 370 on 5 August 2019, and other associated moves by the Indian State, might be seen as the final nail in the coffin of the constitutional erosion in J&K, the central claim of this blog post is that the constitutional autonomy of the erstwhile State has rather seen a gradual erosion ever since the Constituent Assembly of the State was dissolved on 26 January 1957—the day the Constitution of J&K came into force.
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Sidra Yousaf, Paul Dießelberg
Constitutions depict social realities, tell stories, reflect on people and culture. They are the embodiment of a state reality, matured by a national history, admonishing and guiding politics and the broader public. The Indian Constitution tells a unique story: Of combined liberalism and pluralism, of a reality of marginalization in society and of constant search for identity. Recent developments in majority-Muslim Kashmir have made these narratives more visible than ever and point to a new lens of analysis.
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Tanja Herklotz
Kashmir is not only the object of disputes over territory between India and Pakistan as well as India and China. It also witnesses violent conflicts between the Indian security forces (which include the army and paramilitary forces) and an armed Kashmiri insurgency that seeks autonomy from the Indian nation-state. The latter conflict has escalated anew since 5 August 2019 when the BJP-led Indian government abrogated the special status that the Muslim-majority state Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) had previously enjoyed and significantly curtailed the civil liberties of people living in the region. This blog post contextualises the events of August 2019 and thereafter. At the same time, it provides an introduction and some background information to the posts assembled in this symposium titled Casting Light on Kashmir.
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Jana Wolf
Das Urteil des Amtsgerichts Flensburg zu Klimaschutz als rechtfertigendem Notstand stößt auf Begeisterung und scharfe Ablehnung. Nachdem der Freispruch eines Klimaaktivsten durch das Gericht bereits im November bekannt wurde, sind nun die Urteilsgründe veröffentlicht worden. Inmitten der zunehmend intensiver geführten Debatte um den juristisch „richtigen“ Umgang mit Klimaaktivismus schlägt das Urteil eine ebenso ungewohnte wie mutige Richtung ein.
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Jan-Louis Wiedmann
Das Amtsgericht Flensburg hatte jüngst über die Strafbarkeit eines Klimaaktivisten zu entscheiden, der ein fremdes Grundstück unbefugt betreten hatte, um dort die Rodung eines kleinen Waldstücks zu verhindern. Der Aktivist wurde vom Vorwurf des Hausfriedensbruchs freigesprochen, weil seine Tat dem Klimaschutz gedient habe und damit wegen Notstands (§ 34 StGB) gerechtfertigt sei. Dieser Beitrag wirft einen Blick auf die rechtliche Diskussion um Klimaproteste und um die diesbezüglichen Urteile und wirft dabei zwei Fragen auf: Sollten kleine Beiträge zum Klimaschutz als solche rechtlich anerkannt werden oder nicht? Und: Sind unkonventionelle Klima-Urteile illegitimer ‚richterlicher Aktivismus‘ oder ein Beitrag zur Rechtskultur? Bei beiden Fragen geht es um das Verhältnis vom Kleinen (Protestaktion, Urteil) zum Großen (Klimaschutz, Rechtskultur) und damit letztlich um das Verhältnis zwischen Baum und Wald.
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Rouven Diekjobst
Bereits vor einigen Wochen wurde bekannt, dass das Amtsgericht Flensburg einen Klimaaktivisten freigesprochen hatte, der einen Baum auf einem Privatgrundstück besetzt hatte. Der Baum sollte auf Grundlage einer Baugenehmigung gerodet werden, gegen die auch eine verwaltungsgerichtliche Klage eingereicht worden war. Nun ist die Urteilbegründung veröffentlicht: Das Gericht sah § 123 StGB – Hausfriedensbruch – zwar tatbestandlich erfüllt, jedoch aufgrund von § 34 StGB in einer Art „Klimanotstand“ gerechtfertigt. Die vom Gericht bemühte „verfassungskonforme“ Auslegung ist jedoch weder überzeugend noch verallgemeinerungsfähig, schadet dem Ansehen der Judikative und schafft einen Anreiz für zukünftiges rechtswidriges Verhalten.
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Sarah Imani, Anne Schroeter
Wir stehen am Anfang dessen, was man eine dekoloniale Rechtspraxis nennen kann. Es bedarf daher der tiefgehenden Auseinandersetzung mit den Grundannahmen von Rechtsanwendung angesichts historischen Unrechts. Das betrifft die Auswahl zulässiger (Rechts-)quellen, die rechtsdogmatische Einordnung der Dynamik zwischen Unrecht, Rechtsverletzung und Systemunrecht, genauso wie ein Verständnis von Vertretbarkeit im Fluss der Zeit.
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Isabelle Reimann, Nahed Samour
Welche Probleme stellen sich, wenn an einer vorwiegend zivilrechtlichen, individuellen Rechtsbetrachtung zunächst einmal festgehalten wird? Inwieweit kann die Provenienzforschung die erforderliche Nachweisbarkeit des „unrechtmäßigen Erwerbs“ für die rechtliche Prüfung überhaupt liefern? Wann kann eine Provenienzforschung als abgeschlossen betrachtet werden, insbesondere wenn die Beteiligung von Angehörigen und Expert*innen aus der Region nicht als integraler oder auch erforderlicher Bestandteil dieser Forschung gesehen wird?
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Natalia Loyola Daiqui, Sebastian-Manès Sprute
In this split contribution to the blog debate on "Restitution, Colonialism and the Courts", Natalia Loyola Daiqui argues that the claim to eliminate the unlawful consequences of state action (Folgenbeseitigungsanspruch) can serve as a legal basis for restitution claims. Responding to this claim, Sebastian-Manès Sprute raises the question in how far relying on German administrative law would revive the asymmetrical colonial power relationship.
restitution and repatriation claims of formerly colonized communities are subject to German administrative law.
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Evelien Campfens, Isabella Bozsa
On the basis of a case concerning the Bangwa collection in the Municipal Museum of Brunswick, this contribution proposes that a human rights law approach and cooperative provenance research are key in dealing with collections from colonial context. Fifty years after the UN General Assembly urged for the return of colonial cultural takings to victims of expropriation and twenty years after the Declaration on the Value and Importance of Universal Museums – by which museums justified their continued possession of such artefacts – return ceremonies that gained much attention attest that times have changed.
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Judith Hackmack
The report “We want them back”, published earlier this year, found at least 5958 human remains from colonials contexts in the collections of museums and scientific institutions in the geographical area of Berlin. The report, commissioned by the Berlin Senate, is the first systematic survey of the provenance of human remains from colonial contexts in Berlin’s institutions. Why – given the history – are these human remains still here? Where is the systematic effort to repatriate them and return them to their families and communities of origin?
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Yann LeGall, Gwinyai Machona
Addressing colonial injustices by claiming restitution of artefacts and other belongings before German courts is undeniably a legal challenge for all stakeholders. As a shield against (potential) legal claims, museums, state authorities and some legal scholars have argued that there is no legal obligation for restitution of such belongings. Based on the stipulation that “colonial law has to be applied, even if it is no longer compatible with today’s views on law and justice”, this line of argument assumes that the acquisition of the possessions of colonized people by Europeans and subsequent transactions were generally considered lawful in the nineteenth century. In this contribution, we question this assumption.
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Ohiniko M. Toffa, Sarah Imani
Die Frage der Restitution sowohl von sog. menschlichen Gebeinen als auch von sog. Raubkunst hat in den letzten Jahren zunehmend mehr Aufmerksamkeit bekommen. Unter Restitution versteht man dabei die Verpflichtung, den Zustand wiederherzustellen, der vor der Rechtsverletzung bestand, z.B. durch die Freisetzung widerrechtlich gefangen gehaltener Personen, aber eben auch in Form von Rückgaben von Gegenständen. Der Workshop „Restitutionsbegehren vor deutschen Gerichten“ am European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) hat Wissenschaftler*innen verschiedener Disziplinen zusammengebracht, um darüber nachzudenken, welche Rolle das Recht für die Aufarbeitung von kolonialem Unrecht und Kolonialverbrechen spielt.
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Ralf Poscher, Maja Werner
Die Proteste der Klimaschutzgruppe der „Letzten Generation“ sind momentan aufgrund ihrer gewählten Protestformen ein vieldiskutiertes Thema. Eine der umstrittenen Protestformen besteht darin, sich mit den Händen auf der Straße festzukleben. Nachdem Klimaaktivistinnen in München ihre Protestaktionen wiederholten, wurden sie in Gewahrsam genommen - mit einer angeordneten Gewahrsamsdauer von 30 Tagen. Die pauschale Ausschöpfung der Höchstgrenze des Gewahrsams im Fall des Vorgehens gegen Aktivistinnen der Münchener Klimaproteste ist von der – ohnehin rechtlich bedenklichen – Rechtsgrundlage im bayerischen Polizeigesetz nicht gedeckt.
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Katrin Höffler
Derzeit erleben wir nahezu täglich und in ganz Europa, dass junge Menschen in unterschiedlichen Formen Protest erheben, um auf den voranschreitenden Klimawandel hinzuweisen. Alexander Dobrindt forderte härtere Strafen für „Klima-Chaoten“, um eine Radikalisierung zu vermeiden. Sollte der Protest besonders streng geahndet werden? Meine These lautet, dass selbst im Falle einer Strafbarkeit ein Labeling als Öko-Terrorismus beziehungsweise Schwerkriminalität nicht nur falsch, sondern sogar schädlich ist.
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Tobias Gafus
Auf Welt.de ist vor kurzem ein Stück Service-Journalismus der besonderen Art erschienen. Der Redakteur Constantin van Lijnden hat die „Rechte der ausgebremsten Bürger“ zusammengetragen. Was kann man tun gegen die Störenfriede der Letzten Generation, die sich fortwährend auf Straßen festkleben, um auf ihre Forderungen aufmerksam zu machen? Der Staat, jedenfalls in Berlin, leider nur wenig, so der Tenor.
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Jan-Marcel Drossel
Das Gebot effektiven Rechtsschutzes gilt im Wahlprüfungsverfahren jedoch nur unter Berücksichtigung der besonderen Ausgestaltung des Verfahrens. Dessen Ablauf und seine Exklusivität sollen eingangs skizziert werden. Auf der Basis der gewonnenen Erkenntnisse werden sodann hieraus resultierende Probleme im Hinblick auf die Effektivität des vorgesehenen Rechtsschutzes sowie mögliche Reformoptionen erörtert.
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Halina Wawzyniak
Weder das Grundgesetz noch das Wahlprüfungsgesetz stellen materielle Kriterien für eine Wiederholungswahl auf. Das ist in einer Demokratie ein ernsthaftes Problem, weil dann allein der Rechtsprechung die Aufgabe zufällt, die entsprechenden Kriterien zu entwickeln und sie somit judikativ Recht setzt.
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Jakob Schemmel
Das zweistufige System der Wahlprüfung ist getragen von politischen Erwägungen, die nicht mehr verfangen: Die Wahlprüfung gehört nicht notwendig zur Parlamentsautonomie, die Gefahr des politischen Missbrauchs der Wahlprüfung wird mittlerweile durch eine Parlamentsprüfung eher gesteigert. Eine institutionelle Reform der Wahlprüfung scheint daher angezeigt. Eine vorzugswürdige Regelung drängt sich allerdings nicht auf.
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Frank Bätge
Insbesondere nachdem das Berliner Landesverfassungsgericht den Hinweis auf eine komplette Wiederholung der Abgeordnetenhauswahl erteilt hat, wird öffentlich diskutiert, ob auch bei der Bundestagwahl nicht gleich das Bundesverfassungsgericht entscheiden könnte? Diese Frage sollte vor den Hintergründen des Zwecks der Wahlprüfung, ihrer historischen Entwicklung und der Einbettung in den Gesamtzusammenhang einer Wahl betrachtet werden und ist meines Erachtens im Ergebnis zu verneinen.
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Daniel Hellmann
Seit 1949 sind 5.475 Wahleinsprüche gegen Bundestagswahlen beim Wahlprüfungsausschuss des Deutschen Bundestages eingegangen, davon allein 2.121 gegen die Bundestagswahl 2021. Noch nie wurde eine Wahl auf Bundesebene teilweise, geschweige denn in Gänze wiederholt. Gemessen daran war bislang also noch kein Wahleinspruch erfolgreich. Dabei ist es keineswegs so, dass der Wahlprüfungsausschuss und seine Mitglieder noch nie Wahlfehler vorgefunden haben. Vielmehr wurde eine Vielzahl kleinerer und größerer Wahlfehler festgestellt, die jedoch nicht zu einer Wahlwiederholung führten. Wie kann es sein, dass das einzige Gremium zur Aufarbeitung von Wahlfehlern auf Bundesebene bislang trotz vielfältiger Wahlfehler noch nie einem Wahleinspruch Konsequenzen hat folgen lassen?
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Winfried Kluth
Kein anderes Element des demokratischen Verfassungsstaats ist in Deutschland stärker aus der Zeit gefallen als die Wahlprüfung. Sie ist in ihrer Grundstruktur noch in den Denkweisen und Bedürfnissen der konstitutionellen Monarchie verfangen und schützt einseitig die Interessen der etablierten und bei der zu überprüfen Wahl erfolgreichen Parteien. Das lässt sich an einer kritischen Hinterfragung von Zuständigkeit, Verfahren und Prüfungsmaßstäben aufzeigen.
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Sophie Schönberger
Bei der Wahlprüfung durch das Parlament und durch die Verfassungsgerichte stellt sich nicht nur die Frage, wie stabil ein Parlament gehalten werden muss, sondern auch umgekehrt, in welchem Maße Wahlen noch die Überzeugungskraft besitzen, tatsächlich demokratische Legitimation zu stiften. Je öfter nämlich offensichtliche Rechtsverstöße bei der Wahl durch die Besonderheiten des Wahlprüfungsverfahrens vollkommen folgenlos bleiben, desto stärker werden Zweifel daran genährt, ob es bei der Wahl überhaupt mit rechten Dingen zugeht und nach demokratischen Regeln gespielt wird.
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Daria Bayer
Vor dem Amtsgericht Berlin-Tiergarten finden zurzeit Prozesse gegen Aktivist:innen von Letzte Generation statt. Diese hatten sich an verschiedenen Straßen in Berlin festgeklebt, um auf die unzureichenden Klimaschutzmaßnahmen aufmerksam zu machen (die BZ prägte deshalb auch den Begriff „Klima-Kleber“). Dadurch kam es teilweise zu Straßensperren und Staus. Die jüngst ergangenen Urteile werfen die Frage nach den strafrechtlichen Grenzen von zivilem Widerstand bzw. Ungehorsam auf: Kann Klimaschutz ein strafrechtlicher Rechtfertigungsgrund sein?
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Silvia Steininger
Human rights courts can rarely avoid confrontation with backlashing states. This is particularly true for the two oldest and most prominent regional human rights courts, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR). Yet, by close observation, we can witness that for both courts, backlash has triggered important institutional developments which will guide the work of human rights bodies in an increasingly polarized 21st century.
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Erik Voeten
The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is operating in an increasingly challenging political and legal environment. Even if member states have stopped short of far-reaching reforms, they have signaled their collective desire for a more restrained Court, starting with the 2012 Brighton Declaration. Governments in established democracies, like the United Kingdom, have refused to implement or dragged-out implementation of ECtHR judgments. In some countries, government officials or major politicians have suggested exiting the Court’s jurisdiction altogether. Finally, several member states have rolled back domestic rights protections for politically unpopular groups, such as criminal defendants, suspected terrorists, asylum seekers, and non-traditional families.
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Sanford V. Levinson
In the United States, it does not appear to be the case that the apex judiciary faces truly significant attacks on its autonomy, whatever the expressed unhappiness of an increasing number of critics. At least some would argue that the problem is precisely the opposite, that the Supreme Court has a smug sense of its own autonomy and is willing to use it with reckless indifference to the consequences for the American polity overall.
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Alison Young
It is difficult to deny evidence of a potential backlash against the judiciary in the UK. Both Miller decisions sent shockwaves through the United Kingdom. This is despite both decisions having the effect of protecting the powers of Parliament rather than the courts, and both having a marginal, if any, impact on the ability of the UK government to achieve its desired Brexit outcome. It is hard to forget the ‘Enemies of the People’ headline following the first Miller decision.
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Michael Riegner
When Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro visited Hungary in Februar 2022, he was not only strenghtening political ties to his ideological “brother” Victor Orban, who had already attended Bolsonaro’s inauguration in 2018. Bolsonaro’s visit also put a spotlight on the transregional circulation of illiberal legal ideas. Over the past decade, conservative, religious and right-wing movements, activists and governments have built transnational networks in which they exchange legal ideas, forge common litigation strategies, and organize mutual intellectual and financial support. This posts addresses the role of Brazil and Bolsonarism in these networks, and it points to some consequences for the wider research agenda of comparative constitutional law.
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Bertil Emrah Oder
The Turkish Constitutional Court demonstrates the resistance-deference paradox as a pattern in its judicial behavior under autocratic pressure. The docket management strategies including prioritization and late responsiveness are also employed in politically sensitive cases. The deferring stances of the Court legitimize autocratization when core issues of the regime are at stake. In these cases, the Court develops an autocratic partnership that makes itself an unreliable actor without any commitment to judicial ethos. The resistant stances of the Court trigger the political backlash and clashes with the judiciary, leading to further contestation of political autocratization.
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Ewa Łętowska
The strategies of judicial resistance employed by the Polish judiciary after 2015 are diverse and complementary. They respond to changing and intensifying the pressure of political power on the judiciary. They are a consequence of the judgments of the CJEU and the ECHR concerning the administration of justice in Poland.
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Philipp Dann
The 1970s and 80s brought about two new social archetypes – the punk and the nerd. While the anti-establishment punk wants to trash the (economic, political, social) system, wants to provoke and get attention for the sake of it, the nerd behaves rather inconspicuously but effectively. He might be socially awkward and overlooked at first, but skilled and smart as he is, he knows the rules of the game and the mechanisms to get ahead with his plans. When looking at different authoritarian leaders in the world today, these two archetypes come to mind. In this blogpost, I want to use these two archetype of authoritarian leaders to analyse their behaviour and sketch the contours of an analytical framework to compare and distinguish between them.
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Jessica Holl
Even 30 years after the 1988 Constitution, the most democratic one in Brazilian history, the legacies of the military dictatorship still linger on - a fact that has been made amply evident by Bolsonaro's policies and discourse concerning transitional justice. Based on this, the present text aims to show how transitional justice has been deficient in Brazil and then discuss how Bolsonaro’s government has made the situation even worse by dismantling the policies that were developed under former governments.
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Gábor Halmai
The very first step of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party after its 2010 electoral victory towards an ‘illiberal’ constitutional regime was to substantially limit the once very broad review powers of the Constitutional Court. The Fidesz government also started to pack the formerly activist Court with loyalist. By 2013 was appointed by Fidesz. Before 2013, the Court used some cautious strategies to keep a certain autonomy in the midst of threats to lose its independent status altogether by becoming part of the Supreme Court.
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Thomas Bustamante, Emilio Peluso Neder Meyer
It is a relatively uncontroversial opinion that the Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has undermined the rule of law and its constitutional institutions. This contribution concentrates on the Brazilian apex courts to show how a mix of resilience in day-to-day work and a few confrontational positions played an important role in safeguarding the autonomy and independence of the judicial branch in Brazil during Jair Bolsonaro’s term.
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Fernando Leal, Thomaz Pereira
The Brazilian Supreme Court is currently a polarizing institution. Multiple institutional features empower it to control the constitutionality of federal, state, and municipal norms both in the course of concrete and abstract review cases. The Court stands in the complicated position of being criticized for both its actions and its inaction, while it is called to adjudicate demands by actors from all points of the political spectrum, and as it has recently come to face unprecedent authoritarian attacks. And here is the crux of Brazilian current constitutional situation: the anti-institutional speech that has been put forward by Bolsonaro and his supporters has in some cases, on its face, not been against the Constitution per se. It is presented as if it were against institutions.
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Başak Çalı, Cathryn Costello
Domestic and regional human rights courts around the world are under pressure. Populist, illiberal, or autocratic forms of governance have led to a global attack on constitutional democracy, and its guardians, courts. As a result, courts find themselves in a dilemma: should they intervene much more fiercely to uphold the rule of law or protect their institutional powers, but risk to be further attacked as enemies of the government and the majorities? Or should they practice judicial and prudential restraint to safeguard their institutional autonomy in the long term, but risk to be failing and regarded as foes by minority groups, civil society, and progressive movements who are on the receiving end of populist, illiberal or autocratic practices?
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Geraldo Miniuci
Especially over the last three years, people have been demonstrating on the streets of Brazilian cities, expressing their support of Jair Bolsonaro and even demanding the return of military rule. „I authorize“ (military intervention) is a now common cry among Bolsonaro’s sympathizers, often read on banners. Some of the demonstrators are more explicit and openly demand „Military intervention with Bolsonaro“. Why is this happening? Why are these citizens willing to give up their citizen rights not only in favour of a military dictatorship, but of a leader who apparently is capable of seducing, yes, hypnotising them in a way that no General-President during the military dictatorship could ever do?
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Rafael Mafei
Brazil is currently experiencing a tense electoral campaign, in which several candidates, most notably former president Lula da Silva (Workers‘ Party), are trying to prevent the reelection of far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro. In the segmentation of the electorate, one group has deserved special attention from all campaigns, the incumbent and its rivals: the so-called “evangelicals”. The evangelical electorate is more conservative, and thus has more affinities with Bolsonaro than with left-wing politicians. The politically organized evangelical community has made the Federal Supreme Court one of its main opponents.
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Evandro Proença Süssekind
The Armed Forces are back in power in Brazil. This time, differently from 1937 and 1964, it happened through elections. As one of the main supporting groups behind Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral victory in 2018, the military’s role in his government continued to grow. I argue that, firstly, the text addressing the military functions in the Constitution of 1988 repeats the same mistakes made by past Brazilian constitutions; and secondly, that the South American countries’ constitutional framework points out attractive alternative constitutional design options on the topic.
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Florian Hoffmann
On the eve of a fateful election that will determine whether the last four years have been a bad dream and a footnote in Brazil’s political history, or not, the legacy of Bolsonaro’s regime for constitutional law and constitutionalism is widely and expertly discussed. Despite all his rhetorical machismo, Bolsonaro has not governed as a classical autocrat: he was democratically elected and his subsequent administration always found itself between the rock of a fragmented, yet viscerally opportunistic legislature, and the hard place of a judiciary that - while not always unsympathetic to his program - has been primarily interested in safeguarding its autonomy and its (self-)assumed role as the last word on virtually everything.
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Danielle Hanna Rached, M Cecilia Oliveira
The rise of right-wing populist leaders, governments and political parties around the world has impacted environmental policy in general and the climate agenda particularly. In this brief commentary, we aim to contribute to an emerging literature that studies the relation between far-right populist rhetoric and actions on climate change policy. The idea is to analyse whether Jair Bolsonaro brings new tactics to the playbook of autocratic leaders, and if so which types. While political dynamics in Hungary, Poland and the USA have all been studied to establish the links between populist politics and climate inaction, there is still room to broaden the view to countries of the Global South.
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Clara Iglesias Keller, Diego Werneck Arguelhes
This October, Brazilians will elect their next President amidst a wave of disinformation aimed at discrediting the electoral process, and the electronic voting system in particular. One of the main engines of disinformation has been President Jair Bolsonaro himself. The problems created by the President’s constant spreading of disinformation – now targeting the core of Brazil’s representative democracy – go beyond the (in itself very serious) question of whether he could or could not pull off an outright refusal to leave office, in spite of an electoral defeat. Bolsonaro’s unsubstantiated charges of fraud can contribute to and encourage confusion and violence during and after the elections.
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Philipp Dann, Conrado Hübner Mendes, Michael Riegner
If things go badly, the upcoming elections in Brazil may be the last ones for some time to come. Incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro threatens to use the Trump playbook to dispute a possible election loss, counting on the violent support of his highly mobilized followers and parts of the Brazilian military nostalgic for the military dictatorship. His contender, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who initially refused to wear a bullet proof vest, has now taken wear one on his rallies. During his tenure, Bolsonaro has drawn on populist anti-establishment sentiments and authoritarian legacies to develop his own, peculiar brand of illiberal rule known as Bolsonarism. Our symposium discusses Bolsonarism at the ballot box from the perspective of comparative constitutional law.
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Amanda Musco Eklund
Part I of this contribution explains how the regulatory design of the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) raises issues in relation to the rule of law principle of legality. Essentially, the ETIAS screening rules algorithm illustrates how automation can lead to what I suggest is a new form of arbitrariness. Part II reflects on how these legality issues affect other rule of law principles, including the principle of effective judicial protection. In turn, it raises three accountability issues and calls into question the assumption that the safeguard of manual processing in case of a ‘hit’ is a panacea for all rule of law challenges stemming from this semi-automated decision-making.
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Amanda Musco Eklund
This contribution, presented in two parts, offers a predictive glimpse into future rule of law challenges due to the European Border and Coast Guard Agency’s (Frontex) primary responsibility for the automated processing and screening rules of the soon-to-be-operational European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) at the EU’s external borders. . In Part I on legality, I argue that the ETIAS screening rules algorithm illustrates how automation can lead to what I suggest is a new form of arbitrariness – which I refer to as ‘algorithmic discretion’. This can be defined as a situation where the exercise of power and discretion and their limitations are not sufficiently specified at the legislative level but are delegated to an algorithm instead.
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Sarah Tas
Frontex has become notorious for its multiple fundamental rights violations, including pushbacks. The problem of fundamental rights infringements associated with the Agency has been lasting for years, leading ultimately to the resignation of the Executive Director. What I argue in this post is, first, that the fundamental right to the protection of personal data by Frontex has not yet received sufficient attention by scholars and EU institutions. Second, data protection within the Agency needs to be strengthened to prevent any future new scandals.
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Laura Salzano
The gravity of the decision not to disclose the OLAF Report should not be underestimated. The decision of not initiating proceedings on its basis should not either. Excluding the public scrutiny over such serious violations of human rights and breaches of EU law committed by those who are entrusted with applying it, weakens our democracy and fails to respect the very same values it was founded on. In a Union based on the rule of law, the accountability of civil servants should be ensured through efficient mechanisms.
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Michele Gigli
An investigation by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) on allegations of misconduct within Frontex ended with a report classified as confidential, which was therefore only accessible to the agency’s Management Board. Shortly after submission of the report, Frontex’ Executive Director (ED), Fabrice Leggeri, resigned, opening up a new cycle in the governance of the agency. Following up on this, the European Parliament (EP) decided to postpone the discharge of Frontex’ budget on the ground of lacking information with regard to the subject of the OLAF report. In this contribution, I argue that the EP’s refusal to approve the discharge of the budget of Frontex, even though having little impact on the financial stability of the agency, is a tool to enable the political accountability of Frontex.
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Tineke Strik
The scandals about the complicity of Frontex in human rights violations in autumn 2020 exposed weaknesses in the accountability system. In this blog, I will elaborate on this by presenting the rules governing democratic accountability, followed by an analysis of the lessons learned during the parliamentary inquiry on Frontex’ human rights-related performances, in the light of their obligations. I will conclude with ideas on how to strengthen democratic accountability, and how to expand it to the much-needed public accountability of Frontex.
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Salvo Nicolosi
While possibly marking a step in the right direction towards more political accountability, the controversial resignation of Frontex’s former Executive Director, Fabrice Leggeri, leaves open the question about the effective judicial protection for migrants interacting with the agency. A number of judicial actions are brought before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), as the only competent tribunal with jurisdiction on Frontex. By critically reviewing these judicial actions from the perspective of migrants’ access to justice, this post aims to flag the limits of the existing system of EU judicial remedies in light of Frontex wrongdoings. Beyond access to a court, access to justice vis-à-vis EU migration agencies must integrate elements of good governance, such as transparency and accountability.
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Elspeth Guild
The legal and structural problem of fundamental rights protection and its monitoring at the EU’s external borders in the context of border police operations is high on the EU political and legislative agenda at the moment. In this blog I argue that a truly independent system for monitoring human rights compliance at EU borders must be established which is the responsibility of state bodies, building on existing entities such as Ombudspersons, National Human Rights Institutions, National Preventive Mechanisms. The border monitoring activities must be coordinated across Member States and the competent monitoring bodies must have access to their sister bodies in relevant third countries.
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Mariana Gkliati
The available non-judicial forms of accountability are insufficient to ensure the accountability of the agency. Neither their combination nor the respective parts can constitute effective non-judicial remedy in the meaning of Article 13 of the European Convention for Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, while their pre-emptive functionality is not deemed adequate to prevent violations. Therefore, the need for legal accountability in the form of judicial remedies becomes all the more essential.
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Florin Coman-Kund
The recent resignation of the Executive Director of Frontex disguises in fact the many structural problems and flaws resulting from the hybrid exercise of significant executive powers within a shallow legal framework. This blogpost argues that this leads to a lack of clarity, adequate controls and safeguards which in turn creates fertile ground for abuse of power and unaccountability.
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Tarunabh Khaitan
All (but one) responses to my reflections on the ethics of activism as scholars in this blog symposium have been thoughtful, engaged, and charitable. For them, I am very grateful. If my rule-consequentialist worries have any truth to them, we should worry more rather than less about having the relevant motivation I castigate. When the moral stakes are higher (such as in vast areas of the Global South), one has to be even more careful about not making moral mistakes. The debate is not about whether one should be moral (by definition, we should be). It is about what is the most effective means in which the constitutional studies academy can contribute to a more just world.
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Luisa Marin
The resignation of the Executive Director of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (hereinafter: Frontex or Agency) at the end of April 2022 re-opened Pandora’s box with regard to the adequacy of the accountability mechanisms on the Agency. The turmoil was caused by several allegations of breaches of the law, which seems to be confirmed by the OLAF report, leaked at the end of July 2022. The aim of this blogpost is, first, to discuss the emergence of a rule of law crisis in border management and, second, to lay a finger on issues regarding both internal and external oversight mechanisms over Frontex, with special attention for the composition of the Management Board, the very first oversight body within the Agency.
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Luisa Marin, Mariana Gkliati, Sarah Tas
In international macroeconomics, the term ‘Impossible Trinity’ refers to three elements, which are impossible to coexist. In this Verfassungsblog series, we examine whether the EU’s external border policy, Frontex and the rule of law constitute such an ‘Impossible Trinity’, or whether they can be reconciled with appropriate accountability mechanisms.
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Alberto Alemanno
At a time in which a worrying number of risks conspire to threaten the end of democracy and humanity – from climate change to uncontrolled new technologies –, to confine the remit of the legal scholar to the narrow boundaries of academic purity appears ahistorical at best, irresponsible at worst.
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Sam Bookman
There is a fine line between suspicion based on the nature of the motivation (seeking direct material change), and the substance of the motivation (commitment to a particular normative position). Once the “scholactivist” label gets thrown around, it may be hard to maintain that distinction. And it is to normative positions which advocate new ideas or change – including those that are reflective or well-considered – to which the label is most likely to attach.
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Liora Lazarus
In the past decade, the U.K. has seen the overwhelming influence of the populist right. It manifests most famously in the Brexit process, but also in continuous calls for a reversal of liberal constitutionalism. Notably this process is bolstered by a group of scholars, many of whom were in my own faculty at Oxford, who serve as legitimation of government policy and spur its development. Importantly, though clearly highly effective ‘scholactivists’, these scholars would never describe themselves as such. We need to follow the money, we need to follow its route to power and to understand the role the academy plays in legitimating and building these ideological (and often religious) positions.
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Cynthia Farid, Sergio Latorre
Tarunabh Khaitan’s article “On scholactivism in constitutional studies: Skeptical thoughts” has prompted us to make a number of observations. It is a welcome intervention insofar as it may perhaps provide an impetus for a much needed debate within constitutional studies, which on the one hand seeks to lay bare certain kinds of privilege that undergirds the positionality of scholars arguing against Scholactivism, and on the other hand also makes the case for empirically grounded and interdisciplinary engagement in constitutional studies. Yet, to those of us located in, writing from and about the Global South—which includes both the geographical South as well as pockets of it in the Global North (including racialised and Indigenous populations)—this contention raises several concerns.
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Martin Scheinin
My claim and critique of Khaitan’s position is that constitutional law scholars must produce actual answers to questions of legality, constitutionality or feasibility. Scholars may differ in whether or not they start their inquiry with a ‘material outcome’ as their hypothesis but the quality of work by both ‘activist’ and ‘non-activist’ scholars is to be assessed on the basis of the outcome and their academic integrity.
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Leonid Sirota
Tarunabh Khaitan’s editorial comment in ICON on the perils of letting activist inclinations influence one’s scholarship, resulting in an unsavoury “scholactivism” blend, is thought-provoking. Professor Khaitan calls for rigorous adherence to the ethical demands of a search for truth in our research, even as we might, he suggests, become or remain activists for causes we believe in a range of other activities. In my view, however, Professor Khaitan’s critique misses the mark. He is asking too much of individuals and not enough of institutions.
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Vicki C. Jackson
Professor Khaitan has written a powerful analysis and defense of the role of scholars in pursuing knowledge; he raises many more important issues than I have space to address here. I write in full agreement with several of the attitudes towards scholarly work that Khaitan emphasizes, especially the need for independence of judgment and an openness to revision, but find his “scholactivism” category too broadly conceptualized. Universities and their scholars must focus primarily on knowledge – its production, preservation, and dissemination – but good scholarship can be directed to material change in the world as well as to changes in understanding.
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Benoit Mayer
Tarunabh Khaitan’s editorial in the International Journal of Constitutional Law presents insightful remarks about the risk that scholactivism may fail both as scholarship and as activism. I largely share Khaitan’s discomfort with scholactivism, which confuses two different goals: advancing human knowledge and advancing a political goal. However, I wonder whether the instrumentalist argument that Khaitan develops is really the decisive one. In this blog, I present some doubts about this instrumentalist argument before suggesting another line of argument, based on the intrinsic nature of academic research.
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Thomas Bustamante
There is no general reason to suppose that constitutional law scholars should refrain from engaging in politics, and I think that a scholar’s motivation to achieve a certain political goal does not affect the value, quality, or credibility of the conclusions of her inquiry. Moreover, the austere research ethics underlying the arguments of Komárek and Khaitan imposes on constitutional law scholars a set of role obligations that are in tension with some dispositions and epistemic attitudes that are often necessary to be a competent scholar in value-laden disciplines like political philosophy and constitutional law.
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John Morijn
Professor Tarunabh Khaitan’s ICON editorial on “scholactivism”, as well as his September 2021 Letten Prize lecture on "The Role of the Legal Scholar in the World" are unsettling. Although stepping aside and standing by may feel satisfactorily pure and avoids tensions as well as personal attacks in a post-truth world, it is not neutral – simply because any activity relating to constitutional law, active or passive, is inevitably a statement about politics and power. Instead, constitutional lawyers have a professional obligation to explicate in the public debate what forms the implicit basis of all conversation between them: the very relevance of the law to power and politics.
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Adrienne Stone
A scholar motivated to achieve specific outcomes in her lifetime might be reasonably thought to bring a serious-mindedness, persistence and focus that arises from really caring about real-world effects of her work. And beyond scholarly energy, there is reason to suppose that the passion, commitment and even anger at injustice that often attends a scholactivist mindset might bring insight.
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Andrew Stawasz, Jeff Sebo
Discussions of animal law and legal longtermism often take place separately. That separation is misguided. Each field has much to gain from the other. In this post, we explain why animal law is important for legal longtermism. We then propose two general steps that legal longtermists can take to bridge these fields.
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Dimitry Vladimirovich Kochenov, Suryapratim Roy
As Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine continues, EU Member States are contemplating new sanctions, including Schengen visa bans for Russian citizens. The underlying rationale is the WWI ‘enemy alien’ logic, where all Russian civilians are enemy aliens, and must be treated with suspicion. This populist construction of an ‘enemy alien’ is antithetical to the EU’s constitutional core, which also informs its visa and migration law. The populist retributive logic, to us, is a stress-test of the rule of law in the EU. It’s good news that, outside Estonia and Latvia, it seems to be holding strong in other Member States.
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Haydn Belfield, Shin-Shin Hua
Compute or computing power refers to a software and hardware stack, such as in a data centre or computer, engineered for AI-specific applications. We argue that the antitrust and regulatory literature to date has failed to pay sufficient attention to compute, despite compute being a key input to AI progress and services, the potentially substantial market power of companies in the supply chain, and the advantages of compute as a ‘unit’ of regulation in terms of detection and remedies.
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Steffen Mau
Auch wenn touristische Reisen in die Europäische Union im Zusammenhang mit den kriegerischen Verbrechen Russlands in der Ukraine wie Nebenschauplatz erscheinen mögen – hier geht es um etwas. Angesichts der schrecklichen Verbrechen der russischen Armee in der Ukraine erscheint das touristische Reisen und das Beharren darauf, dass dieses Recht nicht einzuschränken sei, kaum nachvollziehbar. Rein legalistische Argumentation verdeckt, dass das Recht immer auch ein Instrument zur Durchsetzung politischer Interessen ist.
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Christoph Bublitz, Christoph Winter
This post introduces a proposal to promote the long-term interests of humanity and to avert existential and other catastrophic risks, such as those resulting from extreme climate change, pandemics and unaligned artificial intelligence, through the adoption of a novel legal decision rule: in dubio pro futura. In the face of legal indeterminacy, when the law does not provide a single correct answer but a range of several acceptable answers, courts should choose the one most favorable to the future of humanity.
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Mark Eccleston-Turner
It is clear that humanity is not prepared for the next pandemic; the global health governance architecture requires fundamental change in order to get us to that point. If humanity is to be prepared for the next pandemic, we must fix the deep rooted, structural inequalities which are embedded within our global health system. The pandemic treaty is an opportunity to do this, but on the basis of the present proposals, and the manner in which the treaty is being developed, it is clear that the treaty will fall far short of such expectations.
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Shin-Shin Hua, Haydn Belfield
This post examines whether competition law can remain effective in prospective AI development scenarios by looking at six variables for AI development: capability of AI systems, speed of development, key inputs, technical architectures, number of actors, and the nature and relationship of these actors. For each of these, we analyse how different scenarios could impact effective enforceability. In some of these scenarios, EU competition law would remain a strong lever of control; in others it could be significantly weakened. We argue that despite challenges to regulators' ability to detect and remedy breaches, in many future scenarios the effective enforceability of EU competition law remains strong.
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Merijn Chamon
Recently, politicians in different EU countries have suggested barring Russian tourists from visiting the EU. Such a ban would be in retaliation for the war waged by Russia against Ukraine. From a legal perspective, these suggestions raise the interesting question whether such a blanket ban would be lawful. From a legal perspective, the question is precisely whether there is a possibility to amend the existing acquis, in order to ban Russians from obtaining short term visas for the purpose of visiting Europe as tourists. It seems hardly tenable to argue that the EU (secondary) legislature is somehow bound by the ratio legis of the current Schengen visa system.
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Jonas Bornemann
After some heads of EU governments advocated for an all-out ban of Russian nationals’ Schengen visas, a heated academic and political debate arose over the question whether the EU could bar Russians from acquiring visas for a short-term stay in the Schengen area. Could a sweeping travel ban for Russian citizens be justified in the light of EU law? This blogpost advises caution.
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Francesco Nicoli
In the aftermath of Ukrainian President Zelenski’s call on the EU to introduce a ban on short-term ‘tourist’ visas for Russians wishing to travel the Schengen area, a lively debate on the issue erupted, featuring important interventions not last on this website. For instance, Sarah Ganty argues that an EU tourist visa ban would be ethically wrong and unlawful. However, there is no absolute right to travel through the EU.
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Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann
The rules-based order necessary for realizing the sustainable development goals (SDGs) requires antagonistic, perennial struggles for justice challenging abuses of power and struggling for collective protection of the SDGs. Without such a ‘Sisyphus morality’ and stronger leadership from constitutional democracies for improving multilevel governance of global public goods, realization of the SDGs and protecting ‘human rights of all’ risk remaining a utopia.
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Abbie-Rose Hampton
Rapid levels of growth and development within the field of synthetic biology pose an undeniable threat to equity and global health justice as a result of the rise in the dematerialisation of pathogen samples. Until fairly recently, it was impossible to detach physical virus samples from the information they contained - the sample was the information - but technological advancements have allowed for the dematerialisation of pathogen samples to occur on a global scale. Whilst there are undoubtedly benefits to be derived from dematerialisation, it poses an existential threat to those international agreements which are underpinned by access and benefit sharing agreements.
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Daniel Bertram
When may a court legitimately rule over affairs of the future at all? Before thinking about how to resolve such cases, we need to clarify the conditions legitimatising the exercise of judicial authority. My (necessarily cursory) argument in this blogpost is twofold. First, I argue that it is both useful and conceptually apt to think about legitimate authority as a jurisdictional question. Second, I propose a heuristic condition that justifies the judicial exercise of extratemporal jurisdiction over future events: preserving choice.
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Sivan Shlomo-Agon, Michal Saliternik
In this blog post we challenge the reactive nature of international law, a discipline that has largely developed in response to specific crises and incidents, such as wars, pandemics, mass migrations, economic breakdowns, or technological advancements. While we acknowledge that the reactive paradigm of international law has facilitated adoption of pragmatic solutions to the concrete problems encountered and offered international law a path by which to direct its development, this approach, we contend, has led international law to be backward-looking, short-sighted, and ill-prepared to address newly emerging global threats and advances.
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Renan Araújo, Leonie Koessler
Constitutions worldwide have seen the rise of future generations. Considering the 193 UN member states, Kosovo, Palestine, and Taiwan, 41% (81 out of 196) of constitutions explicitly referenced future generations as of 2021. We find that this trend started in the early 1990s, lagging behind environmental constitutionalism by two decades. Why do constitutions increasingly refer to future generations? Based on a comprehensive data collection including all constitutions ever written, we argue that future generations are a significant part of a modern, universalist language of constitution-making.
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Oren Perez
The solution to many public dilemmas requires long-term effort by successive generations. Such situation arises whenever the solution to a public dilemma cannot be implemented instantaneously but is dependent on the continuous effort of future governments (and their citizens). In this post I discuss the problem of securing intergenerational cooperation, focusing on the challenge of designing long-term commitment mechanisms. I will also reflect briefly on the tension between commitment mechanisms and the democratic ideal of citizen sovereignty (allowing each generation to make its own choices).
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Sarah Ganty
Volodymyr Zelensky, the Prime Minister of Finland and others have been calling for an EU-wide ban of Russian citizens from Schengen visas. Unquestionably, the horrible crimes perpetrated by the Russian state should be punished. But Russians are citizens of a totalitarian state, they are not Putin. And whether we like it or not, there is no legal way under current EU law to adopt a blanket citizenship-based ban against Russians acquiring Schengen visas. Even more: political attention paid to it by persons in leadership positions is deeply surprising, if not irresponsible.
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Ondrej Bajgar, Jan Horenovsky
With continuing proliferation of increasingly capable AI systems, we will need regulation to address the associated risks. Since our ability to foresee such future risks is very limited, our best bet is to base such regulation on relatively general principles, rather than narrow rules. We think that negative human rights with their existing broad international support could form a suitable foundation both for flexible regulation and for the associated technical solutions.
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Ammar Bustami
The traditional understanding of intertemporal law is not persuasive – a modified intertemporal approach to intergenerational equity is necessary. This approach would have to shift the perspective of intertemporal law from a retrospective present-past relationship to a future-oriented perspective. Instead of observing the evolutionary developments of law over time and retrospectively applying them at a certain point in the future, the new approach departs from the contemporary legal regime and attempts to anticipate its prospective evolutionary developments – with regard to intergenerational equity only.
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Gareth Davies
I want to focus on the question of what the future can do for us – a question less asked, and which may seem antithetical to the idea of responsible behaviour now, and yet which is simply a part of the idea of solidarity across time. Its practical importance is that it strengthens the relationship between the present and future and so gives a more persuasive and coherent basis for solidaristic behaviour now
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Matthijs Maas
If the development of certain technologies, such as advanced, unaligned AI, would be as dangerous as some have suggested, a long-termist legal perspective might advocate a strategy of technological delay—or even restraint—to avoid a default outcome of catastrophe. To many, restraint–a decision to withhold indefinitely from the development, or at least deployment, of the technology–might look implausible. However, history offers a surprising array of cases where strategically promising technologies were delayed, abandoned, or left unbuilt, even though many at the time perceived their development as inevitable.
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Eric Martínez, Christoph Winter
The past decade has seen a growing interest in protecting future generations from risks associated with climate change, pandemics, artificial intelligence, and other potential threats. Philosophical theories have developed in parallel, and those associated with the view that one should be particularly concerned with ensuring that the long-run future goes well have been referred to as longtermism. In the context of law, these theories form the basis for legal longtermism, the set of views associated with the claim that law and legal institutions ought to protect the far future. Based on a pair of recent empirical studies we show that legal experts and laypeople alike believe that the law should protect the long-term future much more than it currently does; that legal experts believe that the law can predictably and feasibly protect the long-term future; and that these beliefs hold true across major demographic subgroups.
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Maria Stemmler
Staaten haben Geheimnisse, die sie nach ihren innerstaatlichen Rechtsvorschriften vor einer Veröffentlichung schützen. Besonders problematisch ist die Geheimhaltung, wenn sich das Verfahren um gravierende Menschenrechtsverletzungen dreht, die von staatlichen Stellen verübt worden sind. Hier kann die Geheimhaltung die justizielle Aufarbeitung staatlichen Unrechts beeinträchtigen oder gar ganz verhindern und den individuellen Anspruch auf effektiven Rechtsschutz leerlaufen lassen.
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Tobias Mast
Beauftragte, die sich als ausgegliederte Organisationseinheiten ohne imperative Kompetenzen einem spezifischen Belang widmen, finden sich auf der Parlaments- und auf unterschiedlichen Exekutivebenen. Besonders vielfältig und undurchsichtig erscheint das Ensemble der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung. Je nach Aufgabenbereich stellen sie Fürsprecher:innen einer Sache oder einer Personengruppe dar, bilden Institutionen der externen Verwaltungskontrolle, koordinieren zwischen Hoheitsträgern und/oder beraten die Regierung aufgrund ihrer besonderen Expertise.
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Maren Luy
Mit den Worten, es handele sich um „ein[en] Fisch also, der gar kein Fisch ist, aber doch wie ein Fisch behandelt werden soll, obwohl er eigentlich für seine Aufgabe auch gar nicht Fisch sein müsste“ beschrieb ein ehemaliger Bundesjustizminister die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (BKM). Er spielte dabei insbesondere auf das Gesetz über die Rechtsverhältnisse der Parlamentarischen Staatssekretäre an, in dem das Bundestagsmandat als Ernennungsvoraussetzung abgeschafft werden sollte. Seine Worte beschreiben aber auch die Organisationsstrukturen und Aufgabenwahrnehmung der BKM zutreffend.
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Michael Koß
Die Beauftragten der Bundesregierung gehören naturgemäß zu dem, was Walter Bagehot, der erste Theoretiker des Parlamentarismus, als den „ehrwürdigen Teil der Verfassung“ bezeichnet hat. Bagehot grenzte die „ehrwürdigen“ von den „effizienten“ Institutionen ab. Während in letzteren die politischen Entscheidungen getroffen und umgesetzt werden, übernehmen die „ehrwürdigen“ Teile der Verfassung repräsentative Aufgaben und müssen ihre politische Agenda symbolisch verfolgen.
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Karoline Haake
Die Ernennung der Greenpeace-Aktivistin Jennifer Morgan zur Sonderbeauftragten der Bundesregierung für internationale Klimapolitik im Auswärtigen Amt erzeugte zuletzt ein großes Echo in der deutschen Medienlandschaft. Das öffentliche Interesse an den Beauftragten der Bundesregierung ebbt jedoch meist schnell nach der medienwirksamen Schaffung eines neuen Amtes ab und hat das Verfassungsrecht ebenfalls noch nicht nachhaltig beschäftigt. Dabei wäre ein Bundesbeauftragten-Gesetz wünschenswert.
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Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri
Nigeria's transition to a digital economy is in full swing. As terrorism and violent extremism are ravaging certain parts of the country, the mounting insecurity has necessitated huge budgetary allocations to national security, giving way to a new kind of digital authoritarianism. Serious concerns have been raised regarding the misuse of collected data and arbitrary surveillance, which undermine human rights and civic freedoms.
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Valsamis Mitsilegas
The expansion of the EU counter-terrorism acquis has signified what I have called the preventive turn in European security policy. Preventive justice is understood here as the exercise of state power in order to prevent future acts which are deemed to constitute security threats. There are three main shifts in the preventive justice paradigm: (i) a shift from an investigation of acts which have taken place to an emphasis on suspicion; (ii) a shift from targeted action to generalised surveillance; and, underpinning both, (iii) a temporal shift from the past to the future.
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Valsamis Mitsilegas
Die Ausweitung der EU-Befugnisse im Bereich der Terrorismusbekämpfung steht für die präventive Wende in der europäischen Sicherheitspolitik. Unter Präventivjustiz wird hier die Ausübung staatlicher Macht verstanden, um zukünftige Handlungen zu verhindern, die als Sicherheitsbedrohung angesehen werden. Im Paradigma der Präventivjustiz gibt es drei Hauptverschiebungen: (i) eine Verlagerung von der Untersuchung von Handlungen, die stattgefunden haben, hin zu einer Betonung des Verdachts; (ii) eine Verlagerung von gezielten Maßnahmen hin zu allgemeiner Überwachung; und, was beide untermauert, (iii) eine zeitliche Verlagerung von der Vergangenheit in die Zukunft.
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Alan Greene
From terrorism and economic crisis, to COVID-19 and climate change; the first decades of the 21st Century have seen democracies lurch from crisis to crisis, implementing legal and political responses to tackle the threat at hand. Many of these ostensibly emergency responses have, however, become permanent, raising profound challenges to the legitimacy of both the constitutional norms impacted by the emergency response, and the emergency response itself. This plea to emergency must, however, be interrogated; Ultimately, what is key to understanding permanent emergencies is not the threat but the decision-maker that claims such an emergency exists.
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Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez
Die Anschläge vom 11. September 2001 lösten eine neue Praxis und ein neues Interesse an Notstandsbefugnissen aus. Zweifellos waren die Vereinigten Staaten Vorreiter bei ihrer verstärkten Ausübung, aber Frankreich ist ein sehr interessantes Beispiel für die vielen Fragen und Herausforderungen, die die Normalisierung des Ausnahmezustands mit sich bringen. Denn Frankreich wird seit mehr als der Hälfte der Zeit, die seit den Anschlägen vom 13. November 2015 verstrichen ist, unter verschiedenen Ausnahmezuständen regiert.
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Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez
The 9/11 attacks triggered a new practice of and renewed interest in emergency powers. Without doubt, the United States were at the forefront of the enhanced exercise of such powers, but France is a very interesting example of the many issues and challenges raised by states of emergencies' normalization. France has been governed under a state of emergency for more than half of the time that has elapsed since the attacks of 13 November 2015.
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Phil Edwards
The Rule of Law requires that the law be a reliable and non-oppressive guide to how citizens should act: as such, the laws governing every citizen must be rationally knowable and voluntarily followable (and, by extension, open to rational challenge and justification). Tendencies in counter-terrorist legislation clearly run counter to the Rule of Law thus understood. Every move away from knowable and followable laws is a move away from it.
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Christoph Bieber
Parliaments form a structural fixture in government districts around the world, they are the pivotal place where public affairs are negotiated and formulated. The Russian assault on Ukraine has made it abundantly clear that this place no longer exists in Kiev. At least it is no longer available to the representatives, and the parliament is forced to reinvent itself as a "placeless actor“. It is not very surprising that this reinvention is taking place in the digital space.
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Kent Roach
Amid the pandemic and the war in the Ukraine, Canada had a quiet emergency. On 14 February 2022, the federal government used the Emergencies Act to respond to a three week occupation of the Parliament building and various border blockades. This was a mild and quick emergency, as far as emergencies go. Mild emergencies that arguably respect rights are better than severe emergencies that do not, yet there is cause for concern.
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Kent Roach
Inmitten der Pandemie und des Krieges in der Ukraine herrschte in Kanada ein stiller Notfall. Am 14. Februar 2022 nutzte die Bundesregierung das Notstandsgesetz, um auf eine dreiwöchige Besetzung des Parlamentsgebäudes und verschiedene Grenzblockaden zu reagieren. Es handelte sich um einen vergleichsweise milden und schnellen Notfall. Milde Notfälle, bei denen Rechte angeblich Beachtung finden, sind besser als schwere Notfälle, bei denen dies nicht der Fall ist. Dennoch besteht Anlass zur Sorge.
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Richard Abel
More than 20 years after the US declared “war on terror” we must assess the damage it inflicted on the core values embodied in the rule of law and the success of efforts to defend them. The fate of the rule of law — whose raison d’être is to restrain the state from abusing its power — itself depends on politics. Party control of the executive and legislature (which in turn shapes the appointment of judges) was the single most powerful determinant of responses to the numerous abuses under all four administrations since 9/11.
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Irina Khmelko
While we frequently hear about Presidents taking the role of a commander in chief in times of war, the legislature, too, can play an important role. Whether a country succeeds in a war depends not least on how well its legislature is able to adjust to face the challenges of war. This blog post takes a closer look at the Ukrainian Parliament – the Verkhovna Rada (the Rada hereafter) – and its roles and activities during the war of the Russian Federation on Ukraine.
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Suzie Navot, Guy Lurie
Israel recently saw a bout of terror attacks, including three assaults in a single week in late March 2022, and more since. The Israeli Government, in an attempt to curb the violence, decided among other steps to administratively detain without trial not only suspected possible terrorists from the Occupied Territories (as it regularly does) but also possible suspects among Israeli citizens. The use of administrative detentions without trial is a good example of the permanent mindset of emergency, as they are utilized as a regular means of government: when in doubt, the Israeli government detains.
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Martin Kovanič
Solving the dilemma of how much surveillance is needed to maintain security and not crossing the threshold of its excessive interference with rights is not easy. It is an ongoing process, also in Slovakia, influenced by many factors - the fight against terrorism, despite not being a prominent threat for the country, has been one of the major drivers of invasive state surveillance. When this happens in the context of weak institutions, it leads to the deterioration of democracy.
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Emre Turkut
Eine besondere Folge des 11. September 2001 ist die rasche und weltweite Ausweitung der Notstandsbefugnisse, da terroristische Bedrohungen als "permanenter" Notstand angesehen werden. In der Zwischenzeit haben sich mindestens drei "Arten" der Einführung eines permanenten Notstands kristallisiert.
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Emre Turkut
One particular consequence of the post-9/11-counterterrorism paradigm is there has been a rapid and global expansion of emergency powers, as terrorist threats are viewed as creating a ‘permanent’ emergency. This is not to say that the post-9/11 war on terror was new as far as the issues of states of emergency are concerned, but rather, as aptly put by Dyzenhaus, "all that is new is the prevalence of the claim that this emergency has no foreseeable end and so is permanent.”
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Rivka Weill
Not enough attention has been devoted to Russia’s demands that Ukraine amend its constitution to recognize Crimea as Russian territory as well as accept the independence of the separatist regions in eastern Ukraine – Donetsk and Luhansk. Though it may not seem intuitive, constitutional law and its accompanying methods of holding referenda to amend constitutions is at the heart of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Is constitutional amendment the way to achieve a breakthrough? What conditions must be met to legitimize secession, which includes the breaking apart of citizens along with the state’s territory, on which they reside?
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Samuel Issacharoff
Ukraine is engaged in an existential war for survival. One need not accept the full role of the exception from Carl Schmitt to acknowledge that the struggle to withstand a brutal assault on civilians transcends all other issues. Ukrainian constitutional law recognizes the need for exceptional powers during a state of emergency, as does every other constitutional order whether expressly or tacitly. Necessarily, a war for survival shifts authority from parliament to the executive and many of the founding principles of democracy may be suspended during the emergency, even such defining features of democracy as popular selection of the government.
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Julia Kyrychenko, Sujit Choudhry
To defend Ukraine is to defend constitutional democracy and the rule of law. But the defence of Ukraine must occur through constitutional democracy and the rule of law. The Verkhovna Rada is a central institution in the Ukrainian constitutional order. The Verkhovna Rada’s legislative authority continues to exist during armed conflict and states of emergency. Indeed, the Verkhovna Rada plays a vital role in such situations. However, the routine operations of the Verkhovna Rada in these extraordinary circumstances have been very challenging.
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Viola Neu
Parteitage sind weit mehr als nur eine Notwendigkeit des Parteiengesetzes zur Sicherstellung innerparteilicher Demokratie. Sie leben von den Teilnehmern und den vielfältigen sozialen Interaktionen. Gerade die Netzwerkbildung, informelle Absprachen bei Wahlen und Abstimmungen, die Suche nach und die Organisation von Mehrheiten oder die Orchestrierung von Debatten sind Prozesse, die hochgradig von persönlicher, oft auch vertraulicher Kommunikation vor Ort bestimmt werden.
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Ralf Poscher, Michael Kilchling
Wir können bislang nicht annähernd quantifizieren, in welchem Umfang sich die „Überwachungslast“ in Deutschland seit 9/11 tatsächlich verändert hat, noch lässt sich deren Gesamtumfang bestimmen. Erst mit der Ausübung der verfügbaren rechtlichen Kompetenzen materialisiert sich der damit verbundene Grundrechtseingriff. Daher ist die Kernfrage nach dem – verfassungsrechtlich vertretbaren – Maß staatlicher Überwachung eben auch eine quantitative.
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Eliza Watt
The past two decades of counterterrorism strategy attest to the fact that the security/privacy trade-off approach is not only outdated, but that it also amounts to a gross oversimplification of the complexities involved in the modern culture of surveillance. Nevertheless, the ECtHR's acceptance of bulk interception regimes as measures that in principle fall within states’ discretion seems to be predicated on this outdated trade-off.
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Eliza Watt
Die vergangenen zwei Jahrzehnte der Terrorismusbekämpfungsstrategie zeigen, dass der Ansatz des 'Trade-Offs' zwischen Sicherheit und Privatsphäre nicht nur überholt ist, sondern auch eine grobe Vereinfachung der komplexen Zusammenhänge der modernen Überwachungskultur darstellt. Nichtsdestotrotz scheint die Akzeptanz des EGMR von Massenüberwachung auf diesem überholten Kompromiss zu beruhen.
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Silvia Steininger
A new national security strategy, as proposed by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and as is the focus of this symposium, must also upend the basic features of Germany’s Ostpolitik. A Bucha Genuflection is not enough to achieve this – but it could be a good place to start. This blog post outlines the possible benchmarks, challenges, and potentials of a regional perspective in the context of the Ukraine crisis. For German foreign policy, this specifically means a change of perspective: Ostpolitik has to be more than just a policy concerning Russia.
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Silvia Steininger
Eine neue nationale Sicherheitsstrategie, wie sie Außenministerin Annalena Baerbock fordert und wie sie im Zentrum dieses Symposiums steht, muss auch die Grundzüge der deutschen Ostpolitik auf den Kopf stellen. Ein Kniefall in Butscha reicht dafür nicht aus – wäre aber ein Anfang. Dieser Beitrag skizziert die möglichen Fixpunkte, Baustellen und Potentiale einer regionalen Perspektive im Kontext der Ukrainekrise. Für die deutsche Außenpolitik bedeutet diese insbesondere einen Perspektivwechsel: Ostpolitik ist mehr als Russland-Politik.
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Uto J. Meier
Interessen können nur dann artikuliert und politisch operationalisiert werden, wenn zuvor eine klare Position über moralische Untergrenzen gefunden worden ist. Diese dürfen nicht individualethisch identifiziert werden, sondern müssen politisch definiert und institutionenrechtlich über klare (neue) Zuständigkeiten verankert werden. Gesinnungsethische Positionen sind, verfassungsgeschichtlich betrachtet, immer schon notwendige, wiewohl nicht unbedingt hinreichende Voraussetzungen von auch menschenrechtlich positivierten Wertorientierungen.
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Cindy Wittke
Viewing Ukraine as an object rather than a subject of negotiations is not an unfamiliar pattern of international security policy. It goes hand in hand with the dangerous tendency to turn Russia’s ‘Near Abroad’ ultimately into a ‘buffer zone’ even in Western political and academic discourses. This pattern has been at work in the course of the annexation of Crimea and the armed conflict in Donbas over the past eight years.
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Cindy Wittke
Der Kreml ist nicht voller Raumtheoretiker und ‚Schmittianer‘ und auch nicht voller beleidigter Geopolitiker mit einer „Russian Angst“-Neurose vor der Erweiterung der NATO. Der russische Staat unter der aktuellen Führung produziert und assimiliert Konzepte und Ideen, die seinen Zielen und seiner tatsächlichen oder angestrebten Stellung innerhalb der regionalen und globalen Ordnung entsprechen. Rechtliche und politische Konzepte in Bezug auf Raum, Souveränität, territoriale Grenzen und Staatsbürgerschaft sind dabei zentrale Themen.
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Sebastian Lutz-Bachmann
The full range of strategic aspects should be taken into account by the Federal Government in developing its „national defence strategy“. Robert Blackwill and Jennifer Harris have already described the strategic importance of economic policy and especially energy policy measures as „war by other means“. Accordingly, redefining security policy must not stop solely at the selection of new weapons systems. Rather, the German government faces the task of also realigning its energy policy with the changed strategic situation in accordance with the European energy policy.
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Sebastian Lutz-Bachmann
Wenn die Bundesregierung eine „nationale Verteidigungsstrategie“ erarbeitet, sollte sie die volle Bandbreite strategischer Aspekte mit in den Blick nehmen. Robert Blackwill und Jennifer Harris haben die strategische Bedeutung wirtschaftspolitischer und insbesondere energiepolitischer Maßnahmen bereits als „war by other means“ beschrieben. Eine Neubeschreibung der Sicherheitspolitik darf daher nicht einseitig bei der Auswahl neuer Waffensysteme stehen bleiben. Vielmehr steht die Bundesregierung vor der Aufgabe, auch ihre Energiepolitik im Einklang mit der europäischen Energiepolitik neu an der veränderten strategischen Lage auszurichten.
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Marcin Rojszczak
Die polnische Erfahrung zeigt, wie eine entschlossene populistische Regierung mit denen in einer Demokratie zur Verfügung stehenden Mitteln in relativ kurzer Zeit die zur Kontrolle der staatlichen Überwachungstätigkeit geschaffenen rechtlichen Garantien aushöhlen kann. Die notwendige Geheimhaltung, die die Arbeit der Sicherheitsdienste umgibt, darf keine Gelegenheit zum Missbrauch von Befugnissen schaffen. Eine Überwachung ohne angemessene Kontrolle schwächt die Demokratie, führt zu einer Verzerrung ihrer Grundsätze und bedroht letztlich, wie der EGMR gewarnt hat, ihre Existenz selbst.
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Marcin Rojszczak
The Polish experience demonstrates how a determined populist government, using the tools available in a democracy, can in a relatively short space of time erode legal safeguards established to control state surveillance activity. The understandable secrecy surrounding the work of the security services must not create an opportunity for the abuse of powers. Surveillance without adequate control weakens democracy, leads to a distortion of its principles, and ultimately, as the ECtHR has warned, threatens its very existence.
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Markus Naarttijärvi
Alongside the expansion of surveillance regimes, there is a parallel development of equal importance, through what could be described as safeguard rollbacks. These are different from surveillance creep, in that the aim and purpose of surveillance mandates remains largely the same, but the associated safeguards are gradually weakened. These rollbacks have generally taken place where mandates were initially put in place with strict limits to ensure proportionality and legal certainty, but where the effectiveness of those mandates are later argued to be limited due to the safeguards themselves.
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Nazar Stetsyk
This post will reveal the history of Ukraine's continuing warning to Europe, and in particular to German authorities about the security dangers of the violent Russian regime and politics. It will demonstrate how the ignorant and weak reaction of German politics to these threats (given the prevalence of economic interests over security and European values) indirectly supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and how the Russian regime abused European languidness and neutrality to launch a large-scale war in Europe. This blogpost is not so much about condemning the mistakes of European politicians, but about suggesting ways to solve these problems, taking into account the experience with obvious mistakes.
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Anna von Gall
Military armament has been happening not just since the so-called “turning point”. Ultimately, a better equipped Bundeswehr alone cannot lead to sustainable peace. The concept of human security and a national security strategy raised by the Foreign Minister must not be based on a purely militarised concept of security. The Federal Government ought to align its actions accordingly.
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Anna von Gall
Militärisches Aufrüsten wird nicht erst seit der sogenannten „Zeitenwende“ betrieben. Eine besser ausgestattete Bundeswehr kann nicht allein zu einem nachhaltigen Frieden führen. Der von der Außenministerin aufgegriffene Begriff der menschlichen Sicherheit und eine nationale Sicherheitsstrategie dürfen nicht auf einem rein militarisierten Sicherheitsbegriff basieren. Die Bundesregierung sollte ihr Handeln entsprechend ausrichten.
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Pika Šarf
In den letzten 20 Jahren wurde eine Krise nach der anderen als Rechtfertigung für die Einrichtung eines umfassenden Überwachungsapparats angeführt. Währenddessen verloren Drittstaatsangehörige schrittweise ihrer Rechte auf Privatsphäre und Datenschutz, wodurch die Bewegung unschuldiger Personen in verdächtige, potenziell terroristische Aktivitäten umgewandelt wurde. Unter den wichtigsten Veränderungen im Informationsmanagement wird die Interoperabilität - die Fähigkeit von Informationssystemen, Daten auszutauschen - die tiefgreifendsten Auswirkungen auf das Recht auf Datenschutz haben und den "point of no return" markieren.
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Pika Šarf
One crisis after another has been offered as a justification for the establishment of a comprehensive surveillance apparatus throughout the past 20 years, while third country nationals were gradually stripped of their rights to privacy and data protection, transforming the movement of innocent individuals into suspicious, potentially terrorist activities. Among the most significant changes in information management in the area of freedom, security and justice, interoperability – the ability of information systems to exchange data – will have the most profound effects on the right to data protection and as such marks the “point of no return”.
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Christian Schliemann-Radbruch
Der von Russland geführte Angriffskrieg in der Ukraine hat ein Thema in die öffentliche Debatte gebracht, welches seit langem nicht mehr so intensiv und kontrovers diskutiert wurde: den Export von Rüstungsgütern. Das ist gut und sollte ein Dauerthema sein, denn Rüstungsgüter sind per se gefährliche Güter, ihr Export ist hochpolitisch und betrifft die Sicherheitsbeziehungen zu anderen Staaten. Sie bedrohen Leib und Leben und ihre Produktion und ihr Export ist strengen Regeln zu unterwerfen. Die derzeit anlaufende sicherheitspolitische Debatte in Deutschland muss daher den Aspekt der Rüstungsexportkontrolle umfassen.
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Anushka Jain, Vrinda Bhandari
India has overhauled its surveillance architecture in a manner which calls into question the separation of powers and accountability mechanisms for the government. The Executive, through orders, has put into place invasive systems which do not have provisions for judicial review or oversight. This absence of oversight raises concerns about potential illegal mass surveillance, as well as the constitutionality of these systems itself.
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Maria Tzanou
Europa hat eine erhebliche Ausweitung staatlicher Überwachungs- und Terrorismusbekämpfungsbefugnisse erlebt, die den zunehmenden Appetit der Gesetzgeber und der Exekutive auf eine Normalisierung der Überwachung zeigen. Lange Zeit haben die europäischen Gerichte diesem Trend energisch entgegengewirkt und Siege für die Grundrechte im Bereich der Überwachung errungen. Die jüngsten Entscheidungen des EuGH und des EGMR eröffnen jedoch ein anderes Bild, das auf einen breiteren Paradigmenwechsel hindeutet.
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Nicole Deitelhoff
The German chancellor’s speech on February 27, 2022, stating that changed times also demand changed policies, has been readily interpreted as a plea for a primarily military-focused policy aimed at deterrence, which may now finally once again be oriented towards political realities. It is almost breathtaking how, in a very short time, entire traditions of thought are nominally being laid to rest in this debate, without any critical questioning of whether this is justified: Does the war in Ukraine really demonstrate that diplomacy or the approach of interdependence have failed? How wise can a policy be that simply wants to reverse past policy by means of a „turning point“?
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Nicole Deitelhoff
Aus der Aussage des Bundeskanzlers am 27. Februar 2022, dass veränderte Zeiten auch eine veränderte Politik verlangen, wird gern ein Plädoyer für eine primär militärische, auf Abschreckung zielende Politik abgeleitet, die sich nun endlich wieder an den politischen Realitäten orientiere könne, ganz wie es Vertreter des Realismus in den Internationalen Beziehungen, wie etwa John Mearsheimer fordern. Es ist geradezu atemberaubend, wie in kürzester Zeit in dieser Debatte ganze Denktraditionen mit offenkundiger Begeisterung zu Grabe getragen werden, ohne dass kritisch hinterfragt wird, ob dies gerechtfertigt ist: Zeigt der Ukrainekrieg denn wirklich, dass Diplomatie oder der Interdependenzansatz gescheitert ist? Wie klug kann eine Politik sein, die per „Zeitenwende“ einfach das Gegenteil des Vorangegangenen in Szene setzen will?
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Maria Tzanou
Europe has experienced a significant expansion of state surveillance and counter-terrorism regimes, which demonstrate the increasing appetite of legislators and the executive for the normalisation of surveillance. For long, European Courts offered a powerful pushback against this trend and produced several celebrated victories for fundamental rights over surveillance. However, recent decisions by the CJEU and the ECtHR reveal a different picture, indicating a broader paradigm shift.
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Albert Fox Cahn, Nina Loshkajian
As long as police can continue to exploit the legal fiction of user “consent” to access our private communications, our privacy rights will remain just as fictional. While we’re hopeful that the courts will one-day strike this practice down as violating the Fourth Amendment, more urgent statutory protections are needed. The legislation needn’t be lengthy or complex, it’s not a nuanced question. To the contrary, what we need is a complete and categorical ban on the use of fake accounts by police, letting those who’ve been surveilled sue, and suppressing the evidence that’s obtained at trial.
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Stuart Hargreaves
though 9/11 did not immediately result in a dramatic expansion of the surveillance state in Hong Kong as was often seen in the west, twenty years later a similar process is now well underway. Though Hong Kong’s surveillance and privacy laws have long been relatively deferential to the needs of law enforcement, the dramatic legal changes occasioned by the introduction of a new ‘national security law’ in 2020 suggest that the population will be under increasing forms of surveillance in the coming years.
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Malcolm Jorgensen
Die Zeitenwende vom 27. Februar 2022 ist faktisch das Eingeständnis einer Kluft zwischen den lang anerkannten Interessen an Multilateralismus und Völkerrecht einerseits und den außen- und verteidigungspolitischen Strategien zu deren Durchsetzung andererseits. Ein Bekenntnis zum Multilateralismus und den zugrunde liegenden rechtlichen Verpflichtungen reicht nicht mehr aus — wenn das überhaupt jemals der Fall war. Deutschlands künftige Nationale Sicherheitsstrategie muss sich mit den beschwerlicheren politischen und militärischen Verpflichtungen befassen, die notwendig sind, um ein solches System zu ermöglichen.
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Malcolm Jorgensen
The "Zeitenwende" of 27 February 2022 is, in effect, an admission of a gap between long-recognised interests in multilateralism and international law, on the one hand, and the sufficiency of foreign and defence policy strategies for upholding them on the other. A primary commitment to the modes of multilateralism and underlying legal obligations is no longer sufficient—if indeed it ever was—and Germany’s forthcoming National Security Strategy must address the more arduous political and military obligations necessary to make such a system possible. The turning point is, in short, the realisation of commitments deeply embedded in national foreign policy identity, which emerges as the foundation for broad legitimacy in the policy revolution.
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Felix Lange
The postulated „Zeitenwende“ should not be understood simply as a historic opportunity to quickly pass the proposed reform in parliament. Even beyond the specific occasion of the Russian attack on Ukraine, the substance of the constitutional provisions on defence appears to be in need of reform. According to the opinion expressed here, the Basic Law should tie Bundeswehr missions abroad to their compliance with international law.
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Felix Lange
Die postulierte „Zeitenwende“ in der Sicherheitspolitik sollte nicht bloß als historische Chance verstanden werden, die vorgeschlagene Reform schnell durchs Parlament zu bekommen. Auch jenseits des konkreten Anlasses des russischen Angriffs auf die Ukraine erscheinen die materiellen verfassungsrechtlichen Grundlagen der Wehrverfassung reformbedürftig. Nach hier vertretener Auffassung sollte das Grundgesetz Auslandseinsätze der Bundeswehr an deren Völkerrechtsmäßigkeit binden. Denn wie die Initiatorinnen dieses Symposiums betonen, besteht für die deutsche Sicherheitspolitik auch eine Verantwortung für die internationale Ordnung und die Wahrung und Durchsetzung des Völkerrechts.
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Li-ann Thio
Die singapurische Regierung verfolgt einen proaktiven, ganzheitlichen Ansatz, um die nationale Sicherheit, Einheit und Solidarität durch die Rehabilitation von Terroristen zu bewahren. Sie betont die Verantwortung aller Bürger, wachsam zu sein und aktiv die ethnische und religiöse Harmonie durch soziale Interaktion und Solidarität als Teil des Gemeinschaftspakts zu bewahren. Ein geeintes Volk zu bleiben, würde das Ziel der Terroristen vereiteln, einen scharfen Keil zwischen "uns" und "sie" zu treiben.
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Achilles Skordas
The available options for the German and Western policy towards Russia have to be based on the correct diagnosis of the causes of the conflict. The purpose of this analysis is to shed some light on the structural reasons for the Russian expansionism and make some projections on the possible long-tern consequences. The rivalry between the Russian-dominated space (Großraum – greater space) and the EU/NATO systems fuels an intense geopolitical antagonism in Europe, which can be transformed into actual conflict. I understand the Großraum in the sense of Carl Schmitt as a tightly managed sphere of interests, under the direct or indirect control of an authoritarian Great Power (infra II).
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Li-ann Thio
The Singaporean government adopts a proactive, holistic approach in seeking to preserve national security, unity and solidarity through rehabilitation, emphasising the responsibilities of all citizen to be vigilant and to actively preserve racial and religious harmony through social interaction and building relationships, as part of the communitarian compact. Remaining a united people would thwart the terrorist goal of driving a sharp wedge between ‘us’ and ‘them.’
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Ilya Somin
Migranten auszusperren, um das ohnehin schon sehr niedrige Terrorismusrisiko geringfügig zu senken, könnte gerechtfertigt sein, wenn die Beschränkungen nur wenige oder gar keine moralisch bedeutsamen Kosten verursachen würden. Tatsächlich aber ist es ein großes Unrecht, Migranten, die vor Unterdrückung und Krieg fliehen, auszusperren. Die Ausgrenzung fügt enormen Schaden zu, verletzt die Menschenrechte gegen ungerechte Diskriminierung und steht auch im Widerspruch zu den Konzepten der Würde, die in der modernen europäischen und internationalen Rechtsprechung eine wichtige Rolle spielen.
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Ilya Somin
Barring migrants for the sake of achieving marginal reductions of already very low risks of terrorism might be justified if restrictions imposed few or no morally significant costs. But, in fact, barring migrants fleeing oppression and war is a grave wrong. It inflicts enormous harm, violates human rights against unjust discrimination, and is also inimical to concepts of dignity prominent in modern European and international law jurisprudence.
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Stefan Mair
The “Zeitenwende” in German foreign policy continues to require justification and facilitation, strategic and material underpinning, as well as structural and procedural changes. But time and again, it will require critical reflection. After years of partial denial of reality and misinterpretation of behavioural patterns of key international actors, there is a risk that everything will now be pressed into the scheme of great power and systemic rivalry, and that a new bipolarity between the Western world and the authoritarian states centred around China and Russia is conjured.
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Stefan Mair
Die Zeitenwende in der deutschen Außenpolitik bedarf weiterhin der Begründung und Vermittlung, der strategischen und materiellen Unterfütterung sowie struktureller und prozessualer Veränderungen. Sie bedarf aber auch immer wieder der kritischen Reflektion. Die Gefahr ist groß, dass nach Jahren der partiellen Realitätsverweigerung und der Fehlinterpretation von Handlungsmustern zentraler Akteure der internationalen Politik nunmehr alle Vorkommnisse in das Schema der Großmacht- und der systemischen Rivalität gepresst werden, gar eine neue Bipolarität zwischen der westlichen Welt und den sich um China und Russland scharenden autoritären Staaten heraufbeschworen wird.
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Carolyn Moser
What does the “paradigm shift” (Zeitenwende) – as Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the readjustment of German security and defence policy – mean for the Franco-German couple? Relations between Paris and Berlin had cooled down in recent years, particularly in relation to security and defence dossiers. Can we now expect that the ice between the two countries will melt? By no means. Even though Germany has sent a first signal that it no longer wants to close its eyes to the geopolitical realities of the 21st century, a number of touchy security and defence issues remain on the table.
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Carolyn Moser
Was bedeutet die „Zeitenwende“ – wie Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz sie nennt – für die deutsch-französischen Beziehungen? Insbesondere im Bereich Sicherheit und Verteidigung war es zwischen Paris und Berlin in den vergangenen Jahren frostig geworden. Ist nun Tauwetter angesagt? Mitnichten. Auch wenn Deutschland ein erstes Signal gesendet hat, dass man die Augen nicht länger vor den geopolitischen Realitäten des 21. Jahrhunderts verschließen möchte, bestehen einige sicherheits- und verteidigungspolitische Themen mit Sprengkraft fort. Drei davon werden im Folgenden näher unter die Lupe genommen.
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Roderich Kiesewetter
The handling and development of the war in Ukraine will be a test of the effectiveness of Germany's role in the EU and the world. The most important part of the turning point must be a return to Realpolitik and the development of a national security strategy based on smart power. The turning point in Germany concerns four areas in particular: 1) German armed forces (Bundeswehr) 2) strategic culture 3) National Security Strategy 4) strengthening crisis prevention and the development of a "civilian reserve".
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Roderich Kiesewetter
Der Umgang mit und die Entwicklung des Krieges in der Ukraine wird zum Lackmustest für Deutschlands Rolle in der EU und der Welt. Wichtigster Teil der Zeitenwende muss die Rückkehr zur Realpolitik und zudem auch die Entwicklung einer Nationalen Sicherheitsstrategie sein, die auf Smart Power setzt. Die Zeitenwende in Deutschland betrifft dabei insbesondere vier Bereiche: 1) Bundeswehr 2) Strategische Kultur 3) Nationale Sicherheitsstrategie 4) Stärkung der Krisenprävention und die Entwicklung einer „Zivilen Reserve“.
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Matthew Specter
What the US and Germany face today with Russia is evidently not a peaceful competition of rivals that can be managed by the pursuit of equilbrium and balance, the leitmotifs of 19th century Realpolitik. Nor is the Russian invasion a result of Western failure to heed realist caution about the project of NATO enlargement in Eastern Europe.
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Maxim Bönnemann, Lina-Marie Dück
There is no doubt: climate law is about to become one of the most important issues in comparative constitutional and international law. The institutional and legal questions are tricky, the number of cases exploding, and, more importantly: the stakes are high. On the very day we kicked off this blog debate the world was hit by the news of an “impossible” and “unthinkable” temperature surge in the Arctic and Antarctic, with climate journalists stating in shock that “Antarctic climatology has been rewritten”. On the day this blog debate concluded we learned of an “unprecedented sixth mass coral bleaching event” in the Great Barrier Reef, with scientists demanding immediate action yet again.
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Ulrich K. Preuß
Could it be that even Russia’s current political leadership is in truth not necessarily interested in conquering the land and people of Ukraine, but in proving Russia’s great power status? If so, the classification as a „regional power“ would be a violation of Russian self-esteem and status consciousness, for the healing of which Russia is starting a war that is contrary to international law, morally reprehensible, economically absurd and cruel, and devoid of any pragmatic rational explanation.
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Ulrich K. Preuß
Könnte es sein, dass es selbst der gegenwärtigen politischen Führung Russlands in Wahrheit gar nicht unbedingt um die Eroberung von Land und Leuten der Ukraine geht, sondern um den Beweis des russischen Großmachtstatus? Dann wäre die Einstufung als „Regionalmacht“ eine Verletzung russischen Selbstgefühls und Statusbewusstseins, für dessen Heilung Russland einen völkerrechtswidrigen, moralisch verwerflichen, ökonomisch widersinnigen und grausamen Krieg bar jeder realpolitisch-rationalen Erklärungsfähigkeit vom Zaune bricht.
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Sam Bookman
The legacy of colonialism suggests a shared affinity between climate litigation in the Global South, and climate litigation brought by Indigenous peoples in the settler-colonial states of the Global North. This blog post focuses on claims brought by Indigenous peoples in the Anglophone settler-colonial states of Australia, Canada, the United States and Aotearoa/New Zealand. I begin by setting out the disproportionate impact of climate change experienced by Indigenous peoples, as well as Indigenous movements of resistance and adaptation. In doing so, I draw on claims brought by various Indigenous groups and individuals in the course of climate litigation. Framing climate litigation as part of this response, I then survey Indigenous climate litigation across the four jurisdictions. I end with some notes of caution regarding the essentializing and exploitation of Indigenous peoples by the climate litigation movement, cautions which may be applicable to litigation in the Global South.
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Elizabeth Donger
Adaptation litigation is not only a tool to better prepare infrastructure through tort and administrative law. It is a more ambiguous and creative category, drawing on everything from refugee law to human rights and legal provisions recognizing the rights of nature. While adaptation litigation in the Global North has largely focused on infrastructure, litigation in the Global South has addressed a broader range of factors that contribute to adaptive capacity, from environmental factors like deforestation, to human governance and resourcing systems like disaster response and migration systems.
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Carlotta Garofalo
The Amazon Forest – el pulmón del mundo – has been at the center of four recent rights-based climate lawsuits in the region. Interestingly, the existence of solid legal grounds for environmental litigation has not stopped petitioners and courts from using some degree of creativity in shaping new rights. I argue that any evaluation of the potential benefits and impacts of (new) rights strategies must consider their limitations in setting clear legal boundaries and achieving immediate political change. Nonetheless, rights-based climate lawsuits play an important symbolic role, as they recognize the vulnerability of certain groups to climate change.
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Lorenzo Gradoni, Martina Mantovani
The strategy of challenging a plurality of states directly before international adjudicating bodies has been, so far, a youth’s distinct move in the field of climate litigation, and it is by far the largest vehicle for transnational complaints. Our contribution provides an overview of the relevant cases, many of which still pending, and tries to pinpoint the drivers and possible trajectories of a global phenomenon which could go some way towards redressing the injustice the Global South is suffering as a result of global warming.
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Manuela Niehaus
One year ago, the First Senate of the German Federal Constitutional Court (GFCC) has issued a landmark decision on the rights of future generations and their (legal) entitlement to solidarity. This blog post compares this decision to the 2018 ruling of the Colombian Supreme Court (CS) that was also concerned with the rights of future generations. I argue that while the idea of solidarity with people threatened by climate change is central to both judgments, the courts have taken very different approaches to whom this solidarity extends to.
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Klaus Naumann
The sudden announcement of a „special fund“ for the, admittedly, lagging overhaul of the German armed forces, and the permanent increase in the defense budget (the „2 percent“ target of the NATO agreements of 2002) should be understood for what they are – a grasping for the emergency brake and not an „arms race.“
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Klaus Naumann
Die plötzliche Ankündigung eines „Sondervermögens“ für die, man muss schon sagen: nachholende Instandsetzung der Bundeswehr, und die dauerhafte Aufstockung des Verteidigungsetats (das „2-Prozent“-Ziel der Nato-Vereinbarungen von 2002) sollten als das verstanden werden, was sie sind – als ein Griff nach der Notbremse und nicht als eine „Rüstungsspirale“. Gleichwohl sollten „strategische Projekte“ der Beschaffung mit entsprechenden Laufzeiten im Zentrum der Maßnahmen stehen.
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Eklavya Vasudev
I argue that courts can locate the transformative potential of law not only through the explicit text of a constitution (although that is one of the main drivers), but also through extra constitutional drivers such as international law. In doing so, courts are able to challenge pre-existing structures of tradition, legality and culture. I will demonstrate this through a brief analysis of key climate cases from both the Global North and the Global South, namely from the Netherlands, Pakistan, Colombia, and Germany. In addition, I also aim to show that considerations usually associated with TC can emerge in both Global North and South contexts.
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Sathiabama. S, Vedavalli. S
This review of climate cases in the Global South reflects the potential of the right to a healthy environment in climate justice. Countries in the Latin American region are already leading the fight against climate change through successful judicial battles, relying on the established right to a healthy environment.
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Christian Marxsen
I argue that there should be a greater separation of powers with regard to foreign deployments than has been the case to date. In addition to the actors who have so far been primarily involved in decisions on foreign deployments – the German Federal Government and Bundestag – the German Federal Constitutional Court should also be given a clearer basis of responsibility for clarifying constitutional issues that have arisen. In this way, the constitutional framework can be made more concrete and strengthened in the long term.
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Christian Marxsen
Ich plädiere dafür, dass im stärkeren Maße als bisher auch im Hinblick auf Auslandseinsätze eine Gewaltenteilung erfolgen sollte. Zu den bisher in die Entscheidung über Auslandseinsätze primär eingebundenen Akteuren – Bundesregierung und Bundestag – sollte zur Klärung aufgeworfener verfassungsrechtlicher Fragen auch das Bundesverfassungsgericht eine klarere Zuständigkeitsgrundlage erhalten. Hierdurch kann der verfassungsrechtliche Rahmen konkretisiert und langfristig gestärkt werden.
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Thalia Viveros-Uehara
As rights-based climate litigation continues to proliferate as a means to tackle perceived deficiencies in climate governance and regulation, new opportunities emerge for claimants and courts to acknowledge the inextricable link between climate change, inequalities, and health. Crucially, by ensuring the protection, respect, and fulfillment of all the normative components of the right to health of poor and socially marginalized persons and groups, courts can help overcome the Executive and Legislative branches’ failures to address climate change in contexts of high social and health inequalities.
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Reut Yael Paz
This contribution briefly unpacks the relevancy of the East/West intersectionality Finland represents for us today. The pragmatic manner in which the Finns have dealt with Russia – in all its previous versions, white, red or “federal” – is instructive in understanding the limits of moral, economic and physical power when facing a neighboring country that will most probably never be trusted, loved or changed, by outsiders.
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Melanie Murcott, Maria Antonia Tigre, Nesa Zimmermann
Climate change is increasingly recognized as an issue of justice. In response to climate injustice, climate litigation in domestic and regional tribunals – pursued primarily by non-state actors such as non-governmental organisations and youth movements – has emerged as a global phenomenon. In this article, we explore two potential lessons for the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) when adjudicating climate cases. These lessons arise from the expansive understanding of standing under South Africa’s transformative constitutional regime, and the recognition of extraterritorial jurisdiction in the Inter-American System of Human Rights (IASHR).
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Tatenda L. Wangui, Cathrin Zengerling, Oliver Fuo
This post gives an overview of climate litigation in Kenya and South Africa, tracing litigation objects, plaintiffs, defendants, key legal bases and arguments. We explore whether there are signs of an emerging trend in climate litigation in both countries and identify key supportive conditions in social movements and media coverage.
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Helene Bubrowski
„Wir sind in einer anderen Welt aufgewacht“, sagte die grüne Außenministerin Annalena Baerbock wenige Stunden, nachdem Russland den Überfall auf die Ukraine begonnen hatte. Baerbock hatte sich über den russischen Präsidenten keine Illusionen gemacht. Deshalb spricht aus ihrem Satz nicht Naivität, die einige Kommentatoren ihr vorwarfen. Während des Bundestagswahlkampfs forderten nur die Grünen, die Pipeline Nord Stream 2 nicht in Betrieb zu nehmen. Die russlandfreundlichen Anwandlungen von einst, die sich vor allem aus antiamerikanischen Ressentiments speisten, hat die Partei abgelegt.
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Agung Wardana
The experience of Indonesia shows that in a country where the government pursues economic development based on a carbon-intensive economic growth model, climate litigation appears to be more challenging because it potentially shakes the foundations of the existing political and economic model; the model that has caused the climate crisis in the first place.
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Helene Bubrowski
„We woke up in a different world,“ Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock stated a few hours after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. Baerbock had no illusions about the Russian president. Hence, her words do not bespeak the naiveté some commentators accused her of. During the parliamentary election campaign, only the Greens had demanded that the North Stream 2 pipeline should not start operations. The Party has shed the pro-Russia tendencies of the past, which were primarily fed by anti-American resentment.
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Jelena von Achenbach
The intergovernmental political mode of EU defense policy is no longer appropriate for the level of European integration in this policy field, the development of which will significantly shape the European project in the coming years. In particular, it is necessary that the European Parliament and the national parliaments be informed of upcoming political decisions in a substantive and timely manner: They should be informed as long as the political process is still open, and their position should be a constituent part of decision-making at the EU level.
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Jelena von Achenbach
Dass das militärpolitische Integrationsgeschehen außerhalb der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung und Debatte stattfindet, bedeutet letztlich für die politischen Akteure geringe Rechtfertigungslasten und größere Handlungsspielräume. Es ist also alles andere als ein Selbstläufer, dass über die Fortentwicklung der EU-Verteidigungspolitik jetzt die breite, allgemeine Meinungs- und Willensbildung stattfindet, die bislang fehlt. Dies ist jedoch dringend angezeigt, um die „hard power“, die die Union in der Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik entwickelt und entfalten will, demokratisch und rechtsstaatlich einzubinden – und das ganze Unterfangen der militärischen Ermächtigung der Union überhaupt seiner Bedeutung entsprechend politisch zu behandeln.
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Maxim Bönnemann, Meike Krakau, Anna-Julia Saiger
If the catastrophe we face is one “for the world and humanity”, isn’t it time to rethink some of our core beliefs regarding institutional roles and the role of the judiciary? If current institutional arrangements fail when addressing the global climate catastrophe, aren’t we in dire need of alternative approaches when thinking about the role of law and courts? We as editors of the forthcoming blog debate neither can nor want to provide answers to these questions here. Instead, we argue that we should look to the Global South for lessons when reflecting on the role of law and institutions in tackling the climate crisis.
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Arnold Wallraff
The analysis of Germany’s strategic restraint to date is of double importance for German arms export policy. First, what has been and continues to be apparent here is a strategic reticence in the sense of a strategy deficit and, above all, a deficit in the culture of debate – both with regard to parliament and to the general public and the media. Additionally – and here lies the difference to Germany’s general military restraint – Germany, and all German governments in recent years and decades, have supplied war weapons and other armaments to all regions of the world on a very substantial scale, without such a basis for discussion, strategy or action.
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Arnold Wallraff
Der Analyse der bisherigen strategischen Zurückhaltung Deutschlands kommt auch für die deutsche Rüstungsexportpolitik eine doppelte Bedeutung zu: Zu diagnostizieren war und ist auch hier einerseits eine strategische Zurückhaltung im Sinne eines Strategiedefizits und vor allem eines Defizits in der Debattenkultur – sowohl mit Blick auf das Parlament wie auch auf die allgemeine und mediale Öffentlichkeit. Andererseits – und hierin liegt ein Unterschied zu Deutschlands allgemeiner militärischer Zurückhaltung – hat Deutschland, haben sämtliche deutsche Regierungen der letzten Jahre und Jahrzehnte in ganz erheblichem Umfang in alle Weltregionen Kriegswaffen und sonstige Rüstungsgüter geliefert, ohne dass eine derartige Diskussions-, Strategie- und Handlungsbasis vorhanden gewesen wäre. Der Export von Kriegswaffen in z.T. höchst problematische Drittländer ist entgegen der abstrakten gesetzlichen Vorgaben und selbstgesetzten Grundsätze zur Regel statt zur Ausnahme geworden.
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Thomas Kleinlein
The Federal Republic’s previous policy of ‘strategic restraint’ has been justified mainly - and rightly - on historical grounds; however, it also has to do with the legal parameters set by international security law and the German constitutional law on military affairs. We should take this legal framework into account when we explore the options for a fundamental reorientation of security and defence policy and a departure from ‘strategic restraint’.
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Joachim Wieland
Die Verfassung steht Vorstandswahlen und Satzungsänderungen auf digitalen Parteitagen nicht entgegen. Die Annahme eines rechtlichen Zwangs zur Briefwahl nach einem elektronischen Parteitag scheint jedenfalls überprüfungsbedürftig. Die Digitalisierung macht auch vor dem Parteienrecht nicht halt.
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Thomas Kleinlein
Die bisherige „strategische Zurückhaltung“ der Bundesrepublik ist sicherlich maßgeblich und zu Recht historisch begründet; sie hat aber auch mit den durch das internationale Sicherheitsrecht und das Wehrverfassungsrecht gesetzten Rahmenbedingungen zu tun. Diese Rahmenbedingungen muss man einbeziehen, wenn man die Chancen für eine grundsätzlichere sicherheits- und verteidigungspolitische Neuausrichtung und eine „Abkehr“ von der „strategischen Zurückhaltung“ ausloten will.
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Isabelle Ley
In a special session of the German Bundestag on February 27, 2022, on the occasion of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the federal government announced nothing less than a realignment of the Federal Republic of Germany's long-standing security and defense policy principles. The decisions taken by the Government replaced the "culture of strategic restraint" that had for decades characterized German decision-making in foreign, security and defense policy with a more active, independent and robust foreign policy role.
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Isabelle Ley
In der Sondersitzung des Deutschen Bundestags am 27. Februar 2022 anlässlich des russischen Überfalls auf die Ukraine hat die Bundesregierung nichts weniger als eine Neuausrichtung der überparteilich konsentierten, langjährigen sicherheits- und verteidigungspolitischen Grundsätze der Bundesrepublik Deutschland verkündet. Damit wurde ein deutliches Signal gesetzt, die „Kultur strategischer Zurückhaltung“, die jahrzehntelang deutsche Entscheidungen in der Außen-, Sicherheits- und Verteidigungspolitik prägte, durch eine aktivere, eigenständigere und robustere Rolle zu ersetzen.
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Alexandra Kemmerer, Isabelle Ley
Under the shock of the Russian invasion, what the security community has long been calling for in vain is now taking shape: a security strategy through which Germany takes on more responsibility in the field of security and defense policy. The decisions taken by the German government on 27 February 2022, which are widely regarded as a Zeitenwende or „turning point“ in security policy, marked a first step.
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Alexandra Kemmerer, Isabelle Ley
Unter dem Schock der russischen Invasion gewinnt Kontur, was von der sicherheitspolitischen Community seit langem vergeblich gefordert wurde: eine Sicherheitsstrategie, mit der Deutschland verteidigungspolitisch mehr Verantwortung übernimmt. Die Beschlüsse der Bundesregierung vom 27. Februar 2022, allseits als sicherheitspolitische "Zeitenwende" eingeordnet, markierten einen ersten Schritt. Jetzt ist zu fragen, was diese Beschlüsse für die zukünftige sicherheits- und verteidigungspolitische Positionierung Deutschlands, für Bündnisse, Auslandseinsätze, Rüstungsexportpolitik und vieles mehr bedeuten.
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Armin von Bogdandy, Luke Dimitrios Spieker
The anti-Fidesz coalition could win the next Hungarian elections. That, however, is only one step on a long path back to a full democracy. Fidesz has skilfully entrenched its power, personnel, and policies. How could a new majority overcome this, align the Hungarian legal order with European standards, and allow for democratic governability?
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Danny Schindler
Seit einigen Jahren zeichnet sich ein Trend zur konsultativen Mitgliederbeteiligung bei der innerparteilichen Entscheidungsfindung ab, der unter anderem bei der Bestimmung der Parlamentskandidaten und der Parteiführung zum Tragen kommt. Betrachtet man das gesamte Verfahren der Parteivorsitzenden- und Parlamentsbewerberauswahl, zeigt sich, dass dem Parteitag vorausgehende Mitgliederbefragungen nicht dazu dienen (sollen), den demokratischen Charakter der Entscheidungsfindung zu verfälschen. Sie tragen vielmehr dem Verfassungsgebot innerparteilicher Demokratie Rechnung.
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Raffaela Kunz
The Budapest Open Access Initiative is celebrating its 20th anniversary and today it seems that we are closer than ever to finally concluding the “access revolution” predicted by many since the arrival of the internet. Yet, developments in the publishing system increasingly suggest that the access revolution is much less revolutionary than expected. Reports gradually bring to light the extent to which publishers started to use the data tracking tools developed by “pioneers” such as Google and Facebook. This development could not only be the final blow for the Open Access movement’s potential to more radically and structurally change the way knowledge is being disseminated in the digital age but pose a systematic threat to the autonomy of the science system and academic freedom in the digital age.
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Isabelle Borucki
Die Corona-Pandemie brachte eine neue Form der Beteiligung und Entscheidungsfindung in Parteien hervor: Den digitalen Parteitag, der nun im dritten Pandemiejahr scheinbar unaufgeregt im "neuen Normal" durchexerziert wird. Doch sind digitale Parteitage eine neue Form der Entscheidungsfindung? Stellen digitale Parteitage eine Bereicherung der politischen Willensbildung innerhalb von Parteien dar oder führen sie eher zu einer Zentralisierung von Entscheidungen? Was passiert darüber hinaus mit den grundlegenden Prinzipien der Präsenz und Repräsentation in Parteien?
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Martin Morlok
Digitalgestützte Entscheidungen unter Abwesenden stellen eine Verarmung gegenüber der Entscheidungsfindung und Anwesenden dar. Sie haben zusätzliche Kosten und Gefahren in mehreren Hinsichten. Die Hoffnungen auf eine Demokratisierung durch digitale Teilhabe der Mitglieder sind doch eher eine Illusion. Die Erweiterung auf digitale Mitgliederentscheide und auch die Durchführung von Parteitagen lediglich im Internetmodus stärkt die Leitungsebene der Parteien.
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Niko Switek
Parteitage können durchaus zentrale Richtungsgeber für Parteien sein, aber sie sind es nicht so automatisch oder selbstverständlich, wie es die Lektüre des Parteiengesetzes insinuieren mag. Es gilt dabei weitere Kontextfaktoren heranzuziehen und diese Gremien im Gefüge der verschiedenen formalen und informalen Einflusszentren in einer Partei zu situieren. Zugleich verändern sich diese über Zeit, radikale Außenseiter nähern sich etablierten Mustern an, bestehende Parteien wiederum lassen sich in ihren Organisationsreformen von den Innovationen neuer Herausforderer inspirieren.
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Sofia Galani
Following the 9/11 attacks, it became more obvious that states are ready to sacrifice the human rights of victims in the fight against terrorism. This became particularly clear in hostage-taking situations, in which states face the dilemma of succumbing to terrorist demands for the sake of hostages or appearing defiant and ready to stop terrorists from attacking more civilians. This has prompted a debate on whether states are allowed under international human rights law to balance the human dignity of hostages with national security or the rights of future victims.
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Fabian Michl
Die innerparteiliche Demokratie ist durch Kompromisse gekennzeichnet. Parteitage befördern in ihrem traditionellen Format die Kompromissfindung: durch Repräsentation und Präsenz. Digitale Parteitage erweisen sich nicht in gleicher Weise als kompromissaffin. Darin liegt eine Verlockung für diejenigen, die kein Interesse am Kompromiss haben. Verfassungswidrig ist die Einführung des Digitalformats deswegen nicht, seine demokratischen „Kosten“ müssen aber eingepreist werden.
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Emanuel V. Towfigh
Die rechtlich sanktionierte, robuste Grenzsicherung markiert heute eine fundamentale Ungleichheit in der Welt, sie ist Reflex und Zeichen ungleich verteilter Ressourcen (wie Wohlstand und Sicherheit) – und perpetuiert gleichzeitig diese Ungleichheit. Dennoch ist Grenzen – wie sich in diesen Tagen angesichts des fürchterlichen Kriegs in der Ukraine in dramatischer Weise zeigt – auch eine Schutzdimension immanent. Grenzregime können daher in einer Gesellschaft von Freien und Gleichen nur als rechtliche Ordnungsinstrumente interpretiert und legitimiert werden, ihre Abschottungsfunktion ist gemessen an fundamentalen Gerechtigkeits- und Gleichheitserwägungen nicht zu rechtfertigen.
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Bernd Grzeszick
Parteitage erfordern nicht stets und zwingend eine Repräsentation durch physisch präsente Repräsentanten. Die Freiheit und Eigenständigkeit der Parteien, die Ablösung vom „Vorbild“ der Parlamentswahl sowie die Erfahrungen mit der digitalen Teilnahme an Sitzungen kommunaler Gremien legen vielmehr nahe, dass Pateitage für Online-Beteiligungen geöffnet werden können und sollten.
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Thomas Poguntke
Die durch digitale Technik leichter mögliche Ausweitung des Teilnehmerkreises an Entscheidungsprozessen ist nicht gleichbedeutend mit einer Erhöhung ihrer demokratischen Qualität. Vielmehr ändert sich die inhärente Logik des Entscheidungsprozesses.
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Sophie Schönberger
Parteitage sind das Herzstück der innerparteilichen Demokratie. Wenn das Grundgesetz den Parteien abverlangt, dass ihre innere Ordnung demokratischen Grundsätzen entsprechen muss, dann sind Parteitage das zentrale Instrument, mit dem dieses verfassungsrechtliche Gebot, das gleichzeitig Teil eines demokratischen Versprechens ist, eingelöst wird.
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Joan Barata
Many states have used these general stipulations contained in international law to introduce in their counterterrorism legislation specific provisions criminalizing the dissemination of ideas or opinions that might incite, endorse, or stimulate the commission of terrorist acts. With social media platforms, a new set of actors have begun setting the thresholds of what speech they will host, complicating governance.
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Daniel Sprick
China did not need 9/11 to further restrict civil and political rights, but it jumped onto the bandwagon in using the legitimizing force of counterterrorism to intensify its repressive policies. China’s so-called “People’s War on Terror” has had a stifling impact on the ability to practice Islam in China (and especially in Xinjiang) and is, when discussed in the context of counterterrorism and human rights, therefore best be characterized as a significant encroachment of religious freedoms, bringing China’s human rights record to a new low point in the 21th century.
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Florence Namasinga Selnes
Freedom of the media just like freedom of expression are provided for in the 1995 Constitution of Uganda, but spaces for exercising these rights are growing narrower by the day. The use of anti-terrorism regulation to suppress dissenting views reflects growing intolerance of criticism of President Yoweri Museveni’s regime. Foremost, legal and physical harassment from the authorities threaten privately funded media institutions and deter journalists from covering and interrogating certain issues.
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Quinta Jurecic
Shortly before Trump’s inauguration in 2016, I suggested that the president-elect might prove to be a chief executive in the mode of Carl Schmitt. Trump, though, represented something different. If the early Bush years were characterized by legal interpretations that pushed the edges of executive and sovereign power, Trump’s vision of the presidency was that of a man who had no interest in legal interpretation whatsoever. As he later said of the portion of the Constitution that spells out the details of presidential power, “I have an Article II, which allows me to do whatever I want.”
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Charles Fried, Gregory Fried
Verfassungen legen die Regierungsbefugnisse fest, aber sie verleihen an sich keine Legitimität, geschweige denn bilden sie die politische Körperschaft, die allein Legitimität verleihen kann. Liberal-demokratische Verfassungen verankern den Respekt vor dem Einzelnen auf unterschiedliche Weise, aber einige Grenzen sind fest und fast universell gezogen. Wenn jedoch eine Regierung, die ihre eigene, ordnungsgemäß konstituierte Rolle als Vertreter der Gesellschaft verrät, stößt sie an eine absolute Grenze der Moral, des Anstands und der Achtung der menschlichen Person und untergräbt sich selbst.
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Charles Fried, Gregory Fried
Constitutions establish governmental powers, but they do not in themselves confer legitimacy, let alone constitute the body politic that alone can grant legitimacy. Liberal democratic constitutions institute respect for individuals in different ways, but some lines are firmly and almost universally drawn. Torture and mutilation, however, are almost universally condemned in properly liberal societies. But when government, betraying its own duly constituted role as agent of society, turns to torture as a tool to inquire into, protect against and punish even the severest threats to itself and to individual persons, it runs up against an absolute limit of morality, decency, respect for the human person, and undermines itself.
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Sophie Duroy
Despite their extraordinary character, Western responses to terrorism failed to bring the security Western populations demanded. Our fear, however, led us to support the erosion of our values, institutions, and laws beyond repair.
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David Dyzenhaus
Während russische Panzer in die Ukraine rollen, sollten wir uns vor den "Träumern des Absoluten" in unserer Mitte in Acht nehmen. Sie verehren die Exekutive, weil nur eine starke Exekutive in der Lage ist, die kosmopolitischen und menschenrechtlichen Errungenschaften der zweiten Hälfte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts zurückzudrehen. Diese Anbetung hängt jedoch davon ab, dass an der Spitze der Exekutive eine Person steht, die zumindest die wichtigsten Grundsätze ihrer Version des "Gemeinwohls" teilt. Dies erfordert die Befreiung der Exekutive von den Zwängen der Rechtsstaatlichkeit, sowohl international als auch innerhalb des Nationalstaates.
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David Dyzenhaus
As Russian tanks roll into the Ukraine, we should be wary of these ‘dreamers of the absolute’ in our midst. They worship the executive because only a strong executive is capable of rolling back the cosmopolitan, human rights achievements of the latter half of the twentieth century. But such worship depends on maintaining in power the person at the head of the executive who shares at least the most important tenets of their version of the ‘common good’. That requires not only freeing the executive from the constraints of the rule of law, both internationally and within the nation state. It also requires that democracy be hollowed out in order to ensure that periodic elections return the right person to power.
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Charles Girard, Pierre Auriel
The threat created by jihadist terrorism for freedom of expression is a particularly serious one in that it operates on several levels. It provides an incentive to sacrifice freedom of expression to the fight against terrorism, it impels people to avoid forms of expression that the killers condemn, and it provides political actors with an effective pretext for silencing or censuring certain voices. Genuinely defending this freedom means not giving ground on any of these fronts.
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Kriszta Kovács
How can democratic constitutional reformers overcome the obstacles put in place by authoritarian constitution-makers? What are the foundational values that could compete for the attention of the constitution drafters? This question is a new iteration of the same old problem of law, democracy, and disagreement.
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Cem Abanazir
In sport, the fine line between ‘political’ and ‘non-political’ expression is vital because certain expressions could potentially result in disciplinary sanctions. Dubbed as the ‘supreme court of world sport’, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (‘CAS’) is pivotal in interpreting and adjudicating cases involving freedom of expression in international sports. Currently, the CAS jurisprudence tends to fail to provide clear and consistent reasoning.
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Antonio Di Marco
The relationship between sports and neutrality belongs to the most hotly debated topics in international sports law. This blog post illustrates the application of the neutrality principle in practice and argues that the athletes’ freedom of expression in sports is emerging as a ‘concession’ rather than as a ‘right’, suggesting that a reform of the regulations imposed by the Olympic Movement is urgently needed.
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Faraz Shahlaei
While Sport Governing Bodies can regulate freedom of expression for athletes in sports, the current approach of the IOC seems to fail to abide by the standards required under international human rights law. In particular, the lack of clarity on the content and forms of expression banned under Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter seems to conflict with the foreseeability expected by international human rights law.
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Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Columbia Global Freedom of Expression
A conversation with Catalina Botero-Marino, Martin Eifert, Matthias Kettemann and Erik Tuchtfeld. Hosted by Alexandra Kemmerer.
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Jillian C. York
Maßnahmen, die die Möglichkeiten terroristischer Gruppen, sich zu organisieren, zu rekrutieren und aufzuwiegeln einschränken sollen, wurden in den letzten Jahren ausgeweitet und führen häufig dazu, dass nicht nur extremistische Äußerungen, sondern auch Menschenrechtsdokumente, Gegenrede und Kunst gelöscht werden. In allen Bereichen der Moderation kommt es zu Fehlern, unabhängig davon, ob die Moderation von Menschen, künstlicher Intelligenz oder einer Kombination aus beidem durchgeführt werden.
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Jillian C. York
Policies intended to limit the ability of terrorist groups to organize, recruit, and incite — as well as for individuals to praise such groups — have been expanded in recent years via content moderation efforts online, and often result in the erasure of not only extremist expression, but human rights documentation, counterspeech, and art.
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Mark James
Expressions in support of social justice, inclusion, anti-discrimination and LGBTQI+ rights no longer appear to breach Rule 50. Where Rule 50 could still come into play is where athlete activists seek to demonstrate their support for overtly political causes. The guidance states unequivocally that expressions must not be targeted at people, organisations, or countries. At Beijing 2022, any expression/gesture aimed at an individual politician, the Communist Party of China, or the Chinese state will remain a breach of Rule 50.
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Jörg Krieger
Throughout history, the IOC always faced tough choices when it dealt with freedom of speech. It attempted to act within the framework of international human rights law whilst it continuously promoted the autonomy of sport from all political interests. At this point, it does not seem that the IOC will move away from its general, apolitical stance.
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Cem Tecimer
The 9/11 attacks exposed the precariousness of the public sphere, however, they did not result in a dramatic shift in the Turkish public sphere. Rather, the coup attempt of 2016 turned out to be Turkey’s “9/11 moment.”
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Antoine Duval, Daniela Heerdt
The Beijing Winter Olympics might constitute a boiling point for the ongoing debate on the freedom of expression of athletes and fans participating in international sporting competitions. This blog symposium brings this debate to a more general audience interested in issues related to human rights, constitutionalization of transnational legal processes and private governance. As an introduction to the contributions, our blog highlights a number of fundamental points which will be at the heart of this discussion.
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Jacob Rowbottom
The horrifying nature and unpredictability of terrorist attacks in the past two decades meant that in the UK, the extensions of state power had considerable public support in the years following 9/11. While useful to authorities dealing with an unpredictable threat, there are several factors in the laws that provide a potent recipe to erode expression rights.
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Stef Scagliola
Today, there appears to be more consensus about the unjust nature of the Dutch/Indonesian war. As a scholar who has studied the evolution of the discourse on this topic, being asked to contribute to a symposium about the relation between decolonisation and human rights, is the perfect occasion to look back.
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Imran Parray
India's complex interlocking of securitization and freedom of expression poses a serious challenge to democratic ideals of free speech. Today, we witness increased targeting of journalists and activists across the country. In particular, conflict-ridden regions have presented a more serious situation where journalists face accusations of conspiring with the enemies of the state. The growing practice of muzzling the press and forums of public debate has created a culture of fear among the civil society, which directly affects the quality of democracy and free speech.
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Ge Chen
Die Unterdrückung der Meinungsäußerung im Internet durch die chinesische Regierung ist fast schon legendär. Sie bildet einen uneinnehmbaren Eckpfeiler dessen, was der Oxford-Professor Stein Ringen die "perfekte Diktatur" des Parteistaates nannte. Chinas Herangehensweise an terroristische Äußerungen muss im Gesamtbild von Chinas sich entwickelnder Agenda zur Zähmung von Äußerungen im Internet verstanden werden.
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Ge Chen
The Chinese government’s suppression of Internet speech is almost legendary. It forms an impregnable cornerstone of what Oxford professor Stein Ringen dubbed the Party-state’s “perfect dictatorship”. China's approach to terrorist speech must me understood within the entire picture of China’s developing agenda of taming speech online.
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Jayson Lamchek
Twenty years after 9/11, the definitive problems of democracy globally relate to disinformation and illiberal intolerance. The Philippines, an illustration of post-truth politics that has engulfed the world, is wracked by tensions in society, resulting in attacks on journalists reporting on disfavoured issues and events. The global War on Terror considerably contributed to a turn towards authoritarianism in the Philippines, vis-à-vis the limits of public discourse, and that law reform offers a very limited kind of remedy.
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Ash Bhagwat
In the United States the actual impact of 9/11 and the subsequent “War on Terror” on speech and press freedoms has been complex, and in many ways much less than expected. In fact, free speech rights vis-à-vis the government remain largely robust in the United States; the real conflicts and issues today concern the role of private Internet companies, notably social media, in restricting free speech.
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Merel Dinkla
Being able to reunite with family from abroad falls under the right to family life, one of the fundamental rights every individual is entitled to. Despite this, some Dutch family reunification requirements are potentially at odds with international human rights law standards and the EU Directive 2003/86/EC on the right to family reunification. This problematic state of affairs reflects the ongoing racialization of European borders, and that of Dutch borders in particular.
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Stefan Salomon
The principal function of borders in immigration law is to distinguish between persons and goods which are permitted to enter a territory and those which are not. I call this the filtering function of the border. In this short contribution, I enquire into how this filtering function of the border operates in the context of border controls in the Netherlands. More specifically, I argue that the way border controls are performed in the Netherlands structurally produces racialized subjects.
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Thomas Spijkerboer
In European human rights law, it is taken for granted that states have the sovereign right to regulate migration. A right to be admitted to a country of which one is not a national, or a right not to be expelled, exists only in exceptional cases. In this blogpost, I look at the origins of “the right to control the entry of non-nationals”. These are to be found in a shift in the colonial labour system which occurred in the second half of the 19th century. It is this history which explains the inequality represented on the map above.
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Eline Westra, Saskia Bonjour
Can formerly colonized subjects and their descendants be full and equal citizens of the former metropoles – and if so, what would that look like? In this blogpost, we explore these politics of belonging in European postcolonial polities by looking at different conceptualizations of the relationship between the Dutch state and Surinamese-Dutch citizens and immigrants. While Dutch government discourses tend to represent Surinamese-Dutch as too different to belong to the Dutch Nation, Surinamese-Dutch organisations claimed postcolonial citizenship as different and equal.
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Karin van Leeuwen
Colonialism and decolonization have importantly shaped the constitutional trajectories of not only the colonized states, but also those of the colonizers. For the Netherlands, decolonization did not only dictate the pace of various constitutional reforms in the mid-20th century that were ‘needed’ to erase Indonesia (1948) and New Guinea (1963) from the text of the constitution, but also introduced new constitutional documents, such as the 1949 Dutch-Indonesian Union Charter and the 1954 Charter of the Kingdom. While it is necessary to critically analyze the impact of these postcolonial arrangements on former colonies, it is equally urgent to fill the profound gap in knowledge about the impact of colonialism and decolonization on domestic constitutional arrangements.
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Anne-Isabelle Richard
In this post, I would like to shed light on an important, yet generally overlooked aspect of the European Convention of Human Rights, namely that it was drafted at a time when many of the member states of the Council of Europe were still important colonial powers. While European empires in Asia were in decline and the Netherlands was in the process of withdrawing from Indonesia, this was not the case in what was then called New Guinea, Surinam or the Antilles. Colonial empires in Africa, for their part, were still well established and the question of the territorial application of the Convention was hotly debated in the drafting process. What were the implications of this link between human rights and empire?
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Antoon De Baets
The conflict in Indonesia in 1945–1949 was not a police action against insurgents in the context of a colonial territory in which domestic law alone was applicable; it was an international armed conflict in the context of independence in which international law should have played its role. The crimes committed during the conflict from both sides were war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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Boyd van Dijk
The specter of the Indonesian Revolution is still haunting our understanding of Dutch imperial violence. In this blog post, I want to highlight two central issues regarding the conflict’s legal history – one involving the alleged non-application of the laws of war to the conflict which has been a mainstay argument in Dutch official narratives, and the other regarding the ways in which we delineate today our legal-moral reasoning with respect to Dutch transgression.
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Janne Nijman
The self-image of The Netherlands as a nation with a legalist (or Grotian) approach to international affairs has turned a blind eye to how Grotian legal reasonings and arguments have been used to legitimize Dutch colonialism and to shape the post-colonial structure of international law.
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León Castellanos-Jankiewicz, Wiebe Hommes
Human rights and decolonization have a complicated relationship. From their inception in the mid-20th century as normative features of the nation-state, human rights co-existed with imperial colonial systems. As aspirational values molded on the Western philosophical tradition, human rights also served as empowering tools in the moment of decolonization while simultaneously hampering claims to national independence. This is why, in the engagement with the ongoing legacies of colonialism, we have embarked on this symposium to examine human rights both as a language of critique and as a constitutive part of the imperial legacy.
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Maximilian Steinbeis, Mattias Kumm
Regierungsamtliche Diskursteilnahme in Zeiten der Ampel und ihre verfassungsrechtlichen Grenzen: ein Online-Symposium des Verfassungsblogs und des Exzellenzclusters SCRIPTS.
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Cem Tecimer
After what is now almost a two-decade long rule by the governing party, there are strong indications that a strong reshuffling in Turkish politics is in the works. Support for President Erdogan and his party is declining. I argue, firstly, that it is a combination of factors that has led to this moment of changing fortunes in Turkish politics – a combination that sheds light on what tactics may successfully be employed by opposition forces who wish to put an end to autocracies. Secondly, I claim that constitutional restoration in Turkey does not require formal constitutional change.
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Dmitry Kurnosov
The case of Russia teaches us how dangerous extra-constitutional constitution making can be – and that it should always be just a last resort. No substantive institutional changes should be made outside of the constitutional bounds. Otherwise, there will always be the danger that breaking the rule of law will continue even after constitutional change has taken place. This is precisely what Russian intellectuals and jurists, who supported Yeltsin in 1993, learned under the rule of Vladimir Putin. We should try to avoid repeating their mistakes.
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Roberto Gargarella
The questions posed by Professors Andrew Arato and András Sajó in their open letter Restoring Constitutionalism are pressing and of utmost public importance. Many of the issues and controversies raised in the letter arise after “democratic backsliding has taken place” and when the constitution already includes “entrenched authoritarian enclaves”. Taking this context into consideration, I will examine a more basic issue, namely the validity of law in a democratic society.
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Ece Göztepe, Silvia von Steinsdorff, Ertug Tombus
Taking into consideration that the backsliding of Turkish democracy during the last ten to fifteen years happened in a piecemeal and often erratic way, only partially based on constitutional amendments, the reverse process should also be possible by gradual legal and, eventually, constitutional changes. Political pragmatism, based on a clear commitment to basic democratic values and societal reconciliation, might be more important for the sustainable recovery of Turkish democracy than a radical constitutional restart.
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Sanford V. Levinson
From my perspective, the most fundamental question that Arato and Sajó are asking is precisely how committed lawyers and constitutionalists should be to particular political systems that do not, at least on the surface, offer any grounds for optimism that the next election will “vote the rascals out of office” and enable forward movement to achieving the grand aspirations of a liberal constitutional order. Paradoxically or not, one might have more hope about Hungary, Poland, Chile, Brazil, or other countries unafflicted by “veneration” of a constitutional system that, left unreformed, serves as an iron cage, a “clear and present danger” to the actual achievement of liberal constitutional aspirations.
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Michael Meyer-Resende
It seems to me that we are asking two questions: First, is Hungary´s constitutional system so damaged that it no longer reflects the core tenets of democratic constitutionalism? My short answer is, yes, but the case needs to be made comprehensively. The second questions is: Could the current constitution be repaired although it is set-up to impede repair? My short answer is: It depends on the post-election context and we should not jump too easily to leave the current legal framework.
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Beata Bakó
If the constitution-making and amending by Fidesz with their legally obtained two-thirds majority counted as illegitimate, constitutional revision with a simple majority cannot be acceptable. If the sudden redesign of institutions gave reason for serious concern eleven years ago, it cannot be welcomed now.
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Rimdolmsom Jonathan Kabre
The topic of corruption plays a particular role in the international investment regime, as is evidenced by the large number of corruption-based investment cases and the abundant literature on this topic. This blog post discusses the role of arbitral tribunals and local institutions (notably courts and bar associations) in addressing the challenges of corruption by focusing on the so called Piero Foresti, Laura de Carli & Others v. The Republic of South Africa case (hereinafter, the Foresti case). I argue that the reaction of the arbitral tribunal to the allegation of corruption is unsatisfactory and that international and national institutions should operate in complementarity given the transnational nature of the phenomenon of corruption.
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Cengiz Barskanmaz
Almost 20 years after the adoption of the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003), open access publications still play a comparatively marginal role in the legal academia. Yet legal scholarship is already benefiting from a public discourse that quality-assured legal scholarship blogs have initiated with their science-communicative opening. Admittedly, particularly the lack of sustainable funding models reinforces the disciplinary reluctance to embrace open access and open science in legal academia.
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Daniel Hürlimann
In der schweizerischen Rechtswissenschaft bewegt sich einiges in Sachen Open Access. Auf der einen Seite sind viele Bottom-Up-Initiativen entstanden, auf der anderen Seite wird der freie Zugang zu rechtswissenschaftlicher Literatur vermehrt Top-Down gefordert – und teilweise auch gefördert. Es bleibt allerdings noch einiges zu tun, bis Open Access zum Standard wird. Dies gilt insbesondere für die Finanzierung von Zeitschriften. Die bisher bestehenden Finanzierungsmöglichkeiten fördern ein System, in dem Quantität mehr zählt als Qualität.
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Paula Baldini
Despite its revolutionary potential, the movement towards amplifying open access can backfire if it does not expand quickly across the world. As it is today, the vast majority of authors who publish open access are based in European research institutions. By making these authors’ works more easily available than others, open access initiatives may end up dictating the terms of the international legal debate around the world.
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Patricia Schiess
In spring 2016, the Liechtenstein Institute launched verfassung.li, the online commentary on the Constitution of the Principality of Liechtenstein. To date, it is the only commentary on the Constitution of Liechtenstein and – to our knowledge – the only open access commentary on a constitution in the German-speaking world.
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Bogdan Iancu
I will, in what follows, seek to answer the overarching question of this symposium, starting from a cautionary Romanian rule of law (RoL) reform tale. Other things being equal, its lessons may be extrapolated to the specific case of hopefully post-Orbánite Hungary. The specific context of Hungary presents, at least apparently, the Romanian problem in reverse, namely, the transition from an authoritarian nationalist regime to a pluralist, European, rule of law order.
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Johannes Rux
Open Access aims to ensure that scientific findings are disseminated as widely as possible and thus reach (and can be further exploited) where they are of greatest use. Open Access assumes that the unrestricted access to research findings will enable further research and boost scientific progress. This is not restricted to STEM-subjects where speed is often essential to find solutions for looming problems but also applies to studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences including Law and Jurisprudence.
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Julia Emtseva, Angelo Jr Golia, Tom Sparks
In 2021, the Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht (also known as the Heidelberg Journal of International Law) was reborn. Though one of the oldest public and international law journals, its editors have taken the decision to embrace a new era and mode of publishing. The ZaöRV is now a Platinum Open-Access journal.
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Richard Holden
The notion that scientific progress depends on access to the existing stock of knowledge is an old one. It dates to the 12th century when the French philosopher Bernard of Chartres observed: “We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.”
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Marcel Knoechelmann
Without specifying its meaning or context, openness remains an empty category. It commonly evokes a positive sentiment, but what does it mean to say: We are opening up this or that? And what does it disguise? It even compares with excellence in this respect: a word that is en vogue to be thrown into debates about the future of the academy.
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Evin Dalkilic, Georg Fischer
Open Access suggests the absence of gates and gatekeepers – but this is evidently not the case. Who gets to publish what and where is still very much a decision made by certain people in certain positions following certain procedures. Although Open Access carries the promise of removing barriers and democratising access, numerous barriers beyond the obvious ones like paywalls or processing charges exist or are being installed.
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Kim Lane Scheppele
Backsliding democracies around the world all face the problem of how to restore the rule of law. Precisely because it is already embedded in European law, with deep Hungarian roots that have long honored European traditions and its international law obligations, Hungary has the option of simply embracing European law to provide a legal path back to the rule of law
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Johanna Fröhlich
I argue that especially in highly polarized social contexts and in divided societies, triggering a new constitution-making procedure requires certain conditions that are necessarily lacking in such circumstances. Oddly, even though these initiatives are motivated by the idea of constitutional restoration, they could easily fail for the same reasons as the constitution they try to mend. When – against the usual and unusual odds – new constitutions are adopted in socially adverse circumstances, the outcome will unavoidably carry the deep tensions and one-sidedness of its environment.
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András L. Pap
For the first time ever in Hungary, a national primary was held to elect the prime ministerial candidate for the opposition, sparking discussions on constitutional restoration, in particular on amending or replacing the 2011 constitution, the Fundamental Law (FL). Following a brief description of the Hungarian institutional and constitutional landscape, I outline several suggestions as to how the question of constitutional restoration in Hungary might be addressed.
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Till Zimmermann
Criminal law serves as the primary tool of choice in Germany's combat against corruption. Yet, apart from the truism that merely tightening the penal framework to combat corruption is useless anyway, there remain deficits. This blog post argues that some of those deficits are to be found not on the level of law in action, but in the law in the books.
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Sofia Ranchordas
Smart-city surveillance is not always used “for the good.” Instead, the faces of regime opponents or, in other contexts, underrepresented minorities, are often self-incriminating elements. It is clear that smart cities pose important problems to privacy and that technology-infused urban spaces bring as many benefits as challenges. I argue that we should be particularly critical of the employment of surveillance technologies in slums because they are by definition vulnerable places from different perspectives.
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Csaba Győry
The call from Andrew Arato and Andras Sajó starts an important and timely debate. It is indeed a thorny question in which cases a formal breach of constitutional norms is the only way to restore constitutionalism. I make three claims: First, while the potential opposition government’s legislative power will indeed be constrained, it will not be entirely powerless. Second, many of these constraints do not stem from constitutional provisions per se, but from informal practices within constitutional organs, and thus cannot be addressed by only formal constitutional changes, revolutionary or otherwise. Third, in the present situation a calculated formal breach of the constitution will most likely lead to civilian strife, political paralysis and radicalization. It will also have the potential to destabilize the European Union.
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João Victor Archegas, Christian Perrone
For the past twenty years, Brazil has been torn between the paths of public security and mass surveillance, and of reaffirming human rights, especially the right to privacy. An interesting duality has emerged: on the one hand, the creation of a robust regime in terms of data protection and, on the other, a wholehearted acceptance of facial recognition technology.
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Renáta Uitz
In the context of hybrid regimes, where constitutional change is gradual, the search for a magical (if not revolutionary) ‘moment’ of constitutional reset is futile. Instead, constitutional scholarship is better off with envisioning a process of constitutional (re-)settlement through legally imperfect processes of trial and error.
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Markus Naarttijärvi
A closer look at the use of surveillance measures by public authorities in Sweden following 9/11 reveals that once it began, the development can perhaps best be described as displaying a ‘ketchup effect’; where you open the bottle and at first nothing comes out, and then it all comes out at once and you have effectively ruined your dish (which, depending on your view of ketchup, may have been doomed from the moment you picked up the bottle).
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Mark Tushnet
Sometimes, probably often, the new anti-authoritarian majority will not be large enough to satisfy the requirements of the nation’s amendment rule for constitutional change. What can be done under those circumstances? One possibility, of course, is simply to push through constitutional change without regard to the pre-existing amendment rule. Sometimes that will be enough. Sometimes it won’t – particularly where the idea of legality has powerful political support. Where simply bulling ahead with constitutional change seems unlikely to be productive, what can be done? The answer, I believe, combines foundational constitutional theory and practical political reality.
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Monika Zalnieriute
As protest movements are gaining momentum across the world, with Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter, and strong pro-democracy protests in Chile and Hong Kong are taking centre stage, governments around the world are increasing their surveillance capacities in the name of “protecting the public” and “addressing emergencies”. Australia is not an exception to this trend.
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Gábor Halmai
Even if the opposition will win the 2022 election in Hungary, it is very unlikely that the new governing parties will reach the two-third majority which according to the current rules is necessary to enact a brand new constitution or even to amend Fidesz’s ‘illiberal’ constitution. Yet, amending Hungary's Fundamental Law by a simple majority would be an unacceptable but also unnecessary break of legality. But it should also be avoided that a new democratic government would have to govern in the long run within the framework of the present ‘illiberal’ Fundamental Law.
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Albert Fox Cahn, Evan Enzer
Throughout the post-9/11 period, we’ve seen the courts fail to check the growth of the surveillance state, inviting and sanctioning new abuses. But we do see reason for hope. The expansion of the surveillance state is increasingly taking center stage in American political discourse. While it’s unclear if America’s political, legal, and constitutional systems will ever fully recover from the post-9/11 moment, it is clear that only mass political movement will be able to edge back us from the precipice of authoritarianism and reassert constitutional checks and the rule of law.
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András Jakab
Revolutionary proponents of instant radical solutions are offering Jacobin moralist arguments about the evilness of the old legal system and enthusiastic political slogans about a bright future under the new Constitution, but they are staying silent about the most likely outcome of their plans: massive armed violence.
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Maria Paula Bertran, Maria Virgínia Nabuco do Amaral Mesquita Nasser
When the anti-corruption systems whistleblowed to a Latin tune recently, the resulting sound was remarkably ugly. It was loud, as the Odebrecht, Petrobras, and J&F cases revealed a wide-spread, refined system of corruption involving prominent politicians and businesspeople in 12 countries from Latin America and Africa named as “Operation Car Wash”. But the sound was also dissonant, as it played tunes that did not represent the patterns of justice expected from the Latin legal systems. That sound had a peculiar U.S. American accent.
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Armin von Bogdandy, Luke Dimitrios Spieker
To restore an independent judiciary and – in a broader perspective – the rule of law, it would suffice to remove the central perpetrators from the judiciary. To achieve this aim, we plead for the criminal responsibility of those judges who severely and intentionally disrespect EU values. Establishing their criminal responsibility in fair proceedings would then justify – in fact: require – their removal from office.
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Winfried Kluth
Die Bundesnotbremse ist aus heutiger Sicht jedoch nicht nur Ende sondern zugleich Beginn eines neuen Staatsversagens gewesen. Tatsächlich war es die Verlagerung der Handlungskompetenz auf die Gubernative, zumal in der föderalen Variante einer informellen ad-hoc-Bund-Länder-Gubernative, die sich als strukturell unpassend und fachlich unangemessen erwiesen hat. Aus diesen Vorüberlegungen lassen sich Eckpunkte für ein Pandemierecht 4.0 entwickeln, das als vorsorgendes und gefahrenabwehrendes Planungs- und Interventionsrecht in organisatorischer und verfahrensrechtlicher Hinsicht über die ersten drei Entwicklungsstufen (Generalklausel, unkoordinierter Maßnahmenkatalog, Bundesnotbremse) nicht nur hinausgeht, sondern zu einer grundlegenden Neuausrichtung führt.
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Rosalind Dixon, David E. Landau
How does one restore a democratic constitutional order that has been eroded through a process of “abusive” constitutional change? The same tools used to achieve abusive change can be used to reverse it. For example, just as formal constitutional amendment is one important way in which abusive constitutional projects are carried out, it is also an important pathway through which abusive change can be reversed.
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András Sajó
It is not out of question that the united Hungarian opposition will obtain Parliamentary majority in 2022, but a constituent supermajority of two thirds remains wishful thinking. Winning the election will not result in actual governmental power. The Fundamental Law was a nice opportunity to purge constitutional institutions. Is another round of purge inevitable with the restoration of the rule of law? The dictates of necessity offer an unappealing perspective and textbook constitutionalism is not prepared for dirty reality.
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Michael Kubiciel
When people talk about the connection between internal and external security, which was occasionally the case during the election campaign for the German Bundestag, they usually mean international terrorism, transnational drug trafficking and organized crime. Yet, various events in the recent months reminded us that rampant corruption in foreign states can also have consequences for our external security.
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Su Bian
In 2018, the Chinese central government professed its determination to combat ‘corruption’ at a new level by promulgating the Supervision Law (SL). Supervisory commissions (SCs) from the national level down to the county level were systematically set up and became the sole supervisory organ, which has largely modified the constitutional division of powers. I argue that the SC shares much in common with the hybrid type of ombudsman but lacks adequate external constraint mechanisms.
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Steven Pierce
In Nigeria, coups d’etat have often been a cause for celebration. Ironically, even as a series of juntas promised to reform corrupt practices Nigeria’s perceived problems grew worse, leading to ever-more stringent rhetoric against corruption and, as Ugochukwu Ezeh suggests in his contribution to this symposium, a near consensus that corruption represents a fundamental threat to Nigerians’ personal security and that of the nation itself. While it is challenging to measure the prevalence or magnitude of corruption objectively, the perception of corruption is that it gets worse and worse, despite the struggle against it.
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Anna Leisner-Egensperger
Die Bundesnotbremsen-Beschlüsse haben dem Schutz von Leben und Gesundheit eine neue Schlagkraft verliehen. Sie könnte erhebliche Auswirkungen auf die verfassungsrechtliche Bewertung der zukünftigen Klimapolitik haben.
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Anne van Aaken
Corruption is a huge challenge and needs all available means to fight it – the call of the United Nations for using behavioral sciences to understand and fight corruption needs to be heeded urgently.
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Michael Wrase
Die Anerkennung eines Rechts auf schulische Bildung durch das Bundesverfassungsgericht greift weit über die Frage pandemiebedinger Schulschließungen hinaus. Sie stellt das bisher objektiv-rechtlich begründete Bildungsverfassungsrecht auf eine neue Grundlage – das hat dogmatische und praktische Konsequenzen.
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John Philipp Thurn
Nach der Entscheidung des BVerfG zur "Bundesnotbremse" ist es verfassungsrechtlich zulässig, eine an sich ungefährliche Ausübung der körperlichen Bewegungsfreiheit zu verbieten, wenn dieses Verbot als Teil eines nicht offensichtlich wirkungslosen Gesamtkonzepts die Durchsetzung einer anderen Maßnahme des Gesundheitsschutzes erleichtert – und das unmittelbar per Gesetz, also ohne gerichtlichen Rechtsschutz. Kann das richtig sein – und wo führt das hin?
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Gwendolyn Domning
Slipping in and out of the academic spotlight, the topic of corruption has persistently raised the interest of scholars, international organizations, and societies all over the world since the 1990s. I focus on the Republic of Korea’s (ROK) establishment of a new anti-corruption agency, the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials (CIO), and argue that the CIO provides new anti-corruption ‘services’ on the one hand and strengthens state accountability mechanisms on the other.
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Ugochukwu Ezeh
Anti-corruption legalism is often a symptom of a broader phenomenon: the securitisation of corruption. Taken together, securitisation and anti-corruption legalism are counterproductive approaches: they undermine the evolution of democratic values, political accountability mechanisms, and independent constitutional institutions that form the bedrock of meaningful and sustainable anti-corruption strategies.
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Tristan Wißgott
Mit seinem Beschluss vom 19. November 2021 (Bundesnotbremse I) hat das Bundesverfassungsgericht nicht nur die lange ersehnte Antwort auf die Frage nach der Verfassungsmäßigkeit von Kontakt- und Ausgangsbeschränkungen gegeben. Es hat sich zugleich zu der hoch umstrittenen Frage geäußert, ob die »Bundesnotbremse« Ausgangsbeschränkungen unmittelbar durch Gesetz anordnen durfte. Die Argumente des Gerichts überzeugen nicht.
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Kevin Davis
Enforcement is the central challenge in anti-corruption law. Ironically, in many societies the problem is that there are too many enforcement agencies rather than too few, mainly because those agencies’ actions are poorly coordinated. In the early years of the twentieth century, Brazil’s anti-corruption agencies developed an intriguing response to this conundrum. They embraced what I and my co-authors call institutional modularity.
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Heiko Sauer
Das Bundesverfassungsgericht hat die Bundesnotbremse einer eingehenden verfassungsrechtlichen Kontrolle unterzogen, ohne sich hinter Entscheidungsspielräumen der Politik zu verstecken. Die überzeugenden Beschlüsse zu den Kontakt- und Ausgangsbeschränkungen sowie zu den Schulschließungen lassen auch Folgerungen zur Vereinbarkeit der jetzt diskutierten Maßnahmen mit dem Grundgesetz zu.
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Fabia Fernandes Carvalho, Florian Hoffmann
This blog symposium introduces a new collaborative format between Verfassungsblog and the journal Verfassung und Recht in Übersee (VRÜ) / World Comparative Law (WCL). Today, we inaugurate these joint symposia with the theme of the recently published VRÜ/WCL Special Issue on "Corrupting Democracy? Interrogating the Role of Law in the Fight against Corruption and its Impact on (Democratic) Politics". It thematises corruption and its conceptual pendant anti-corruption as prototypical hard cases for both the rule of law and for democratic politics.
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Martin Nettesheim
Dem neuen "Recht auf schulische Bildung" liegt sowohl ein erziehungswissenschaftlich als auch verfassungsrechtlich fragwürdiges Verständnis zugrunde. Das Bundesverfassungsgericht konstruiert Schule als Markt und Schüler als Konsumenten. Über die vom BVerfG am 19. November 2021 bewirkte kulturtheoretische Rekonstruktion von Schule wird zu diskutieren sein.
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Isabel Lischewski
Kinder und Jugendliche haben ein Recht auf schulische Bildung aus Art. 2 Abs. 1 in Verbindung mit Art. 7 Abs. 1 GG. Das hat das Bundesverfassungsgericht in seinem Beschluss zur Verfassungsmäßigkeit pandemiebedingter Schulschließungen heute festgestellt und damit erstmals bestätigt, dass es Grundrechte gibt, die nur und explizit für Nicht-Erwachsene gelten. Stellt das in dem Beschluss erstmals vorgestellte Recht auf Schulbildung aber tatsächlich ein genuines und ausschließliches Kinderrecht dar? Und was bedeutet die Entscheidung für den anhaltenden Kinderrechtediskurs?
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Johanna Wolff
Das Verbot von Präsenzunterricht greift in das Grundrecht von Schülerinnen und Schülern auf schulische Bildung ein, so das BVerfG. Der Eingriff sei in der konkreten Situation allerdings gerechtfertigt gewesen. Auch wenn aber das BVerfG damit die bisherigen Schulschließungen nicht beanstandet, erteilt es für künftige keinesfalls einen Freifahrtschein – im Gegenteil.
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Jaana Palander, Saara Pellander
The presence of a strong security paradigm in Finnish migration law, policy and court practice is not a new phenomenon. What has become most prevalent is the securitization of asylum seeking. For a long time, this speech has not turned into practice, but this may soon change, in response to the migration influx after 2015 and in the Belarussian context.
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Audrey Macklin
At the broadest level, 9/11 exacerbated the chronic precarity of non-citizens’ status as legal subjects governed under the rule of law. In principle, the rule of law is indifferent to citizenship: after all, the legal subject is constituted through subjection to law, not to the state as such. And yet, the rule of law has always been insipid in the sphere of migration, and securitization diluted it even further. This is true across all jurisdictions, including those bound by human rights entrenched in constitutional texts.
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Giacomo Orsini, Jean-Baptiste Farcy, Sarah Smit, Laura Merla
With liminal legal spaces expanding on several domains of non-EU migrants’ lives in Europe, specific populations of third country nationals came to face greater discriminatory treatment. Rules and procedures were being adopted in the name of security and the protection of the public and/or social order against so-called “irregular migration”. We focus on non-EU migrants in Belgium, as they constitute an extremely relevant case to illustrate how institutions of a liberal, democratic European state have transformed and adapted the ways they operate discrimination along racist lines.
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Mohsin Alam Bhat
Indien hat komplexe rechtliche Mechanismen geschaffen, die den Status der Staatsbürgerschaft stark verunsichert haben. Diese Mechanismen erlauben es, Personen willkürlich als mutmaßliche Ausländer ins Visier zu nehmen, stellen unzumutbare Beweisanforderungen für den Nachweis der Staatsbürgerschaft und erleichtern den schleichenden Verlust materieller Rechte - und das alles ohne formellen Entzug des Staatsbürgerschaftsstatuses. Diese Prozesse lassen sich meiner Meinung nach am besten als das verstehen, was Peter Nyers als "Irregularisierung der Staatsbürgerschaft" bezeichnet.
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Mohsin Alam Bhat
India has created complex legal mechanisms that have introduced severe insecurity of citizenship status. These mechanisms permit arbitrary targeting of persons as suspected foreigners, place unreasonable evidentiary standards for proving citizenship, and facilitate creeping loss of substantive rights – all without a formal revocation of citizenship status. These processes, I suggest, are best understood as what Peter Nyers calls ‘irregularizing citizenship’.
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Andrew Arato, András Sajó
How to restore constitutionalism and the rule of law is a somewhat neglected problem among constitutionalists. Thanks to forthcoming elections, some countries like Hungary where “democratic backsliding” has taken place, may have the opportunity to restore the rule of law. Is a democratic community bound to follow constitutional rules of dubious democratic nature? Or can these be replaced in violation of legality, for example in an extra-parliamentary democratic process? If so, under what conditions? We call on constitutionalists to provide answers to these questions and formulate alternatives between the two extremes of legality and paralysis, possibly involving an element of illegality, but compensating for this by dramatic increase of democratic legitimacy.
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Peter Billings
Obwohl der Zusammenhang zwischen Terrorismus und Asyl in Australien keine empirische Grundlage hat, haben bestimmte Gesetze, Maßnahmen und Praktiken, die im Jahr 2001 zur Terrorismusbekämpfung eingeführt wurden, bis heute Bestand - insbesondere die Offshore-Abfertigung von Asylbewerbern, die auf dem Seeweg ankommen. Ich behaupte, dass Australiens Abschreckungsmodell eine negative "Signalwirkung" auf die heutige Asylpolitik und -praxis einiger europäischer Staaten hatte.
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Peter Billings
The Australian government’s agenda of progressive border securitization was, initially, sustained by counter-terrorism rhetoric. However, the focus of concern has shifted away from the potential terrorist threat posed by asylum seekers towards deterring unauthorised maritime migration. Though the nexus between terrorism and asylum lacks an empirical basis in Australia, certain laws, policies and practices premised on counterterrorism in 2001 endure to this day – offshore processing of asylum seekers arriving by sea, notably. I argue that Australia’s deterrence model has had a negative ‘signalling effect’ on some European states’ contemporary asylum policies and practice.
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Julia Gelhaar
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Europeanization received a [...]
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Emilie McDonnell
The Nationality and Borders Bill is the culmination of the UK government’s increasingly securitised, criminalised and hostile approach to asylum and migration. While 9/11 served to solidify the highly dubious nexus between migration and terrorism, the UK (alongside other destination states) has for decades been implementing restrictive migration policies and practices designed to deter and prevent asylum seekers and other migrants from reaching its territories and accessing safety.
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Ayşe Dicle Ergin
Even though 9/11 has had a significant impact on the global linking of migration and security, different triggers may be required for each country for the concrete effects of this approach to emerge. For Turkey, the developments are parallel but delayed. Turkish immigration policy, which was trending towards becoming more liberal and rights-based after 9/11, has suffered a serious break after a series of terrorist attacks in the country.
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Michael Sebastian Schneiß
The state of the European Union's asylum and migration policy can be summed up as follows: 20 years after the attacks on the Twin Towers, the "war on terror" has become both a cause of people on the move, and serves at the same time as the normative underpinning for the unimaginable arms race that has taken place at the external borders of the EU. Legitimised by the political leadership of the European Union, it is now a reality that the principles of the rule of law have ceased to apply at the EU's external borders without consequence.
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Sangeetha Pillai
Since its earliest days, Australia’s sweeping constitutional powers over aliens and immigration have been drawn on to support broad exclusionary laws. In the two decades since 9/11, the tendency towards exclusion has increased significantly.
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Eleonora Celoria
While concerns over terrorism have not shaped Italian migration policy in a comprehensive way, the increased use of the administrative measure of expulsion of foreigners for counter-terrorism purposes must be questioned. It poses serious challenges to fundamental rights and rule of law principles and might foster a shift from a punitive to a preventive approach in the field of migration control.
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Luicy Pedroza
As much as the comparative study of migration policies has developed recently, it still suffers from a blazing assumption: that states have equal sovereign power to determine their migration policy according to their own interests. The notion of “externalization”, so widely discussed nowadays, reminds us of asymmetries of power. In cases of extreme asymmetry though, as in the relation between Mexico and the United States, the spaces for sovereign decision making on migration policy are extremely thin to nonexistent.
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Alicia Ely Yamin
Amid the unfolding „moral catastrophe“ of COVID-19, and across the entries in this symposium, we see a clamor for any pandemic law-making exercise to promote more justice in global health.
However, this universally-embraced imperative masks a wide array of divergent views about the nature and sources of inequalities in global health, and in turn what should be done if we were to think beyond a narrow pragmatism of the moment.
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Alicia Ely Yamin
This final webinar of the 'International Pandemic Lawmaking: Conceptual and Practical Issues' Symposium will bring together leading scholars to critically discuss cross-cutting themes of the Symposium, and key points of contention and recommendation for the future of global pandemic governance.
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Ferdinand Weber
Migration and citizenship law are politically configurable matters, like all others. All terrorist threats affect the state's duty to protect life, possibly state infrastructure and the sense of security in the public sphere. Picking up a connection to migration, in contrast to already existing domes-tic right-wing and left-wing extremism, can promise a quick reduction of external dangers in the political competition. Certainly, most people reject an equation of migration and terrorism as politically backwards. However, the image of migration being infiltrated by terrorism is effective.
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Ilja Richard Pavone
The COVID-19 pandemic has raised unprecedented challenges for the global health framework and its long-term consequences are not yet in full sight. The alarm mechanism based on the declaration of Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), in particular, has been severely tested. As underlined by some scholars, a reform of the PHEIC’s mechanism would not solve the core issues of the alert and response system behind the IHRs, that do have mainly a political dimension.
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Raphael Oidtmann
Any future international treaty or instrument on pandemic preparedness and response should refrain from further perpetuating an understanding of international borders that is primarily based on considerations of territoriality – rather, it should ensure that borders are no longer a constitutive element determining the international community’s effort of fighting the spread of dangerous diseases.
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Ching-Fu Lin, Chuan-Feng Wu
The COVID-19 pandemic has blatantly exposed the flaws of the World Health Organization (WHO) and its International Health Regulations (IHR) in addressing cross-border communicable diseases. We argue that the IHR is ill-designed: its rules and mechanisms are disproportionately tied to the Director General’s (DG) exercise of power, rendering insufficient member access to and participation in core decision-making and greater tendency of regulatory capture.
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Norman Paech
In Einem sind sich politische Parteien, Medien und Öffentlichkeit einig: ob man den Rückzug der Bundeswehr aus Afghanistan nun Desaster, Debakel oder Niederlage nennt, er soll gründlich analysiert werden, und mit ihm der gesamte Einsatz seit 2001. Die völkerrechtliche Legitimation des Kriegseinsatzes steht nicht zur Debatte. Doch muss eine unvoreingenommene Analyse zu dem Ergebnis kommen: der Krieg begann mit einem Verstoß gegen das Völkerrecht, produzierte in seinen 20 Jahren zahlreiche Kriegsverbrechen und endete nun mit einem letzten Bruch des Völkerrechts.
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Sara (Meg) Davis, Mike Podmore, Courtenay Howe
Considering the unprecedented suffering caused by COVID-19, any future pandemic lawmaking should be informed by public consultations that prioritize hearing the experiences of people most affected by the crisis, and that facilitate their identifying the redress and reforms they want. Such a process will be critical to rebuilding trust in public institutions.
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Sharon Bassan
Piecemeal and fragmented policymaking during Covid-19 underscored the need for an equity-focused global health agenda. Yet, most responses were nationally-focused, lacked global commitment and solidarity, failed to notify the WHO of novel outbreaks, and were non-compliant with its professional recommendations.
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Ellen ‘t Hoen, Ciara Staunton, Paul Ogendi, Cassandra Emmons, Pedro Villarreal
Amid contention that global governance was unprepared and incapacitated in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this November, a special session of the World Health Assembly will convene to discuss a potential international instrument on pandemic preparedness and response. As part of the "International Pandemic Lawmaking: Conceptual and Practical Issues" symposium which is publishing critical insights and recommendations for this potential pandemic treaty each day on Bill of Health and Verfassungsblog, this is the second webinar examines the issues, challenges and opportunities related to scientific innovation.
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Pedro Villarreal
More inclusive models for scientific data sharing at the international level clearly can and must be devised. Doing so will require stronger commitments by states, improved multilateral mechanisms, and legal rules that facilitate the fair allocation of fruits of scientific progress without influence from competing agendas.
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Paul Ogendi
By relying on the private sector in the context of COVID-19, many countries are struggling to secure adequate personal protective equipment, testing kits, and, more importantly. life-saving vaccines. A radical paradigm shift is needed from a market-based paradigm to one that encourages more scientific collaboration transcending national, regional, and global levels.
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Obiora Okafor
While the withdrawal phase of allied involvement in Afghanistan has, quite deservedly, generated a lot of attention, controversy and tragedy, broadly speaking, it has not – so far – caused or signaled any significant rupture in the orientation of international law and relations toward weaker states and peoples.
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Ciara Staunton, Deborah Mascalzoni
COVID-19 demonstrated the interconnectedness of the world and that our collective protection and well-being is contingent on our individual response. The importance of solidarity and acting in the public interest became key messages in public health, as too were these principles justified as the basis for data-sharing across borders. Accessing this data was critical and its timely access to this data was essential in research for the much-needed new vaccines.
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Corri Zoli
Für manche stellt der demütige Abzug der Vereinigten Staaten und der NATO-Koalitionspartner aus Afghanistan ein angemessenes Ende der Kriege nach dem 11. September 2001 dar. Doch meiner Meinung nach markiert dieser Abzug einen wichtigeren Anfang: unseren unfreiwilligen Eintritt in eine neue Ära der kompetitiven Kriegsführung - wobei Afghanistan nur den Anfang einer neuen Ära globaler Infrastruktur- und Lieferkettenkriege darstellt.
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Corri Zoli
Some argue that the humbling exit of the United States and NATO coalition partners from Afghanistan marks a fitting end to the post-9/11 wars and its conceits. My sense is that this exit marks a more important beginning: our unwitting entry into a new era of competitive warfare—with Afghanistan representing the opening salvo of a new era of global infrastructure and supply chain wars.
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Shaimaa Abdelkarim
Feminist international legal scholarship has been attentive to the gendered framing of the ‘war on terror’, specifically, in relation to proliferating practices of democratisation in third world societies. I suggest that Afghan women’s experiences are integral to challenge the function of human rights in reproducing gender norms.
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Jochen von Bernstorff
We are still in the process of assessing the outcomes of 20 years of Western military and humanitarian presence in Afghanistan, and of a heartless and chaotic withdrawal. The current and somewhat self-centred debates may obscure considerable collateral legal nihilism. My main argument is that the re-interpretation of Art. 51 UN Charter by the US in the context of the so called “war on terror” was (and still is) an attempt to re-introduce new legal justifications for old forms of great power interventionism.
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Anne van Aaken, Tomer Broude
In this brief essay, we wish to highlight some insights from behavioural economics that can contribute to a successful process of international pandemic lawmaking. Our interest here is not to engage with individual or collective psychological reactions to pandemics or other large-scale risks, or with substantive policy made in their wake. Several such behavioural issues and dimensions have been dealt with elsewhere, not without (ongoing) spirited debate. Here, however, while building on related frameworks of analysis from the field of behavioral economics, as applied to international law (including nudge theory), our focus is on the process and design of pandemic international law-making.
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Thilo Marauhn, Daniel Mengeler, Vera Strobel
Alongside the political question of the consequences of the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, there is also the pressing question of the legal responsibility of the Federal Republic of Germany. We come to the interim conclusion that the Federal Republic of Germany has not fully complied with its obligations to protect fundamental rights - above all the protection of life under Article 2 of the Basic Law - and its obligations under international law.
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Helmut Philipp Aust, Janne Nijman
From the perspective of an international lawyer, the urban dimension of the attacks of 9/11 is conspicuously absent from most of the debates. Yet, there is a hidden story underneath the bigger geopolitical picture and its international legal implications that most of the contributions to this symposium discuss. The 9/11 attacks went for urban symbols that were at the same time global symbols; in the wave of terrorism that followed cities both in the Global North and Global South were the target – physically, politically and culturally. Security is increasingly understood as an urban issue.
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Helmut Philipp Aust, Janne Nijman
Diese urbane Dimension der Anschläge vom 11. September wird in den meisten völkerrechtlichen Debatten auffällig wenig berücksichtigt. Jedoch verbirgt sich hinter den größeren geopolitischen Entwicklungen und den damit verbunden völkerrechtlichen Auswirkungen, eine weitere Geschichte. Die Anschläge vom 11. September 2001 zielten auf urbane Symbole ab, die gleichzeitig globale Symbole waren; in der darauffolgenden Terrorismuswelle waren Städte sowohl im globalen Norden als auch im globalen Süden das Ziel - physisch, politisch und kulturell. Sicherheit wird zunehmend als ein urbanes Thema verstanden.
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Kaat Van Delm
Our international norms are arguably ill adapted to emergencies such as pandemics. In this contribution I discuss a potential remedy for one related challenge, namely a cooperation amongst competitors for the accelerated development of vaccines. A way to foster cooperation could be the use of fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (‘FRAND’) terms to the licensing of pandemic-essential intellectual property rights (IPR).
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Asad Kiyani
Examining how Western states - primarily the US, UK and Canada - approach and develop their exceptional status with respect to allegations of international crimes shows that they pursue ‘exceptionalism’ and its benefits through a variety of strategies. Given the relative standing and power of these states internationally, the risks posed by their tactics may disproportionately burden international institutions and norms rather than the states themselves.
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Fréderic Mégret
The Western imaginary of solidarity to distant others has long dominated discussions of Afghanistan. This commentary looks at what might be described as intermediary solidarities - towards local suppletives who have put themselves in harm’s way to aid foreign interventions, primarily Afghan interpreters, employed by Western armies. I contrast a sense of patriotic noblesse oblige to former allies with a more critical international evaluation of the status of these interpreters.
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Cassandra Emmons
A pandemic instrument should recognize the changed landscape of the international community and enhance roles for and communication between regional and global governmental bodies and especially non-governmental actors. I recommend a new international instrument on pandemic response be explicit about reporting requirements when governments suspend rights during such emergencies.
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Luciano Bottini Filho
The pandemic status is also a political exercise and a way to phrase a crisis according to political interests. As long as some diseases do not reach a pandemic level, they would not elicit the immediate financial help and international cooperation, which has at least been promised (if not delivered) during COVID.
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Sakiko Fukuda-Parr
Setting out new norms and arrangements for the provision of global public goods for pandemic preparedness and response should be a centrepiece of a new legal instrument that is capable of challenging market power, and builds on human rights principles in synch with the age of hyper-globalization.
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Gian Luca Burci, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Aeyal Gross, Tsung-Ling Lee, Joelle Grogan
Amid contention that global governance was unprepared and incapacitated in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this November, a special session of the World Health Assembly will convene to discuss a potential international instrument on pandemic preparedness and response.
Marking the launch of the 'International Pandemic Lawmaking: Conceptual and Practical Issues' Symposium, this webinar will bring together leading scholars to critically discuss cross-cutting themes of the Symposium, and key points of contention and recommendation for the future of global pandemic governance.
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Gian Luca Burci
The COVID-19 pandemic has been characterized by mistrust in science, the manipulation of science for political purposes, the “infodemic” of mis- and disinformation, and a repeated failure to base policy decisions on scientific findings. The crisis of confidence in scientific analysis is paradoxical and disquieting, particularly in light of increasing international regulation to manage acute or systemic risks and its reliance on science.
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Joelle Grogan
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has brought global health structures into sharp relief: it exposed the gross inequalities and inequities of health care access, as well as the symbiosis between human rights, health care, politics, economics, and the law. This symposium, “International Pandemic Lawmaking: Conceptual and Practical Issues,” was convened with two primary aims: to shed light on the inequities and imbalances exposed by global pandemic response, and to advocate recommendations on which principles should guide the framing and drafting of a potential international instrument on pandemic preparedness and response.
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Gerald Becker-Neetz
Die Entscheidung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts zum Klimaschutz vom 24. März 2021 hat der Bundestag mit Gesetzesbeschluss vom 24. Juni 2021 mit dem Ziel umgesetzt, den monierten verfassungswidrigen Zustand zu beseitigen. Parallel zur Umsetzung nimmt eine Debatte über die soziale Dimension des Klimaschutzes Fahrt auf: Der soziale Ausgleich müsse beim Klimaschutz mit bedacht werden.
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Andrew Arato, Gábor Halmai
We believe that the replacement of the Fundamental Law is necessary, with a rule of law constitution that restores freedom. The new document should be one created by a democratic constituent power according to newly enacted rules, making every effort to avoid civil war and its usually accompanying violence. In its process of drafting the role of the 1989 round table can be a model, even if we cannot count on the acceptance of its new constitutional draft by 2/3 of the parliament elected in 2022.
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Christian Calliess
So überzeugend der Klimabeschluss des BVerfG im Hinblick auf die strukturelle Koppelung der planetaren Grenzen in Form des 1,5-2 Grad-Ziels mit Art. 20a GG im Ergebnis ist, so sehr wirft doch der grundrechtliche Weg dahin in rechtsdogmatischer Hinsicht viele Fragen auf. Ich konzentriere mich in diesem Beitrag auf die Frage, ob der Erste Senat die berühmte, aber zugleich auch umstrittene „Elfes“-Konstruktion fruchtbar macht und in diesem Rahmen einen im Hinblick auf die Grundrechtsdogmatik tragfähigen und zukunftsweisenden Weg beschritten hat.
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Armin Steinbach
Klimaneutralität als alternativloses Ziel politischen Handelns hat jetzt das höchstrichterliche Plazet. Zugleich befördert die neue intergenerationale Vorwirkungsdogmatik einen klimapolitischen Unilateralismus, der so manche ökonomische Binsenweisheit in den Wind schlägt: Trittbrettfahren und carbon leakage werden bei unilateralem Vorpreschen noch für klimapolitische Ernüchterung sorgen.
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Marten Breuer
Der Beschluss des Bundesverfassungsgerichts zum Klimaschutz ist ein rechtspolitisch wichtiges Signal, auf das die Politik umgehend reagiert hat. Doch so wünschenswert es aus rechtspolitischer Sicht auch sein mag, so unklar sind die grundrechtsdogmatischen Implikationen. Hierzu einige – eher skizzenhafte – Überlegungen.
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Lukas Märtin, Carl Mühlbach
In seinem Beschluss zum Klimaschutzgesetz hat das BVerfG nicht nur den Klimaschutz gestärkt, sondern auch ein anderes Prinzip aus Art. 20a GG betont: die Generationengerechtigkeit. Bisher gelten in Deutschland oftmals Schuldenbremse und schwarze Null als generationengerechtes Optimum. Diese Ausrichtung ist jedoch das genaue Gegenteil einer Generationengerechtigkeit, wie sie nun auch das BVerfG auslegt.
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Joelle Grogan
The ‘Power and the COVID-19 Pandemic’ Symposium was hosted by the Verfassungsblog, and supported by Democracy Reporting International under the re:constitution program supported by Stiftung Mercator, and the Horizon-2020 RECONNECT project. Over the course of 12 weeks from 22 February to 15 May 2021, the Symposium reported on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on law and legal systems in 64 countries, accompanied by 11 commentaries on transversal themes including human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
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Joelle Grogan
Involving over 100 contributors worldwide, the 2021 Power and COVID-19 Pandemic series builds on the 2020 COVID-19 and States of Emergency Symposium to again provide snapshot critical analysis of a world in continued crisis and extended emergency. This final commentary in the 2021 Symposium is divided in two parts: first, an analysis of the impact the pandemic has had on legal systems over the course of the last year; and second, an outlook on how to prepare for future emergencies by building on the lessons of the current one. This is part II.
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Joelle Grogan
Involving over 100 contributors worldwide, the 2021 Power and COVID-19 Pandemic series builds on the 2020 COVID-19 and States of Emergency Symposium to again provide snapshot critical analysis of a world in continued crisis and extended emergency. This final commentary in the 2021 Symposium is divided in two parts: first, an analysis of the impact the pandemic has had on legal systems over the course of the last year; and second, an outlook on how to prepare for future emergencies by building on the lessons of the current one. This is part I.
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Christine Bell, Sean Molloy, Asanga Welikala, Kimana Zulueta-Fülscher, Erin Houlihan, Rasha Al Saba, Samrawit Gougsa, Joelle Grogan, Sheila Jasanoff, Stephen Hilgartner, Joshua Castellino
How has COVID-19 impacted upon legal and political systems; minorities and indigenous peoples; and conflict-affected states in transition? This final panel debates themes of trust, equality, conflict and power, and concludes with a commentary by the convenor of the Symposium who will draw together key findings, emergent threats, and reasons for hope.
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Anna Katharina Mangold, Kriszta Kovács, Wen-Chen Chang, Julinda Beqiraj, Shaheera Syed, Nadia Tariq-Ali, Chun-Yuan Lin, Joelle Grogan
The COVID-19 pandemic has placed extreme strain on legal systems, requiring action in response to fast-changing and complex situation of the pandemic emergency. This panel evaluates state action - and in particular, executive-decision making - in response to the pandemic against the standard of the rule of law, and considers whether this will lead to permanent shifts in legal systems worldwide.
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Mark A. Graber, Ciara Staunton, Iain Cameron, Anna Jonsson-Cornell, Jerome Amir Singh
Bringing together experts representing states who have adopted divergent attitudes to the role of science in law and decision-making, as well as an examination of vaccination policy, equity and individual choice, this panel considers the complex policy choices, rationales and politics which interplay in decision-making during a pandemic.
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Tom Gerald Daly, Hans Petter Graver, Michael Meyer-Resende, Dean R Knight, Sabine El Hayek
How has democracy been impacted by over a year of pandemic response and emergency? How have states ensured the democratic accountability of their actions in response to the global health emergency? What lessons can be learned for now, and for the future? This panel examines democratic practices, and highlights the best – and most concerning – developments.
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Alice Donald, Nerima Were, Tara Imalingat, Manon Julicher, Max Vetzo, Maria Ela L. Atienza, Lucy Moxham
COVID-19 – and state responses to it - present a threat to human rights unparalleled in the contemporary era. At the same time, human rights offer a universal framework which guides decision-makers, ensures accountability for their actions and omissions, and renders visible the structural inequalities which drives the pandemic’s differential impact on certain communities. Looking forward, this panel discusses how human rights can be used to underpin a just and sustainable post-pandemic recovery.
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Joelle Grogan
Marking the conclusion of the "Power and the COVID-19 Pandemic" Symposium, this webinar series brings together contributors from around the world to discuss the impact of the pandemic on law and governance, drawing on five transversal themes: human rights; democracy; the rule of law; science and decision-making; and the impact of an extended emergency.
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Sheila Jasanoff, Stephen Hilgartner
The CompCoRe study, an ongoing qualitative comparison of policy responses to Covid-19 in sixteen core countries and two affiliates, begun in April 2020, sought to identify and explain patterns of perceived success and failure in managing this multifaceted crisis. [...] As national and international authorities look to futures beyond Covid-19, a lesson emerging from our study is that they should revisit their institutional processes for integrating scientific and political consensus-building. If free citizens are unable to see how expertise is serving the collective good, they will sooner rebel against the experts than give up their independence. Just as a sound mind is said to require a sound body, so the coronavirus has shown that the credibility of public health expertise depends on the health of the body politic.
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Christina Eckes
On 29 April 2021, the Bundesverfassungsgericht published its decision that the Federal Climate Change Act of 12 December 2019, establishing national climate targets and annual emission amounts allowed until 2030, violates fundamental rights. Do the judges in such a case undermine separation of powers as a time-honoured achievement of modern constitutional democracies in order to force the political branches to take urgently necessary actions? No. By allocating different functions to the three branches, executive, legislature, and judiciary, separation of powers aims to ensure that the tension between law and majoritarian politics is perpetuated and that neither law nor politics dominates the other.
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Jerome Amir Singh
Financial self-interest, fiscal considerations, geopolitics, sovereignty, governance, protectionism, and nationalism are currently dictating COVID-19 vaccine procurement at the macro level. Such structural factors indirectly vitiate autonomy at the grassroots level and run counter to the ideal that individuals should have access to the highest attainable standard of health.
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Felix Ekardt
With a real bang, the German Federal Constitutional Court has adjudicated what is probably the most far-reaching decision ever made by a supreme court worldwide on climate protection. This does not preclude the fact that the decision also has considerable weaknesses.
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Konrad Lachmayer
While the Austrian government´s reactions during the first wave of Covid-19 in spring 2020 are considered to have been successful, disillusionment followed in the fall 2020 with a second wave, for which the government did not seem to have prepared properly. The third period (January to April 2021), on which I will focus in this blog entry, shows a mixed performance of the government.
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Katja Rath, Martin Benner
Der Klimaschutz-Beschluss des BVerfG hat auch über das Umweltrecht hinaus Bedeutung, etwa für den Rechtschutz der jungen Generation in den Bereichen der sozialen Sicherungssysteme oder der Staatsverschuldung. Sie gibt Anlass, sämtliche Säulen des gesellschaftlichen Lebens, bei denen Entscheidungen der Gegenwart zu Lasten für künftige Generationen führen, auf mögliche Beschränkungen intertemporaler Freiheiten abzuklopfen.
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Joelle Grogan
On 16 December 2020, despite rising rates of infection and the widely predicted ‘second wave’ already impacting neighbouring European countries, Prime Minister Boris Johnson mocked the opposition for wanting to ‘cancel Christmas’ by reintroducing nationwide lockdown restrictions. Three days later, a nationwide lockdown in England was introduced (inadvertently mimicking the March 2020 commitment that London had ‘zero prospect’ of lockdown, four days before it was enforced). The lockdown – closing schools, universities and a majority of businesses which were deemed non-essential and prohibiting gatherings of more than two people outdoors from separate households – continued until 12 April 2021 when restrictions began to be lessened through a phased ‘roadmap out of lockdown’. Such political hyperbole by the executive and lax response, followed by sudden U-turn policy making (‘essay crisis’ governance) and severely restrictive measures, have characterised much of the response to the pandemic in the UK.
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Satang Nabaneh
More than a year after the pandemic was first reported in The Gambia, the state is returning to ordinary processes. Many COVID-related restrictions have been lifted, allowing businesses, markets, schools, restaurants, bars, gyms, cinemas, and nightclubs to resume normal operations, and borders to be open. However, from 8 March 2021, police permits will no longer be issued for music festivals, political events, and other forms of social gatherings. This comes against the backdrop of the country’s limited resources, weak healthcare systems, and ineffective mitigating measures including social distancing, self-isolation, and avoiding public gatherings to prevent further spread of the virus.
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Helmut Philipp Aust
Das Bundesverfassungsgericht fordert in seinem historischen Klima-Beschluss, über 2031 hinaus zu definieren, wie Emissionen zu reduzieren sind. Die Pointe dieser Konstruktion liegt darin, dass der Gesetzgeber hier nicht nur punktuelle Änderungen für den Zeitraum ab 2031 vornehmen kann, ohne mit anderen Vorgaben Karlsruhes in Konflikt zu geraten.
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Arianna Vedaschi
Domestic emergency powers resorted to in the Covid-19 crisis are very different from each other. Is it possible to identify common trends in the comparative scenario? Limiting the scope of the analysis to democratic countries of the Western European area, at least four different tendencies can be identified.
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Bent Stohlmann
Das Bundesverfassungsgericht stellt in seinem Beschluss vom 24.03.2021 die Verpflichtung für den Gesetzgeber auf, auch für nach 2030 Emissionsziele festzuschreiben. Insoweit das Bundes-Klimaschutzgesetz (KSG) dieses nicht schon heute tut, ist es verfassungswidrig. Dass Karlsruhe hierfür nicht die dogmatische Figur der Schutzpflicht heranzieht, hängt auch mit selbstauferlegten Zwängen des Gerichts zusammen. Dabei äußert sich im Klimabeschluss zugleich ein tieferliegendes Problem der Maßstabsbildung durch das Bundesverfassungsgericht.
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Xin He
It is widely agreed that Wuhan, China is the origin of this pandemic. China has also been criticized for its initial mishandling of the outbreak, including local officials’ cover-up, the incompetence of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control (CDC), and the repression of whistle-blowers. In light of what had happened in other countries, however, China’s subsequent responses were nothing short of miraculous. From its lockdown in Wuhan, to the nationwide joint prevention and control system, from border sealing to mass testing and contact tracing, China’s measures were more intense than almost anywhere else in the world.
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Tom Gerald Daly
What’s the future of the free world? What does the ‘free world’ even mean? Recent reports from leading democracy assessment bodies depict a shrinking democratic atlas that is more fragmented than it has been for decades after a steep decline in every world region.
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Maximilian Steinbeis
Über Regelkreise, Klimawandel und das Bundesverfassungsgericht
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Matthias Goldmann
The judgment of 29 April 2021 quashing parts of the Climate Protection Act (CPA) has made history. Not only because the First Senate of the BVerfG put an end to deferring the reduction of greenhouse gasses to the future, or at least to the next government. But because this turn to the future came in the form of a turn to international law and institutions. It is precisely by relying on international law that the court overcomes the counter-majoritarian difficulty commonly tantalizing climate litigation and human rights law generally. The most astonishing fact is, however, that the court entirely avoids the tragic choice between supposedly undemocratic international commitments and the democratic legislature. I argue that it does so by approaching constitutional law in a decidedly postcolonial perspective.
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Andreas Buser
Der Klima-Beschluss des Bundesverfassungsgerichts schlägt hohe Wellen. National wie international wird das Urteil bereits jetzt als Meilenstein für den Klimaschutz gefeiert. Der Beschluss legt den Grundstein für eine weitergehende und dauerhafte verfassungsgerichtliche Kontrolle der staatlichen Klimaschutzbemühungen anhand der Grundrechte und Art. 20a GG
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Anna-Julia Saiger
Who ought to decide on climate issues? Now, the Constitutional Court has decided. It held that the provisions of the Federal Climate Protection Act are “incompatible with fundamental rights insofar as they lack sufficient specifications for further emission reductions from 2031 onwards”. This decision is extraordinary in many ways: in its interpretation of the constitutional obligation to protect the environment (art. 20a of the Basic Law) as much as in its commitment to international cooperation and international law in climate issues. From this decision on, the German constitution will speak in the future tense.
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Nerima Were, Allan Maleche, Tara Imalingat
What began as a health crisis quickly morphed into an economic, human rights and governance upheaval. In March 2021, we came full circle as we saw a return to excessive law enforcement in the country on account of the third wave of the virus, which has led to a surge in the number of people testing positive and thrown the country back into a state of disarray as poorly resourced health facilities grapple with the influx of cases.
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Beatrice Monciunskaite
The government response to COVID-19 in Latvia can be characterised as one of legal caution. Even though successive states of emergency have been used to manage the crisis, adequate parliamentary and judicial oversight has resulted in broadly proportional handling of the pandemic.
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Nika Bačić Selanec
The Croatian government has, much like any other, struggled to find an adequate response to the pandemic of COVID-19. “Dancing with the virus” for the last year entailed introducing, relaxing and re-introducing more or less stringent measures limiting constitutional rights and individual liberties based on epidemiologic developments and political priorities of the day, or season. The measures have ranged from almost a full lockdown in early 2020 when our numbers of infections were amongst the lowest ones in Europe, to a (far too) lenient regime during the tourist season in summer and fall 2020, when the budgetary, economic and political concerns prevailed over the need to address the serious worsening of our epidemiologic parameters. Even today, in the midst of the ‘third wave’, Croatia has quite a moderate set of measures.
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Maria Ela L. Atienza
The Philippines have one of the longest lockdowns in the world in response to COVID-19. This post reviews the past year, focusing on the main legal and political issues as well as prospects in the country with the second highest total number of COVID-19 cases in Southeast Asia.
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Rasha Al Saba, Samrawit Gougsa
The disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on minorities and indigenous peoples across the globe has been well documented. Individuals from these communities have been infected at a greater rate, are more likely to die after contracting the disease and now risk being at the back of the queue in national vaccination programmes. Our work has focussed on a number of elements of this phenomenon, including a study of the disproportionate burden of Covid-19 on the most marginalized communities worldwide, and the ways that members from these communities have been pushed into forced labour as a result of the pandemic.
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Eglè Dagilytė, Aušra Padskočimaitė
The coronavirus pandemic posed an unprecedented challenge for the Lithuanian society and the decision-makers. Lithuania’s response to the disease was overseen by two different governments - a populist centre-left government in spring 2020 and a liberal-centre-right coalition formed after the 2020 October parliamentary elections. Since Lithuania’s approach to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic including its legal/constitutional framework has already been addressed, the present analysis will focus on the second quarantine as well as on some overarching issues concerning the rule of law, human rights and good governance.
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Manon Julicher, Max Vetzo
Along with Covid, the Government’s response, and the growing public unrest, came a continuing string of constitutional questions and developments, that is unlikely to diminish anytime soon. Building on the abovementioned Verfassungsblog post, we will discuss the main constitutional Covid-19 highlights, largely chronologically. Throughout we will pay particular attention to three recurring and interrelated themes: the evolving role of Parliament in shaping the political and legal response to Covid-19, the relevance and varying intensity of judicial control in pandemic times, and the omnipresence of fundamental rights concerns.
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Wen-Chen Chang, Chun-Yuan Lin
Except for a minor hospital cluster infection in late January 2021, there has been no sign of community spreading. Compared to what has been going on globally with three million death, Taiwan’s control of Covid-19 pandemic is a miraculous success, particularly given its barred access to the World Health Organization and its geographic proximity and economic close ties with China. Notably, this success has been achieved without issuance of any emergency order for lockdowns, shelter in place, business closure, or school suspension. People’s daily lives have been kept without substantial interruption. Because of this, Taiwan’s legal and regulatory responses with the Covid-19 pandemic was praised as the least restrictive in the world.
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Zemelak Ayele, Yonatan Fessha
Covid-19’s arrival in Ethiopia was especially inopportune, coming as it did when the country was at a political crossroads and the federation under heavy strain as a result of unprecedented intergovernmental disputes. Covid-19 emerged just two years after the three year public protests which began soon after the 2015 elections in which the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the ruling coalition until 2019, claimed 100% victory. The public protests led to a political division within the party resulting in the coming to power of Abiy Ahmed who re-configured the party.
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Dean R Knight
Just over a year since the first outbreak in New Zealand, we cast our eye back and reflect on the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Without question, the response is a study in the wonders of modern government, given the magnitude of the threat, the different dimensions of community wellbeing at stake and different parts of government involved in the response. Public health guidance, clinical health care, economic support and stimulus, social welfare and support, border security and surveillance. The list goes on....
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Joelle Grogan, Julinda Beqiraj
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented an extreme strain on legal systems worldwide, as they struggled to adapt existing legislative frameworks, administrative functions, and executive decision-making to the fast-changing and complex situation of the pandemic emergency. The measures adopted worldwide, including mandates in the form of lockdowns and restrictions on gatherings, closures of educational and business institutions, have been not only among the most restrictive limitations on the rights of the majority of global population but also long lasting, with uncertain ending.
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Hans Petter Graver
One year into the pandemic it is necessary to take stock of what has been achieved by the measures that have been implemented, and to reflect on their costs. Phrased differently, how successful have the authorities been in their endeavors to contain and control the spread of COVID-19? And from a legal point of view, what are the constitutional and cultural legacies of a year of deploying war-like measures against the virus? In this contribution to the symposium, I revisit the Norwegian COVID-19 response. In particular, I begin to unpack the narrative of success and its impact on deliberative democratic discourse. I do this by way of taking stock of the response through the lens of three rule of law indicators, namely the application of the principle of legality, the degree of parliamentary control, and adherence to open and democratic principles of rule-making.
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Ahmed Ellaboudy
Indeed, from the very outset, Egypt’s attitude concerning the management of the pandemic crisis was the adoption of the minimum possible actions, which does not harm the state economic plan, nor change the way the system functions. From a formalist point of view, Egypt has existed in a permanent state of emergency since 2017, and as a consequence, no specific legal response was adopted by the state which might alter the regular decision-making process or power arrangements between different branches. The desire of presenting an image to the public that the situation is under control was a crucial factor in Egypt's political, legal, and economic response to the COVID-19 crisis.
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Mark A. Graber
COVID revealed the extent to which attacks on evidence-based politics are part and parcel of the right-wing populist challenge to constitutional democracy in the United States and elsewhere. Right-wing populism challenges constitutional commitments to rule of law and basic liberal freedoms, as such strongmen as Erdogan. Orban and Maduro seize control of courts and persecute dissidents. Populist responses to the pandemic in the United States raise equally important questions about the constitutional commitments to science that are as important to constitutional democracy as the rule of law.
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Tamar Hostovsky Brandes
Israel’s response to the pandemic took place in an unstable and highly polarized political climate. This affected the decisions taken in several ways. First, throughout the crisis, it was difficult to achieve agreement within the government on required actions. In addition, decisions often reflected political rather than professional considerations, a problem that was exacerbated by the instability of the coalition. The prospect of additional elections also effected the political will to enforce restrictions, in particular in the Ultra-Orthodox sector, as Ultra-Orthodox parties are perceived by Netanyahu as necessary partners in any government coalition.
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David Lovatón
It has now been a year since the beginning of this prolonged pandemic, the state of emergency (decreed on March 15, 2020 and extended throughout this entire time), the various levels of confinement and restrictions on civil liberties such as freedom of movement and the right of assembly, and a severe economic recession. At this point, our balance sheet is in the red. This is not only because we reached an official death toll of 52,000 and some 1.5 million cases of infection by March of this year, but also because there has been a severe weakening of institutions, which would explain—in part—why Peru is one of the countries in Latin America that has been hardest hit by COVID-19.
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Alice Donald, Philip Leach
We anticipated a year ago that the pandemic, and state responses to it, presented both threats and opportunities in relation to the full panoply of human rights—civil, political, economic, social and cultural. Our proposition was that, as Scheinin ventures, “human rights do not present a barrier to decisive action to contain the virus”. Rather, they offer a universal frame of reference in the context of COVID-19—guiding national authorities as they balance competing interests and priorities; ensuring public accountability for their actions and omissions; and rendering visible the structural injustices that have driven the contagion’s disproportionate impact on certain communities. A year on, these arguments are all the starker.
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Shaheera Syed, Nadia Tariq-Ali
The ‘lives versus livelihood’ conundrum in Pakistan is emblematic of the difficulties that accompany the balancing of conflicting rights in transitioning democracies. From testing the ability of various tiers of the government machinery to work together to keeping the economy afloat as the country faced lockdowns, Pakistan deeply felt the onset of the burden of disease. The country’s journey through the pandemic was shrouded in deep political contestations over power struggle between the provinces and the centre. As the crisis deepened in mid-2020, the social policies for pandemic response became the site for centralising authority; where trade-offs were made between fundamental rights and well-being of citizens to draw political mileage and cementing the narrative of the centre.
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Seokmin Lee, Tae-Ho Kim
South Korea has reduced the significant number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases without ordering stringent restrictions, nor locking down regions and causing severe economic damage. South Korea was able to slow down the spread of COVID-19 along with the government’s quick reaction to the disease. The government has been implementing nationwide free public testing programs. The KCDC in the government tracked all the confirmed cases’ geographic footprints and publicized the information to the people via online websites and mobile texts. Local cities opened up an innovative ‘drive-through’ testing area, which became a model followed by other countries. The civil society has also generally followed the guidelines provided by government, including using medical face masks and adapting to ‘social-distancing.
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Anna Katharina Mangold
In January 2020, information about a highly contagious virus in Wuhan started to get public attention in Germany. Initially, as can be expected in times of crisis, it was mostly the executive that took action. Due to federal competence allocation, first acted the local authorities in their capacity as health authorities, soon joined by the governments of the federal states (Länder) and the federal government. By now, legislative amendments have formed a massive body of Corona legislation, covering various aspects of economic and social life in Germany. The debate has mainly focused on questions of vertical and horizontal separation of powers, the role of expertise in the Covid response, and restrictions of fundamental rights as adjudicated by courts.
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Zuzana Vikarská
This blogpost analyses the Czech situation from the perspective of the rule of law requirements and identifies two main deficiencies: a significant and long-lasting shift of power to the executive, and an ostentatious lack of reasoning of the executive crisis measures. Fortunately, these ‘two tales of executive arrogance’ have been somewhat counterweighed by the legislature and the judiciary.
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Andrés Cervantes
Considering the political scenario, this article will highlight that the government's management of the pandemic has been ill-timed; it has not been holistic but rather aimed at providing temporary solutions without alleviating the underlying problems of the Ecuadorian population and that the control of the President's exceptional powers has been assumed mainly by the Constitutional Court of Ecuador and not by the legislature.
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Stéphanie Dagron
This article first analyses the various dimensions of the public health and human rights crisis, in order to identify, secondly, the breadth of the efforts that need to be made for a short- and long-term human rights-based response to COVID-19.
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Bianca Selejan-Gutan
The year 2020 was a difficult one for Romania, as for the whole world, because of the Covid-19 crisis which overlapped with other local crises of political, legal and social natures. The country’s response to the Covid-19 challenges was rendered even more difficult and incoherent by these crises. In February-March 2020, the government and the President were looking for a solution in order to initiate the procedure for early elections and at the very first moments of the pandemic the country had an interim government after a motion of censure had passed.
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Ridwanul Hoque
Government authorities and political leaders take huge pride in claiming that Bangladesh has been one of the most successful countries to tackle COVID-19, with the least number of deaths compared with the size of its population (165 million). In reality, the COVID-situation and Bangladesh’s responses to the crisis are much different than the rosy picture that is often drawn.
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Jakub Jaraczewski
This post will cover four core areas of legal concern regarding the Polish response to COVID-19 across the last few months. First of them is the continued issue of legality of the measures used. Second is the issue of transparency and clarity of the measures employed with a particular look at the issue of exiting the emergency. Third is the matter of judicial oversight and the role of Polish courts during the pandemic. Fourth issue pertains to the convergence between the challenges brought about by the pandemic and the continued backsliding of the rule of law and erosion of human rights in Poland.
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Luwie Ganeshathasan
In the midst of this public health emergency, Sri Lanka’s legal system has contributed little if anything to Sri Lanka’s response to Covid-19 since March 2020. The legal system has been expected to and in a large part has in fact been “kept out of the way” of the political actors. In this post I will provide an overview of the GoSL’s legal and political response to Covid-19 and will highlight the implications of key actions on the rule of law and democratic governance. I will thereafter briefly capture the outlook for 2021.
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Kristian Cedervall Lauta
On 11th March 2020 the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen found herself in a historic moment. The infection numbers in Denmark had dramatically increased within the last 24 hours - from just 157 infected in total on the 10th of March to 514 on March 11th – and a, now well-documented, disagreement between the health authorities and the government on the overall strategy had forced the hand of the Prime Minister to take decisive action. Dressed all in black, the prime minister ceremonially opened the press conference with the, now famous, words: “What I will tell you tonight, will have major implications for all Danes”. Indeed, almost one year from the Prime minister’s public prophecy, we can conclude - it did.
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Ciara Staunton
COVID-19 is our first digital pandemic. An effective response to COVID-19 is reliant on access to data that can be used to identify COVID-19 hotspots, guide national and localised responses, as well as be used in research aimed at developing COVID-19 diagnostics, therapies and vaccines. This digital pandemic has thus seen a shift in our data practices. “Open science” and the rapid data sharing of the results of clinical trials, observational studies, operational research, routine surveillance, information on the virus and its genetic sequences, as well as the monitoring of disease control programmes has been pushed to a new level.
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Samo Bardutzky, Saša Zagorc
Slovenia had a very different experience in the first and the second wave of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. In the first wave, the number of infections and deaths per capita has been comparatively low and Slovenia was even identified as a “corona success story”. The second wave, however, has propelled Slovenia into the highest ranks of mortality per capita globally with the total of 162 deaths per 100,000 people from the beginning of the pandemic until 25 January 2021. The Government introduced stringent measures in Autumn 2020, including the complete ban on assembly and sale of non-essential items, the closure of educational institutions, a strict 9 pm - 6 am curfew, and the prohibition of movement across municipal borders.
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Marie-Laure Basilien-Gainche
To cope with the COVID-19 crisis, the French Parliament adopted the Act n° 2020-290 creating a new regime of exception: the state of health emergency. It is concerning as it confers more powers and large leeway to the executive branch than the traditional state of security emergency, and as it offers the opportunity to restrict widely rights and liberties with almost no checks and balances.
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Oran Doyle
In Ireland, it is not constitutionally permissible to declare an emergency in response to COVID-19. The legal response, therefore, has been mounted within the normal constitutional framework. This has consisted of five primary statutes that (a) empower the Minister for Health to make regulations (secondary legislation) imposing restrictions to control the pandemic and (b) establish enforcement powers that the Minister for Health can attach to particular restrictions. By early March 2021, the Minister had made 74 sets of regulations imposing restrictions.
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Başak Çalı, Emre Turkut
Ever since the first officially reported COVID-19 case in the country in March in 2020, Turkey, like most of the world, has taken measures to control the pandemic. The measures taken by Turkey included limitations on freedom of movement, closing schools and moving to online teaching at schools as and universities, restrictions on business opening hours, cessation of prison and detention visits, prohibition of resignation for healthcare staff, and, more stringently, the introduction of curfews.
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Abdurrachman Satrio, Mohammad Ibrahim
It has been a year since the first Covid-19 case was confirmed in Indonesia, in early March 2020. At that time, the Indonesian government underestimated the dangers of Covid-19, which proved fatal since the virus continued to spread gradually to all Indonesian provinces within a month. At the time of writing, Indonesia is the country with the highest number of positive cases in Southeast Asia with 1,419,455, even the Covid-19 death rate in Indonesia is among the highest in the world.
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Sean Molloy, Christine Bell, Asanga Welikala, Erin Houlihan, Kimana Zulueta-Fülscher
This post looks at emergency law responses to the Covid-19 pandemic in conflict-affected states in transition. While some type of emergency response to Covid-19 has been used in most states, we suggest that conflict ‘fault lines’ can mean that emergency law responses have a capacity to undermine transitions.
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Marzieh Tofighi Darian
As of January 26, 2021, Iran has reported a total of 57,481 death and more than 1,300,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, making it the hardest-hit country in the Middle East. After days of denial, Iranian officials finally confirmed the first COVID-19 related death on February 19, 2020. The government’s response in the early days of the pandemic was a preview of what was to come: refusing to quarantine the city of Qom, the first epicenter of COVID in Iran; rejecting the call to postpone the Parliamentary elections; and continuing to receive flights from China, all resulting in the quick spread of the virus across the country.
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Merilin Kiviorg, Päivi Margna
The first coronavirus infection in Estonia was diagnosed on 27 February 2020. Immediately, some steps were taken by the Government to deal with the rapidly evolving and changing situation, including placing some restrictions on freedom of movement especially on people in quarantine. To further tackle the emerging crisis the Government established a state of emergency on Estonian territory. This was done by Order No. 76 of 12 March 2020. The numbers of infected in spring 2020 were low in comparison with the numbers of infected during the second wave in autumn-winter 2020. On the day when the emergency situation was declared there were only 27 COVID-19 positive people.
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Ciara Staunton, Melodie Labuschaigne
On 15 March 2020 with only 61 cases and 0 deaths recorded, President Ramaphosa quickly decided that swift action was required and declared a state of disaster. Despite this quick action, South Africa has recorded the highest number of cases in Africa. This post will consider whether its response has been legitimate, proportionate and subject to appropriate judicial oversight.
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Kriszta Kovács
A year ago, the first lockdowns were introduced in Europe. Since then, European governments have been busy introducing COVID-19 containment measures, including social distancing rules and mask mandates. For two months, they have been vaccinating the people. Ostensibly, the EU countries have taken similar steps. This piece provides a sketch of how the Hungarian government has handled the pandemic.
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Sabine El Hayek
Lebanon is facing an unprecedented crisis due to the continuous political turmoil and the unfolding economic and financial meltdown, exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. This situation was further aggravated by the devastating 4 August explosion of 2,750 tonnes of Ammonium Nitrate at the port of Beirut that killed over 200 people, injured more than 7,000 and left thousands of residents without a roof. To date, justice has not been served, and no one has been held accountable. The combined impact of these crushing tragedies in addition to the rampant inflation is catastrophic on citizens’ livelihoods.
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Maaike De Ridder
As Covid-19 started to make its way onto Belgian territory, the Belgian federal government found itself in the midst of political disorder and negotiations to form a government after the May 2019 elections. Up until March 2020, the competent authority to decide on Covid measures was a caretaker minority government (Regering Wilmès I). But, after the first big outburst of cases in Belgium, the government formation accelerated. Nine political parties made a deal to give the resigning minority government full authority to combat the virus and its economic and social ramifications by a motion of confidence (Regering Wilmès II).
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Hafsteinn Dan Kristjánsson
At the beginning of this pandemic in Iceland, the sense of urgency, uncertainty, and necessity seemed to be front and centre. New and far-reaching restrictions were seen, at least by some, as ‘a necessary evil’ in order to protect us from a new and, in a sense, invisible threat. The learning curve for the government was also steep. According to our law, the government had a wide discretion to address this novel situation. Less than a year later, this is still true to a certain extent. However, whereas the necessity to act was predominant in the first stages of the pandemic, questions of constitutionality and legality are now moving to the forefront.
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Max Steuer
In spring 2020, Slovakia was praised for minimizing the instances of the COVID-19 pandemic. By early 2021, however, with Slovakia among the top five countries with the highest increase of COVID-19-induced death cases, a very different picture has emerged, highlighting the costs of neglecting democracy considerations (encompassing human rights and the rule of law) by the executive in particular.
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Paul Daly
As of early 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage across Canada. These are dark days. Although the arrival of vaccines suggests light will soon appear at the end of the tunnel, Canada is a long way from the end of its COVID-19 crisis.
In this blog, I hope to illuminate readers, through the lens of pandemic-related public law litigation, about how Canada has responded to COVID-19.
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Cristina Fasone
The activity of the coalition Government between the Five Star Movement (5SM), the Democratic Party and other centre-left junior allies to tackle COVID-19 has been praised by some and severely criticized by others. Looking back at this first year of pandemic, a crucial problem of the Italian management of the disease and the related economic and social crises has been the lack of loyal cooperation; a principle entrenched into the Constitution (Art. 120, second para, Const.), with regard to the relationship amongst the different levels of government.
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Esteban Hoyos-Ceballos, Julián Gaviria-Mira
It has been a year now since a discussion began about the profound changes that the arrival of the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic could bring to our constitutional systems. This year has confirmed that the bad omens of the early days of the pandemic were well justified. The system has been put through a severe stress test and, unfortunately, we cannot say that it has been up to the challenge. This blog post seeks to briefly review the main events that have marked the institutional response to the pandemic and the implications that this response has had for the Colombian constitutional system.
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Radosveta Vassileva
In a prior article, I explained how the Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov was using the COVID-19 emergency in spring 2020 as an opportunity to implement measures curtailing fundamental rights and solidifying his autocracy. Subsequently, Borissov’s GERB party enacted questionable amendments to the Law on Health permitting the executive to usurp powers traditionally conferred onto Parliament in Bulgaria’s constitutional order.
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Roman Petrov, Bohdan Bernatskyi
The pandemic has exposed all the weaknesses and shortcomings of the Ukrainian health protection system, which has been on a periphery of the national reforms agenda for many years. In many regards, the Ukrainian way to protect the population against infectious diseases remains ineffective and fragmented and based of outdated Soviet-time approaches and methods. To date, Ukraine is one of the unfortunate leaders among European countries in confirmed Covid-19 cases and coronavirus death tolls. There is still no clear national strategy on how to prevent the further spread of Covid-19 in Ukraine is in place. The President of Ukraine and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine forecasted the terms of vaccination under the WHO COVAX initiative. However, detailed arrangements are far from being in place.
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Teresa Violante, Rui T. Lanceiro
Following an initial comparatively successful handling of the pandemic, infection numbers began increasing consistently after September in Portugal and reached an alarming rate at the beginning of 2021. A second lockdown started on January 14, 2021, with record infection and mortality rates and the National Health Service near breakdown. On 21 January, the measures were tightened and included the closure of schools and universities. A year later, Portugal is back to square one, and, as the failure to control the growth of the pandemic seems evident, medical and moral despair dominate. The impact of the restrictions on the freedom of movement contributed to a decline in the country’s overall score of The Economist’s Democracy Index 2020, that now qualifies it as a “democracy with flaws”.
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Pui-yin Lo
Hong Kong was one of the front urban regions that recorded COVID-19 cases in early 2020. One year later, there were recorded over 11,000 confirmed cases and 200 deaths. At the time of writing, this Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China is struggling with the fourth wave of infections, which is the most virulent thus far, due to the combination of community spread initiated a cluster of dancing instructors and students, and the infiltration of the coronavirus, finally, into the least hygienic environs of the built-up areas.
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Edoardo Stoppioni
With the end of the first wave of COVID-19, the state of crisis was ended in June 2020 in Luxembourg. But its problematic features seem to have remained in the legislative action tackling the second wave. Two main differences appear between the legal approach adopted in March and the current one.
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Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law
A conversation with Alexandra Phelan, Maike Voss, Mark Eccleston-Turner, Pedro Villarreal, and Leticia Casado, moderated by Alexandra Kemmerer.
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Ratna Rueban Balasubramaniam
The COVID-19 pandemic occasioned a de facto worldwide state of exception. In Malaysia, the beginning of the pandemic would coincide with political turmoil. In 2018, a democratic reformist government surprisingly rose to power after unexpectedly winning the general election. The victory ended six decades of ethnocratic and authoritarian rule under the United Malay National Organization (“UMNO”), a Malay nationalist party committed to a political doctrine of ethnic “Malay Dominance.” However, in March 2020, just as the WHO declared a global pandemic, a series of political machinations brought down the reformist government.
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Constantinos Kombos
The outbreak of COVID-19 caught the Cypriot legal order unprepared as regards the effective response in containing the spread of the virus. Contrary to the approach of other European states that declared a state of emergency, Cyprus opted for the adoption of executive measures based on pre-existing, primary legislation. In the absence of any contemporary legislation and with the conscious decision not to table legislation, the executive employed the provisions of colonial legislation, namely the Quarantine Law (Cap. 260) which was enacted in 1932 by the British. The said law intended to regulate the imposition of quarantine and provided for the prevention in the then colony of dangerous infectious diseases. Following the independence of Cyprus in 1960, colonial legislation – including Cap. 260 – remained in effect, as per article 188 of the Cypriot Constitution, subject to compliance with constitutional provisions.
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Kirill Koroteev
As the end of the year 2020 approached, the Vice-President of the French Conseil d’État Bruno Lasserre commented on one line of the case-law that appeared in the pandemic year: urgent application judges had to decide on the legality of rules found in press-releases and interviews by first deciphering legal rules and their hierarchy from those texts. This reflected exactly my experience as a practitioner in 2020 Russia: advising a client having weighed whether a blog of the Speaker of the Moscow City Duma carried more authority than a televised interview of the Moscow Mayor.
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Felix Uhlmann, Odile Ammann
In our earlier blog contributions, we analysed whether the Swiss federal government (the Federal Council) acted within the bounds of the Swiss Constitution (hereinafter: Cst.) when enacting emergency ordinances in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. We criticised the self-suspension of Parliament in March 2020, and we had a first glance at the interaction between the Confederation and the cantons. We are now, hopefully, halfway through the pandemic, which justifies a look back and a look into the future, especially into the ongoing vaccination efforts.
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Thulasi K. Raj
In the recent global history of constitutional democracies, it is difficult to name a single crisis that has plagued them simultaneously, until the COVID-19 pandemic. The calamity brought in by the virus was universal. For governments, it presented an opportunity for crisis management without compromising rights guarantees. Some countries have marginally succeeded in this test while in others, concerns of democratic decline were amplified. Three features defined the Indian response to COVID-19: lack of transparency, executive monopoly and suppression of dissent.
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Alicia Cebada Romero, Elvira Dominguez Redondo
The Spanish response to the waves of the COVID-19 pandemic that have affected the territory has so far largely relied on emergency powers. The measures were adopted on the basis of the pre-existing legal framework provided in article 116 of the Constitution and its legislative development, Ley Orgánica 4/1981 on state of alarm, exception and siege, adopted on 1 June 1981 (henceforth LO 4/1981). As explained below, two different approaches have characterised the response to the first and second wave. However, both have their legal basis on the same norms and are based on the same legal category, i.e., the state of alarm ('estado de alarma').
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Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law
A book launch conversation to mark the publication of ""Defending Checks and Balances in EU Member States. Taking Stock of Europe's Actions", with Adam Bodnar, András Jakab, Justyna Łacny, Christoph Möllers, Joseph Weiler et al.
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Eugenio Velasco
Close to a year since its first confirmed case of COVID-19, several indicators place Mexico among the countries that have suffered the worst effects of the pandemic. This post offers a critical overview of the governmental responses to the outbreak. It begins by describing the actions taken by officials of the different branches and levels of government. This is followed by an assessment of the many omissions and deficiencies that have characterized the response of the Federal Executive. Lastly, it closes by offering an outlook for 2021.
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George Karavokyris
In the first wave of the pandemic (March-June 2020) Greece has been widely praised for having taken all necessary actions to contain effectively the spread of the virus. Despite the reasonable concerns, a consensus among scholars about the constitutionality of harsh restrictions on rights was reached, along with a broad social acceptance, due to the priority of health public interest and the exceptional character of the measures. Set by an emergency mechanism, the framework of the “crisis-law” remains alive and binding, while the country is possibly entering, after the second and more lethal spike (November-January), the third wave of Covid-19.
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Fionnuala Ní Aoiláin, Thomas Bustamante, Joelle Grogan, Jakub Jaraczewski, Thulasi K. Raj, Martin Scheinin
Marking the launch of the 2021 "Power and the COVID-19 Pandemic" Symposium, this webinar will bring together five contributors to discuss the impact of the pandemic on legal systems globally, and offer initial assessments for the rule of law, democracy, and human rights.
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Shirin Chua, Jaclyn L. Neo
The Covid-19 pandemic has tested the legal, political, economic and public health systems of countries all over the world, and Singapore – particularly as it found itself having to hold a general election in the middle of the pandemic – is no exception. However, it does seem that the pandemic has created opportunities for consolidation of democracy in Singapore as a result of increased citizen-state interactions during this time.
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Iain Cameron, Anna Jonsson-Cornell
The Swedish political and legal response to the Covid-19 pandemic is best described as soft in terms of the character of the measures applied, and decentralized in terms of the division of powers and responsibilities. Swedish constitutional law does not provide for a state of emergency in a peace time crisis, such as a pandemic. Instead, the principle of statutory anticipation is used, which means that ordinary laws (with, in some cases, special provisions which can be activated) apply also in a time of crisis, e.g. the Public Order Act (POA), which allows the government to restrict the number of participants in public meetings or organized public events. Where these powers are deemed to be insufficient, the legislative procedure should be sufficiently flexible to allow new powers to be added relatively speedily. However, the events in 2020 showed that this approach suffers from several deficiencies.
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Khemthong Tonsakulrungruang, Rawin Leelapatana
COVID-19 posed one of the biggest challenges to the government of Prayuth Chan-ocha, the former junta leader and current prime minister. He successfully controlled the first round of pandemic, which spiked in mid-March by enforcing disproportionately harsh measures for unnecessarily prolonged period. [...] This article discusses the government’s failure to utilize emergency power to manage COVID-19 and assesses adverse effects brought about by the prolonged state of emergency.
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Martin Scheinin
In mid-April 2020 Verfassungsblog published my first take on Finland’s response to COVID-19, under the characterisation 'Best Practice and Problems'. Into February 2021, Finland has remained one of the few European champions in combating the epidemic, with 9,423 cases and 131 deaths (both per one million inhabitants and by 18 February 2021). Notably, Finland’s success has not followed from strict ‘draconian’ measures but from a combination of factors that include at least geographical location; cultural patterns that support physical distancing and even isolation; a well-functioning healthcare system; a good level of compliance; comparatively good levels of vitamin D; and sheer luck which would be related to the first factor, geographical location.
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Emilio Peluso Neder Meyer, Thomas Bustamante
In the first half of January 2021, Brazil had already counted more than 200,000 deaths and 8 million people diagnosed with COVID-19. Throughout 2020, the responses from the federal government, which should have taken on a coordination role considering the federalised National Health Service (SUS, Sistema Único de Saúde), were confusing and inefficient. Doubts and scepticism spread by the federal executive undermined the work of governors and mayors and, mirroring the American example, contributed to increase the number of cases and casualties.
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Marco Rizzi, Tamara Tulich
Australia’s legal and political response to the outbreak of COVID-19 has been marked by the formation of a new intergovernmental forum, the National Cabinet, to lead a coordinated national response to the pandemic, and the declaration of successive states of emergency at the federal and state levels activating extraordinary executive powers, including limitations on movement and border closures. Australia’s response has, to date, resulted in the successful curtailment of community transmission of COVID-19 in Australian States and Territories. However, the response to the pandemic has also involved the removal of existing mechanisms of executive accountability, suspensions of Parliament and little parliamentary scrutiny or other oversight of executive action. These democratic deficits present fresh challenges for Australia going forward, particularly as the National Cabinet structure becomes permanent and the states of emergency endure for the foreseeable future.
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Joelle Grogan
One year on how has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the law, and the way states govern? Should we be concerned about the ongoing use of emergency powers? How can we look forward to what lies ahead? Convened by Joelle Grogan, this Symposium is hosted by the Verfassungsblog and supported by Democracy Reporting International and the Horizon-2020 RECONNECT project.
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Hannah Birkenkötter, Nico Krisch
Multiple legalities: a high-profile online conference on conflict and entanglement in the global legal order will be live-streamed on Verfassungsblog next week.
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Hannah Birkenkötter, Nico Krisch
Whether a bureaucrat in an environmental ministry tries to keep track of the various reporting duties she needs to comply with, or an investor seeks to understand the law of international financial transactions; whether a human rights defender faces a multi-level system of domestic and international human rights institutions with which to engage, or a professional athlete competes in a setting where rules from various entities – states, professional associations, the competition conveners – apply, there are today few (if any) situations that are governed by only one single regulatory framework. Multiplicity, it is now widely agreed, is a condition of the law beyond and increasingly also within the state.
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Hannah Birkenkötter, Nico Krisch, Julia Eckert, Miguel Poiares Maduro, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Surabhi Ranganathan
How do different actors navigate law’s multiplicity? This panel will bring together perspectives from law, critical theory and legal anthropology to discuss how actors’ engagements with legal norms shifts our understanding of law as a unitary order.
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Laura Mai, Jason Rudall, Lars Viellechner, Sarah Nouwen, Tomer Broude
This panel will analyse different ways in which norms from different legalities are being related: how do different forms of ordering in the field of climate change (standards, guidelines and frameworks) interact with one another? How do norms of environmental protection impact other areas of international law? And how can we best conceptualize the ways in which such norm interactions take place and provide guidance to normative conflicts – are they examples of colliding systems or instead of an emerging legal tapestry?
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Poul F. Kjaer, Julia Eckert, Tobias Berger, Julie Wetterslev, Robert Hamilton
This panel investigates how international law, formal state law and Indigenous and/or religious law interact and relate to one another by contrasting the historical example of 18th century maritime provinces in Canada with contemporary legal disputes from Bangladesh and Nicaragua to. The papers use ethnographic and legal historical methods to better understand those relationships.
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Michele Krech, Lucy Lu Reimers, Tomáš Morochovič, Rozemarijn Roland Holst, Larry Catá Backer, Oren Perez
How do norms get transformed and do new norms emerge from legal interactions? This panel looks at this question with three different case studies of actors weaving different legalities together: World Athletics’ engagement with the norm of gender equality; UNCLOS courts’ and tribunals’ consideration of broader norms of ocean governance; and the impact of corporate social responsibility norms on WTO law.
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Hannah Birkenkötter, Gráinne de Búrca, Ralf Michaels, César Rodríguez-Garavito
Almost seventy years after Philip Jessup coined the term “transnational law” as “all law which regulates actions or events that transcend national frontiers…both public and private international law”, the public-private law dichotomy is still deeply entrenched in legal thought. This panel brings together scholars who have regularly transcended this dichotomy in their work to discuss how legal multiplicity is impacting on our understanding of transnational law today.
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Christoph Möllers, Thomas Streinz, Ralf Michaels, Nofar Sheffi, Stefania di Stefano
How are online platforms that are used by billions of users around the world regulated? This panel looks at how platform economies such as Facebook or AirBnB are regulated and how they relate with and connect the different legalities they come into contact with. Does this challenge traditional understandings of law?
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Tomer Broude, Laurence Boisson de Chazournes, B.S. Chimni, Miranda Forsyth, Laura Knöpfel
When faced with multiple legalities, how do we know what “the law” is, and how is this notion formed by different actors coming at this question from different vantage points? This panel investigates this question through different case studies, ranging from the post-colonial state of Papua New Guinea to Northern Colombia and China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
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Anne Peters, Poul F. Kjaer, Surabhi Ranganathan, Oren Perez, Fulya Apaydin, Charles Roger
Informal, “soft” law has often been investigated through the lens of network authority. This panel contrasts two such perspectives from transnational law – private transnational legal regimes in the field of corporate social responsibility and the transition from and connections between informal and formal law in the field of global financial governance – with a theoretical approach that emphasizes the importance of connectivity norms for the global legal order.
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Nico Krisch, Jeff Dunoff, Andrea Liese, Hannah Birkenkötter
The Conference on Multiple Legalities is organized as part of the interdisciplinary research group “Overlapping Spheres of Authority and Interface Conflicts in the Global Order”. Three research groups present their main insights from this multi-year collaborative endeavor in conversation with Jeffrey L. Dunoff. Some research results can be found in a Global Constitutionalism Special Issue.
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Sarah Nouwen, Brian Z. Tamanaha, Christoph Möllers
How does multiplicity in law beyond (and within) the state affect our understanding of the nature of law? In this discussion, international law scholar Sarah Nouwen engages in a conversation with legal philosophers Brian Z. Tamanaha and Christoph Möllers to take stock of the debate and its implications for theories of law.
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Gráinne de Búrca, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Larry Catá Backer, Pascal McDougall, Gabriele Wadlig
Formal legal rules do not appear out of thin air. Rather, their emergence is conditioned by frameworks that are invisible to the formalist perspective. This panel looks at how formal law is driven by an array of less visible factors: data, algorithms, and broader “background rules”.
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Nico Krisch, Antoine Duval, César Rodríguez-Garavito, Machiko Kanetake, Caroline de Lima e Silva
How do different legal orders interact vertically? Is this interaction marked by conflict and contestation, or by compromise and collaboration? This panel looks at three different such interactions: between domestic courts and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights; between regional human rights courts and United Nations Treaty Bodies; and between Swiss domestic law and the lex sportiva.
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Hannah Birkenkötter, Dana Burchardt, Brian Z. Tamanaha, Francesco Corradini, Valentin Jeutner
When attempting to analyse multiple legalities, various conceptualizations have been and continue to be offered to capture this phenomenon. These different conceptualizations rest on different images of multiplicity. How do we arrive at such diverging conceptualizations, and what are the reasons behind them? This panel presents and discusses three different images of multiplicity.
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Anne Peters, Laurence Boisson de Chazournes, B.S. Chimni, Jeff Dunoff
This panel assembles four eminent international law scholars to discuss how the multiplicity of law beyond the state observed over the past two days affects the study of international law today. What are the prospects for international law as a discipline?
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Hannah Birkenkötter, Nico Krisch, Mattias Kumm, Sarah Nouwen
In closing, we aim to take stock of the two-day conference and our attempt to bring into conversation scholars from different backgrounds to understand the implications of multiplicity for the theory and practice of law beyond the state.
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Lucia Rubinelli
Let me start by expressing my gratitude to the editors of the Verfassung blog and to the contributors to this debate. When I was writing the book, the very idea of it being read sent me into a panic. It still does today, but I am lucky to have found generous and insightful readers in Peter Niesen, Carlos Pérez Crespo, Markus Patberg and Esther Neuhann. Their comments raise both general methodological points and specific historical questions about the chapters. I will try to answer them in turn: I will first engage with the methodological critiques and I will then move to interpretative questions about the story I tell in the book, its protagonists and their historical contexts.
The main aim of the book is, as I see it, to explain how the idea of constituent power has been used to make sense of the democratic principle according to which power belongs to the people. [...]
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Esther Neuhann
In her book Constituent Power: A History (2020), Lucia Rubinelli aims to provide a history of the “language” or, more precisely, the “words ‘constituent power’” (14). She narrates this impressive history along five historical key moments, from Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès to Hannah Arendt.
In the following, I will, first, comment on the methodology Rubinelli adopts throughout the book and, second, focus on the fifth historical moment “Arendt and the French Revolution” (Chapter 5). In this chapter, Rubinelli reconstructs Arendt’s critique of “sovereignty as a theoretical category and as a principle of political organization” (177) and her suggestion to replace it with ‘constituent power’. It is an original contribution of the book to show that Arendt’s argument is in line with the sense in which Sieyès originally put forward ‘constituent power’ – although Arendt herself framed it as a critique of Sieyès which, according to Rubinelli, is rooted in her inaccurate reading of Sieyès through Carl Schmitt.
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Markus Patberg
In these brief remarks, I reflect on Rubinelli’s interpretation and critique of what is going on in contemporary theoretical debates about constituent power. What I want to argue is that while her reconstruction of classical positions is highly illuminating and takes our understanding of constituent power’s complex history to a new level, we risk underestimating the ideas in play if we regard them, as Rubinelli suggests we should, as “contingent” (p. 29) and therefore equally valid.
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Carlos Perez Crespo
In this comment, I engage with Chapter 3 of Lucia Rubinelli's book, which is an essential contribution to the study of constituent power in the Weimar Republic and the reception of this idea in the work of the controversial jurist Carl Schmitt (1888-1985). My thoughts are organized into two sections. In the first, I summarize Rubinelli's reading of Schmitt’s understanding of constituent power in Weimar. My main criticism concerns Rubinelli’s reading of the arbitrary character of constituent power in Schmitt, which in my view insufficiently reflects Schmitt's distinction between dictatorship and despotism. In the second part, I turn to the historical transition of constituent power that Rubinelli detects between the 19th-century French lawyers and the Weimar Republic. I point out that there is a missing link in Rubinelli's history of Schmitt's constituent power: the dialogue between the languages of German state theory (Staatslehre) and French public law (Droit Public) in the early 20th century.
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Peter Niesen
The research question of 'Constituent Power. A History' is framed in the book‘s introduction as a critical mission in intellectual history, as Rubinelli identifies a major confusion in recent works on the historiography of political thought. A small industry has sprung up in recent years to backdate the advent of constituent power to the middle ages and even to antiquity. Authors claim to have discovered an employment of the concept in texts dating back to before the term became historically available in Emmanuel Sieyès. Rubinelli is surely right to castigate the anachromisms involved, and referring to Aristotle, Marsilius or Machiavelli, Bodin, Spinoza or Hobbes as early adapters to a timeless concept of constituent power seems misguided, but perhaps for other than her stated methodological reason, that we need to attend to the usage of the term because there is no determinate and stable concept of constituent power.
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Peter Niesen
Lucia Rubinelli’s book Constituent Power. A History (Cambridge 2020) is a major contribution to democratic thought, in both method and substance. This Verfassungsblog symposium in the context of the Hamburg DFG-funded project „Reclaiming Constituent Power“ (319145390) arises from a shared interest in the subject matter of the book, the democratic reading of the fundamental lawmaking power of the people, as well as from a shared interest in the authors identified as relevant. The comments are devoted to the successive chapters of the book, on Emmanuel Sieyès (Peter Niesen on chap. 1), on French droit publique and Carl Schmitt (Carlos Perez on chap. 2-3), on the post-WW II lawyers such as Mortati and Böckenförde (Markus Patberg on chap. 4), and on Hannah Arendt (Esther Lea Neuhann on chap. 5).
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Helmut Pollähne
Reiben sich nur Wissenschaftler*innen (und seien es solche des Rechts) verwundert die Augen, wenn Strafverfolgungsbehörden Forschungsunterlagen beschlagnahmen? Es wäre wünschenswert, dass auch inzwischen in der Justiz tätige Akademiker*innen nicht vergäßen, welcher Stellenwert der Forschungsfreiheit gebührt (auch wenn ihr – hier: juristisches – Studium von der Forschung allzu weit entfernt angesiedelt gewesen sein mag).
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Bettina Weißer
Wegen der Untätigkeit des Gesetzgebers ist die empirische Sozialforschung gewissermaßen dem unausgesprochenen Goodwill der Justizpraxis ausgeliefert, die die notwendige Sensibilität walten lassen mag – oder eben auch nicht, wie der berichtete Sachverhalt eindrucksvoll belegt. Das beschädigt nicht nur die Forschungsinteressen der individuell betroffenen Wissenschaftlerinnen, sondern es richtet auch weiteren Schaden an.
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Thomas Weigend
Empirische SozialforscherInnen brauchen Vertrauen – sowohl von den Institutionen, die ihre Tätigkeit finanziell unterstützen, als auch von den ProbandInnen, die ihnen Zugang zu persönlichen Informationen gewähren. Verfassungsrechtlich sind die Bedingungen, die akademisch eingebundene SozialwissenschaftlerInnen für ihre Arbeit benötigen, durch die Wissenschaftsfreiheit in Art 5 Abs. 3 GG abgesichert. Dennoch kann die notwendige Vertrauensbasis gefährdet werden, wenn sie sich beruflich mit Fragen beschäftigen, die für Strafverfolgungsbehörden von Interesse sein können, wie etwa Vorgänge im Justizvollzug oder Dispositionen ihrer Probanden zu terroristischen Straftaten. Solche Insider-Informationen können von großer Bedeutung für die Strafverfolgung sein. Ob entsprechende Unterlagen bei den ForscherInnen für Zwecke eines Strafverfahrens beschlagnahmt werden dürfen, ist zum Gegenstand heftiger Kontroversen geworden.
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Frank Meyer
Die Ausgestaltung der Zeugnisverweigerungsrechte in der StPO erweckt schon bei oberflächlicher Betrachtung einen inkohärenten Eindruck. Sie ist ein unsystematisches Sammelsurium von Partikularrationalitäten und steckt voller Unwuchten. Die Wissenschaftsfreiheit erfährt darin erstaunlicherweise keinen besonderen Schutz. Und noch erstaunlicher mag es scheinen, dass sich darüber bis dato weder größeres Unbehagen in der Wissenschaft geregt hat noch die verfassungsrechtlichen Leitkommentare den unzureichenden Schutz im Strafverfahren weiter problematisieren.
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Sabine Gless
Strafprozessrecht wird gerne als «Seismograph der Staatsverfassung» bezeichnet. Ein Beben lösten jüngst zwei Beschlüsse das OLG München aus (Beschl. v. 31.01.2020, OGs 19/20 und v. 28.07.2020, 8 St ObWs 5/20). Sie erklärten die Beschlagnahme von Videointerviews für rechtmäßig, in denen sich Häftlinge mit islamistischem Hintergrund zu ihrer eigenen Geschichte äußerten. Die Interviews waren von Sozialforschern im Rahmen eines von der DFG geförderten und von der Bayerischen Staatsregierung unterstützten Forschungsprojekts zur «Islamistischen Radikalisierung im Justizvollzug» geführt worden.
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Christian Walter, Philip Nedelcu
Ein Beschluss des Oberlandesgerichts München versetzt die empirische Kriminalitätsforschung derzeit in helle Aufregung. Worum geht es? Das OLG wies in dieser Entscheidung die Beschwerde eines Erlanger Professors für Psychologische Diagnostik zurück, mit der dieser sich gegen die Durchsuchung seiner Diensträume an der Universität und die Beschlagnahme des Transkripts eines Interviews gewandt hatte, das eine Mitarbeiterin seines Lehrstuhls im Rahmen eines Forschungsprojekts zur Radikalisierung im Justizvollzug mit einem Häftling geführt hatte.
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Sabine Damir-Geilsdorf, Julia Eckert, Gritt Klinkhammer, Michi Knecht, Mira Menzfeld, Werner Schiffauer, Martin Zillinger
Beamte des Bayerischen Landeskriminalamts durchsuchten am 31.1.2020 das Büro des Hochschullehrers Mark Stemmler, der im Rahmen eines Forschungsprojekts vertrauliche Gespräche mit inhaftierten Jihadis geführt hatte. Interviewaufzeichnungen und weitere identifizierende Informationen wurden trotz seines Protests beschlagnahmt. Der Fall illustriert beispielhaft, dass Forschende derzeit über keine rechtlichen Möglichkeiten verfügen, wissenschaftliche Daten wirksam vor behördlichen Zugriffen zu schützen. Die Interviewpartner*innen selbst, das ethische Selbstverständnis der Wissenschaftler*innen und die Datenschutzregeln von Forschungsförderungsinstitutionen (er)fordern aber systematische und verbindliche Schutzzusagen, um gesellschaftlich wichtiges Wissen gewinnen zu können. Interdisziplinäre Beiträge aus den Rechts- und Sozialwissenschaften debattieren Gründe und Hürden für ein Zeugnisverweigerungsrecht für Wissenschaftler*innen und formulieren juristische Lösungsansätze.
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Marta Cartabia, Daniel Halberstam, Anna Śledzińska-Simon, Antoine Vauchez, Armin von Bogdandy
We are debating the specter of German Legal Hegemony. It’s a new dimension for most German lawyers. The prevailing view has been that Germany is at the receiving end and losing out. Many consider Germany as making a too small impact on European law because it’s too inflexible for its federalism and too inhibited for many reasons. Quite a few see the 2nd Senate of the BVerfG as the last institution defending law and reason against overbearing European institutions as Berlin politicians have largely given up. The symposium has provided a different picture. How to deepen learning from it? Today we propose a discussion which is both analytical and normative.
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Franziska Oehm
In den letzten Wochen hat sich die politische Debatte um die Vorlage eines Entwurfes für ein Lieferkettengesetz in Deutschland intensiviert. Derzeit wird auf Minister*innen-Ebene zwischen dem Bundesministerium für Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung, dem Bundesministerium für Arbeit und Soziales und dem Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft über den Gesetzesentwurf verhandelt, der im Nationalen Aktionsplan „Wirtschaft und Menschenrechte“ angelegt ist. Uneinigkeit besteht aktuell neben Fragen des Anwendungsbereichs vor allem noch über den Haftungstatbestand – soll Haftung für Menschenrechtsverletzungen entlang der Lieferkette Teil des Gesetzes werden, und wenn ja, wie sollen Haftungsnorm und korrespondierende Vorschriften ausgestaltet sein? Wissenschaftler*innen, Vertreter*innen der Zivilgesellschaft und Politik sowie weitere Interessierte haben der Debatte im Rahmen einer Fachtagung neue Impulse gegeben.
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Daniel Halberstam
Long before the fighting ceased, Jean Monnet was already planning to integrate a defeated Germany into “a Europe united on terms of equality.” The idea had been brewing in the French and Italian resistance during World War II, even since Germany had been defeated last time around, and before then, in other forms, too. The key to bringing the warring nations together in solidarity was, as the Schuman Declaration would explain, taming the age-old animosity between Germany and France in a supranational project “open to all countries willing to take part.” The aim, in the words of the Treaty of Rome would be an “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe.”
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Anna Śledzińska-Simon
In this post, I argue that: (I) the influence of German jurisprudence on the legal systems in Central and Eastern Europe results from transfers of legal knowledge and “cooperative adaptation” of elites in the new democracies; (II) the German legal hegemony is in fact a hegemony of reason and a culture of justification; (III) the decision of Bundesverfassungsgericht in PSPP is an attempt to maintain the culture of justification in view of its inevitable end.
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Pál Sonnevend
I have to start with a confession: if it was not for the Bundesverfassungsgericht and German legal scholarship, I would have not become the lawyer I am today. Writing a PhD in the Max-Planck-Institute in Heidelberg, attending classes by giants of German public law taught me to appreciate the famous German “Rechtsdogmatik”, a term that can only be poorly translated by “legal doctrine”. The conceptual sophistication and clarity of thoughts, the persuasive power of reasoning, the attention for details and the elegance with which the lack of answers to certain questions is concealed created for me an aura of infallibility and self-evident truth. I also remember my condescending attitude when I met foreign guests in the Max-Planck Institute who were not familiar enough with this constitutional language, or even dared to challenge some of its conclusions. Being inside this world felt reassuring, safe and also elevating. After wandering through the legal education of post-communist Hungary I finally saw the light.
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Russell A. Miller
The novel’s two ugly Americans provide useful models for two facets of hegemony as Gramsci theorized it. Hegemony, he insisted, is more than a state of cultural domination. It is better understood as a process of socio-historical change that takes place before power is institutionalized. The two drivers of the hegemonic process Gramsci theorized are consensus and coercion.
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Mirosław Wyrzykowski
The question about the legal hegemony of Germany was raised by comments from lawyers, but also politicians, in connection with the - undoubtedly - controversial decision of the German Constitutional Tribunal in the PSPP case. Armin von Bogdandy’s introduction refers primarily to the problem of the Europeanization of Germany vs. the Germanization of Europe in the context of European integration and Sabino Cassese’s description of “some specific decisions of these more recent EU-specific decisions of the Second Senate of the German Federal Constitutional Court as an attempt to put a German dog leash on European institutions". But it also refers to the past of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the "imposition" of "an enlightened, soft neo-liberalism" on the countries of this region (Bogdan Iancu). In the case of Poland, because Kaczyński’s government seems to be a persecutor against the proceedings which the German jurisprudence provides, "the secret crypt in which the seeds of its spirit will be protected...". (Carl Schmitt).
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Pedro Cruz Villalón
As I see it, the central question is whether Germany, just as it is an economic and a political power in the EU, is also a legal power. This would, of course, beg the question whether this notion makes sense by itself. Is it permitted to speak of legal power in the way it is preached for other forms of power? And supposing the notion applies to Germany as a Member State of the EU, may this national condition be aptly described as hegemonic? The ultimate question behind the questions just mentioned would be ‘How can this problem be tackled?’, assuming that it indeed turns out to be a problem.
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Argelia Queralt Jiménez
Before starting my reflections on the arguments presented in Professor von Bogdandy’s text, a number of caveats need to be made. First of all, as I will explain below, the Spanish Constitution of 1978 and Spanish democratic constitutional law have been deeply influenced by German constitutional law. This is a fact that is both well-known and unquestioned. It may also explain why, at present, there is no debate about the matter. For this reason, before I began to write this article, I felt it necessary to discuss with some legal colleagues how they saw the questions put forward, as I did not consider myself to be entitled to reply on behalf of the Spanish academia as a whole. Secondly, the article that we have been asked to reflect on mixes different questions. Some of them may be significant from a German standpoint, but, in contrast, are not salient topics from a Spanish one. Finally, and in relation to the point that has just been mentioned, I will attempt to provide a response in the case of those aspects that are susceptible of being considered from outside, in this case from Spain.
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Joseph H.H. Weiler
I have been politically aware for around, sigh, five decades. And with unerring regularity once every ten years or so, we have been treated to a kind of decennial Oktoberfest of German public hand-wringing. Very public – group therapy writ large. Sometimes it comes with the label of ‘Legitimacy Crisis’. Oftentimes it is a variation on the theme of ‘Are We Back to Weimer Times – and You Know What Followed That!’ It has all the hall marks of a ritual.
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Oreste Pollicino
It was already clear to Seneca, almost 2000 years ago, that “[i]f a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favourable”. Now, almost 2000 years later, as mentioned by Armin von Bogdandy in his inspiring introduction to this symposium, we are faced with a crucial question of existential significance: Are we moving towards a Europeanised Germany or a Germanised Europe? In order to answer to the question, we have to draw a distinction between intention and practical effect.
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András Jakab
German constitutional thinking has been central in EU law, in ECHR law, and even in some domestic constitutional systems outside of Germany. It is, however, gradually and unstoppably losing influence in Europe. This is largely due to the fact that Karlsruhe has lost its status as the most influential court in constitutional issues in Europe, with this title now belonging to the Strasbourg Court and likely to do so for the foreseeable future. This trend (i.e. the fading international influence of German constitutional thinking) cannot be reversed by German constitutional lawyers, as it is the result of major institutional and structural (“tectonic”) changes that have taken place over the last 20-25 years. German lawyers can, however, somewhat mitigate this trend by constructively participating in the formation of a common European Constitutional Language (in English).
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Koen Lenaerts
In my view, three direct implications flow from the principle of ‘equality of the Member States before the Treaties’. First, the uniform interpretation and application of EU law are key for guaranteeing that equality. Second, the uniform interpretation of EU law needs to be ensured by one court and one court only, i.e. the Court of Justice. Third and last, the principle of primacy underpins the uniform interpretation and application of EU law. That law – as interpreted by the Court of Justice – is ‘the supreme law of the land’ as primacy (Anwendungsvorrang) guarantees that normative conflicts between EU law and national law are resolved in the same fashion. Primacy thus guarantees that both the Member States and their peoples are equal before the law.
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Helen Keller, Sebastian Bates
Our focus is a postwar development, namely the European Convention on Human Rights and its interpretation in the case-law of the Court. That case-law evinces the adoption of certain ‘imports’ from the doctrine developed and applied by German domestic courts that, as Judge Wildhaber implied, the concept of German legal thinking must encompass if it has any meaning at all. Without them, the ‘legal world’ inhabited by specialists in the Convention would be entirely different. They accordingly demonstrate the salience of such thinking to the Convention system. But for reasons that we will briefly explore, they do not demonstrate that this thinking is uniquely dominant in the deliberation rooms of the Human Rights Building.
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Daniel Sarmiento
The influence of the German legal tradition in the European legal community is unquestionable. No other European country has displayed, like Germany has, such an articulate and institutionalized effort of promotion of its own legal system and thinking. The project paid off. EU Law displays an obvious German imprint that is now enforced in twenty-seven Member States. Lawyers throughout the European continent learn German to read the high-quality legal literature produced in German universities and research centers, courts and public institutions. The ultimate sign of intellectual distinction of a European lawyer is to “read the Germans”. No other feature can surpass in pedigree a lawyer’s fluency and ability to dominate German concepts in their very own words.
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Başak Çalı
I write this blog post just as I complete my fourth year as a professor of international law in Berlin. I am, as von Bogdandy calls, a Bildungsausländerin. My university education was first in Turkey and then in the United Kingdom. My academic career has been, for the most part, in the UK and then in Turkey. When I moved to Berlin from Istanbul four years ago to take up the professorship of international law at the Hertie School, I imagined Berlin to be somewhere between Istanbul and London. I hoped that it would be the best of both worlds, I would find a home in a city with a handsome Turkish speaking community at a university that conducts education and research in English. I also hoped that speaking Berlin’s two oft-spoken languages, Turkish and English, I would survive with my basic German, and learn more of it along the way and become a late Berliner.
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Antoine Vauchez
The specter of national hegemony has haunted the field of European law ever since in its emergence in the 1950s in the wake of creation of the European Communities. As the circulation and competition between national and professional models of law have always been central to its dynamics, this transnational field has developed as a reflexive field questioning its own “European-ness” -that is its capacity to produce authentically “European” norms that are not just a mask for new forms of domination, influence or hegemony.
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Bogdan Iancu
For over a decade now, the mainstream liberal discourse, also on the Verfassungsblog, has consisted in the incantation of one mantra: ‘populists’ are destroying ‘the rule of law’. What started as an attempt to describe the post-2011 situation in Hungary has gradually become a conceptual master key or, better yet, a jack-of-all-trades.
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Sabino Cassese
Armin von Bogdandy’s article entitled “German Legal Hegemony?” is an invitation to reflect on the paths of European legal scholarship: what are the conditions of the different national legal cultures today, and what are the conditions under which a national legal culture can become hegemonic (or, on the contrary, is it possible for a common tradition to prevail)?
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Armin von Bogdandy
The German legal discourse on Europe solemnly professes the idea of a Europeanized Germany: Kooperation, Verfassungsgerichtsverbund, Europafreundlichkeit, Integrationsverantwortung. However, some cast doubt on these assertions.
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Suna Gülfer Ihlamur-Öner
Voluntary, safe and dignified return is one of the durable solutions to forced displacement and, thus, hosting states have the responsibility to provide international protection to refugees until the conditions for voluntary repatriation are met. Premature or forced return that is falling short of international standards would mean a violation of the principle of non-refoulement. Current global governance of forced displacement impeding seeking asylum, delaying resettlement, and facilitating return ends up violating the very founding principles of the international refugee regime while exposing refugees and asylum-seekers to violence and higher risks.
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Emanuela Roman
Cooperation on migration management has been recently characterised by a process of “informalisation”, most prominently in relation to readmission, which saw the proliferation of informal agreements of a dubious legal nature – particularly from a rule of law perspective. This expansion has been two-fold. First, the use of informal agreements has expanded from the national level to the EU level. Second, the informalisation of cooperation with third countries has extended to include not only migration and border management, but also asylum management. This post aims to analyse both expansive shifts, highlighting their impact on international responsibility sharing mechanisms and the protection of asylum seekers’ fundamental rights.
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Aysel Küçüksu
An empirical study of all asylum-related preliminary rulings reveals a disquieting trend: the Court has adopted an administrative, passivist role within the area. Its distinguishing features include an overzealous concern for the technicalities of the legislative instruments before it and sparse to no references to human rights instruments or values in the operative parts of the judgments. In light of the symbolic power carried by the Court’s language, this trend risks sending the wrong signal to national judicial instances; namely, that concerns for the system can legitimately trump concerns for the individuals caught in it.
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Ayşe Dicle Ergin
Reports have documented allegations about those in need of international protection being physically prevented from entering into Greece, being subjected to severe forms of mistreatment and deprivation of their liberty, property as well as being collectively expelled from the country without having the opportunity to apply for asylum. Thus, it could be argued there are violations of the right to seek and enjoy asylum, right to life, prohibition of torture, right to liberty and security and right to an effective remedy. Yet this blog will only focus on the most relevant rights/issues.
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Narin Idriz
In practice, Member States and the EU increasingly rely on informal instruments for cooperation with third countries, especially in the area of migration control, with important implications for the rule of law. The choice for informality becomes particularly problematic when it affects the legal situation of irregular migrants, including refugees because it makes it very difficult for them to challenge these instruments in front of EU courts. This blog post explores the effects of EU’s recourse to informality on the judicial protection of the rights of irregular migrants by using the EU-Turkey Statement as an example. The Statement, also known as the EU-Turkey ‘deal’, raises serious doubts as to whether the EU legal order indeed provides for the promised ‘complete’ system of legal remedies.
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Andrea Ott
The examples in this post demonstrate that the EU is an autonomous international actor independent from its Member States, but it is tied up internally by its institutional procedures and restrained by its attributed powers. This governance system requires complex and time-consuming negotiations within the Union and with its international partners, which might end up in Court (Singapore, CETA Opinions) or delay ratification (Istanbul Convention). The EU’s painful practice concerning treaty-making (with complicated rules, extensive case law and long negotiations of often comprehensive mixed agreements) is clearly not fit for purpose in times of crisis.
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Caterina Molinari
The questions raised by the use of soft deals - and soft law more generally - in the Area of Freedom Security and Justice (‘AFSJ’) are numerous and complex. This post focusses on the justification behind the use of soft deals in the field of readmission, in order to develop two reflections: First, in a legal system founded on the rule of law, recourse to soft deals to elude constitutional constraints is questionable tout court. And secondly, if certain constitutional constraints can arguably be side-lined through the use of soft deals, in the name of flexibility and speed, others must necessarily remain operative and frame the conduct of EU institutions. In the author’s view, at least those Treaty principles that govern EU institutional action independently on the legally binding nature of its outcome remain relevant. Among these, a prominent role in framing the use of soft deals can be attributed to the principle of institutional balance, enshrined in Art. 13(2) TEU.
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Narin Idriz, Eva Kassoti
This online symposium is being held just before the ACES-Asser conference on ‘Migration deals and their damaging effects’, which will take place online on 8-9 October. The conference and the contributions in this symposium aim to examine the legal and policy implications of the increased informalisation of the EU’s external action in the field of migration and asylum. The use of informal instruments in EU external relations is nothing new. At the same time, the increasing recourse to such instruments in the past few years has been a growing cause of concern over their potential detrimental effects on the rights of migrants and refugees, the EU’s institutional balance, the rule of law, as well as the global regime for protection of refugees.
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Mathias Möschel
On 23 July 2020, the Italian government formally warned Apulia that if the region did not introduce gender parity election rules by 28 July 2020, it would do so in its place. Apulia failed to adopt a regional statute in that time frame. Thus, on 31 July 2020, the Italian government adopted Decree Law 86/2020 which essentially introduced a mechanism of “double gender preference” for the regional Parliament elections to be held on 20-21 September 2020. What is clear is that this summer’s events around the Apulia election are yet another example of the “irresistible rise of gender quotas in Europe”, where Germany increasingly stands out as the proverbial exception.
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Louise K. Davidson-Schmich
Recently, the Thüringian State Constitutional Court struck down a new law requiring parity with regard to party lists for state elections in response to a challenge brought by the populist far-right Alternative for Deutschland. Many of the AfD’s and the male-dominated court’s arguments against the law are common worldwide in debates about quotas. In an increasing number of democracies around the globe, however, quotas have not only survived constitutional challenges but have come to be seen as an essential mechanism for achieving political equality. Empirical research has determined many common concerns about quotas are unfounded. Here I provide some responses to the AfD’s and the Court’s worries about the law, drawn from the extensive political science literature on gender quotas.
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José Manuel Díaz de Valdés
Electoral quotas for women (‘EQW’) have become a world trend, raising questions about their constitutionality in different legal systems. This short piece attempts to summarize some of the main issues involved in this debate and the courts’ approach to it. The text concludes by offering some general criteria to assess the constitutionality of EQW.
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Micaela Alterio
I would like to participate in the debate on gender parity in Parliaments with the experience of Mexico. Mexico for the first time in its history has 48,2% of women in the Deputies Chamber and 49,2% in the Senate. The parity achieved in the Mexican Congress was the result of successive legislative and constitutional reforms which were supported by the Supreme Court of Justice.
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Sebastian Hapka
Das Urteil des Thüringer Verfassungsgerichtshofs vom 15. Juli 2020 zum sogenannten Paritätsgesetz sorgt derzeit für viel Kritik. Auch wenn diese oft eher politischer als rechtlicher Natur ist, zeigen nicht zuletzt die zwei Sondervoten der Richterin Licht und des Richters Petermann sowie der Richterin Heßelmann, dass es sich auch in juristischer Hinsicht um ein besonders streitbares Urteil handelt. Beide Sondervoten monieren unter anderem das Fehlen einer Güterabwägung. Es stellt sich damit die Frage inwieweit das Urteil in dogmatischer Hinsicht überzeugen kann
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Julie Suk
Last week’s decision by the Thuringia state constitutional court to invalidate parity legislation destabilizes a widespread understanding of the German constitutional law of sex equality as seen from outside. Because Article 3.2 of the German Basic Law (GG) since 1994 has explicitly stated that “the state shall promote the actual implementation of equal rights for women and men, and eradicating disadvantages that now exist,” it was long assumed by jurists and scholars throughout the world that gender parity measures to overcome women’s disadvantage or underrepresentation in positions of power were permitted, if not encouraged, by German constitutional law. By invalidating the parity legislation, the Thuringia constitutional court calls this understanding into question.
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Laura Volk
Am Mittwoch der vergangenen Woche, dem 15. Juli 2020 erklärte der Thüringer Verfassungsgerichtshof das Paritätsgesetz für verfassungswidrig. In der medialen Berichterstattung wurde das Urteil teils als „enttäuschend“ bezeichnet, an anderer Stelle als „wenig überraschend“ eingeordnet. Auch wenn man sich in politischer Hinsicht mit der Antragstellerin des Verfahrens der abstrakten Normenkontrolle in keinerlei Hinsicht identifiziert, so ist das Urteil des Thüringer Verfassungsgerichtshofes dem Grunde nach zu begrüßen.
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Laura Volk
Am Mittwoch der vergangenen Woche, dem 15. Juli 2020 erklärte der Thüringer Verfassungsgerichtshof das Paritätsgesetz für verfassungswidrig. In der medialen Berichterstattung wurde das Urteil teils als „enttäuschend“ bezeichnet, an anderer Stelle als „wenig überraschend“ eingeordnet. Auch wenn man sich in politischer Hinsicht mit der Antragstellerin des Verfahrens der abstrakten Normenkontrolle in keinerlei Hinsicht identifiziert, so ist das Urteil des Thüringer Verfassungsgerichtshofes dem Grunde nach zu begrüßen.
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Michaela Hailbronner, Ruth Rubio Marín
In diesem Beitrag nehmen wir die deutschen Entwicklungen und Debatten vor dem Hintergrund der europäischen in den Blick. Dabei geht es primär um eine Frage gesetzgeberischer Ermessenspielräume. Die sind insbesondere dort weit, wo, wie hier, der Wortlaut der jeweiligen Verfassungen selbst keine klaren Aussagen enthält, wissenschaftlicher Dissens besteht und internationale und europäische Entwicklungen Quotenregelungen im politischen Bereichen ganz überwiegend für vertretbar und teilweise sogar zur Steigerung demokratischer Legitimität für angezeigt halten.
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Lea Rabe
Die Zukunft von Parité ist, auch wenn das Thüringer Gesetz nun erst einmal gekippt ist, unentschieden. Das gilt umso mehr im Bund. Der Weg zum Bundesverfassungsgericht gegen die Entscheidung aus Weimar steht grundsätzlich offen.
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Mathias Hong
Das Thüringer Urteil stützt sich maßgeblich auf die Entstehungsgeschichte des Gleichstellungsgebotes in der Thüringer Verfassung: Weil im Entstehungsprozess konkretere Vorschläge zur Zulässigkeit von Paritätsregelungen erfolglos geblieben seien, „zwing[e]“ die Entstehungsgeschichte zu der Folgerung, dass die verfassungsgebende Gewalt mit dem Gleichstellungsgebot „nicht die Möglichkeit“ habe eröffnen wollen, „paritätische Quotierungen einzuführen“. Diese Art der entstehungsgeschichtlichen Argumentation leidet jedoch an einem grundlegenden Mangel: Sie verkennt den zentralen Unterschied zwischen allgemeineren und konkreteren Anwendungsvorstellungen eines Gesetzgebers.
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Michaela Hailbronner, Ruth Rubio Marín
In this contribution we examine the German developments in light of broader European debates. Though we believe that the German Basic Law can support stronger arguments for parity laws in representative political institutions, we do not need to make such stronger arguments here to defend the constitutionality of parity laws. For what is at stake is ultimately a question of legislative discretion: whether German legislatures are allowed to pass parity laws as a matter of state and federal constitutional law. Such legislative discretion is particularly appropriate where the constitutional text itself provides no clear standards, academic commentators disagree and where – as in this case – there exists a significant European trend towards adopting gender quotas with regional and international institutions repeatedly encouraging the adoption of such laws.
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Christine Hohmann-Dennhardt
Die Diskussion um Parité-Gesetze, die zum Ziel haben, Frauen gleichermaßen wie Männer in den Parlamenten Platz nehmen zu lassen, zeigt wieder einmal, wie schier unerschöpflich doch das Reservoir von Gründen ist, mit denen man davon überzeugen will, dass Frauen eben doch nicht beanspruchen können, überall mit den Männern gleich zu ziehen.
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Michaela Hailbronner, Ruth Rubio Marín
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.
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David Krebs
David Krebs schlägt in diesem Beitrag das Konzept eines „Globalisierungsfolgenrechts“ vor, um der Auseinandersetzung mit Globalisierungsfolgen in der rechtspolitischen und -wissenschaftlichen Debatte einen begrifflich-konzeptionellen Rahmen zu geben. Der Beitrag zeigt eine deskriptive sowie eine normative Funktion des Konzeptes auf. Er schlägt zudem vor, zwischen „geborenem“ und „gekorenem“ Globalisierungsfolgenrecht zu unterscheiden. Schließlich skizziert er anhand von Beispielen ein Mehrebenensystem des Globalisierungsfolgenrechts und erläutert, wie sich ein deutsches Lieferkettengesetzes in dieses einfügen würde.
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Christian Scheper
Ein Lieferkettengesetz zum Schutz der Menschenrechte und der Umwelt muss die deutsche Außenwirtschaftsförderung erfassen und damit die Förderungskriterien für Unternehmen im Ausland gesetzlich regeln. Die Notwendigkeit ist mehrfach begründet:
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Cannelle Lavite
The French Loi de Vigilance is the result of a remarkable mobilization of trade unions, civil society and parliamentarians. It combines hard law with (international) soft law standards on business and human rights and introduces an unprecedented corporate duty of vigilance in French tort law.
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Andreas Rühmkorf
In den letzten Jahren haben zunehmend die Heimatstaaten transnationaler Unternehmen gesetzliche Regelungen für globale Lieferketten erlassen. Diese Gesetze sollen das weltweite Handeln transnationaler Unternehmen dahingehend beeinflussen, dass diese Unternehmen mehr Verantwortung für ihre globale Lieferkette übernehmen und sie sich stärker für die Einhaltung von Arbeitsstandards, Menschenrechten und Umweltschutz einsetzen. Dieser Ansatz basiert maßgeblich auf der Idee der Komplementarität von staatlichen Regelungen (public governance) und privater Regulierung (private governance).
Die bisherigen nationalen Lieferkettengesetze unterscheiden sich jedoch hinsichtlich der von ihnen geregelten Themen (z.B. Kinderarbeit oder Korruption) sowie des Regelungsinstruments (z.B. Berichterstattungspflicht oder Unternehmensstrafbarkeit). Man kann diese Gesetze nach ihrer Regelungsstärke in ein Regelungskontinuum einteilen, das im folgenden kurz diskutiert wird.
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Lena Walker
Die von der Initiative Lieferkettengesetz geforderte Regelung soll neben den menschenrechtlichen Verpflichtungen auch sogenannte umweltbezogenen Sorgfaltspflichten für Unternehmen beinhalten. Auch der dahingehende Entwurf der Bundesbundesregierung, der 2019 bekannt wurde, sieht solche umweltbezogenen Sorgfaltspflichten vor. Dadurch soll erreicht werden, dass deutsche Unternehmen die Einhaltung von Umweltstandards in der Lieferkette, insbesondere im Herkunftsland von importierter Ware, überwachen. Solche gesetzlich geregelten und verpflichtenden, umweltbezogenen Sorgfaltspflichten stellen ein neuartiges umweltrechtliches Instrument, für das es erst wenige Beispiele gibt. Neben der nationalen Regelung in Frankreich stellt die europäische Holzhandelsverordnung – nach ihrer englischen Bezeichnung (European Timber Regulation) im Fachjargon oft als EUTR bezeichnet – ein Beispiel dar. Die nun mehrjährige Erfahrung mit der 2013 in Kraft getretenen Holzhandelsverordnung und ihrer Um- und Durchsetzung durch die europäischen Mitgliedsstaaten lohnt deswegen einen besonderen Blick.
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Sarah Hoesch
Die Initiative Lieferkettengesetz strebt eine gesetzlich verankerte und sowohl menschenrechts- als auch umweltbezogene Sorgfaltspflicht für Unternehmen in Anlehnung an die UN-Leitprinzipien für Wirtschaft und Menschenrechte an. Auf Verfahrensebene soll eine die gesamte Wertschöpfungskette erfassende Risikoanalyse durchgeführt und unter anderem die Ergreifung angemessener Maßnahmen zur Beendigung, Abmilderung und Wiedergutmachung von Menschenrechts- und Umweltbeeinträchtigungen vorgesehen werden. Im Folgenden werden die Notwendigkeit einer eigenständigen umweltbezogenen Sorgfaltspflicht und denkbare Möglichkeiten ihrer rechtssicheren Gestaltung dargelegt.
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Pierre Thielbörger, Timeela Manandhar
Krieg ist nicht nur ein schmutziges Geschäft, sondern auch ein lukratives. Ein berühmt-berüchtigtes Beispiel dafür sind die sog. „Blood Diamonds“ (Blutdiamanten, vgl. die Kimberley Resolution), die in Konfliktgebieten in verschiedenen afrikanischen Ländern illegal geschürft und von transnationalen Unternehmen gekauft werden. Der so erwirtschaftete Erlös wird in großen Teilen zur Finanzierung bewaffneter Gruppen genutzt, was die bestehende Konflikte in der Region verschärft. Ein anderes aktuelles Beispiel, das die Verstrickung von Unternehmen in Kriegspraktiken aufzeigt, sind die strafrechtlichen Untersuchungen gegen das französische Unternehmen Lafarge für seine Aktivitäten während des syrischen Bürgerkriegs. Lafarge wird u.a. Finanzierung von Terrorismus und Beteiligung an Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit vorgeworfen, nachdem es für den Weiterbetrieb seiner Werke finanzielle Absprachen mit verschiedenen bewaffneten Gruppen eingegangen, Rohmaterialien von ihnen erworben und insgesamt 13 Millionen Euro an den Islamischen Staat gezahlt haben soll.
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Isabell Hensel, Judith Hoellmann
Die Studien legen schonungslos offen, dass nationale Arbeitsrechte verletzt werden, nicht wirksam bzw. nicht ausreichend vorhanden sind oder, wie etwa in der Ukraine, systematisch abgebaut werden. Insbesondere Frauen sind rechtswidrigen Arbeitszeit-, Überstunden- und Urlaubsregelungen, Kündigungen sowie dem Missbrauch von Teilzeitverträgen, Verletzungen des Mutterschutzes, ungesetzlichen Lohnzahlungen und Repressionen gegen Gewerkschaftsmitglieder ausgesetzt.
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Matthieu Binder
Die Bemühungen von Zivilgesellschaft und Politik um ein deutsches Lieferkettengesetz rücken Unternehmen mit weltumspannenden Produktionsketten ins Zentrum der Debatte um den Schutz von Umwelt und Menschenrechten. Im Fokus der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung steht deshalb nicht zufällig die Forderung nach einem produzierende Unternehmen und international aufgestellte Retailer verpflichtenden Gebot, im Rahmen der eigenen Wertschöpfungskette Umwelt und Menschenrechte durch umfassende Risikoanalysen und hierauf abgestimmte Maßnahmen effektiv zu schützen. Diese Perspektive ist verständlich, verengt den Diskurs jedoch, und räumt insbesondere Auditierungs- und Zertifizierungsunternehmen nicht den Platz ein, welcher der Branche aufgrund ihrer faktischen Bedeutung für das Funktionieren einer globalisierten Wirtschaft und den effektiven Schutz von Umwelt und Menschenrechten zukommen sollte.
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Nicolas Bueno
Über die Volksinitiative ‘Für verantwortungsvolle Unternehmen – zum Schutz von Mensch und Umwelt’, den indirekten Gegenvorschlag des Nationalrats und den weiteren schwächeren Gegenvorschlag ohne Haftung des Ständerats ohne Haftungsnorm debattiert das Parlament schon über zwei Jahren. Doch am Dienstag entschied sich das Parlament für den schwachen Gegenvorschlag ohne Haftung für Unternehmen. Damit wird die Konzerninitiative nicht zurückgezogen. Wahrscheinlich im November aber spätestens im Februar 2021 werden Schweizer Bürger*innen für oder gegen den Text der Volksinitiative stimmen müssen.
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Anton Zimmermann
In der heutigen Zeit dürfte unzweifelhaft sein, dass menschenrechtlichen Schutzgütern mancherorts auch und zum Teil gerade von privater Seite Gefahr droht. Die jüngere Vergangenheit hat gezeigt, dass selbst Zulieferer und Tochtergesellschaften deutscher Muttergesellschaften im Ausland teilweise leider menschenunwürdige Arbeitsplätze bereitstellen oder in anderer Weise finanzielle Eigeninteressen in illegitimer Weise über die Grundbedürfnisse der örtlichen Bevölkerung stellen. Diese Entwicklung hat eine Debatte darüber ausgelöst, ob man das deutsche Deliktsrecht aktivieren kann, um Menschenrechte grenzüberschreitend gegenüber Privaten durchzusetzen. Dieser Beitrag soll zwei Hürden beleuchten, die dieses Vorhaben nehmen müsste: das Internationale Deliktsrecht und die Verteilung der Beweislast für die Verletzung menschenrechtsbezogener Sorgfaltspflichten.
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Markus Kaltenborn
Im Auftrag von zivilgesellschaftlichen Organisationen sind zwei Gutachten erstellt worden, die Vorschläge zur gesetzlichen Ausgestaltung einer menschenrechtlichen Sorgfaltspflicht enthalten – zum einen das bereits vor vier Jahren für Amnesty International, Brot für die Welt, Germanwatch und Oxfam verfasste Gutachten „Verankerung menschenrechtlicher Sorgfaltspflichten von Unternehmen im deutschen Recht“, zum anderen das in diesem Frühjahr von der Initiative Lieferkettengesetz vorgestellte „Rechtsgutachten zur Ausgestaltung eines Lieferkettengesetzes“. Die in den beiden Gutachten erarbeiteten Empfehlungen geben wertvolle Impulse für die nun bald intensiver zu führende Debatte zur Ausgestaltung eines Sorgfaltspflichtengesetzes bzw. einer entsprechenden europäischen Regelung.
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Alexander Schall
Die UN-Prinzipien für Wirtschaft und Menschenrecht („Ruggie-Prinzipien“) aus dem Jahr 2011 statuieren in ihrem Teil IV eine menschenrechtliche Verantwortlichkeit von Unternehmen („human rights due diligence“). Es fragt sich, ob und wie die Unternehmen für Verletzungen dieser Pflicht zivilrechtlich auf Schadensersatz haftbar gemacht werden können. Unter geltendem Recht ist eine solche Haftung nur sehr schwer zu begründen. Alexander Schall schlägt daher de lege ferenda ein Erfolgsdelikt der „Menschenrechtsverletzung“ in Anlehnung an § 823 I BGB vor („§ 823a BGB“). Alternativ könnte auch die „menschenrechtliche Sorgfaltspflicht“ der UN-Prinzipien direkt ausformuliert werden, zB als neuer Absatz 3 des § 91 AktG. Sie könnte als Schutznorm fungieren, bei deren Verletzung der daraus entstehende Schaden gemäß § 823 II BGB zu ersetzen ist.
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Markus Krajewski
Über das Für und Wider eines Lieferkettengesetzes und dessen mögliche Inhalte wird seit einiger Zeit in Politik und Wissenschaft diskutiert. Dass die Bundesrepublik Deutschland mit einem sollen Gesetz auch zur Verwirklichung der Leitprinzipien der Vereinten Nationen für Wirtschaft und Menschenrechte beitragen würde, ist unbestritten und im Nationalen Aktionsplan „Wirtschaft und Menschenrechte“ auch angelegt. Weniger klar und seltener diskutiert ist dagegen die Frage, ob Deutschland völkerrechtlich auch verpflichtet ist, ein derartiges Gesetz zu erlassen, um seiner menschenrechtlichen Pflichten zu genügen. Dieser Frage wird hier nachgegangen. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei die territoriale Reichweite der Schutzdimension internationaler Menschenrechte.
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Franziska Humbert, Robert Grabosch
Das Völkerrecht sieht bisher keine Möglichkeit für Individuen vor, gerichtlich gegen Unternehmen aufgrund von Menschenrechtsverletzungen vorzugehen. Ein Lieferkettengesetz de lege ferenda könnte diese Lücke beim Rechtsschutz schließen. Die Möglichkeiten des Privatrechts sind bisher kaum ausgeschöpft. Der folgende Beispielsfall, der auf der Grundlage der Schilderung von Arbeitsrechtsverletzungen im Ananasanbau in Costa Rica in der Lieferkette deutscher Supermarktketten im Bericht „Süße Früchte, Bittere Wahrheit“ der Nichtregierungsorganisation Oxfam gebildet wurde, soll die zentralen kritischen Rechtsfragen deutlich machen.
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Miriam Saage-Maaß, Maren Leifker, Armin Paasch
Wenn aktuell über Lieferketten gesprochen wird, geht es vor allem darum, wie ihre Funktionsweise trotz Corona-Krise aufrechterhalten werden kann. Über die Auswirkungen der Krise am Anfang der Lieferketten wird kaum gesprochen. Dort arbeiten Menschen unter Bedingungen, die keine soziale Distanz zum Schutz der eigenen Gesundheit erlauben. Weil europäische Firmen massenhaft Aufträge stornieren, werden Arbeiter*innen auf die Straße gesetzt, ohne dagegen sozial abgesichert zu sein. Das Lieferkettengesetz, um das es in diesem Symposium geht, ist ein Baustein für eine fairere Globalisierung.
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Joelle Grogan
The fifty days of the ‘COVID-19 and States of emergency’ Symposium covered the height of the global legal reaction to the pandemic, offering a snapshot of countries in collective crisis. It began with a call for a global conversation on the kind of legal norms which should govern the situation of worldwide pandemic. This final contribution aims to trace the central themes, questions and issues raised by the Symposium.
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Eva Pils
The reality of China’s coronavirus experience raises distinctive legal-political concerns. The Party has used its vast and concentrated power to fight not only the virus, but also domestic critics of its response, including medical professionals, journalists, human rights activists, a constitutional law professor, and citizens simply speaking up via the social media because they were engaged, or enraged, or both. The fight against one of these ‘enemies’, inevitably, has affected that against the other.
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Diogo Esteves, Kim Economides
In addition to initiating a humanitarian crisis, the coronavirus outbreak is triggering multiple impacts (social, political, economic, environmental etc.) on the global stage, whose consequences – both negative and positive – were not only unforeseen, but remain unpredictable. We can be sure, however, that they will inevitably touch, one way or another, our justice and legal aid systems.
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Michael Meyer-Resende
By mid-March, all EU member states were in a state of emergency, whether they officially declared one or not. Across the EU many human rights were severely restricted, particularly the right to free movement. Not every state of emergency is the same, however. Some exceed what is foreseen in international human rights law.
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Kwaku Agyeman-Budu
Ghana has adopted several measures in tackling the COVID-19 global pandemic, chief among them being the enactment of new legislation to tackle the issue, and the exercise of powers under pre-existing legislation. A formal state of emergency has not been declared in the wake of the pandemic, leading to debates, for instance regarding the impact of the current situation on the 2020 elections.
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Paul Kalinichenko, Elizaveta Moskovkina
Since the first cases of COVID-19 were registered in Zabaikalsky kray and Tumenskaya oblast on 31 January 2020, the Russian government has reacted to the challenge of the epidemic by enacting new legislation and introducing some emergency measures. The pandemic is bringing new and unpleasant surprises, creating specific social, economic and legal hardships which is making the unstable life of Russian citizens even worse.
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Jesús María Casal Hernández, Mariela Morales Antoniazzi
Nicolás Maduro, who still holds the presidency, declared a state of alarm on March 13, 2020, invoking the need to counter the pandemic. However, the corresponding decree not only contradicts the constitutional provisions for states of exception but is also being employed to impose abusive limitations on human rights, to aggravate political repression and persecution, to blur the seriousness of certain socio-economic problems, and to contain social protests. The absence of judicial and parliamentary controls that could counteract these excesses of power has resulted in an autocratic shift within a context that was already authoritarian.
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Slavomíra Henčeková, Šimon Drugda
The Slovak experience with the COVID-19 pandemic has been affected by the fact that the outbreak took place at the time of a change in government. The new government, because of its relative inexperience and populist tendencies, has committed mistakes, often amounting to an infringement of citizens' fundamental rights and freedoms, especially the freedom of movement.
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Éric-Adol Gatsi Tazo
Cameroon has neither resorted to the exceptional measures that its constitution provides for, nor adopted a new law for the occasion, as many other countries have done. The state has instead relied on already existing provisions, applicable in ordinary times to combat the pandemic. This speaks volumes about the “ordinary” powers of the administrative authorities.
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Bianca Selejan-Gutan
In Romania, the sanitary crisis caused by the SARS-COV-2 pandemic started during an existing political crisis and overlapped, at a few crucial moments, with a constitutional crisis. The fact that 2020 is an electoral year had an important impact on the crisis management: on the one hand, the political conflicts increased, but, on the other hand, the fact that the power did not belong to the same political majority hindered potential abuses of one of the actors, especially of the President.
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Zuzana Vikarská
In the Czech Republic, the COVID-19 crisis has brought not only a general state of chaos but also a considerable shift of powers to the executive branch. The first shift, impairing the legislative branch, was triggered by the declaration of a state of emergency on 12 March 2020. The second shift, diminishing also the role of the judiciary, was caused by a ruling in which the Constitutional showed its unwillingness to interfere with the government’s steps.
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Uladzislau Belavusau, Maksim Karliuk
In contrast to the ‘illiberal democracies’ of Hungary and Poland, Belarus in its response to COVID-19 appears to be playing the role of a perfectly ‘liberal’ state with almost a laissez-faire solution, where people’s choice is prioritized and rights are respected as no severe measures are introduced to close businesses or restrict free movement. This image is inevitably misleading, as democratic institutions in Belarus have been brought to heel long ago, and alternative information about the state of affairs in Belarus regarding the virus remains suppressed.
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Leonardo Cofre
Due to the pandemic, Chile's 2020 electoral calendar has been modified, delaying the most important political event of the year: the April referendum for a new constitution. While the postponement is reasonable considering the current sanitary situation, recent suggestions that there be a further postponement due to a possible post-pandemic economic crisis threaten the democratic legitimacy of the process. As argued in this post, these measures and opinions, when read together, put the government close to an authoritarian use of the constitution.
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Ahmed Ellaboudy
One could learn a very important lesson from the Egyptian experience as it relates to the state of emergency: A good constitutional text alone is not enough. Although new amendments to the Emergency Law included several public health measures that allow the state to contain the impact of the spread of COVID-19, the absence of a parliamentary and judicial review will remain a huge threat to fundamental rights and the basics of the democratic rule-making.
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Tanasije Marinković
The Covid-19 epidemic outbreak in Serbia coincided with the beginning of the election campaign for both parliamentary and municipal elections. Soon, it became clear that what was at stake in the fight against Covid-19 was not so much saving the nation as securing the majority re-election of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, headed by its populist leader and President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić.
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Lukman Abdulrauf
Like many other countries across the world, Nigeria has called upon emergency powers to deal with COVID-19 without, however, having declared a state of emergency. The use of emergency powers in Nigeria in the fight against COVID-19 is not only peculiar but problematic for a number of reasons.
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Rait Maruste
Due to the COVID-19 epidemic the Estonian Government (Vabariigi Valitsus), without consulting the parliament (Riigikogu), declared by Order Nr. 76 on 12 March 2020 a state of emergency (eriolukord), defining the epidemic as an “emergency situation”. This is the first time in our modern history where a state of emergency has been declared. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs subsequently informed the Council of Europe of the Estonian derogation under Article 15 of the European Convention of Human Rights.
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Ledi Bianku
Albania was hit the by Covid-19 pandemic, although it seems not as gravely as some of its neighbours. Starting from 10 March 2020 the Albanian Government adopted several measures aiming to limit the spread of the pandemic in the country. Most of those measures have been continuously reviewed, following the development of the pandemic.
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Ratna Rueban Balasubramaniam
Two simultaneous narratives are unfolding as Malaysia responds to Covid-19. The first is the specific character of the ongoing legal response. The second is salient backdrop to any evaluation of this legal response that Malaysia is in political turmoil.
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Tom Gerald Daly
Curating analysis of these developments since early April through the COVID-DEM project, and reading across the 62 published contributions to this outstanding symposium, there are clear commonalities across all democracies affected. Beyond these commonalities, the effect of the COVID-19 response on the democratic system has been – and will be – starkly uneven across democracies worldwide, due to the different democratic ‘starting point’ of each state as the pandemic hit.
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Eglè Dagilytė, Aušra Padskočimaitė, Aušra Vainorienė
The COVID-19 outbreak constitutes an unprecedented challenge in the history of independent Lithuania, which in its 1992 Constitution embedded a broad list of human rights and freedoms. It seems that so far the emergency powers have been used proportionately and in a time-limited manner, albeit some concerns regarding human rights and the rule of law remain. While it is understandable that the pandemic required a quick response, more attention from the Lithuanian decision-makers on fundamental rights and the required balancing would have been welcome.
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Allan Maleche, Nerima Were, Tara Imalingat
Kenya's President is yet to declare a state of emergency and has opted to implement measures that ensure citizens can continue with their lives. Constitutionally, rights may only be limited by law and only to the extent that is reasonable and justifiable in an open and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom.
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Akiko Ejima
People have been perplexed by the slow and soft approach of the Japanese government in their attempt to bring COVID-19 under control. The first case of COVID-19 in Japan was confirmed on 16 January 2020. On 30 January, the Japanese government set up the COVID-19 Countermeasures Headquarters. It published emergency countermeasures against COVID-19 on 13 February and presented Basic Policies for Coronavirus Disease Control on 25 February. However, none of these measures have introduced drastic measures such as border controls and/or curfews.
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Miguel Ángel Presno Linera
The confinements imposed by the Spanish Government in response to the pandemic are among the most intense in comparative terms since they contain a prohibition of going out into the street with only limited exceptions. Given their intensity, especially the strong limits imposed on the freedom of movement, the restrictions are rather suspensions than mere restrictions of fundamental rights and as such go beyond their legal basis of the state of alarm.
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Alice Donald, Philip Leach
It is mistaken to conceive of COVID-19 principally as a threat whose eradication necessarily requires rights to be sacrificed. Rather, human rights standards and principles offer a means of transparently balancing competing interests and priorities in the cauldron of COVID-19 decision-making – and rights-respecting measures which secure public confidence are likely to be more effective and sustainable over time than arbitrary or repressive ones.
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Giorgi Chitidze
On 21 March 2020, Georgia declared a nationwide State of Emergency for one month in an effort to halt the spread of COVID-19. The decree has recently been extended until May 22, 2020. To date, Georgia is among the countries with the least infected population and the mortality rate remains low (635 confirmed cases, 10 deaths, and 309 fully recovered as of May 10, 2020). Despite the relative success within the medical sphere, the rule of law, democracy and human rights are facing an epidemic of unseen scale.
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Trung Nguyen
In Viet Nam, Wthe ‘state of emergency’ clauses are virtually a repetition of measures the government may take when there is no emergency. This means that were the government to declare a state of emergency there would be no reserving policy space for the government to fall back to. Viet Nam should thus seize the opportunity to revise its legislation and clearly distinguish between emergency and non-emergency measure, both in terms of degree and scope.
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Nika Bačić Selanec
Analysing national responses to the coronavirus, the University of Oxford study found that Croatia was the most rigorous of all the examined countries considering the actual number of infections. Overall, the Croatian response to Covid-19 might not pose an autocratic threat to the rule of law as in certain European countries. This is far, however, from suggesting there have not been significant constitutional challenges, or that we should not require an enhanced constitutional oversight over apparently quite restrictive governmental action.
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Andrés Cervantes
When referring to the rule of law and constitutionalism we must be extremely cautious: Ecuador was founded in 1830 after the dissolution of Great Colombia, and in just 190 years has adopted 20 constitutions. The current Ecuadorian Constitution dates from 2008. This means that the nation does not possess a strong constitutional tradition nor a culture of promotion of the rule of law. On the contrary, Ecuador has a long history of institutional breakdowns and coup d'états which were caused by political and economic crisis. However, these were nothing compared with the situation all Ecuadorians are currently facing.
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Khemthong Tonsakulrungruang, Rawin Leelapatana
On 13 January, Thailand was the first country outside of China to confirm a COVID-19 case. Prayuth invoked the Emergency Decree on Public Administration in Emergency Situation on 26 March 2020. At present, new cases are down to a single-digit figure per day. However, the 2005 Emergency Decree may not be the appropriate tool, as it has misled the public’s understanding of the pandemic and allows the government to employ unnecessarily harsh measures, leading to over-criminalization and arguable abuses of power.
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Antoine Buyse, Roel de Lange
The Dutch authorities take a quasi-legal, quasi-rhetorical approach to shape their intelligent lockdown and try to tame the pandemic beast, with questionable constitutional practices as a result. While the reliance on medical and other expertise might be a welcome difference compared to some other countries, overreliance on experts in communication may hide real political and legal choices that have been made.
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Iain Cameron, Anna Jonsson-Cornell
The Swedish government’s ways of handling the Corona crisis have drawn a lot of international attention. Sweden has tried to limit the spread of the disease by means of recommendations, rather than quarantines and curfews. There is no provision in the Swedish constitution for the declaration of a state of emergency in peacetime, only in war or where there is an imminent danger of war. Instead, the Swedish approach is to have delegations to the government, and sub-delegations to administrative agencies in a variety of statutes.
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Ridwanul Hoque
It appears that Bangladesh’s legal responses to the COVID-19 crisis are inconsistent, ad hoc, and deficient in transparency and democratic practices. The unprecedented nature of the pandemic requiring exceptionally urgent actions, may be attributed to the sorry state of affairs. A thoughtful, more legitimate approach could nevertheless have been taken.
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Niall Coghlan
Does the pandemic require derogation from human rights treaties? This [...]
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Vincent A. De Gaetano
Notwithstanding some initial hesitation, the way in which the Maltese health authorities have so far handled the emergency has been well received by the general public. Measures were introduced gradually, with daily press conferences explaining the reason for each new measure or variation thereof, whilst providing statistics on the number of daily swabs, patients infected, patients recovered, and fatalities.
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Kristian Cedervall Lauta
While the Danish Government’s approach, up until this point, has been successful in limiting the spread of the pandemic and none of the government initiatives seem blatantly unconstitutional – something might be forgotten in the state of Denmark: that the resilience and cultural properties of the Danish society contributed to the success in handling COVID-19 rather than increasing executive power.
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Aleksejs Dimitrovs
The Government of Latvia adopted the decision on emergency situation due to COVID-19 on 12 March to apply until 14 April. For the time being, this period has been extended once to 12 May. This post considers the applicable legal framework, concrete limitations adopted by the Saeima (Parliament) and the Government are described, followed by an assessment from the point of view of European Union values.
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Roberto Gargarella
Argentina’s government has been adopting numerous and significant decisions in the face of the coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis. But: Almost all the relevant decisions adopted by the Executive Branch were decisions that belonged to the Legislative Branch: Congress is the only authority legally authorized to adopt them. In other words, the Executive Power is not authorized to do what it has been doing so far.
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Felix Uhlmann
Were we ready for the crisis? I do not mean whether Switzerland had enough hospital beds and ventilators, but whether its Federal Constitution was ready. Arguably, the former are vital, and as regards the latter, Switzerland is under no suspicion of losing its quality as a democracy and a Rechtsstaat. Still, the constitutional questions raised by the Corona crisis are troubling. The federal government is applying emergency powers unheard of since WW2, and which were previously unimaginable for most. Legal scholars are only starting to grapple the full implications of the crisis.
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Stéphanie Laulhé Shaelou, Andrea Manoli
Once the first case of COVID-19 was reported on 9 March 2020, the Republic of Cyprus introduced emergency measures to contain the spread of the virus, as per the powers granted under the Constitution in the event of emergency. Following scientific advice, the Cypriot Government responded quickly by limiting temporarily personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, disrupting once again the constitutional legal order.
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Edoardo Stoppioni
In times of neoliberalism, it is healthy hearing the Prime Minister Xavier Bettel of Luxembourg say that “the protection of health and life takes precedence over economic interests”. But this declaration came in the context of the recourse to extraordinary emergency powers, on the day before the Government declared the “state of crisis” to face the Coronavirus situation. In Luxembourg, this tool to regulate emergencies has progressively found its path into the Constitution while elsewhere in Europe philosophers or public law professors argued that a constitutional state of emergency entails the paradox of “constitutionalising the absence of constitution”. It is therefore important to reflect on the effects of the conjugation of these two discourses into the sanitary crisis and their effect on democracy and human rights protection.
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José Gonzalez
Due to its violent past of a 36 year-long internal armed conflict and the scourge of corruption, the COVID-19 pandemic presents to Guatemala great challenges that goes beyond ensuring healthcare to its population. The excessive use of imprisonment in the enforcement of sanitary measures, the protection of detained persons, ensuring the effective implementation of financial assistance programs, achieving accountability of public servants during the crisis, and the reactivation of the judiciary are some of the issues that demands a proper answer from the Guatemalan state. This post analyzes the “emergency state” implemented in Guatemala and presents some of the measures and effects related to the current crisis.
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Konrad Lachmayer
As the number of infected persons is declining and the overall situation gradually improving, it becomes clear that the measures have proved to be effective from a public health perspective. However, in light of the general retreat of the virus the upholding of many measures also becomes contestable now regarding their proportionality. With the improvement of the public health issues, the challenge for the rule of law has begun. Will the government be able to restrain itself and find a way back to constitutional normality?
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Bonolo Ramadi Dinokopila
Botswana, a country with a population slightly over two million, has recently joined countries that took stringent measures necessary to contain the spread of COVID-19. On the 31 March 2020 President Dr. Mokgweetsi E. K. Masisi declared a state of public emergency. This was the second time a state of public emergency was declared since Botswana attained independence in 1966.
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Roman Petrov, Bohdan Bernatskyi
All legal measures limiting human rights in response to COVID-19 adopted by the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine are made pursuant with respective clauses of two specific legal acts: the Code of Civil Protection of Ukraine (art. 16) and Law “On the protection of the population from infectious diseases” (art. 3). The said legislation empowers the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine as a key body in the protection of the population against infectious diseases with a broad margin of appreciation. However, more importantly, is that the Ukrainian Constitution envisages a restriction on certain rights and freedoms if these restrictions are prescribed by law in the interests of protecting the health of the population. Ukrainian think tanks and NGOs express deep concern on unconstitutionality of limitations of human rights caused by the Government’s measures to fight COVID-19.
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Saša Zagorc, Samo Bardutzky
Since the Slovenian declaration of an epidemic on 12 March 2020, a number of measures have been proposed, adopted and rejected in order to stop the spreading of the disease. Importantly, a state of emergency has not been declared. Nevertheless, in the past 6 weeks, interpretations and amendments of the existing statutory framework have also caused concerns from the constitutional point of view.
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David Lovatón
The COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictive measures adopted across Latin America have increased insecurity, suffering and hunger for millions across the region. Although restrictions on free transit, freedom of work, and freedom of assembly, among others, are legitimate – given that social distancing is the only weapon against this virus – we must be aware that millions of people in Latin America survive due to their work in the informal sector. It is unacceptable that for many, the only options during this pandemic are to be killed by hunger or by COVID-19. For this reason, following this emergency, the region must resume a debate about the relevance of a new social or welfare state, without corruption, that can provide basic public services including healthcare.
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Cassandra Emmons
As has been highlighted by other contributors to this Symposium, emergency decrees have already been used to achieve political ambitions beyond addressing COVID-19 in places like Hungary or Bulgaria. While states bear the responsibility of protecting their nations, modern day international human rights law is designed precisely to protect people from governments that abuse their powers. What limits does international human rights law impose on governments during emergencies? Can they be enforced? And how does COVID-19 fit in these conceptualizations?
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Sanaz Alasti
In its early stages, the COVID-19 crisis in Iran looked nothing like a crisis. The initial reactions to the outbreak were met by skepticism by both the public and many of Iranian officials – despite the World Health Organization warning of the potential for a catastrophe for weeks. Indeed, in late February Iran’s deputy health minister – Iraj Harirchi who denied accusations that the government was downgrading the coronavirus outbreak in the country – has reportedly tested positive for the sickness.
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Jakub Jaraczewski
The measures introduced to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Poland are among some of the most extensive and far-reaching, affecting many spheres of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. Few of these measures amount to recommendations and suggestions of specific behaviour, most of them are hard, legally enforceable orders and prohibitions and flouting them incurs the risk of severe financial punishment. Yet the legal framework for these measures causes a significant degree of controversy. This report aims to present a birds eye’s view on the measures in Poland and to highlight some issues legal scholars and experts have taken with both the substantive side of the measures and the means they were introduced.
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José Igreja Matos
In the past weeks, the European judges have been confronted in multiple ways by the Covid19 crisis. The challenges for judiciary were exceptional: the willingness to serve our fellow citizens, providing solidarity and support, in times of plague; the duty to supervise, as broadly as permitted by political authorities, the lawfulness of emergency measures; the emergent call to deal with the negative consequences of judicial lockdowns for the efficiency of courts and, moreover, the anxiety arising from the need to look after one’s own health and that of others, in particular witnesses, litigants or other citizens present in court.
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Chien-Liang Lee
On December 31, 2019, the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (CDC) sent the above message via email to the International Health Regulations (IHR) focal point under the World Health Organization (WHO). In the meantime, Taiwan also initiated COVID-19 epidemic prevention measures. This article endeavors to explain Taiwan’s emergency command and response system, to summarize Taiwan’s current regulatory actions against the epidemic outbreak, and to provide a few remarks on the emergency measures undertaken from the perspective of constitutionalism.
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Ashwanee Budoo
In the evening of 18 March 2020, Mauritians learnt the harsh news that their tropical heaven island of about 1.2 million people was also being swept by the coronavirus (COVID 19) tsunami, with three confirmed cases. As of 21 April 2020, the country has recorded a total of 328 cases, with 73 of them still being active and 9 deaths. Initially recording high increases in the confirmed number of COVID 19 cases, the country has been able to flatten its curve, without even a single case being recorded on some days. Depending on the trend of the spread, the government is working on a COVID 19 Bill that will gradually re-open the economy as from 4 May 2020.
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Michael Henry Yusingco
The Philippines is remarkably familiar with national emergencies, having faced just in the past three decades alone two global financial catastrophes, a number of coup attempts, a couple of destructive volcanic eruptions, a slew of ravaging typhoons, deadly terrorist attacks, and a devastating earthquake. Notably, the national response at these moments of crisis is to give the President “emergency powers”. Of course, this also comes with the admonition that citizens must fall in line and obey the commands of the government, which usually means temporarily “adjusting” adherence to human rights and respect for civil liberties.
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Sarah Ganty
The COVID-19 health crisis is happening in the context of a political crisis in Belgium. As the virus was spreading in the EU in early March, political parties were still negotiating the formation of a federal government. The need to provide a unified and strong answer to the situation added another layer to the political crisis and seems to have put the main political disagreements on the backburner. Even though, many institutional and constitutional challenges have been solved without considerably affecting basic democratic principles. This is not true when it comes to fundamental rights, especially fundamental rights of vulnerable groups such as migrants and prisoners, female victims of violence etc.
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Hafsteinn Dan Kristjánsson
While Iceland is not under a lockdown, the borders have been closed and wide-ranging measures implemented concerning a ban on gathering, social distancing, closing down or restricting the operation of schools, hair salons, organized sports and so on. When this is written, the current version of the ban on gathering is destined to last until 4th of May but some measures will be in place throughout the summer and maybe even longer. Now, gatherings of more than 20 people are forbidden, including in workplaces, cafés, restaurants and shops but special rules apply to grocery shops and pharmacies. The so-called two metre rule applies in these places. Other places have been shut down completely, such as gyms, swimming pools and pubs. The economic situation is also dire. Businesses are struggling and unemployment is on the rise. The last big depression is still fresh in memory. In what follows, I will focus on measures concerning the health crisis.
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Sven Jürgensen, Frederik Orlowski
SARS-CoV-2 has hit Germany hard with (as of Easter 2020) more than 120,000 confirmed cases. The entire development of the pandemic has been accompanied by a critical debate about whether the Federal Government and the Länder (states) took the appropriate measures to fight the virus. The first objective of this post is to show which legal measures are available to the Federal Government and the Länder and to briefly report which of those have been applied to. It discusses whether extraordinary times are the right moment for constitutional amendments and why a critical reflection of the current legislative changes is not only necessary but essential for the understanding of our constitution.
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Alberto Alemanno
Due to their inherent cross-border spillovers, many of the national responses to COVID-19 raise major concerns under EU law. Yet only a few of them have been timidly denounced by the EU Commission as the Guardian of the Treaty. How long will this last?
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Jaclyn L. Neo, Darius Lee
Up till late March 2020, Singapore’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was the envy of many nations. Its strategy of early testing, rapid contact tracing, and isolating cases and close contacts was praised for its effectiveness. Indeed, for some time, Singapore seemed to be successfully ‘flattening the curve’. And to top it off, the Singapore government managed to contain the spread of the disease while keeping workplaces, businesses, and schools open. This all, however, changed when a sudden spike in cases occurred in the latter half of March.
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Joelle Grogan
The UK initially downplayed concerns arising from the spread of COVID-19: Prime Minister Boris Johnson suggesting Britain should ‘take it on the chin’, pursued a policy which introduced no significant measures beyond encouraging hand-washing for 20 seconds. This changed, abruptly, on 12 March. On the same day schools and businesses were shut in Ireland and France, and three days after Italy was locked down, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a move to the delay phase and advised, though did not direct, over-70s to stay home, and travellers to avoid cruises. People should ‘avoid pubs and restaurants’, but they would not be closed. Large gatherings, such as the Cheltenham Festival, would not be prevented from going ahead. On 19 March following the rapid spread of the virus, the government announced that there was ‘zero prospect’ of a lockdown in London which would place limits on peoples’ movement. Four days later, on 23 March, the capital entered lockdown along with the rest of the country. ‘Zero prospect’ had lasted less than four days.
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Julián Gaviria-Mira, Esteban Hoyos-Ceballos
The way in which the events surrounding the pandemic in Colombia have unfolded, and the measures taken so far by the executive branch have led us, once again, to think about presidential powers: their scope, extent and limits. The first question we ask ourselves is: what kind of powers does the executive branch exercise when it orders measures such as national mandatory self-confinement? Perhaps in the midst of uncertainty and fear it seems natural to us that mayors, governors and ultimately the President have decided to confine us to our homes under threat of a fine if we don’t follow the precise guidelines of the various decrees and administrative acts. But such power and restriction of our freedom is a matter of concern that we must examine closely. We must also pay attention to the institutional mechanisms that are being deployed to deal with the crisis. In the current situation, not only does the what in the decision matter (i.e., mandatory self-confinement measures), but also the who and the how (i.e., whether the decisions are adopted by mayors, governors or the President – and, in the latter case, if the President does it through exceptional or ordinary powers).
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Martin Scheinin
Finland has a modern Constitution with an ambitious catalogue of fundamental rights. Has this framework, including the constitutional regulation of emergency powers, been able to cope with the COVID-19 crisis? Are there lessons to learn from Finland?
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Eugenio Velasco
As of April 5th, the Federal Health Ministry reported 2,143 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Mexico. International experience suggests that the country is at the cusp of confronting the full effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This post provides a description of the constitutional and statutory regulation of emergency powers and a brief commentary on the government’s actions thus far. It starts by offering an account of the constitutional provision of emergency powers, noting from the outset a disinclination to the prospect or desirability of their application. Then, it describes the emergency powers to confront a health crisis contained in statutory form. Finally, it evaluates the government’s response to the pandemic.
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Serdar Ünver
In order to ensure a quick and flexible response in fighting against COVID- 19, Turkish presidency and administration preferred to introduce the measures against the pandemic in the form of circulars instead of declaring a state of emergency. This choice is being criticised for opening the way for arbitrariness and undermining the principle of legality.
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Iain Payne
Compared to many other countries, the known impact of COVID-19 on public health in Nepal has thus far been small. At the time of writing (4 April), only nine COVID-19 infections have been identified. However, as in many low-income developing countries, Nepal is particularly vulnerable to the spread of the virus. The country’s healthcare system is weak and, even at the best of times, hospitals suffer from chronic shortages of oxygen cylinders and ventilators—essential tools to fight the disease. Test kits are limited and the capacity to test samples in large quantities quickly is severely lacking. Moreover, while the existence of the virus within the community is known, the extent of its spread remains hidden The mass migration of workers back to their villages in pre-emption of the looming nation-wide lockdown potentially carried the virus throughout the entire country.
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George Karavokyris
Each time a crisis emerges, the law is entitled to seize the exceptional moment and contain it, within the limits of democracy and the rule of law. Legal normality, as a vague standard, is usually redefined by the legislator and the courts and rapidly adjusted to reality. The constitutional value of public interest comes into conflict with civil liberties and scholars begin to question the law. The saga of the (Greek) coronavirus crisis-law is, like everywhere, utterly reduced to the proportionality of the exceptional measures of the (Greek) State, but its moral and political implications seem far broader and ambiguous.
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Geoffrey Yeung
When news began to circulate about a novel virus in December 2019, Hong Kong was in the midst of protests that had been going on for months. There were (and continue to be) widespread demands for accountability and democracy, accompanied by a significant degree of public distrust and dissatisfaction towards the Government. Pertinently, the Government had just invoked hugely controversial emergency powers to quell the protests. Hong Kong was also one of the hardest-hit regions during the SARS epidemic 17 years ago, and there was a collective determination not to repeat the tragedy.
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Hans Petter Graver
Governments across Europe are quick to limit personal freedoms in the name of fighting the pandemic. The case of Norway, however, reveals how the process of adopting these measures can compromise democratic discourse and procedure. The main rule of law challenges we have seen here are an overreach of the authorities of their legal powers, a lack of transparency and exclusion of the public from public decision-making and battle over jurisdiction to regulate between the central government and local authorities. In the end, it is not just our health, but the rule of law that is under threat.
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Teresa Violante, Rui T. Lanceiro
As we write this report, it is unclear how the Covid-19 outbreak will unfold in Portugal. The country reacted quickly to adopt measures aimed at reducing social contact, including the closure of schools and a general ban on non-essential movement. Whether that will prove efficient to avoid the collapse of the national health system and prevent thousands of deaths, only time will tell. In this contribution, we describe and reflect on the action taken by public powers to address the Covid-19 pandemic, considering the situation as of April 9.
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Abdurrachman Satrio
Indonesia is a perfect example of how poorly a country can handle the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). In February, when Indonesia’s neighbouring countries such as Singapore were occupied with the restriction of the entry of foreigners into their territory after the announcement of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, Indonesia’s government under the Presidency of Joko Widodo (Jokowi) introduced the opposite policy which made it easier for foreign tourists (including those from the mainland China) to travel to Indonesia. The purpose of this particular policy according to Jokowi’s government was to exploit the economic gaps which would arise from foreigners’ fears of travelling to Indonesia’s neighbours including Singapore and Thailand.
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Alan Greene
Like many countries around the world, Ireland has enacted emergency legislation to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. The scope of these powers are vast, impacting on almost every aspect of life in Ireland. Notably, no state of emergency has been declared in accordance with Ireland’s constitutional provisions or under Article 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
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Melodie Labuschaigne, Ciara Staunton
As COVID-19 spread across the world, the first reported case in Africa was not until 27 February 2020 in Nigeria; six days later the South African National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) confirmed the first case in South Africa. Since then, cases have increased steadily and the first death in South Africa was recorded on 27 March 2020. COVID-19 has shown its potential devastating impact elsewhere, but it is a particular cause for concern in South Africa.
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Tamara Tulich, Marco Rizzi, Fiona McGaughey
To date, in Australia, there have been over 5,350 confirmed COVID-19 cases, 26 deaths and over 275,000 tests conducted. The majority of the confirmed cases were acquired overseas. Australia is a Federation with a national government and state and territory governments. This adds complexity to responding to a national crisis. So far, Australia’s response has been characterised by cooperative federalism, at least nominally, primarily through a newly formed National Cabinet. There has been a staged ratcheting up of border controls and executive powers to prevent and control the spread of COVID-19, and a ‘hibernation’ approach to the conduct of business and exercise of fundamental rights. In this post, we discuss the governance model through the National Cabinet, the hard law response at Federal and State and Territory level and the extensive economic interventions.
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Radosveta Vassileva
On 23 March 2020, Bulgaria’s Parliament enacted a Law on the Measures and Actions during the State of Emergency Announced by Parliament on 13 March 2020 (hereby referred to as Law on Emergency for brevity). This was the second attempt to enact this piece of legislation after Bulgaria’s President vetoed some of its provisions. This new Law entered into force retroactively on 13 March 2020 when Parliament declared a state of emergency (izvunredno polojenie) in light of COVID-19. The peculiar situation that Parliament can declare a state of emergency, define its scope and provide guidance on the measures which could be taken later, and apply the law retroactively to justify measures and actions taken by the executive in the period before defining these terms is troublesome from a rule of law perspective. Moreover, some of the measures go beyond healthcare concerns and create opportunities for arbitrariness and human rights violations. B
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Sébastien Platon
2 years and less than 5 months after the end of the two-year state of emergency triggered on the wake of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, a brand new “state of health emergency” was activated in France on the 23rd March to cope with a new attack led, this time, by a small and invisible enemy, Covid-19. The so-called “state of health emergency” currently constitutes the legal framework and basis of the measures in force to cope with the epidemic, including nationwide lockdown. What is this new regime? Is it a threat to individual freedoms? What are its limits and guarantees? Was it legally necessary?
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Kim Lane Scheppele
Not surprisingly, those of us who write about emergencies have been far more concerned about overreaction than underreaction and we have been far more concerned about politically caused emergencies rather than natural disasters. History is littered with the cautionary tales of overreaction to politically caused emergencies. But the dangers of state failure evident in underreaction are underestimated.
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Emilio Peluso Neder Meyer, Thomas Bustamante
One of the few heads of state that insist on denying scientific and epidemiologic facts concerning the spread of COVID-19 is the Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. For Bolsonaro, politics comes before truth. Since the beginning of the pandemic of COVID-19, he is disseminating doubts on social media (although Twitter, Facebook and Instagram deleted some of his posts) to galvanize his radical supporters while creating a distraction for his government’s inability to implement social and economic aids to the low-income families affected by social distancing. For the moment, the president has failed to gather the public support that he needs for an extension of the emergency powers of the executive, like Orbán did in Hungary. But his authoritarian discourse has not disappeared from the horizon. On 31st March 2020, for instance, Bolsonaro celebrated the anniversary of the Coup of 1964 as a “great day for freedom”.
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Julinda Beqiraj
With one of the highest death rate by population worldwide, Italy has undertaken a series of necessary but very intrusive measures resulting in strong limitations of fundamental rights and liberties. The Rule of Law (ROL) is considered to be “the basis of all genuine democracy” (Statute of the Council of Europe); and in times of emergency, respect for the ROL and adherence to its principles should still prevail. So, what safeguards have been put in place to ensure that the Italian legislative response to COVID-19 provides effective protection of public safety and complies with core Constitutional principles, international law obligations and the ROL?
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Dean R Knight
New Zealand’s governmental response to Covid-19 has been, so far, dramatic and legally curious. As a South Pacific island nation, Covid-19 was late to infiltrate New Zealand, allowing the government time to shape its response in the light of experiences elsewhere. At the first sign of community transmission, the government moved to lockdown the country – shutting the border, keeping people in their household ‘bubbles’ and closing businesses other than those deemed essential. To effect the lockdown, the government relied on some ordinary legal powers and a handful of reserve emergency powers, supplemented by strong messaging from a charismatic prime minister. While providing a stopgap solution for the sudden move, the current legal framework is bit soft and fragile in places. It seems likely the government will move to sharpen and fortify the legal basis for the lockdown and put in place a more bespoke and enduring solution.
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Tamar Hostovsky Brandes
A notable characteristic of the Israeli management of the crisis is the growing reliance on the military and on national security agencies, with respect to both types of measures. The sections below will examine the measures taken, the concerns these measures raise, and the steps taken to address such concerns.
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David Dyzenhaus
Canada is in almost full emergency mode in its bid to flatten the pandemic curve. But so far the federal government has not declared a federal state of emergency in terms of the Emergencies Act (1985), although it has discussed publicly the pros and cons of taking this step and has been urged to do so on the basis that such a declaration would enable a nationwide testing program. There are four main reasons for this hesitation to declare a national state of emergency.
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Kriszta Kovács
On 23 March 1933, an act was adopted in Nazi Germany in response to the “crisis” of the Reichstag fire to enable Hitler to issue decrees independently of the Reichstag and the presidency. Article 48 of the constitution of the Weimar Republic made this act possible. Eighty-seven years later, on 23 March 2020, the so-called 'Enabling Act' was put before the Hungarian Parliament. This was drafted under emergency constitutional provisions in Articles 48-54.
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Joelle Grogan
As states of emergency are declared throughout the world in response to the spread of COVID-19, concerns arise as to the use - and potential abuse - of power in a time of crisis. In this Symposium, comparative country reports examine the use of emergency powers from the perspective of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.
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Alba Nogueira López, Gabriel Doménech Pascual
A global health crisis, broadcasted almost instantly, arguably ensures that most citizens accept health recommendations responsibly, and no coercive measures are needed for them to take precautions. In fact, the first decisions made by the Spanish health authorities with respect to COVID-19 were passed through documents with no regulatory value. However, the rapid spread of the epidemic forced these authorities to increasingly restrict various fundamental rights and freedoms. Three major legal issues arose then: firstly, whether the ordinary provisions of the health legislation were sufficient to deal with this crisis or emergency powers should be triggered; secondly, whether the central government should have powers devolved to better manage the crisis; and, thirdly, under which conditions and to what extent the government may restrict constitutional rights by virtue of these emergency powers.
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Hoitismolimo Mutlokwa
South Africa has the highest recorded cases of COVID-19 infections in Africa. The Government has acted swiftly after COVID 19 was declared a global pandemic. This blog will discuss the measures that have been put in place by the government, in safeguarding businesses and protecting the rights of workers who are vulnerable to the socio-economic effects of the COVID-19. This will be divided into two sub-topics, namely measures taken during the declaration of national disaster and action initiated during the lockdown.
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Seokmin Lee
The Republic of Korea (South Korea) was calculated to be one of the countries that are “heavily hit” by the spread of COVID-19 that sprung from Wuhan, China. According to the latest Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, as of March 23, South Korea has reported just over 8,900 cases and 111 deaths. Whereas many Western countries have reached ever higher numbers of infections, South Korea’s outbreak curve has been beaten back. From a one-day high of 909 new cases on February 29, South Korea has seen its daily case count rise by as few as 74 cases last Monday. And this Monday the number of new cases was 64. South Korea is seeing a "stabilizing trend", as Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha told the BBC recently.
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Toon Moonen, Jonas Riemslagh
The last weeks, we have witnessed the outbreak of a virus the like of which the world has not seen in a long time. As the epicenter of the crisis moved to Europe, Belgium has not been spared. Upon finishing this blogpost, 4,269 cases of COVID 19 were reported. 1,859 people were hospitalized. In total, until now, 122 patients died. Measures to fight the crisis and its consequences took many forms, including legally. In this post, we focus on three categories: containment measures, the granting of ‘special powers’ to the executive and measures aimed at socio-economic survival and recovery.
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Diletta Tega, Michele Massa
Particularly in the current month of March 2020, Italian authorities have enacted, and gradually intensified and extended, a lockdown on mobility, assembly and economic activities, currently encompassing the entire national territory. Such measures, unprecedented in democratic countries, have met praise by the World Health Organization. From a legal point of view, a vast array of legal instruments has been employed, and some have been crafted for this very occasion (for a complete list, see the references below). We focus here on national initiatives, but also Regions and Municipalities have employed their emergency powers, occasionally creating problems in coordination.
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Felix Uhlmann
Law secures the stability of societies. In times of the Coronavirus, one is under the impression that law is no longer a foundation of our society but a bed of quicksand. Certainties erode at breathtaking speed. The following contribution looks at the current legal situation in Switzerland from a perspective of constitutional and administrative law. Needless to say that it may be outdated quickly.
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Yuxue Fang
Three months after the first case of COVID-19 reported in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China is presumably approaching its final stage of domestic control, and its present policy focus is on restoring the country to its normal running. China’s current relatively stable condition on the virus, undoubtedly, is hard-earned. Restrictive measures to fight COVID-19, typically including traffic restriction, work ban and events cancellation, have brought about profound economic implications on individual employees and enterprises. In this blogpost, I will review the legal basis and scope of these measures, followed by an examination of supportive measures for financially affected employees and enterprises respectively.
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Leila Barraza, Sarah A. Wetter
Given that COVID-19 has generated unprecedented orders for business closures and social distancing, we must examine what safeguards our legal system can offer. Are there protections for people who cannot go to work because they are sick or under quarantine orders? And if so, who provides the monetary compensation? When businesses are forced to close or events forced to cancel, are there any protections to help businesses recover from extreme losses of income due to an infectious disease outbreak? While our current legal system offers scattered safeguards in select jurisdictions, it is only now becoming obvious that reforms are needed to ensure an economic safety net, everywhere, as part of pandemic preparedness.
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Wen-Chen Chang
Taiwan has demonstrated to the world its strength and success in combating the spread of COVID-19 despite decades of exclusion from the World Health Organization (WHO) and ongoing bullying from the People’s Republic of China (China). Given its geographical proximity and close economic exchanges with China, Taiwan was estimated to be heavily hit by the spread of COVID-19 originated from Wuhan, China. Reversing the trend, Taiwan has maintained a considerably low number of confirmed cases, and detected most cases of possible community spread, while Europe, the United States and the rest of the world are struggling with an ongoing global pandemic.
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Paul F. Scott
The United Kingdom’s response to the coronavirus epidemic is still in its early stages, but seems likely to – eventually – involve a wide range of the emergency powers currently available to the state, as well as some which do not yet exist. Nonetheless, it already seems inevitable that the success of the state’s response to Coronavirus will eventually be judged not only by the nature of the interferences with individual liberty carried out, but also – and perhaps primarily – by the sufficiency of the associated economic measures.
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Anika Klafki, Andrea Kießling
Germany is in the middle of the global Corona Crisis. Currently, about 11,000 people are infected with the Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 and 20 people have died of Covid-19 in Germany. The DAX is experiencing price slumps similar to those experienced during the financial crisis in 2008. The following blogpost provides an overview of the relevant legal instruments in the fight against the virus.
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Isabel Feichtner, Geoff Gordon
Here in conclusion, we will not offer a unitary encapsulation of the project as a whole. The contributions are sufficiently diverse, sometimes in disagreement, and any such effort would be premature at this stage. Instead, we are interested to sketch the possibilities going forward for our inquiries into notions of value and value practices, on the basis of what we have assembled here in this symposium. To do this, let us take a step back, to ask a broad question: What makes our questions about value intelligible, and what makes them intelligible now?
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Nofar Sheffi
But how do jurists and legal theorists read and write Airbnb’s story? Do they narrate it as a Cinderella story, the fairy-tale rise to power and glory of three drudges? Do they recount the story of a rare and fantastic ‘unicorn’, a start-up company that reached a $1 billion valuation? Do they retell the ballad of Robin Hood, a heroic outlaw, who robbed the rich to give to the poor, a model of ingenuity, altruism, and popular justice? Do they adopt the economic rhetoric of competition, describing the relations between Airbnb and hotels, and between Airbnb and states, as David-and-Goliath battles between stodgy giants and an innovative newcomer? Do they warn Little Red Riding Hood against the Big Bad Wolf? Or do they caution the three bears about Goldilocks, the gentrifier?
To problematize the valuation of hospitality, this blogpost examines the interplay between different dispositifs that, so to speak, value ‘hospitality’ – tourism, and also migration and citizenship.
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Florian Hoffmann
Florian Hoffmann analyses the left critique of rights and Marx's account of the function of liberal rights as both a necessary legal infrastructure for the 'free' market exchange of commodified labour – and, hence, as an element of the system underlying the constitution and extraction of surplus value - as well as an ideological configuration that obscures the inequality of the (rights-based) exchange relationship through the semblance of equal rights.
Is this really all there is to rights in/under capitalism? And are there sufficiently strong and evident alternatives so as to obviate rights (activism) all together?
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Outi Korhonen, Juho Rantala
For many, blockchain’s social value derives from its potential to foster freedom, neutrality, openness and transparency; or simply from the implication that otherwise is within the possible. But Bitcoin and blockchain are not all potential; limitations apply. And if confined to their ‘mainstream’ uses, private blockchain systems boost efficiency in producing value in its monetary sense and reinforcing global value chains.
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Jamee K. Moudud
In this blog post, Jamee K. Moudud argues that labor relations are conflictual and corporations are fundamentally political creatures who have always attempted to structure the legal and political foundations of the economy so as to further their investment activities. Thus, corporations will generally oppose progressive reforms, especially if they raise costs.
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Anna Chadwick
In this post, I reflect on the relationship between the multi-trillion-dollar forex market in which fiat currencies are traded and contemporary debates over the legal nature and administration of money. Anna Chadwick suggests that the constitutional study of money should be extended to the legal instruments that establish the forex market.
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Christine Schwöbel-Patel
Christine Schwöbel-Patel relies on the Marxian distinction between use-value and exchange value to understand how images of global justice are circulated as a form of publicity.
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Julia Dehm
In both direct and obvious ways, but also in ways that are often backgrounded and obscured, recent discussions that fossil fuel assets and infrastructures risk becoming “stranded assets” if legal regulations to limit global warming are imposed makes evident the critical role that law plays in (co-)constituting “value”.
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Toni Marzal
There is a remarkably solid consensus in ISDS about how damages should be calculated. But why indeed should we care about the technicalities of valuation? Toni Marzal argues that this is a key question of major legal and political significance, that ought to attract as much attention as the issues of arbitral jurisdiction or investor rights. Beyond the sheer figures awarded against States, there are several major reasons to get interested in quantum-related matters.
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Clair Quentin
Clair Quentin delivers a brief guide to the various schools of Marxian value theory generally encountered today, and what they would say about the distribution of the global corporate tax base if they were adopted as the theoretical basis for the OECD’s work in this area.
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Donatella Alessandrini
Donatella Alessandrini draws from anti-capitalist and post-colonial feminist studies to address the co-existence of technological upgrade and social downgrade in value chain capitalism.
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Oliver Schlaudt
Oliver Schlaudt explains why one dollar is not everywhere one dollar and how that turns the alleged competitive advantage of lower production costs into a structural disadvantage for poor countries.
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Klaus Kempter
Klaus Kempter on Marxian Wertkritik, Modern Monetary Theory and the illusion of the state.
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Gunther Teubner
What follows are six arguments which rebut the primacy of economic profit in advanced capitalist societies, and submit that the imperative to create surplus value is a function of autopoietic systems generally and not merely a product of economic forces.
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Fabian Muniesa
What does an anthropological critique of value require? And what is the use, and challenge, of asking this question in relation to the law? The idea of ‘critique’ refers here to a frontal questioning of the notion of value, not to a contribution to a theory thereof: calling it ‘anthropological’ entails a focus on the constitution of meaning, with ‘value’ understood as a key cultural parameter of economic life, best expressed today in the imperatives of finance.
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Isabel Feichtner, Geoff Gordon
The contributions to this symposium are the first fruits of the research project “Constitutions of Value.” They are based on presentations and discussions at a workshop we convened at the University of Würzburg on 12 and 13 December 2019 (with funds made available by the state of Bavaria for the research network ForDemocracy). We had invited lawyers, an economist, a sociologist, a historian, a philosopher, and a commons activist to think about the role of law (together with politics, economics, technology and science) in co-constituting value and value practices. In this introduction we seek to explain what prompted us to assemble this multidisciplinary group to engage in and contribute to a legal study of value, what we hope to achieve with this project, and the challenges that it needs to face.
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Ulrich K. Preuß
Wenn man nun ein solches Geburtstagsgeschenk bekommt, muss man sich in angemessener Weise dafür auch bedanken. Das Mindeste, was man erwarten kann, wenn so kluge, intelligente und sympathische Menschen mit klugen und intelligenten und manchmal nicht ganz so sympathischen Gedanken mir gleichsam ein Geschenk vor die Füße oder vor das Podium legen, ist doch wohl, dass sie eine angemessene Antwort erhalten. Und das ist eine Antwort, die mindestens auf der Höhe von Hegel liegen muss.
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Christine Landfried
Die repräsentative Demokratie ist durch Entscheidungen, die sie systematisch in ihrer Handlungsfähigkeit einschränken und zu einer Entfremdung eines Teiles der Bürger führen, in eine tiefe Krise geraten. Am Beispiel der Entwicklung der Demokratie seit der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts skizziert Christine Landfried diese Problematik und zeigt, welche Hinweise wir aus den zukunftsweisenden Arbeiten von Ulrich K. Preuß für eine Perspektive zur Überwindung der Krise der repräsentativen Demokratie gewinnen können.
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Dieter Grimm
Das Versprechen der Demokratie ist nicht, dass dem Willen des Volkes Geltung verschafft wird. Denn den Willen des Volkes gibt es nicht. Es gibt vielmehr nur unzählige Kombinationen von Meinungen und Interessen, aus denen jeweils von neuem ein dem Volk zurechenbarer Wille gebildet werden muss. In dem so gebildeten Willen werden sich nie alle wieder finden. Das Versprechen der Demokratie ist aber, dass alle bei der Bildung des Willens mitwirken und also Einfluss auf das Ergebnis nehmen können und dass der jeweiligen Mehrheit nicht alles erlaubt ist, insbesondere nicht, die Minderheit um ihre Chancen zu bringen, selbst Mehrheit zu werden, samt den Voraussetzungen, die dafür nötig sind.
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David Abraham
The great marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm observed that the “long 19th century” repeatedly posed the question of “who is the people” while the “short 20th century” attempted to answer the question – often in the most bloody and regressive ways. It has been one of U. K. Preuss’s great contributions to grapple with and explain how constitutions have attempted to conceptualize and vindicate “the people” within a liberal and democratic order that can free us from those bloody and regressive ways.
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Dana Schmalz
Migration war in den vergangenen Jahren eines der meistdiskutierten politischen Themen. Auf die Frage, ob Migration eine Herausforderung für die Demokratie darstelle, werden viele mit „ja“ antworten, jedoch mit ganz unterschiedlichen Erwägungen. Es geht mir hier nicht um Fragen der „Integration“, die auf Annahmen darüber beruhen, wer wohin migriert und mit welchem kulturellen Hintergrund. Vielmehr möchte ich die Frage formaler betrachten und mit zwei Aspekten beginnen, unter denen Migration als Herausforderung für die Demokratie erscheint. Der erste Aspekt lässt sich überschreiben mit „Territorium und Gleichheit“, der zweite mit „Entscheidung über Grenzen“.
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Verena Frick
Das Bundesverfassungsgericht hat in seinen Urteilen zum Ausländerwahlrecht in Hamburg und Schleswig-Holstein von 1990 wenig Zweifel daran gelassen, dass das Grundgesetz auf allen Ebenen des Staatsaufbaus nur das deutsche Volk als einheitliche Legitimationsgrundlage kennt. Ulrich K. Preuß sah das mit guten, demokratietheoretischen Gründen anders. Er rechtfertigte die Zulässigkeit des kommunalen Ausländerwahlrechts gerade mit der Verschiedenheit von Gemeindevolk und Staatsvolk. Preuß‘ Argumentation ist über den Bremer Fall hinaus wegweisend und gibt Anlass, heute noch einmal neu über meist übersehene Orte der Demokratie nachzudenken: Städte, Kreise und Gemeinden.
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Tim Wihl
Die Neue Linke, der man den hier zu feiernden Ulrich K. Preuß zurechnen kann, war immer ein sowohl soziales als auch kulturelles Projekt. Gleiches gilt für die enorme innere Vielfalt der Frauenbewegung. Oder das Problem des (Inter-)Nationalismus, eine besonders scharfe Variante von Verteilungspolitik. Denn die kulturell-zivilisatorisch stets wünschenswerte Weitung des Blicks erfordert keine Freihandelspolitik (liberal), sondern den Streit darum. Wie soll die Nord-Süd-Politik aussehen? Benötigen wir heute eine Präferenz für den Süden? Erst recht gilt für die Umweltpolitik als absolut prioritäre Querschnittsfrage unserer Zeit, als Frage des menschlichen Überlebens in den nächsten 50-100 Jahren: Sie war, ist und wird immer mehr nicht zuletzt – eine Verteilungsfrage.
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Isabelle Ley, Claudio Franzius, Tine Stein
In diesem Symposion soll darüber diskutiert werden, wer das Volk eigentlich ist, wie es sich integriert und wie es zu einem politischen Willen und legitimen politischen Entscheidungen kommt.
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Constantin Hruschka
This blogpost will look at the levels of human rights protection and suggest a way forward in light of the agency’s extended tasks and competencies.
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Carolyn Moser, Rabia Ferahkaya, Lukas Märtin
Especially since the migratory pressure of 2015, the agency has discovered the significance of the African pre-frontier area. The rationale behind this reinforced engagement in Africa is one of pre-emptive border control and migration management.
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Florin Coman-Kund
This blog post first sketches out the agency’s successive mandate expansions allowing for a broader geographic theatre of operations. It then examines the law currently governing the exterritorial activities of Frontex, in particular the recently concluded status agreements with Western Balkan countries.
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Catharina Ziebritzki
Catharina Ziebritzki argues that responsibilities are effectively blurred by the sheer number of actors operating in asylum processing centres at the EU external borders.
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Elisabeth Badenhoop
This blogpost contextualises Frontex by discussing a pioneer database in Europe, the German Central Foreigner Register that presumably served as a model when establishing the European databases, and by drawing some lessons from the German case for the European context regarding the effectiveness of database surveillance.
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Samuel Hartwig
For many years, Frontex and border control were of little interest to the wider European public. This changed in the wake of the so-called ‘migrant crisis’ as the agency and its various activities were thrust into the limelight due to a steady stream of allegations of misconduct.
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Carolyn Moser
This first contribution to the symposium briefly outlines the genesis, development, and status quo of the agency, while the ensuing analyses will zoom in on specific politico-legal matters that are at the core of the current debate.
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Rainer Bauböck
The twenty-two responses to Rainer Bauböck's proposal for strengthening urban citizenship suggest two general lessons. First, there is more common ground than expected. None of the authors defends a strong statist view that would not leave any space for a conversation about citizenship at the local level. Second, in spite of its long premodern pedigree, the idea of urban citizenship seems still so new that it needs to be fleshed out in more detail. Conceptual confusion makes it hard to distinguish misunderstanding from disagreement, so the most urgent task now seems to be clarification.
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Liav Orgad
If one accepts the proposition that control of the gates is a core feature of state-centred citizenship, what can be the legal implications of urban citizenship, in addition to the ones that already exist?
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Kenneth Stahl
Kenneth Stahl argues that many countries such as the United States already have a form of “citizenship federalism,” in which local (not specifically urban) citizenship, based on residence, exists alongside national citizenship, rooted in nationality.
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Willem Maas
The assumption is that nation-states often undervalue potential immigrants and that cities would better value their potential contributions. Because citizenship involves not only inclusion but also exclusion, however, there are dangers to proposals such as Bauböck’s that “cities should determine who their citizens are independently of how states do this.”
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Stephen Minas
On 23 January 2020, the government of the People’s Republic of China imposed a quarantine on the central Chinese city of Wuhan, population eleven million. Stephen Minas reinforces the cautionary trend in this debate over the merits and prospects of ‘urban citizenship’.
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Helmut Philipp Aust
Helmut Aust reflects on the role of law in this discourse. The answer one might give to the question of decoupling citizenship from the state would arguably also depend on one’s disciplinary perspective. It is easier to think outside of the box from the perspective of political theory, political philosophy, and history than it is from the perspective of the law.
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Ran Hirschl
Urban citizenship is a bold and intriguing idea, regardless of whether we envision it as an alternative or as a complement to extant models of state-based membership. However, this concept seems to be slightly off target in identifying the main issue of city under-representation, namely the constitutional non-existence of cities, and more generally, the great constitutional silence surrounding today’s extensive urbanization and the consequent rise of megacities.
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Barbara Oomen
Should urban citizenship be emancipated from national citizenship? Barbara Oomen points at the international human rights framework for three reasons: (1) This is where local authorities are already looking for inspiration; (2) the legal framework of human rights offers an added value in meeting some of the underlying objectives of city-zenship; and (3) it could mitigate concerns legitimately raised in earlier contributions.
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Alexander Aleinikoff
What goes underexplored in Bauböck’s commentary is the relationship of citizenship to sovereignty. Alexander Aleinikoff claims urban citizenship is a useful concept only to the extent that urban areas possess legal authority—some form of sovereignty—to rule by and for themselves.
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Avigail Eisenberg
Along with several other contributors to this Symposium (e.g., Hase and Lenard), Avigail Eisenberg is skeptical that enhancing urban democracy will help meet the global challenges we confront today.
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Margaret Kohn
Urbanisation has radically transformed the way that people live, but a corresponding legal and political shift has not taken place. In North America and most of Europe, the power of cities is derived from the sovereignty of the state. Many cities do not have access to the revenue needed to provide for the social welfare and infrastructure requirements of residents.
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Luicy Pedroza
Contrary to what Warren Magnusson suggests, Luicy Pedroza finds that non-citizen local enfranchisement is highly important.
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Maarten Prak
The urban citizenship discussed in this Forum is not at all new in the Western world; it has a history of at least a thousand years, and when we include Ancient Athens, even much more. This history is relevant because it suggests the scope, as well as the limitations of such alternatives.
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Johanna Hase
In this contribution Johanna Hase highlights two aspects: First, she argues that the framing in terms of urban rather than local citizenship is not helpful, and possibly even counter-productive, for the purpose of constructing the new citizenship narrative. And second, she questions the relation between emancipating urban citizenship from nationality, on the one hand, and the growing competences of local polities, on the other hand.
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Enrico Gargiulo, Lorenzo Piccoli
Stadtluft macht frei, or city air makes you free, was a proverb in the Middle Ages. It referred to a legal principle according to which runaway serfs were to become free after living one year in a city. Today, many scholars suggest that urban citizenship still has powerful emancipatory effects.
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Monica W. Varsanyi
I will take Rainer Bauböck's closing words as my point of departure and offer an answer that is less predictive and normative, and more empirical. I agree with his assertion that we need a robust urban citizenship. I would suggest that we already have some important examples of urban citizenship that challenge and complement national citizenship in crucial ways and it is important to shine a light on those examples to chart a course forward.
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Sandra Seubert
How can ‘staged urbanism’ provide spaces of urban citizenship? Under what conditions can urban citizenship “contribute to overall democratic integration within and beyond nation-states”?
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Harald Bauder
Earlier commentaries in this online symposium highlighted various aspects of urban citizenship, such as the exclusion of non-urban populations (Lenard) or the conundrum of multilevel frames of legal authority (van Zeben). Harald Bauder suggests that urban citizenship can be an important mechanism to create inclusive communities.
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Warren Magnusson
In a way, the question of urban citizenship is easy. If a state were to give non-citizens citizenship rights with respect to local elections or urban affairs more generally, it would be fully within its powers to do so. As Rainer Bauböck and others have argued, there are many good reasons why a state might want to do so – and just as many reasons to protect the state’s authority to uphold the system of rights as a whole. That said, many issues remain. There is no consensus, and perhaps there never can be on the key terms at issue: state, nation, urban, and citizenship.
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Josephine van Zeben
Josephine van Zeben's response to Bauböck’s reflections on urban citizenship considers some legal implications of the postnational view that Bauböck finds most promising. Specifically, it questions how suited citizenship is – as a legal instrument – for accommodating the concerns raised in Bauböck’s contribution.
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Patti Tamara Lenard
It seems urgent that “urban citizenship” is properly characterised to understand not only the rights and responsibilities citizens of cities may well have, but also their grounding. I have no quarrel with this project. However, so far, accounts of urban citizenship – like Rainer Bauböck’s in the piece that launched this forum – do too little to consider the citizenship that is “left over” for those who do not, or cannot, move to cities.
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Nir Barak
Nir Barak deepens the ambivalence in Rainer Bauböck’s account of urban citizenship and suggests a skeptical but friendly critique towards notions of emancipating urban citizenship from nationality. The relationship between urban and national citizenship should not be seen as mutually exclusive; claims for enhancing city-zenship and decentralizing state power are warranted only insofar as they provide forward-thinking urban response to the decline in democratic participation and civic solidarity at national levels.
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Avner de Shalit
The city is not only a "densely populated area of continuous settlement, which is organized as a single jurisdiction" (an often used formal definition of a city); the city is also a state of mind, a certain political and social consciousness.
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Rainer Bauböck
Since the first decade of the millennium – for the first time in human history – more people are living in urban areas than in rural ones. According to UN projections, in 2050 the share of urban populations could rise to more than two thirds of the world population. Will this demographic change also lead to a decline of nation-states and a rise of cities as the dominant arenas of politics, democracy and citizenship?
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Gábor Attila Tóth
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.
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Michael Meyer-Resende
The experience of the Central European round tables has no specific relevance today, but it may be significant in the future. Not in a direct way of copying them and it would be unwise to frame any future political consultation as a being inspired by the 1989 round tables. Yet, if we look at the round tables’ essence, negotiating a peaceful transition with an outgoing power, charting a course between legality and legitimacy, the round tables can tell us something of remaining relevance.
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Christian Boulanger
On one hand, I wish to give credit to the Central Round Table which is often seen as not having fulfilled its aspirations. Given the particular structural context in which the round table was operating, it was remarkably successful and achieved more than could have been anticipated given its weak legitimacy and power base, in particular, providing a sense of stability and moral guidance in tumultuous times. On the other hand, my thesis is that it was unable to exert a major influence on what was to follow, neither in the short-term or long-term.
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Petra Gümplová
Petra Gümplová on the Round Table in Czechoslovakia and the potential of round tables as political tools to address current challenges in the Czech Republic and on a global scale.
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Karolina Wigura
Karolina Wigura discusses the idea of future round table talks in Poland between the populists and the other political powers, aiming at achieving a broader consensus to repair the judiciary and other state institutions.
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Andrew Arato
What should be the modality of transformation? The lessons of 1989 transcending the reform-revolution dichotomy could become extremely relevant.
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Kriszta Kovács
The year 1989 entered history books as the year of the peaceful dismantling of Soviet-type regimes in East-Central Europe. These regimes did not collapse because of classical revolutions; the process ultimately involved round table negotiations between delegates of the undemocratic powerholders and the democratic opposition. Today the people in the Visegrád countries are divided in their opinions regarding the round tables, not least because of the widespread questioning of its achievements.
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Michał Ziółkowski, Barbara Grabowska-Moroz
Professor A. von Bogdandy in his recent piece published at Verfassungsblog analyzes difficulties regarding enforcement of the EU values. He argues that the application of Treaty provisions relating to EU fundamental values should be cautious in order to avoid controversy or pressure. However, the ‘national identity argument’ is not convincing in the Polish case. It cannot be used by a Member State in an arbitrary or blanket way without being checked and confirmed.
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R. Daniel Kelemen, Tommaso Pavone, Cassandra Emmons
In a recent contribution to Verfassungsblog, Professor Armin von Bogdandy observes, “European constitutionalism is perhaps facing a ‘constitutional moment’. But rather than calling on the EU to stand up to increasingly authoritarian member governments, von Bogdandy concludes that, “Powerful arguments suggest caution.” His admonitions offer a lesson into how scholars can inadvertently propagate what political economist Albert Hirschman described in his 1991 book as The Rhetoric of Reaction.
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Kim Lane Scheppele, Gábor Halmai
In his contribution ‘Fundamentals on Defending European Values,’ Armin von Bogdandy counsels caution. His arguments are wise in normal times. But we no longer live in normal times. The current governments of at least two EU Member States, Hungary and Poland, are engaged in normative freelancing with the explicit aim of making future democratic rotation impossible. The rogue governments we see today are undermining the values of the European Union when the EU is more popular in these Member States than their own governments are.
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Joelle Grogan
Brexit is the ‘shock’ that united Europe according to the President-elect of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. There’s certainly an element of truth to this. Despite some occasional signs of disagreement, the EU-27 have given every show of maintaining a unified position in all stages of the Brexit process so far. There may be a tempting political expediency of prioritising a unified position on Brexit (no doubt in ‘protection of the European project as a whole’) above holding individual Member States’ governments’ to account for measures which further and entrench rule of law backsliding. This post aims to outline only some of those challenges, and highlight outstanding issues, in the years of the Brexit process ahead.
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Michael Meyer-Resende
Discussing years of controversies between Polish lawyers and the ruling Law and Justice party, the law professor Marcin Matczak concluded: “We won the legal discussions, but we lost the public debate.” Despite manifest violations of the law, Poland’s ruling party did not lose votes in recent parliamentary elections. In Hungary the situation seems to have been even worse. The public debate was not lost, it hardly took place. That’s a problem.
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Aleksandra Kustra-Rogatka
Is a soft law instrument the right object of assessment in a situation where most commentators on the ongoing rule of law crisis summarise previous EU actions with the statement: too late, too long, too mild? This piece offers a look at the July blueprint for action as a political declaration which provides important general statements regarding the concept of the rule of law within the EU legal system in times of democratic backsliding in Member States.
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Jakub Jaraczewski
In its July 2019 blueprint for action on the rule of law, the European Commission has outlined three main avenues of action on the rule of law in the EU: prevention, response and promotion.
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Armin von Bogdandy
In 2007, the Treaty makers ennobled the former fundamental principles of the Treaty on European Union as European values. Respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law and the protection of human rights have henceforth transcended the sphere of ‘merely’ legal matters. Today, however, this step feeds a perception of a deep crisis: when founding values appear weak or controversial, the entire house may crumble.
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Petra Bárd
Ursula von der Leyen’s promotional tour before her election did not turn out well. She failed to point to substantive rule of law issues, rather she traced back the division between Eastern and Western European state to emotional components. This text takes a look beyond the political rhetoric and explores what the new Commission might entail for the rule of law in the EU.
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Jan Łukomski
In this blog, I argue that the global operations of FIFA affecting the labour rights of individuals fall under the scope of the ICESCR and that FIFA’s responsibility for potential violations of these rights can be engaged. It could also form the basis for Switzerland’s international legal responsibility for a possible violation of a state’s obligation to protect.
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Michele Krech
How does FIFA purport to address and overcome its historical and ongoing record of institutional disregard for, and discrimination against, women? Its primary weapon appears to be the recently adopted Women’s Football Strategy, designed to “empower the organisation to take further concrete steps to address the historic shortfalls in resources and representation, while advocating for a global stand against gender discrimination through playing football”. This may seem an ambitious compound goal, seeking to advance gender equality within FIFA, football and beyond. But what promise does the Women’s Football Strategy actually hold in this regard?
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Daniel Rietiker
The aim of this post is to address the relevance of the European Court of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights for FIFA.
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Wojciech Lewandowski
In its Bauer ruling the CJEU confirmed that the fundamental rights enshrined in the Charter might under certain circumstances become horizontally applicable. This post argues that this development of judgments has implications also for sport federations such as FIFA.
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Raquel Regueiro Dubra
Since Qatar won the hosting rights for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in 2010, recurrent human rights violations of migrants working on building or refurbishing new infrastructure for the tournament have been denounced. As football’s governing body, FIFA should have been aware of the risk that the organisation of the 2022 World Cup could entail human rights violations in the country. In this blog, I investigate how a migrant worker could engage the legal responsibility of the different actors involved in the organisation of the FIFA World Cup 2022.
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Bodo P. Bützler, Lisa Schöddert
We argued that the explicit inclusion of human rights in FIFA ́s Statutes since April 2016 exemplifies how transnational sports law (lex sportiva) can undergo processes of eigen-constitutionalization that contribute to the protection of human rights. Yet, this protection can be effective only when coupled to regimes of reflexivity and enforceability.
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Eleanor Drywood
This blog explores children’s rights violations connected to FIFA’s activities and discusses the slightly disjointed approach taken to this area in the past which tended to be piecemeal, reactive and uncoordinated.
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Antoine Duval, Daniela Heerdt
In this blog we provide a brief introduction to the symposium by going through FIFA’s human rights impacts, policies, and responsibilities.
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Yongxi Chen
While it is certainly beneficial to contrast the SCS to emerging governance mechanisms in the West or principles of civil liberties, it is equally important to connect it to traditional Chinese thoughts which may have influenced the policy-makers. In view of the tendency of associating the SCS with Confucianism, this blog post concentrates on fajia (legalism), a traditional school of political and legal thought that had shaped the mode of governance in imperial China.
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Jeremy Daum
Posing questions about how technology can be used to shape citizens, and change what it means to be a citizen, is of critical and immediate importance, but using China as a blank slate on which we project hypotheticals causes more confusion than clarity. It can distract us from more pressing concerns regarding China, technology or both.
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Francesca Lagioia, Giovanni Sartor
One of the contested issues in this debate relates to similarities and differences between scoring systems in China and in the West – how unique is China? In this post, we will try to reconcile the different perspectives, arguing that both commonalities and differences exist, depending on the adopted level of abstraction. Thus, we shall zoom in the Chines Social Credit System (SCS), examining the features it shares with other systems and point to related issues: it is a scoring system, it is formal, it is ICT based, it is surveillance based, it is opaque and unaccountable. This enables us to distinguish commonalities and differences.
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Joshua Fairfield
The Chinese Social Credit System trends against democracy. It is being built by a competent and motivated anti-democratic system with social control as one stated goal. The more important question though is whether the Chinese machine learning data diet will make Chinese AI stronger than Western AI, and whether the realities of machine learning will undermine Western-style capitalism and liberal democracy. As this essay argues, I think there is a real chance that both will occur.
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Mirjam Mueller
In a capitalist economy, the value of goods tends to be tied to their exchange value. A Social Credit System is, in principle, able to integrate a wider set of behaviours and characteristics that merit reward than the price mechanism. It could hence turn out to be better at valuing feminine-coded tasks, such as care-work. Yet, I argue, feminists should be sceptical with regards to the emancipatory potential of a Social Credit System, as such a system might turn out to merely reproduce dominant forms of valuing rather than promoting real change.
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Primavera de Filippi
To what extent does the Social Credit System comply with the fundamental principles of democratic legal systems and human rights values?
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Jiahong Chen
In this contribution, I will aim to answer the question as to whether a Social Credit System will be more likely to lead a society to a ‘digital republic’ or a ‘digital dictatorship’. After analysing how the Chinese Social Credit System exhibits an enormous gap between policy-making and policy-execution, I argue that instead of a utopia or dystopia, such a system is more likely to lead us to a future of ‘digital bureaucracy’.
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Costica Dumbrava
Good citizenship cannot be captured or fixed by an algorithm, because: (1) people genuinely disagree about what good citizenship is; (2) there are limits to how any conception of good citizenship can be enforced in states that uphold the rule-of-law; and (3) even the best scheme of algorithmic citizenship would fail to achieve its objectives due to the inherent weaknesses of applying algorithms to social affairs.
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Alberto Romele
The thesis I propose is that the reason why the Social Credit System so scandalises Westerners is not because it is contrary to ‘our’ Aristotelian and Arendtian liberal political tradition. Rather, it is precisely because it shows the illusion upon which this tradition is founded. This consists in believing that there is a void at our disposal between people as ‘free’ citizens and the political as a set of laws.
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Cristie Ford
It is analytically problematic and perhaps amoral to proceed as if the Social Credit System concept is a purely technocratic initiative that exists at some metaphysical separation from the regime that spawned it.
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Jelena Dzankic
I ardently oppose the use of surveillance mechanisms in regulating the relationship between individuals and governance structures. As a result of three interrelated dynamics, rather than creating ‘perfect’ citizens, social credit systems are more likely to create calculated and passive subjects.
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John Cheney-Lippold
John Cheney-Lippold removes China from the analysis. Abstracting a social credit system allows him to ask more general questions: What do all social credit systems purportedly want? And most importantly: What is the 'social' in social credit?
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Mathias Siems, Daithí Mac Síthigh
This blog post suggests that it is preferable to regard China's Social Credit Systems as a specific instance of a wider phenomenon. In this respect, China may be considered as a 'normal country' experimenting with rating-based forms of governance.
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Jens van ‘t Klooster
The Chinese Social Credit System, in particular as presented by Western media, is widely seen as the height of technological dystopia. But is that intuition well founded? Wessel Reijers has sought to identify features that he takes to justify a rejection of the Chinese Social Credit System but forgoes an equally critical consideration of the alternatives. Relying on the market, the default solution of Western societies, is not obviously more just.
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Wessel Reijers
The Chinese Social Credit System gets easily likened to dystopian science fiction scenarios in the West, which at least in part seems to be related to the authoritarian character of the Chinese state. But we should assess the Social Credit System in its own right, asking: is the implementation of a Social Credit System leading to a dystopian political system?
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Petra Bárd, Anna Śledzińska-Simon
In this blog post Petra Bárd and Anna Śledzińska-Simon propose the CJEU to introduce “rule of law infringement procedures”, having both a fast-track and a freezing component, as part of a wider “EU rule of law toolbox”.
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Karolina Podstawa
This piece offers a brief overview of such anticipated implications of the judgement, firstly, from the perspective of the European Union and its rule of law, and, on the other hand, from the perspective of Poland.
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Luke Dimitrios Spieker
Commission v. Poland gives the Court not only the opportunity to put ASJP into practice but also to clarify the doctrinal framework for finally addressing the developments in “backsliding” Member States under EU law. This contribution will shed some light on these two uncertainties, suggest ways of how the Court could resolve them and explore the potential repercussions for the EU legal order.
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Femke Gremmelprez
The outcome of C-619/18 Commission v Poland will affect the current rule of law discourse on three grounds: First, it might exert pressure on the Council to finally act in respect of the Art. 7(1) TEU procedure against Poland. Secondly, the prospect of pecuniary sanctions in light of an Art. 260 TFEU procedure would create an incentive for Poland to (partially) redress the situation. And lastly, the effective functioning of the preliminary ruling procedure could be endangered.
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Maciej Taborowski, Pawel Marcisz
While the judgment in C-619/18 Commission v. Poland is unlikely to deliver a surprise as to the assessment of the Polish ‘reforms’, interesting issues are emerging in relation to the effects of the judgment for the Polish authorities. This piece starts from a brief discussion why the case seems lost for Poland, proceeding then to analysis whether and how the judgment should be implemented.
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Jakub Jaraczewski
Next month the Court of Justice of the European Union will make a decision that is likely going to feature in the future textbooks on European Union law. In the case C-618/19 Commission v Poland, the Court will tackle the topic of judicial independence and the question of whether the standards of the rule of law were violated by the Polish government and parliament and thus address a critical element of European Union’s legal system.
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Dieter Gosewinkel
Was bedeutet Geschichtlichkeit für das Verständnis des Verfassungsstaats? Im Jahre 1972 stellte sich ein Professor des Staatsrechts an der Universität Bielefeld dieses Thema und entwickelte Überlegungen zum Verhältnis von Rechts- und Geschichtswissenschaft.
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Mirjam Künkler, Tine Stein
Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde’s work has received extensive scholarly attention beyond Germany in recent years, with incisive discussions of his legal and constitutional theory, his theorization of the relation between politics, law and religion, and his intellectual mentors. But amid Brexit and the run-up to the European elections in May 2019, it is worthwhile returning to some of the finest moments of Böckenförde the public intellectual.
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Anna Katharina Mangold
Selten gelingt einem Juristen eine Formulierung, die auch jenseits der Disziplin und im öffentlichen Diskurs derartigen Widerhall erzeugt.
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Mathias Hong
Whenever Carl Schmitt is discussed, Böckenförde’s reading of him should be taken into account.
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Mathias Hong
Wann immer Carl Schmitts Lehren rezipiert werden, darf eine Auseinandersetzung mit Böckenfördes Deutung nicht fehlen.
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Gertrude Lübbe-Wolff
The current surge of populist movements, the anti-democratic reflections of a wide-spread feeling that something is going fundamentally wrong (even) in democratic societies – are they symptoms of fundamental deficits in representative democracy? Can Böckenförde`s theory of democracy help us understand what is going on?
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Joachim Wieland
Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde hat den Sozialstaat als historisch zwingende Weiterentwicklung des bürgerlichen Rechtsstaats verstanden und daraus weitreichende Folgerungen für die Interpretation des Grundgesetzes gezogen, die bis heute von nicht zu unterschätzender Aktualität sind.
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Ute Sacksofsky
Eine wichtige Facette des Wirkens von Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde ist die Entfaltung des freiheitlichen Charakters des Grundgesetzes. Sein zentrales Anliegen war es, Freiheitlichkeit nicht nur auf Angehörige des Mainstream zu beschränken, sondern auch die Freiheit der Andersdenkenden zu schützen. Gerade in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren war diese konsequente Liberalität von kaum zu unterschätzender Bedeutung, denn es gab nicht viele, die sich in diesem Sinne äußerten.
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Christoph Enders
Gewöhnlich erregt die Neu-Kommentierung einer Gesetzesnorm, selbst wenn es sich um eine zentrale Vorschrift des Grundgesetzes handelt, kein größeres Aufsehen jenseits der Fachwelt. Anders 2003: In einem Beitrag für die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung griff Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde Matthias Herdegens Kommentierung des Art. 1 GG, der Verfassungsbestimmung, die die Unantastbarkeit der Würde des Menschen proklamiert, empört und mit scharfen Worten an.
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Benjamin Rusteberg
Böckenförde entwickelte seine wesentlichen Positionen zu Grundrechtstheorie, Grundrechtsinterpretation und Grundrechtsdogmatik in vier Aufsätzen, die er über 30 Jahren veröffentlichte. Diese vier Aufsätze behandeln letztlich alle dasselbe Grundthema, dem er sich jedoch in jedem der Aufsätze aus einer anderen Perspektive nähert und so immer weitere Facetten dieses Themas aufdeckt.
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Frieder Guenther
Wie sind die ungewöhnlich scharfen Reaktionen auf Böckenfördes Debattenbeiträge zu erklären? Und wie war er zu seinen Ideen gelangt, die offensichtlich nicht dem Mainstream in der Staatsrechtslehre entsprachen? Frieder Günther über Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde und die bundesdeutsche Staatsrechtslehre.
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Anna Katharina Mangold, Benjamin Rusteberg
Am 24. Februar dieses Jahres verstarb Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde. Böckenförde prägte wie kaum ein anderer die staatsrechtlichen Debatten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, als Wissenschaftler, Bundesverfassungsrichter und public intellectual. Mit diesem Symposium möchte der Verfassungsblog Werk und Person Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenfördes würdigen und seiner gedenken.
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Carolyn Moser
Stories on the civil–military interface in the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) rarely have a happy ending. They tell us that bureaucratic efficiency and operational effectiveness could be enhanced if the civil and military branches of EU security and defence were better streamlined. This blogpost challenges this negative narrative and argues that a significant civil–military nexus—that is the interconnectedness of civilian and military elements in the CSDP—has already materialized.
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Anna Mrozek
The intergovernmental component based on international law principles remains quite strong in this policy field. However, the Council appears as a key decision-making body with regard to launching EU military missions, and determining the structural details (command and control). This certainly raises the question on which level of the multi-level legal system effective rule-of-protection mechanisms are in fact embedded.
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Jelena von Achenbach
While most legal scholarship and the Bundesverfassunsgericht hold that Member States remain self-governed in the field of military policy, the New Defence Policy illustrates that this is not the case. PESCO shows how the New Defence Policy is subjecting the Member States to regulatory measures which are generated and enforced through EU political processes that clearly leave behind the intergovernmental form.
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Falk Ostermann
This blog post wants to raise two objections against politico-integrative euphoria: first, I agree with the view that the current initiatives are marginal in comparison to the EU’s needs for becoming a flexible, ready, and willing autonomous security and defense actor; and second, I will expound that autonomy still matters though in a different way than it did before, posing a particular challenge to EU actorness.
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Moritz Weiss
To what extent does PESCO suggest novel ways and rules of decision-making that are neither supranational nor intergovernmental? While I share the general view that the differentiated integration of PESCO shapes a certain middle ground between the two forms of policy-making, I argue that we should preserve the distinction between supranational and intergovernmental rules since it still makes a difference in political life.
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Sebastian Graf von Kielmansegg
Grand labels like a “European Defence Union” are rather misleading. In particular, there is no “European Army” in sight. For the foreseeable future, there is no return to the European Defence Community of the 1950s. A more realistic solution is a cooperative network of national armies, systematically using the concept of pooling & sharing.
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Theodora Kostakopoulou
The Eurozenship debate has generated a wealth of ideas and [...]
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Stefan Korte
Investments in enterprises, which are relevant for public security and services, are an important source of growth, jobs and innovations. But such investments can be detrimental to the security of supply for the community members – for example, when a state owned enterprise, which is located in a third state, gets control over the only electricity station in a Member State.
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Sven Simon
How to allocate the powers to collect information, surveil and restrict investment between the EU and the Member States? This question has far reaching ramifications for the underlying political relationship between the EU and its Member States.
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Age Bakker
In the face of rising global tensions the free flow of direct investment capital across borders is in dispute. The self-evidence of free capital movements since the start of the euro can no longer be taken for granted. Concerns have emerged about the intentions of foreign investors acquiring domestic key industries.
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Mavluda Sattorova
In its white paper published in July 2018, the government has acknowledged the key role of foreign investment for the UK’s growth and development, whilst also noting that ‘a small number of investment activities, mergers and transactions in the UK economy pose a risk to our national security.’ The aim of the proposed reforms is to ensure that in these cases the UK government is able to intervene in order to prevent or mitigate such risks.
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Joanna Warchol
The EU has one of the world's most open investment regimes, and collectively EU Member States have the fewest restrictions in the world on foreign direct investment. A proposal for a Union Act on the Screening of foreign investment in strategic sectors was tabled by ten Members of International Trade Committee (INTA) at the European Parliament (EP). The inter-institutional “provisional” agreement is going to be voted by the full House of the EP on the 14th of February 2019.
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Teoman M. Hagemeyer
The proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and [...]
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Dominik Eisenhut
The national investment screening mechanisms for the defence and security [...]
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Philipp Stompfe
On 19 December 2018, the German government has passed amendments [...]
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Thomas Papadopoulos
Screening of foreign direct investments could take place through European [...]
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Steffen Hindelang, Andreas Moberg
Volvo Personvagnar AB, Kuka, Aixtron, OSRAM Licht, Daimler, Saxo Bank, [...]
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Liav Orgad
European Union (EU) citizenship is in crisis. If the Eurozenship debate, composed of experts on EU citizenship, is analogized to a doctor’s diagnosis, the outcome is more extensively polarized than initially thought—a chronic disease, not just a temporary disorder. As I follow the debate, it is no longer clear what the problem is—there seem to be too many, real and imaginary—or how to heal it. Some issues seem to be “genetic,” part of the EU’s DNA, yet others resemble a concrete illness that may be cured, so the argument goes, by a “doctor's prescription,” which in law means a legal design.
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Willem Maas
While perhaps appealing as a gesture towards addressing problems such the anticipated deprivation of rights following Brexit, statelessness, or wide variation in Member State naturalization and denaturalization policies, these proposals are impracticable in the absence of international recognition of EU citizenship (which would normally require recognizing the EU as a state, which in turn should normally mean that the Member States cede competence over citizenship), challenge deeply rooted national stories of peoplehood with an emerging story of European peoplehood, and risk undermining fragile public support for EU rights.
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Oliver Garner
I would argue, however, that Kostakopolou’s argument for a “co-determined Eurozenship” would not go far enough in realising the potential of the status. This post develops this argument first by grounding the normative appeal of autonomous EU citizenship in the context of Member State withdrawal. Next, it is suggested that the co-determination of the status by Member States and the EU institutions would be incompatible with the current legitimacy foundation of the EU. The post concludes by considering the more radical alternative of EU citizenship being made autonomous so that individuals can exercise constituent power to re-establish these foundations of the European Union constitutional order.
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Dimitry Vladimirovich Kochenov
In this brief contribution I turn to Kostakopoulou’s text and briefly show that her proposal: 1) ignores the core aspects of EU citizenship’s added value; 2) is entirely unnecessary; 3) is not legally neat; and 4) is dangerous for the very nature of EU citizenship today as it essentially pleads for the recreation of the ‘suffocating bonds’ the EU was created to ease, only at a scale much more scary than Greece, Ireland or France, when taken one by one. Besides, it ignores every single outstanding problem actually posed by EU citizenship law as it stands.
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Jelena Dzankic
I would be most happy if Dora Kostakopoulou’s vision of an autonomous EU citizenship came into being. However, there are two key normative and practical pitfalls of her proposal. First, the decoupling of statuses that she proposes poses the risk of ‘free riding’ on EU citizenship rights for those who had, at some point enjoyed, and then lost, this status. Second, having in mind the different definitions of residence across the Member States, linking the acquisition of EU citizenship to this status is like putting a roof on a house with uneven walls.
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Jean-Thomas Arrighi
I agree with Dora that political theorists should not be afraid of radicalism, as long as the proposed reform effectively achieves clearly defined and desirable goals (the utilitarian test) and is consistent with fundamental norms (the principled approach). Richard Bellamy already pointed to the potentially negative consequences of what he describes as a form of “mushroom reasoning” on some of the core principles underlying the European project, such as that of reciprocity. While I broadly share Richard’s conclusion, my main concern here is that Dora’s proposal may not entirely satisfy the utilitarian test requirements. In other words, instead of killing seven flies at a blow, it may end up killing none.
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Jules Lepoutre
A European citizenship model autonomous from Member States’ nationality cannot work within the context of free movement. Should we end the debate, then, and take Richard Bellamy’s side? Not necessarily. Dora Kostakopoulou’s Eurozenship can be both improved and approved, and below I offer a few options for doing it.
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Eva Ersbøll
I agree with Dora’s diagnosis, and I agree that the EU – and EU Member States – should act to rectify shortcomings of the Union citizenship construction that largely unconstrained allows inequality in regard to access to Union citizenship and Union citizenship rights. However, I cannot subscribe to Dora’s solution. In my opinion, the suggested reform is not the right cure to the shortcomings of the present Union citizenship practice.
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Rainer Bauböck
Dora Kostakopoulou rightly spots some deficits in the current construction of EU citizenship, but she asks the wrong questions about these deficits and her answers would therefore aggravate rather than resolve the problems. She asks: “Why should statelessness lead to the loss of Eurozenship?” The better question would be “Why should the EU tolerate that Member States produce stateless people?” She proposes “that all children born in the EU, who might not be able to inherit a Member State nationality, would automatically be EU citizens”. The better proposal would be to make sure instead that all children born and raised in a Member State become citizens of that state and thereby EU citizens.
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Daniel Thym
In the debate between Dora Kostakopoulou and Richard Bellamy, I agree with most of the propositions put forward by Dora in her introductory paragraphs: that EU citizenship allows former enemies to meet and live in harmony; that nationalistic populism should be rejected; and that the prospect of Brexit remains depressing. Nonetheless, I disagree with her proposal to move towards an autonomous EU citizenship.
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Dimitris Christopoulos
Dissociating Union citizenship from Member States nationality law recognizes and consolidates the assumption that people holding a genuine link to the EU have the right to possess its citizenship, regardless of whether their state of residence is willing to offer it to them. I believe that granting the status of European citizenship beyond Member State nationality, in a period noted by the emergence of far-right populism targeting migration as the major threat for European civilizational unity is a win-win solution both for its bearers and the EU itself.
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Richard Bellamy
Dora Kostakopoulou makes a spirited case for an autonomous status of European Union citizenship – one that is not related to the possession of citizenship of a Member State. However, while I sympathise with some of the concerns lying behind this proposal, I regard it as a misguided way of addressing them that is based in its turn on a misunderstanding of the nature of citizenship and of the EU and its achievements – albeit one shared by a number of the EU’s prime actors as well as certain of its foes.
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Theodora Kostakopoulou
Refusing to believe that political constraints outweigh political possibilities in the present historical conjuncture, I argue that the time is ripe for the disentanglement of Eurozenship from Member State nationality. Since the mid-1990s I have defended this reform. But my argument for an autonomous Eurozenship in this debate unfolds in two steps which are presented in the subsequent two sections. In the first section, I explore the incremental disentanglement of EU citizenship from the nationality law of Member States, while in the second section I reconstruct Eurozenship, that is, I present the configuration of an autonomous EU citizenship law which can co-exist with EU citizenship cum Member State nationality.
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Tomasz Tadeusz Koncewicz
When is the constitutional design of any (domestic, international, supranational) polity in error? On the most general level such critical juncture obtains when polity’s founding document (treaty, convention, constitution) protects against the dangers that no longer exist or does not protect against the dangers that were not contemplated by the Founders. While discussion of the evolution of human rights and international actors in response to social change (LGBT, euthanasia, abortion) is well documented, such evolution with regard to political change (transition from one sort of government to another) is less well documented. Constitutions not only constitute but should also protect against de-constitution. For supranational legal order to avoid a deadlock of „being in error” in the above sense, the systemic threats coming from within the polity’s component parts must be recognised and constitutional design be changed accordingly.
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Dieter Grimm
Can the democratic constitutions of Hungary and Poland survive an autocratic majority? Hardly. Hungary and Poland seem to be lost for liberal and democratic constitutionalism. At least for the time being, the next question is how democratic constitutionalism can prevent an autocratic majority. The task is to make it difficult for an autocratic parliamentary majority to capture the institutions of critique and control of government and to undermine separation of powers.
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Jelena von Achenbach
Being a democrat means accepting that the law is not a very durable sword against authoritarianism. Democratic law bends and submits to the majority. When push comes to shove, it lacks the capacity to defy anti-democratic, authoritarian majorities. Of course, this does not mean that legal mechanisms and instruments are meaningless in this context. They can work against and impede the rise of anti-pluralist, illiberal and anti-democratic political movements. But it is important to acknowledge that legal interventions and prohibitive measures that target anti-liberal, anti-democratic political platforms also pose risks. They may undermine what they are supposed to protect: a free and egalitarian political process that is based on open political competition, pluralism and a free public discourse.
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Sujit Choudhry
Let us make a plea for modesty. Constitutional democrats need to be clear-eyed and realistic about what good constitutional design can do. We need to steer a middle course between constitutional idealism and nihilism. Constitutional idealists argue that thoughtful and intelligent constitutional design can largely eliminate the risk posed by populism; constitutional nihilists respond by arguing that there is little, if anything, that constitutional design can do in the face of the populist challenge that secures victory at the ballot box and captures the state from within.
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Anna von Notz
When it comes to Poland and Hungary, everyone is talking about the judiciary, about the independence of the courts, about the rule of law. But hardly anyone talks about parliaments. Yet they are at the heart of our democracies. And they are no less at risk. This became clear in the third panel of our workshop, which dealt with the electoral system, party regulation and opposition rights in Hungary and Poland. What may sound technical at first glance are surprisingly effective instruments in the hands of autocrats. It is precisely with these instruments that the governments of both countries have set the course for a “democracy” that primarily benefits the ruling parties and undermines political plurality.
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Mathias Hong
Freedom of speech, media freedom and the freedom of civil society are the lifeblood of democracy. As far as the threats to freedom of speech, media and civil society are concerned, from a normative perspective, the problems of Hungary and Poland are decidedly not external to western democracies. The question arises of how resilient constitutions are or can be made in this matter, whereby political viewpoint discrimination takes a center role in the conetxt of not only constitutional resilience but also our European values.
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Michaela Hailbronner
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.
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Gábor Attila Tóth
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.
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Susan Rose-Ackerman
Those who win elections want to remain in power after the next election. They have an incentive to undermine the credibility of the opposition and to use the tools of political power to do so. Incumbents who aggrandize power and demonize opponents can produce situations where office holders are less and less threatened by credible organized opponents. The opposition, in turn, seeks to gain power not only by espousing alternative policies but also by questioning the integrity and competence of incumbents.
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Christoph Grabenwarter
Resilience of a body in general describes the ability to cope with an attack on its immune system. What is undisputed in psychology or biology is also valid for legal bodies, in particular for states. The term “constitutional resilience” obviously refers to the abilities of constitutions to cope with attacks and in the end to cope with a real crisis. In searching for answers on what constitutional resilience is, this article asks three questions: Where are the vulnerable parts of a democratic state governed by the rule of law? How can one protect the vulnerability of the state or some of its features? If vulnerable parts of a Constitution are properly protected – are the democratic state and its constitution safe?
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Mattias Kumm
The problem with movements and parties spearheaded by “populist” leaders such as Putin, Erdoğan, Orbán, Kaczyński or Trump is not that they happen to embrace more nationally focused policies that metropolitan elites widely condemn as unjust, ineffective or otherwise misguided. Nor is the problem that they embrace a confrontational political style and uncouth rhetoric at odds with the mores of reflexively enlightened society in political capitals across liberal constitutional democracies. Neither of those features would constitute a constitutional threat justifying sustained reflections on constitutional resilience. The problem with electoral successes of populist authoritarian nationalists is that they pose a fundamental threat to liberal constitutional democracy.
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Kriszta Kovács, Mattias Kumm, Maximilian Steinbeis, Gábor Attila Tóth
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.
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Robert Howse
Israel's Nation-State Law can be seen as an expression of the kind of democratic authoritarian populism that appears to be spreading globally. But it is no time to give up the game and there are examples that show how it is possible to counter the narrative of democratic authoritarian populism.
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Yofi Tirosh
Much has been, and will be, written about what the Basic Law – Jewish Nation-State does, but attention is also due to how it does what it does. . The use of language in the Nation’s Law is so troubling in its sophist concealment of the meanings of the norms it encodes, that it creates, perhaps, injustice of the second order.
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Hassan Jabareen
The opponents of Israel's Nation-State Law can be roughly divided into two camps. The first camp views the law and especially its Article 1 as racist while the second camp cosiders it as conflicting with basic democratic values because it does not include the right of equality. This group also views Article 1 as simply declarative, as from the moment of its establishment the State of Israel has defined itself as a Jewish state. How does Israeli law perceive racism? And how tenable is the proposition of the Law being merely declaratory?
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Karin Loevy
The Nation-State Law saga revealed in Israel’s constitutional politics three constitutional narratives while only two are conventionally recognized. . This third narrative is usually disregarded by the Israeli Jewish public and perceived as marginal or even as an existential threat. But in the debates about the Nation-State Law the force of this narrative became apparent and it is about time to shed light on the presence and the value of this alternative narrative.
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Tamar Hostovsky Brandes
The enactment of Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People on July 19th, 2018, triggered an intense public debate, not only in Israel. But what are the implications of this law? In particular, how is it likely to affect minorities, the right of Israel’s Arab-Palestinian minority to internal self-determination, and the possible development of all-encompassing social solidarity in Israel?
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Cathryn Costello, Elspeth Guild
In that 2015 State of the Union address, Juncker famously asserted that his Commission would be ‘very political’. ‘Political’ in Juncker’s words, meant facing up to challenges, not just ‘business as usual’. Rather, it was ‘time to speak frankly about the issues facing the European Union.’ In spite of this apparent rhetorical and institutional commitment, our central argument is that the Commission’s weakness during the refugee crisis meant it underperformed not only when measured against the aim of being more ‘political’ (in particular if this means correctly identifying and dealing with the sources of real political problems), but even if we envisage for it a more modest technocratic role.
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Joris Larik
The shift away from a technocratic, apolitical European Commission towards a politicized one is a momentous development of the European Union. In the Common Commercial Policy and the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the EU has constitutionalized and institutionalized different degrees of accountability mechanisms in this special domain of foreign affairs
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Marco Goldoni
The Juncker Commission began its mandate in the aftermath of a deep crisis affecting the Euro-zone. But was his political Commission able to open up economic and monetary policies to political accountability?
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Kenneth Armstrong
At first sight, it may neither be easy nor obvious to assimilate the conduct of the Brexit negotiations to the idea of a ‘political Commission’. A closer look, however, reveals that Juncker's personnel and organisational choices regarding the Brexit negotiations fit that pattern more readily.
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Dimitry Vladimirovich Kochenov
The tale of the ‘political Commission’ is not only bound to weaken the Union’s ability to meet the outstanding challenges touching upon its institutional core but has fundamentally undermined the EU’s action in an area of most fundamental concern: the unfulfilled promise of democracy and the rule of law for all European citizens.
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Alberto Alemanno
This time was supposed 'to be different', at least this was the motto of the 2014 European Parliament elections campaign. With less than a year before the next European elections, the time is ripe to examine how different this EU political cycle has actually been.
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Mark Dawson
The idea of a political European Commission may be the defining idea of the Juncker Presidency. It was the idea that gave Mr. Juncker the Presidency in the first place. As he stated in 2015, he wanted a 'very political Commission'. This ambition raises many questions, particularly: What does the political Commission mean? Did it work and should it be repeated?
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Armin von Bogdandy, Piotr Bogdanowicz, Iris Canor, Matthias Schmidt, Maciej Taborowski
The illiberal turn in Europe has many facets. Of particular concern are Member States in which ruling majorities uproot the independence of the judiciary. For reasons well described in the Verfassungsblog, the current focus is on Poland. Since the Polish development is emblematic for a broader trend, more is at stake than the rule of law in that Member State alone (as if that were not enough). If the Polish emblematic development is not resisted, illiberal democracies might start co-defining the European constitutional order, in particular, its rule of law-value in Article 2 TEU. Accordingly, the conventional liberal self-understanding of Europe could easily erode, with tremendous implications.
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David Kosař
In a nutshell, I argue that despite several conceptual problems in CJEU’s understanding of judicial independence, it showed a healthy dose of judicial statesmanship in Celmer. As neither the preliminary reference procedure nor the fundamental right to the fair trial are good “vehicles” for addressing the Polish structural judicial reforms, there is a limit what the CJEU could do. The foundations of judicial independence are political and thus the real constitutional moment will be the combo of the next Polish parliamentary and presidential elections.
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Agnieszka Frąckowiak-Adamska
It can be argued that the individual assessment required by the Aranyosi judgment is not the proper test in the LM case due to three reasons. Firstly, regular control reverses the logic of the mutual trust developed by the CJEU. Secondly, there is a substantial difference between fundamental rights and the independence of judiciary. Infringements of the latter require other legal mechanisms of protection. Thirdly, the Polish institutional changes affecting judicial independence may influence all 26 EU acts providing for mutual recognition of judgments. A broader perspective should be taken.
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Wouter van Ballegooij, Petra Bárd
Surrender cases are litmus tests for the EU’s approach towards the enforcement of the rule of law in the Member States. Without judicial independence and other elements of the rule of law concept, EU law will cease to be operational, whether in the context of the single market or outside of it. Aranyosi and LM are the beginning of a long journey. In a more general sense, these cases demonstrate that ultimately – as in all incomplete constitutional systems – it is the courts which play a crucial role in carving out and applying rule of law and fundamental rights exceptions.
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Kim Lane Scheppele
A craving for the rule of law can be satisfied in two ways. You can invoke it legally through a case-by-case checking of its presence in any particular instance (though of course, retail assessment means you’re at the mercy of the court near you) or you can better guarantee a steady and plentiful delivery by contracting wholesale, thus providing a legal constraint on the supplier’s ability to deviate. This week’s decision of the European Court of Justice in the “Celmer” case (Case C-216/18 PPU, Minister for Justice and Equality v LM) tells us that the rule of law is now available retail in the European Union, but it is not now – and probably can never be – available wholesale.
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Stanisław Biernat
Immediately after it was published, the judgment in Case C‑216/18 PPU Minister for Justice and Equality v. LM generated many varied assessments in Poland. Some commentators treated the judgment as a general vote of no confidence against the Polish judiciary whilst others (including the Minister of Justice) found it to be a defeat of the Irish court. The judgment is used as an argument in current political disputes. Leaving aside, however, the aforementioned determinants, it is to be concluded that because of its approach to certain significant issues, the judgment does not yield to an unequivocal interpretation, and its actual consequences are still hard to anticipate.
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Catherine Dupré
In many ways, this case illustrates EU constitutionalism at its best: despite not being obliged to do so, the Irish judge made a request under Article 267 TFEU, bringing together concerns raised by the pending Article 7 TEU procedure and the more technical and narrow issue of fair trial under Article 47 EU Charter. While the ECJ follows the path opened in Aranyosi for assessing the ‘real risk of breach’ under Article 47 EU Charter, in interpreting that provision it manages to weave in the wider Article 7 TEU contextual concerns as well, thereby considerably strengthening the constitutional status of the right to a fair trial.
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Matteo Bonelli
Much was at stake in the LM / Deficiencies decision. The Court of Justice was called to strike a complex balance between different interests, a balance that was bound to be controversial. While the ruling was not the defining ‘constitutional moment’, this moment might be only postponed. The Court made it clear that ‘red lines’ already exist in European constitutional law, and that it is willing to operationalize them. Nonetheless, it should not be forgotten that the Court should not replace the ‘political game’ – a game that is clearly on.
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Matej Avbelj
The diagnosis is grim. So, the CJEU should have done something! If the political class is reluctant, the law in the hands of the CJEU must be put to play. The conventional narrative has it that this has always been the case. This was the gist of the hope laid in the anticipated LM case. The CJEU has not lived up to those high expectations. This is not a landmark ruling and neither will its impact be of seismic constitutional proportions. The reason for that is, as we shall see, not the reluctance of the CJEU to address the problem seriously, but a plain fact that the expectations have been simply too high. While this is, most likely, as good as it can judicially get, the LM decision has still not brought us what we have been looking for. Nevertheless, we might be at least an inch closer toward that goal.
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Pál Sonnevend
The LM judgment is certainly not the end, rather the beginning of a development. Its teaching is not that systemic deficiencies of the judiciary do not matter. Rather, such deficiencies shall be addressed systemically. Such systemic solutions may force the respective member state to adjust without making its participation in the EU abruptly impossible.
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Mattias Wendel
The much-awaited judgment in the case LM (also known as Celmer) is a landmark decision. The European Court of Justice acknowledged for the very first time that the essence of the right to a fair trial prohibits, under certain circumstances, the surrender of individuals from one EU Member State to another. Against the backdrop of the rule of law crisis in Poland and elsewhere, this acknowledgment is certain to be seen as a big step towards strengthening the rule of law in Europe. At the same time, the decision falls short of the expectations of those who wanted the Court of Justice to assess the independence of the Polish judiciary in substance.
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Laura Gómez Abeja
Spanish counter-terrorist legislation was originally aimed at fighting local terrorism of a nationalist nature. In Spain, the phenomenon was so present during the constituent process that the Constitution itself included a provision that allows certain fundamental rights to be suspended for specific persons, “in relation to the investigations corresponding to the actions of armed bands or terrorist elements” (art. 55.2 EC –Spanish Constitution-).
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Benjamin Rusteberg
Ever since 9/11, a multitude of laws against terrorism have been adopted, both on the federal level and on the level of the Länder (which in Germany are mainly responsible for the police). The 2002 “Law on suppression of international terrorism” was only the first of many to follow: immediately after 9/11, the Federal Ministry of the Interior seized the opportunity to introduce counterterrorist measures that had been on its agenda for quite some time.
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Bérénice Boutin
In the span of three years, France has adopted no [...]
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Daniel Sprick
When HU Bo posted his tweet in July 2014, he [...]
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Margarite Zoeteweij
There is almost not a day that passes without terrorism [...]
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Arianna Vedaschi
State secrecy provides an interesting viewpoint on national and supranational [...]
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Martin Scheinin
On 24 January 2018, the Helsinki District Court of 24 January 2018 ruled on an alleged plan by three Muslim men, all Finnish nationals, to travel to Syria and join the ongoing armed conflict there. The prosecutor chose to base the charges on Section 2, Preparation of an offence to be committed with terrorist aim, under the construction that joining the armed opposition forces in Syria so as to engage in hostilities against the official army of the al-Assad regime, could have resulted in death or injury to members of the Syrian military forces.
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Rumyana Grozdanova
Writing extra-judicially, Lord Justice Brown once described the typical court [...]
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Christophe Paulussen
Terrorism is all over the news these days but not [...]
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Kim Lane Scheppele, Laurent Pech
Poland and Hungary have governments that are systematically undermining constitutional checks on the power of their leaders and deliberately turning all state institutions into arms of the party. Those cases demand that the EU’s full powers be urgently directed to averting a full-blown autocracy within the EU. What can be done?
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Kim Lane Scheppele, Laurent Pech
When Hungary first starting doing down the path to autocracy after 2010, EU officials were quick to recall the “failed” case of Austria in 1999. Didn’t the EU learn from its experience?
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Kim Lane Scheppele, Laurent Pech
According to Frans Timmermans, speaking on 17 September 2017, “the situation in Hungary is not comparable to the situation in Poland” implying that Poland is far worse off than Hungary in the rule of law department. But is that true?
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Kim Lane Scheppele, Laurent Pech
Despite the Commission’s best and repeated efforts, the rule of law situation in Poland has indeed been going from bad to worse under the stewardship of Poland’s de facto leader and its “Law and Justice” governing party.
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Kim Lane Scheppele, Laurent Pech
Why have some EU officials called Article 7 the EU’s “nuclear option” – and is Article 7 really that powerful?
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Kim Lane Scheppele, Laurent Pech
Does the Commission have the competence under the Treaties to monitor compliance with the rule of law in countries suspected of rule of law backsliding, even in the event of a breach in an area where the Member States act autonomously?
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Kim Lane Scheppele, Laurent Pech
On 26 January 2018, Jarosław Kaczyński, Poland’s de facto leader (which in itself is a rather unhealthy sign in a democracy), claimed that what he refers to as judicial “reforms” would not be an EU matter but rather an “internal competence guaranteed by EU law”.
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Kim Lane Scheppele, Laurent Pech
What would happen to the principle of mutual trust? Take requests for extradition under the European Arrest Warrant: Member States would be required to send anyone on their territory (including their own nationals) to a non-rule-of-law abiding Member State.
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Kim Lane Scheppele, Laurent Pech
The notion of backsliding implies that a country was once better, and then regressed. How does that happen? Turns out, it follows a well-organised script that can be summed up in 8 steps.
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Kim Lane Scheppele, Laurent Pech
Is the rule of law too vague a notion to be enforced by the EU against its Member States? Discussing possible sanctions against Poland over its rule of law issues, the Bulgarian prime minister recently claimed that the rule of law is too “vague” to be measured before adding: “Every time you want to hurt someone’s feelings, you put [on the table] ‘the rule of law’.”
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Uladzislau Belavusau
Twelve scholars from eight countries have offered their critical perspectives on the legal governance of historical memory, categorised under the common heading of “memory laws”. One aspect crystalized by this symposium is that despite their multiple forms (punitive and declarative, constitutional and administrative, legislative and judicial, etc.), the adoption of such memory regulations has been on a tremendous rise in Europe.
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Ioanna Tourkochoriti
An important area where law and historical memory intersect is the use of memory laws to express collective disapproval of crimes against humanity. These laws, although based on a compelling need to use the symbolic dimension of the law in order to condemn the lowest points of history, can have dangerous unintended consequences for freedom of speech.
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Tomasz Tadeusz Koncewicz
The past has not been spared from the “politics of resentment” engulfing Poland for the last two years. The peculiar (mis)understanding and political instrumentalization of history by Polish rulers provide an important cautionary tale against one-sided partisan historical debate as it impacts how we remember the past and see ourselves today.
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Jiří Přibáň
History is a battlefield of present politics. Dealing with the past reveals the power struggles and strategies of the present. Past events are both denounced and glorified by political agents of the present hoping to weaken their enemies. However, the past also contains injustices and political crimes and any decision not to deal with them in the present only reaffirms them and confirms the unjust status of their victims. Not to contend with the past injustices thus compromises the legitimacy of the present system of positive law. To deal, or not to deal with the past, indeed, is an important question. However, it is also inseparable from questions of which past is to be dealt with and how.
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Marina Bán
With this blogpost for the T.M.C. Asser Institute – Verfassungsblog joint symposium, I would like to draw attention to another facet in the legal governance of historical memory, that regarding the use of totalitarian symbols of the past. This issue remains particularly pertinent in the region of Central and Eastern Europe in parallel to the widely discussed decline in the rule of law.
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Gábor Halmai
After the 1989-90 democratic transition, Poland and Hungary were the first to introduce the institutional framework of constitutional democracy and of transitional justice. For a number of reasons, including a lack of democratic traditions and constitutional culture, after the 2010 parliamentary elections, liberal constitutionalism became a victim of the authoritarian efforts of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party. In April 2013, the government as part of the Fourth Amendment to the Fundamental Law adopted Article U, which supplements detailed provisions on the country’s communist past and the statute of limitations in the body text of the constitution.
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Maria Mälksoo
The Ukrainian parliament Verkhovna Rada adopted four ‘memory laws’ shortly after the Maidan revolution in the spring of 2015: One contains a legislation criminalizing both Nazi and Communist totalitarian regimes, prohibiting the propaganda of their symbols; two laws commemorating, respectively, Ukraine’s fighters for twentieth-century independence movement and the victory over Nazism during the Second World War, and a law guaranteeing access to archives of repressive Soviet-era organs. These laws raise fundamental questions about the legitimate defense of democracy in times of political transformation and war.
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Nikolay Koposov
The notion of memory laws emerged as recently as the 2000s, and it can be used in a narrow sense of denoting enactments criminalizing certain statements about the past (such as Holocaust denial) and in a broad sense as including any legal regulations of historical memory and commemorative practices. Such regulations are by no means a recent phenomenon.
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Eric Heinze
Recent years have witnessed a surge of studies on law and historical memory, often authored by comparative constitutional scholars. Such scholarship frequently takes ‘particularist’ forms, through studies of dramatic events within specific states or regions. As part of the T.M.C. Asser Institute – Verfassungsblog symposium on memory laws, however, this essay asks: Can the discipline be characterised as a whole? If so, in what ways and with what aims?
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Grażyna Baranowska
Recently, Uladzislau Belavusau with his post about a de-communization law in Poland launched a joint ASSER-Verfassungsblog symposium on what he has coined "mnemonic constitutionalism". Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias followed up on this topic by mapping the landscape of various memory laws in the recent years and unfolding the ongoing challenges to fundamental rights, joined by Anna Wójcik with an exploration of how memory laws affect state security. With this contribution, I would like to discuss how the European Court of Human Rights has failed to offer redress to the families of the victims of the Katyń massacres seeking to receive information about their loved ones. I will compare the Polish case-study with the Spanish and South-American practice concerning the “right to the truth”, thus adding this concept to the array of topics discussed under the umbrella of “memory laws” and mnemonic constitutionalism.
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Anna Wójcik
Recently, Uladzislau Belavusau with his post about a de-communization law in Poland launched a joint ASSER-Verfassungsblog symposium on what he has coined "mnemonic constitutionalism". Aleksandra Gliszczynska-Grabias followed up on this topic by mapping the landscape of various memory laws in the recent years and unfolding the ongoing challenges to fundamental rights. With this essay, I would like to highlight another aspect of mnemonic constitutionalism, affecting various understandings of security.
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Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias
Recently, Uladzislau Belavusau with his post about a de-communization law in Poland launched a joint ASSER-Verfassungsblog symposium on what he has coined "mnemonic constitutionalism". Drawing on his idea of mnemonic constitutionalism, I would like to join this discussion by mapping the general landscape of how memory laws have recently been manufacturing the socio-constitutional climate in various states.
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Uladzislau Belavusau
Memory politics and protection of ethnic minorities have not received enough attention in the discussion on the decline of the rule of law in Poland and Hungary. Poland has recently supplied a paradigmatic example.
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Paul Blokker
While the developments in Poland and in Hungary clearly have to do with a move away from legal constitutionalism, I am not so sure about their moving towards a form of political constitutionalism, as prof. Adam Czarnota suggests. In my view, a key dimension of political constitutionalism is the observation that specific constitutional norms and rights are ultimately ‘essentially contestable’ as reasonable disagreement is an intrinsic part of democracy. Therefore, the understanding and interpretation of such norms and rights ought to remain part of an on-going political debate, rather than being one-sidedly interpreted by the judiciary. Such an open and inclusionary political debate ought to take place within the limits of the constitution, as a basic framework for resolving disagreements. And it ought to be grounded in the ideas of audi alteram partem and the equal weight of different views in the debate.
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Tomasz Tadeusz Koncewicz
"It is the institutions that help us preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about - a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union - and take its side."
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Tomasz Gizbert-Studnicki
N.W. Barber and A. Vermeule, in their seminal paper, differentiate between three types of cases in which the exceptional role of courts can come to light. I will be interested only in the third type of cases, which has been defined by Barber and Vermeule as follows: ‘There are some cases in which the health of the constitutional order requires the judge to act not merely beyond the law, as it were, but actually contrary to the law.’
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Lech Morawski
Let me begin by quoting Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, in which he stated that a “democratic government should be government of the people, by the people and for the people”. As you know the current government in Poland does not enjoy the support of the political and economic establishment or academic professors but it is supported by the majority of ordinary people.
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Adam Czarnota
In the present constitutional crisis, my position is that we have to criticise the changes made by the ruling party to the Constitutional Tribunal but not because they undermine rule of law in Poland and are radical. In my opinion the changes are not radical at all. We do not see changes in the “grammar” of law but we observe changes of elites with preservation of the same institutional setting. Only the aesthetic dimension of exercise of power by the government has changed. The rhetoric indeed has rapidly changed but all mechanisms remain the same. In such a situation, the “self-defence” of the institutions including constitutional tribunal in Poland is a part of the political spectacle, part of the drama by which mobilised citizens are manipulated for political gain.
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Marcin Matczak
Nicholas Barber’s paper “Self-Defence for Institutions” provides a useful tool for analysing the complex relationship between the branches of government, in particular between the most dangerous and the least dangerous ones: the legislative and the judicial. This paper sets out to elaborate the theoretical tool proposed by Barber and to show that the elaborated tool has a better explanatory value than the original when applied to real-world circumstances. The real-world case examined in this paper is the constitutional crisis that Poland has undergone for the last 18 months.
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Christian Tomuschat
The Colloquium on the judgment of the Italian Constitutional Court [...]
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Filippo Fontanelli
This short presentation distils the conclusions of the panel regarding [...]
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Antje von Ungern-Sternberg
The conveners asked the third panel of the conference to [...]
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Karin Oellers-Frahm
In the following I will briefly give you an overview [...]
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Giovanni Boggero
The first panel dealt intensively with the question as to [...]
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Christian J. Tams
2 ½ years after it was rendered, Sentenza 238/14 of [...]
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Riccardo Pavoni
1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS This post summarizes some of the key [...]
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Alessandro Bufalini
I will focus here on two facets of Judgment 238/2014 [...]
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Heike Krieger
Judicial practice may be a means to overcome the opposition [...]
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Paolo Palchetti
Introduction 1. International legal thinking has long been dominated by [...]
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Andreas von Arnauld
Jurisdictional Immunities, or: A Formally Strong German Position On the [...]
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Anne Peters, Valentina Volpe
Sentenza 238/2014 of the Italian Constitutional Court created a legal [...]
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Paul Blokker
Populist engagement with constitution-making and constitutional reform forms a distinctive, [...]
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Diego Werneck Arguelhes
We typically think of courts as victims or targets of [...]
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Juan F. Gonzalez Bertomeu
Introduction: foes of all stripes Let’s start with this truism—no [...]
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Jorge González Jácome
In 2005, the Colombian Constitutional Court upheld an amendment allowing [...]
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Bertil Emrah Oder
Populist strategies have for some time been an integral part [...]
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Bilyana Petkova
Common criticisms of judicial activism stretch from the somewhat outdated [...]
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Samuel Issacharoff
A discussion of courts and populism begs for definitional boundaries. [...]
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Or Bassok
The American Supreme Court is currently ill-equipped to confront populism. [...]
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Alon Harel
“I did not come to in order to be loved [...]
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Rosalind Dixon
Democratic “populism” is on the rise worldwide. In the last [...]
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Andrew Arato
The antagonism of populist governments to apex courts is a [...]
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Jan-Werner Müller
The meaning of “populism” is deeply contested. It is striking, [...]
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Michaela Hailbronner, David E. Landau
This mini-symposium is a joint project between the editors of [...]
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Armin von Bogdandy, Michael Ioannidis
The pointed commentary published on Verfassungsblog over the last week—coming from different perspectives and informed from different experiences—shows the potential of such debates. In the case of Greece, they are an important addition to a discourse focusing too much on austerity or debt sustainability.
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Stylianos-Ioannis G. Koutnatzis
For the Greek drama to be resolved on a long-term basis, the shift from the exclusive focus on finances to institutional arrangements is long overdue. Armin von Bogdandy and Michael Ioannidis convincingly set out the proposal’s significant advantages. At the same time, however, its implementation might raise a host of both legal and practical considerations.
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Sergio Dellavalle
Von Bogdandy and Ioannidis’ implicit suggestion that the question of legitimacy in institution-builing could be bypassed by making use of the Greek diaspora is not really convincing. Sergio Dellavalles's response to the proposal made by v.Bogdandy/Ioannidis.
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Matthias Ruffert
Armin von Bogdandy’s and Michael Ioannidis’ proposals are highly welcome, as are any proposals to strengthen the Greek State as a strong partner in the EU. No doubt, there will be no fourth rescue package, so we better try something else.
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Maciej Taborowski
Greece has a problem with its institutions, a fact admitted even by the government of that country. The prospect of bankruptcy and collapse of the European order represents a good justification for the proposal made by v. Bogdandy and Ioannidis.
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Frank Schorkopf
The Greek diaspora as such does not have a superior ethos compared with Greeks at home. Frank Schorkopf responds to the proposal on institution-building in Greece made by Arnim v. Bogdandy and Michael Ioannidis.
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Luca De Lucia
There are certain risks that could delegitimise and further weaken the Greek political, bureaucratic and judiciary institutions. Luca De Lucia's respond to Armin von Bogdandy and Michael Ioannidis' proposal for a new approach to institution-building in Greece.
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Pál Sonnevend
As populism rises and crises of the rule of law emerge, we have to think out of the box. Pál Sonnevend's reply to v. Bogdandy and M. Ioannidis focusses on the democratic environment and guarantees of the rule of law in Greece.
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Angelos Chaniotis
For decades, a significant number of Greek public servants owed their position to patronage, nepotism, party support, or fraud. Angelos Chaniotis responds to Armin von Bogdandy and Michael Ioannidis' suggestion to institution-building in Greece.
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Achilles Skordas
Even though Greece avoided imminent collapse and civil unrest in 2015, the reform process has not reached the threshold of irreversibility. Response by Achilles Skordas to the suggestions made by v. Bogdandy and Ioannidis.
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András Jakab
The fact that Greece seems to be in trouble again should be considered an opportunity! Response by András Jakab to v. Bogdandy/Ioannidis' suggestion to use the Greek diaspora as a tool for a new approach to institution building.
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Armin von Bogdandy, Michael Ioannidis
Current attempts to solve the crisis in Greece aim at economic solutions. With a new bailout programme being stalled and the next tranche once more postponed, the search is on for new solutions off the beaten paths.
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Richard Bellamy
The premise of this timely and important book is that the Euro crisis has placed the EU in an existential predicament that cannot be resolved in the usual fashion of yet more of the same. Though there is surprisingly little by way of a sketch of what might have been the Eurocrats’ dream, the reader is left in no doubt that we are currently living through what might best be termed the Eurocrats’ nightmare – a form of governance that falls far short of the current challenges confronting the EU, and is indeed partly promotive of them.
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Bojan Bugaric
The European Union is facing a political crisis unprecedented in its 59-year history. This club of democratic countries established primarily to promote peace and prosperity in post-war Europe is facing a nationalist and populist surge that threatens the democratic principles at the very heart of the EU. Capitalizing on the European sovereign debt crisis; backlash against refugees streaming in from the Middle East, Brexit and public angst over the growing terror threat, previously fringe political parties are growing with alarming speed.
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Mark Dawson, Floris de Witte
Almost all contributions to the collection ‘The End of Eurocrats’ Dream’ touch upon a tension that has been implicit in the integration process from the very start, but has only explicitly manifested itself during the Euro-crisis: the tension between independence and interdependence. This tension is also evident in the refugee crisis, and in (the aftermath of) Brexit: how can we at once accept Member State autonomy (in fiscal policy, border control or deciding on the conditions for EU membership) while at the same time sustaining collective commitments towards, say, a monetary union, Schengen or free movement?
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Maurizio Ferrera
As stated in its preface, this impressive collection of essays has the ambitious aim of launching a “fundamental debate” about European integration in the wake of the crisis and, in particular, the institutional reforms and policy choices made since 2008. The volume’s title already contains the basic diagnosis. European integration has fallen prey to a technocratic project - a dystopian dream which has corroded the EU’s constitutional integrity, its legitimation basis, its very point and purpose. This dream has to end, or better yet be brought to an end through an effective, if laborious, intellectual and political work. This is the basic message of the volume, shared by all its contributors.
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Daniel Innerarity
The Eurocrats’ dream was the stealth Europe. The Monnet method of bureaucratic integration has been mechanical and furtive, dominated by necessity. The principal leaders of integration, on the right and the left, have been driven by a crude determinism that presumed that economic development would inevitably lead to desired institutional improvements. The hidden hand of functional imperatives has been more important than reflection and choices, as if integration could be carried out without the need to make express decisions of the kind that are contained in constitutional moments.
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Poul F. Kjaer
The process of European integration was from the outset marked by an integrationist teleology as formally stated in the objective of “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” in the preamble of the Treaty of Rome. The core message of The End of the Eurocrats’ Dream is that this integrationist teleology has come to an end.
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Karl-Heinz Ladeur
Are „Eurocrats“ to blame for the bad shape of Europe? First of all, one has to ask whether „Eurocrat“ is a meaningful term at all. Obviously one can find lots of examples in the European law and politics that demonstrate a kind of hubris and at the same time a complete failure to accomplish the goals of the „European Project“ – one needs to mention only the grand „Lisbon“ prospect of technological modernisation.
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Jiří Přibáň
One person’s dream is another person’s nightmare. This oneiric truth indicates the relative meaning of dreams, yet it also invites a wake-up call. The End of the Eurocrats’ Dream volume edited by Damian Chalmers, Markus Jachtenfuchs and Christian Joerges is such a wake-up call warning fellow academics, European politicians and the general public that what used to be presented by many advocates and agents of European integration as a wonderful dream is now often experienced as a nightmare with potentially disastrous effects for European and national politics in all countries of the EU.
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Elise Muir
One ought to be cautious to take a broad spectrum so as to avoid the temptation of narrowing down concerns to a specific set of events such as Brexit or ‘a crisis’. The process of European integration is indeed so advanced that a narrow approach could result in a biased analysis. Meanwhile, one still needs to be precise and concrete so as to induce a constructive dialogue for change.
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Jonathan White
While EU scholarship still tends to narrate the Union’s history as one of successful adaptation, and the ‘euro crisis’ as something like a rite of passage, here is a book in a different mould. Singularities and turning-points are the blocks it builds with, and the present moment marks a conclusion.
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Robert Howse
No one wants to go down in the history books like those fools who said in the 1930s, "well, Hitler isn't such a bad chap really..." Protecting our egos from the imagined judgment of prosperity, the cautious course is to predict the worst for the Trump Presidency, the very destruction of the American constitutional regime, the collapse of liberal democratic values. I however am willing to risk being proven a fool, so here goes...
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Massimo Fichera
We should be careful when we embrace the new transnational paradigm. If dialogue can take place, this must not forget that constitutionalism's soul must be looked for at the local level, not in the fluid transnational arena - beyond the seemingly neutral vocabulary of technocracy, and reaching out to a physical space where claims can be put forward, resources allocated, boundaries defined, and decisions contested, within touching distance.
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Lorenzo Zucca
In Europe, UK, and USA constitutional structures are proving unfit to respond to the challenges of the XXI century. Now is the time to ride on the constitutional moment for the all three of them.
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Frank Cranmer
Writes Matej Avbelj in High time for popular constitutionalism!, ‘The majority in our societies seems to be increasingly disconnected with the liberal values that especially the legal academia, but also the ruling political class – at least on a declaratory level – have taken for granted…’ Living as I do in the country in which one sees an increasing distaste for the European Convention of Human Rights and regular media criticism of the ‘unelected judges’ in Strasbourg – and that despite the fact that the judges of the Court are, in fact, elected from a slate of three by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe – I cannot help wondering whether the disconnect is anything very new.
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David Abraham
The failure to offer a serious alternative to the current maladies of capitalism should not be construed as a constitutional crisis.
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Cormac Mac Amhlaigh
Part of the malaise surrounding our contemporary world is a tendency to view constitutional politics, to borrow Goethe’s metaphor, as architecture rather than music; as fixed and immutable rather than a dynamic phenomenon which requires the ongoing assertion and reassertion of the key values and terms of engagement of our mutual interaction with each other and with authority. Six practical suggestions how to defend our constitutional values.
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Matej Avbelj
Not long ago the advent of illiberal democracy has been announced. It has been mocked, downplayed, but also seriously critically engaged with, including by the authors of this blog. However, since the idea has come from marginal countries in the European East, from Hungary, Poland, but also Slovenia and the likes, it has not been really perceived as an objective threat to the Western constitutional order. The election of Donald Trump, not for who he is, but what he has been standing for, must change this.
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Selin Esen
Refugee migration has always been a phenomenon for many countries in the modern age and Turkey is no exception. Since the 20th Century Turkey hosted hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers and refugees from different countries.
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Antonia Baraggia
From the very beginning of the Eurozone crisis, conditionality progressively entered into the vocabulary and the normative sphere of the EU economic governance. At the time of the first assistance package to Greece, conditionality was just an emergency tool set in the bilateral Loan Agreements, signed by Greece and other Members States. However, after the establishment of emergency funds like the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM) and the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), and especially after the creation of a permanent institution, a sort of “European mirror image of the IMF” – the ESM – conditionality has become a sort of leitmotiv of the European response to the economic crisis or, even, a necessary requirement according to the ECJ.
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Viorica Vita
For the last seven years, sovereign debt conditionality dominated the European public discourse. Courts called to adjudicate heavy conditions impeaching on constitutional core of EU nations. National parliaments vocally debating the democratic legitimacy of austerity measures. Executives busy implementing generous reform packages. Scholars actively commenting on the constitutional implications of crisis-driven conditionalities.
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Bartosz Marciniak
Τοῖς πᾶσι χρόνος καὶ καιρὸς τῷ παντὶ πράγματι ὑπὸ τὸν οὐρανόν. This Septuagint translation of a verse from the book of Ecclesiastes points to a fundamental distinction regarding the transience – the distinction between chronos (time) and kairos (a right moment). Time is everlasting and consists of singular kairoi. Kairos, being its constitutive part, should not defy the structure of time. This distinction bares on the way in which we should understand any change of a constitution that claims to belong to free and equal citizens.
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Maksim Karliuk
After the fall of the Soviet Union, many post-Soviet countries pursued integration among themselves, leading to various regional arrangements. Those had little success for an array of reasons stemming from considerable differences among the many integrating states. Eventually, an understanding came along, that in order to make things work, a change in approach is needed. Among others, such a change would require an efficient legal framework and stronger regional institutions capable of upholding it. These features were played with on the way to the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), which was obviously inspired by certain narratives about the EU integration process, and eventually launched in 2015.
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Enrico Peuker
Two months ago, the European Parliament and the Council have enacted the European General Data Protection Regulation as the result of a 4 years running legislative procedure. For a long time, it was uncertain whether the regulation could be passed at all: Not only has there been considerable opposition by EU Member States, but there have also been about 4.000 amendments by Parliament, accompanied by an enormous engagement of lobby groups.
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Eszter Polgári
Hungary was the first country in the post-Soviet bloc that joined the Council of Europe and ratified the European Convention on Human Rights and this remains a matter of national pride. While the Convention is perceived as a yardstick in human rights protection that may not be circumvented, still lively debate surrounds the authority of the case-law of European Court of Human Rights. The recent constitutional reform has left the status of the Convention largely untouched. The Convention still enjoys a supra-legislative rank: it is subordinated to the Fundamental Law but is superior to all other pieces of legislation.
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Alberto Alemanno
As calls for a political check of the TTIP mandate multiply, time has come to pinpoint where the problem in the on-going negotiations lies.
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Matej Avbelj
The EU constitutionalism has been transformed. For the worse. The causes for that are well known. They are the sum of consecutive, unresolved financial, economic, political, humanitarian and security crises. This post is not interested into causal relationship between the crises. It centers instead on their aggregate negative outcome and the possible way ahead. It asks what exactly the EU constitutionalism, as a dominant narrative of European integration, has (d)evolved into and what can be done to fix its fissures?
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Ruvi Ziegler
On Thursday 23rd June 2016, pursuant to the European Union Referendum Act 2015, a UK-wide referendum will be held on the question: ‘should the UK remain a member of the EU or leave the EU’. Hitherto, much of the referendum debate has concerned immigration (to the UK) by EU citizens, exercising their mobility rights, with rather unsavoury rhetoric concerning deportation of criminals and ‘warnings’ about future arrivals from candidate accession states. Alongside immigration, leading campaigners have argued that the referendum is, at heart, a about questions of sovereignty and democracy.
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Gianluigi Bizioli
As far as individuals are concerned, international problems can be tackled through increased tax cooperation and transparency. As to corporations, on the other hand, taxing multinational groups at arm’s length together with an increase of tax cooperation would not solve the problems of global tax law. In this case, the problem lies in the structural principles behind international taxation of multinational groups and, therefore, a reaction based only on tax transparency is clearly insufficient.
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Vigjilenca Abazi
The ability of organisational insiders to speak up and disclose information in the public interest is at the core democratic values. It seems paradoxical then to punish and prosecute those who actively practice them. The time is ripe to establish a legal framework with clear requirements for protected disclosure that affords a wide protection to individuals who expose wrongdoing in the public interest.
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Stephen B. Cohen
The United Nations Covenant should be interpreted to prohibit state mandated bank secrecy, which facilitates tax evasion by wealthy residents of the developing world. In other words, bank secrecy laws of Lichtenstein, Panama, and Switzerland, for example, violate internationally recognized human rights.
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Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Gianluca Mazzoni
I am skeptical about the effectiveness of a shift towards more transparency. I do not believe that this could help overcoming the growing gap between legality and legitimacy in international tax law. Especially, I do not see how the gap can be reduced by making taxpayer information public. Or better, I do not believe this is the right path that States should pursue.
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Yoseph M. Edrey
Privacy, at least with respect to taxes, is the shield of the villains. The legal or constitutional issue should not focus on preventing the flow of information but rather on the way the informed uses the information.
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Ekkehart Reimer
Information is the new currency of international tax policy. Countries have successfully developed techniques and strategies to enhance the flow of tax-relevant information across borders. This shift requires adaptations with respect not just to human rights but to democracy: Lawyers should reconsider the traditional core of parliamentary power to tax. Democratic assent to the imposition of taxes needs to be informed consent. As long as lawmakers cannot assess the economic impact of existing and new tax rules in a global environment, lawmaking is a blind flight.
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Liav Orgad
This has been an instructive discussion that has shed light on some of the most pressing issues of our time. Overall, there is an agreement on the existence of the social entity of the “majority group,” although less on the criteria to identify a majority. Some interesting disagreements are found on the empirical question – whether the majority culture is indeed “needy” (how much, in which field, etc.) – and on the normative question: whether a culturally needy majority should be granted a right to defend its constitutional identity in the immigration context.
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Costica Dumbrava
Concerns about national, cultural and demographic preservation have become increasingly salient in the age of migrations and globalisation. Liav Orgad fittingly points to recent political reactions to the influx of refugees in Europe and to broader trends towards relinking citizenship and migration policies with concerns about national identity and cultural integration. He is right to complain about the reluctance among political theorists to engage systematically with these developments. I fully agree with Orgad that ignoring these issues is both “theoretically wrong” and “politically unwise”. However, I disagree that majorities have special majority rights that can be defended on the same normative basis as minority rights. I argue that if a current majority group is worried about its rights, it should genuinely support minority rights in anticipation of its future minority status.
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David Abraham
Liav Orgad’s new book, The Cultural Defense of Nations, could hardly have appeared at a more opportune moment. It represents a systematic effort to grapple with the core issues of national identity so much on the agenda of both the classical and new lands of immigration. It seeks to do so within the framework of liberal political and social theory while turning our sympathies toward majority cultures facing the “threat” of lost identity and dominance, a loss being brought about by both immigration and the multiculturalist policies of the past generation.
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David Owen
There is little doubt that the contemporary rise of populist forms of politics, especially those of the right, have targeted immigration as a key issue – and, more generally, political parties of left and right have responded to, and often stoked, perceived public concerns (however ill-founded) concerning immigration through efforts designed to highlight and demarcate the privileges of citizenship. In his timely response to this phenomenon, Liav Orgad aims to offer an account of majority rights that is, he thinks, missing from contemporary political theory and that can differentiate justifiable and unjustifiable ways in which the majority culture can defend its dominant standing and, hence, the rights it should (and should not) possess.
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Paul Blokker
Liav Orgad’s idea of a two-stage process of the regulation of immigration and access to citizenship in The Cultural Defense of Nations appears sensible and on first sight largely agreeable. But a more careful positioning of the argument regarding democratic theory and sociological understandings of nationalism brings out aspects that problematize some of its key assumptions and that reveal a risk of counter-productivity. In this, the argument might be less original than claimed and the specific version of a liberal theory of cultural defense less fit for socio-culturally complex democratic societies, in particular within the European context. I will briefly touch upon three dimensions that seem to me problematic: the notions of majority culture and cultural defense; the notion of constitutional identity as used in the book; and the problem of constitutional populism.
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Randall Hansen
Over the last several decades, a burgeoning literature on minority rights and minority accommodation has emerged. The rights of the ‘majority’ – everyone else – have garnered little interest because scholars have assumed that they will take care of themselves. In this excellent book, Liav Orgad argues that large-scale immigration to Europe and North America has rendered this assumption false. Immigration, above all to North America, is of course not new, but the overall numbers today are greater than in the past, and it is occurring in a new context of globalization, transnationalism (migrants live half their lives or more in their home countries), and radically new technology (which allows one to live in a Twitter/Facebook-/YouTube world entirely in one’s home country language).
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Alexander Yakobson
How would Denmark react to a wave of mass immigration from Germany, numbering hundreds of thousands or millions of people? The question is, needles to say, purely hypothetical, but it is nevertheless, in my view, highly pertinent in the context of discussing the issues raised in Liav Orgad’s important book, The Cultural Defense of Nations. These questions are at the very heart of Europe’s present concerns and dilemmas, which makes the book’s highly original, learned and well-argued contribution to the debate all the more valuable.
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George P. Fletcher
When I first wrote about linguistic self-defense (discussed in Liav Orgad’s book pp. 198-200) I had a conception of languages in danger, The most visible potential victim were the French in Quebec. But with the help of Charles de Gaulle, the Quebecois have held on well to their culture (majority at home, minority at large, but supported by a large nation in Europe). One form of linguistic self-defense I proposed at the time was insisting on speaking your language in commercial transactions. For the sake of profit, store keepers would play along. Also, public advertising is a critical mode of making a language seem like the background state of normalcy. The key case in Quebec, as I recall, was called Chaussures Brown Shoes. That was the way they wanted their sign to read. The Anglophones objected and lost.
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Eric Kaufmann
Liav Orgad writes convincingly that the issue of cultural rights for majorities has been thrust into view by immigration. No longer can a white French or German person think of her ethnic identity and national identity as one and the same. In the introduction to Rethinking Ethnicity: majority groups and dominant minorities (2004), and again in Political Demography (2012), I argue that migration and differential ethnic birth rates are driving a wedge between the ethnic majority and ‘its’ nation-state.
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Christian Joppke
Liav Orgad (2015) has written an admirably sensitive and learned book about besieged “majorities” in a world of global mobility and flux, especially that consisting of or conditioned by people moving across borders. It opens up an entirely new, dearly needed conversation on whether we need the concept of “majority”, which hitherto has remained legally and normatively uncharted. But is there really a case for a “liberal theory of majority rights”, analogous to a liberal theory of minority rights, both wishing to protect “personal identity and personal autonomy” (lead text, in the following “lt”)? Orgad has the right instinct that the care of the majority should not be left to the populist right but taken serious by liberals and the political mainstream. But the notion of a “distinctive cultural majority” (lt), which he presents as “the inevitable outcome of multiculturalism”, rests on an unreconstructed notion of multiculturalism; and at close inspection, much as the case for liberal minority rights, the case for distinct majority rights dissolves into a case for universal individual rights that liberal state constitutions already provide.
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Liav Orgad
Are Poland and Hungary justified, under international law or EU law, in restricting migration to defend their “Christian heritage”? How about the so-called “European way of life” or their “constitutional identity”? More generally, can a liberal democracy restrict immigration and/or access to citizenship in order to protect the "majority culture” and still remain liberal? Cultural defense policies are mushrooming in Europe, as refugees and migrants from Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East many of them Muslims keep coming to our shores in unprecedented numbers. Can the “cultural defense” of majorities be reconciled with liberal values and, if so, how?
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Daniel Sarmiento
The overall message looks puzzling. First, privacy is a super-fundamental right that reigns supreme above all other rights after the Court’s decision in Schrems. Second, national electoral rules governing the right to vote in elections to the European Parliament come under the scope of application of the Charter, but Member States can restrict such a right as long they do so in a proportionate way, says the Court in Delvigne. And third, illegal immigrants who have already been ordered to abandon the territory of the EU can be subject to criminal prosecution if they ever return, according to the Court in Celaj. In sum, Privacy is a super-fundamental right. The right to vote is quite super, but not as much. The rights to liberty and free movement are not super at all, at least when they concern third country nationals. Is this the kind of case-law one would expect from a fundamental rights court? Does this make any sense at all? Maybe it does.
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Franz C. Mayer
Just like Star Wars, the "Solange" saga about German constitutional order’s approach to fundamental rights protection in the context of European integration appeared as a story told and settled. But now there are rumours that in Germany Solange Episode III is in the making, with a release date around 2016. The ECJ’s Schrems decision will bring some turmoil to the Solange Episode III production in Germany.
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Gero Ziegenhorn, Katharina von Heckel
In Schrems the CJEU has declared the Safe-Harbor-Decision of the European Commission invalid whilst strengthening the EU fundamental rights. The Court has done so with astonishing clarity. Although the matter is about Facebook Ireland’s transfer of data to servers of Facebook, Inc. in the U.S., it, ironically, will not be Facebook but companies of the European “old economy” that will have to face severe consequences in the aftermath of this landmark judgement. In many cases of every day data processing in the business world, the consent of data subjects will be impossible to obtain. It is at the same time nearly impossible to prevent data to be transferred outside the EU. Hence, a vast number of data processing operations which were lawful before Schrems are now illegal.
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Bilyana Petkova
By and large the possibility of challenging mass surveillance worldwide can be strengthened by two factors. Perhaps counter-intuitively, the first should be the support of the business community. The second is democracy.
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Orla Lynskey
The Schrems judgment of the ECJ has implications for the viability of the commercial practices of Internet giants (and minions), for the legality of state surveillance practices and for the future sustainability of an Internet that is global rather than parochial. It is thus not surprising that the Court of Justice of the EU delivered its judgment only one week after the Opinion of the Advocate General and that this judgment has attracted so much academic and media attention, including through the existing commentary on this blog. In adding to this commentary, I shall not rehash the well-versed facts but shall focus on three points which I found striking.
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Christina Eckes, Vigjilenca Abazi
On Tuesday, the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union declared the Commission’s US Safe Harbour Decision invalid. The Court’s ruling in Case C-362/14 of the Austrian Internet activist Maximillian Schrems v the Irish Data Protection Commissioner is a milestone in the protection of European fundamental rights, but it also preserves space for different national supervisory standards and national discretion on whether data may actually be transferred. Is the ruling opening the way for a patchwork of national data protection? How does this ruling influence the TTIP negotiations?
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Christopher Kuner
The judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Schrems v. Data Protection Commissioner (Case C-362/14) is a landmark in EU data protection law, but one about which I have serious misgivings. While I share the Court’s concern regarding the surveillance practices of the US government (and other governments for that matter) and some of its criticisms of the EU-US Safe Harbor Arrangement, I take exception to its lack of interest in the practical effects of the judgment and the global context in which EU law must operate.
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Martin Scheinin
What is remarkable in the CJEU's Schrems decision is that a) the Court actually identified the intrusion in question as falling under the notion of the essence of privacy – something the European Court of Human Rights has never done under the privacy provision of ECHR Article 8, and b) the identification of an intrusion as compromising the essence of privacy meant that there was no need for a proportionality assessment under Article 52 (1.2) of the Charter. For these reasons, the Max Schrems judgment is a pathbreaking development, a major contribution to the understanding of the structure and legal effect of fundamental rights under the Charter.
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Russell A. Miller
We might celebrate the Court’s decision in Case C-362/14 as an improbable victory of good (data-privacy) over evil (consumer and intelligence data abuses). But I want to offer some words of caution about god-like judicial power.
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Elspeth Guild
Why are we surprised that asylum seekers will go to great efforts to arrive somewhere where they have a chance of decent reception conditions rather than being forced to live on the street or locked up in horrific detention centres? Clearly good quality first reception is the key to equitable distribution of asylum seekers. Until there are good quality reception facilities available in all Member States there is no point even addressing the question of responsibility sharing.
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Diana Wallis
It is great to see this debate on the EU justice deficit. To me this debate goes to the fundamental issue of legitimacy, with which the EU continues to grapple. However I have one regret, which relates to the lack of attention devoted to the European Union's justice deficit in the area of civil and private law. All of us enter into private law obligations throughout our lives, making small contracts, buying property, inheriting property, being involved in an accident; the list is endless. The justice or injustice consequences of these civil law interactions, in terms of the way in which these obligations operate, are construed and adjudicated upon which can dramatically impact individuals and society.
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Narine Ghazaryan
Although discussions on justice in Europe are not new, ’justice [...]
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Turkuler Isiksel
A legal order centered on the market, far from being vacant from a justice perspective, embodies a particular theory of justice: one that valorizes voluntary economic exchange for its conduciveness to peace, prosperity, and freedom. Whether commerce is, indeed, conducive to all of these things is another question.
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Petr Agha
The idea of Constitutionalism beyond the state perfectly matches the essentially non-political, economic arrangement that has clothed itself in political discourses of human rights, rule of law and democracy. The forms and procedures put forward by Kumm et.al. conceal the initial lack of substance and proximity with the life of Europeans and their daily dealings and the relations which the framework they were designed to merely formalize. The Union postulates the a-priori conditions of unity which do not dynamically (organically) emerge from within the heat of political life - unity appears as extraneous layers superimposed on the disarray of European communities. What remains, within the framework the European Union, is an expression without anything to express, devoid if not of meaning then of a connection to the sources of meaningfulness.
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Martijn van den Brink
The starting premise behind Europe’s Justice Deficit? is that we have to associate justice not only with the state, but also with sub- and supra-state entities. Considering the depth and breadth of European integration, the EU cannot escape our scrutiny; the EU is, as the editors remark, ‘clearly at the very least a potential agent of (in)justice’. One cannot but wholeheartedly agree with this starting assumption, but we should also acknowledge that it leaves a very important question unanswered: does the EU possess the same capacities for delivering (in)justices as other entities, in particular the state? Can we simply apply our justice vocabulary to the EU without even the slightest modicum of translation that takes into account the context within which the EU is situated? While it is not denied that the EU has the ability to deliver justice, it is suggested that there are limits to the EU’s justice capacities.
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Timofey Agarin
As the winds of populism blow across Europe, from the Algarve to Lapland and from the Irish to the Aegean Sea, it might be tempting to dismiss the return to nativism as a temporary and transitory vehicle of popular protest. However, as UKIP, Golden Dawn, Jobbik, the Sweden Democrats, Podemos, Syriza, Vlams Belang and True Finns all secure seats in local, regional, national and supranational assemblies, the questions mount about differential impact of the Euro crisis on comparative attractiveness of these political forces to national electorate over the idea of a unified and indeed just Europe. With populist parties advocating extremely diverse political agendas, they all reach out to their voters hushing them away from the political forces who have dominated the political scene during the years of plenty before the Euro crisis.
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Cathryn Costello
By enlisting transport companies in migration control, and denying visas to refugees, the EU is complicit in the grotesque scenes in the Mediterranean Sea: Those fleeing cannot board regular flights and ferries, for lack of visas and as carriers face sanctions if they allow them to board. We are willing to spend billions on rescue at sea, but not provide safe means of access to refugees. Those most in need, including those whose needs we would recognize by offering asylum, risk their lives to reach the relatively safety of the EU. Unjust? Unethical? Indecent? Cruel? All of these, surely.
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Justin Lindeboom
Recognising “justice” as inherently contestable, one might raise the more specific question what role the European Court of Justice has in (re)assuring justice in Europe, and whether the Court, insofar as it possesses a distinct role in that regard, succeeds in promoting justice. The avalanche of criticism at, amongst others, Laval, McCarthy, Dereci and, most recently, Dano, represents a deep belief that the European Court of Justice should not betray its name. In the knowledge that we fiercely disagree about what justice entails, however, it is not easy to substantiate the Court’s role and scope of responsibility.
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Guiliano Amato
The main obstacle nowadays to communities that are perceived as such is the level of inequality that we have reached in our societies. Tony Judt, before he died, wrote that I cannot perceive someone as a member of my community if the distance of my income to his is too big. Taxation is what we need and what we can use. But this requires something beyond of what Europe can do.
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Marija Bartl
If the economic advancement of the lender states is at least in part attributable to the access to the markets of the debtors, then the latter have a right to solidarity and political redistribution of economic benefits. Building solidarity – as a basis for political redistribution – in Europe from such premises would not be impossible: it is very much in contrast with the self-righteous attitude adopted by lender states today, and condoned by much of mainstream economic theory.
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Matthias Ruffert
Most of the short texts on the blurb praise the [...]
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Daniel Thym
The term justice is far too abstract to provide meaningful guidance on how to resolve specific legal questions. Normative ideals of justice are usually conceptualised, in contemporary constitutional law, in terms of human rights and countervailing public policy objectives. While I am, by and large, happy with the constitutional infrastructure of the EU, my outlook on the judicial practices of European Court of Justice is less optimistic.
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Pavlos Eleftheriadis
The Eurozone crisis has raised serious concerns about injustice in the distribution of resources, burdens and risks. The functioning of the Eurozone has had great unintended consequences. In the past five years five member states have needed assistance of one kind or another (Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Cyprus) and are going through painful adjustment. This shows that the problem is systemic, not particular to each one of them. The problems in the design of the Eurozone, which is not an ‘optimal currency union’ are well known.
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Lorenzo Zucca
It is high time to think of Europe as committed to a just society. This requires a fully-fledged ethical vision for Europe. It should be asking for more than political justice, which simply asks EU political institutions to correct the injustice produced by the market.
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Christian Joerges
My account on Europe's justice deficit will depart from a tension inherent to the project, and I will submit three groups of observations: The first one will deal with what we have experienced about the nature of “the economic”; with the use of this notion, I wish to insinuate an analogy to what we associate with “the social”; namely, the social embeddedness of the economy. The following observations are concerned with the distinction between justice within consolidated polities and justice between such polities. The third part of my story will ask, first, whether a synthesis of both concerns, i.e., of domestic and inter-European justice, is conceivable in principle - and then whether it is still available. After the crisis, this is the 1 million dollar question: How can the European project get back on track, regain legitimacy, rise from its ruins?
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Dimitry Vladimirovich Kochenov, Gráinne de Búrca, Andrew Williams
Let us face it: the EU affects the lives of many people in ways they perceive as profoundly unjust. Lives are dramatically affected by the policies of austerity, widely understood to be EU-imposed. With the Court of Justice appearing to stand for its own authority and EU autonomy at any cost; with migrants attempting to reach fortress Europe and drowning en masse as the EU cuts back its rescue services; and with economic inequalities in the Member States reaching new heights, could it be that there is a justice deficit in Europe, exacerbated by the European Union? It has never been made abundantly clear whether the achievement of justice is among the EU’s objectives, thus leading to a sub-optimal legal-political reality. There is an urgent need to address the question of justice openly and without reservation, and not to permit nationalists and Eurosceptics to monopolize this debate.
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Leonie Vierck
My small contributing message to this debate is that nudging plays an important role in aid politics. Substantially, there are parallel debates going on, and you might find some of the insights useful by means of transferral. As this is a new and explorative debate, there might still be space for some inspiration from related fields.
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Christopher Unseld
Nudging does polarize, but it also challenges the conventional way German legal scholars imagine the world of law. Even though it is good intuition to be afraid of a totalitarian government of economic rationality, it would be wrong to defend our current logic of judicial proportionality against the nudging approach. Instead, we should embrace democratically supervised economic expertise within our regulatory framework, without giving up on the possibility of radical love and revolution.
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Niels Petersen
Emanuel Towfigh and Christian Traxler have asked why the nudging debate has arrived so late in the German legal discourse. They argue that this is due to a mixture of reasons related to legal culture and legal education. I agree with their analysis. So let me address one question that both authors do not touch. Why should lawyers deal with the question of nudging? Wouldn’t this rather be a task for psychologists or behavioral economists? Prima facie, there seems to be a lot in favor of leaving the discussion on nudges to social scientists. A nudge seeks to alter people’s behavior without restraining choices. In order to influence people’s behavior, however, you have to analyze behavioral patterns, which is impossible without empirical methods.
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Niels Petersen
Emanuel Towfigh und Christian Traxler fragen in ihrem Beitrag, warum die Debatte um „nudges“ so spät im deutschen rechtswissenschaftlichen Diskurs angekommen ist. Sie identifizieren dafür mehrere Gründe, die zum einen in der Rechtskultur, zum anderen in der rechtswissenschaftlichen Ausbildung verankert sind. Ich stimme ihren Ausführungen im Wesentlichen zu. Daher möchte ich den Blick auf einen anderen Aspekt legen, den sie in ihrem Beitrag nicht angesprochen haben: Warum sollten sich Juristen mit „nudges“ beschäftigen?
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Christopher Unseld
Nudging does polarize, but it also challenges the conventional way German legal scholars imagine the world of law. Even though it is good intuition to be afraid of a totalitarian government of economic rationality, it would be wrong to defend our current logic of judicial proportionality against the nudging approach. Instead, we should embrace democratically supervised economic expertise within our regulatory framework, without giving up on the possibility of radical love and revolution.
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Georgios Dimitropoulos
In a thought-provoking comment on the legitimacy of nudging, Towfigh and Traxler rightly point out that nudges have many facets. As a result, their legitimacy has to be judged case by case. Responding partly to Towfigh and Traxler and partly to the broader issue of the legitimacy of nudging, I want to distinguish between two aspects that are raised in the comment: firstly, public and legal legitimacy and secondly, legitimacy among legal professionals.
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Gunnar Folke Schuppert
If we take a look through the lens of administrative science we see two things: firstly, that the concept of nudging cannot rightfully claim to have any news value, and secondly, that it needs to be placed within the context of contemporary insights from the fields of controlling science and communication theory.
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Sabine Junginger
Although design thinking has become a buzzword in business and although human-centered design approaches are being explored in a range of public innovation labs concerned with developing and delivering citizen-centric policies and public services, nudging is rarely discussed for its design implications. What would such a discussion contribute and how may it help us focus on the potential benefits of a nudging approach? It would begin by questioning how nudging enhances or diminishes people’s abilities to take deliberate action or to make informed decisions.
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Georgios Dimitropoulos
In a thought-provoking comment on the legitimacy of nudging, Towfigh and Traxler rightly point out that nudges have many facets. As a result, their legitimacy has to be judged case by case. Responding partly to Towfigh and Traxler and partly to the broader issue of the legitimacy of nudging, I want to distinguish between two aspects that are raised in the comment: firstly, public and legal legitimacy and secondly, legitimacy among legal professionals.
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Gunnar Folke Schuppert
Setzt man die verwaltungswissenschaftliche Brille auf, so zeigen sich zwei Dinge: erstens, dass das Nudging-Konzept keinen Neuigkeitswert für sich beanspruchen kann und dass es – zweitens – in den Kontext zeitgemäßer steuerungswissenschaftlicher und kommunikationstheoretischer Einsichten gestellt werden muss.
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Emanuel V. Towfigh, Christian Traxler
Die Vorstellung, dass Regierungen auf „Nudges“ zurückgreifen, um Entscheidungen der Bürger zu beeinflussen, polarisiert, vor allem unter Juristen. Die einen betrachten diesen verhaltenswissenschaftlichen Ansatz als faszinierenden und attraktiven Weg der Politikgestaltung. Die Aussicht auf billige und sich gleichsam selbständig vollziehende Regulierungsinstrumente klingt gerade in finanziell harten Zeiten verlockend und lässt diese „sanften“ Interventionen als bestechende Alternative zu konventionellen Regulierungsmechanismen erscheinen. Andere hingegen beschwören die Gefahr eines überfürsorglichen Staates herauf, der mit „Psycho-Tricks“ seine Bürger manipuliert. Verglichen mit traditionellen Politikinstrumenten wie etwa Steuern sind Nudges eher hintergründige Regierungsaktivitäten, die nur schwer durch demokratische Prozesse zu kontrollieren sind und damit leicht außer Kontrolle geraten können. Obwohl eine starke Polarisierung im politischen Diskurs heutzutage nicht unüblich ist, lohnt es sich, die Hintergründe dieser emotional und leidenschaftlich geführten Kontroverse in den Blick zu nehmen.
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Daniel Halberstam
I enjoyed the exchange on my article providing a qualified constitutional defense of Opinion 2/13. I will not delve into a point-by-point rebuttal of the critics here. Instead, I shall make three quick points and end with a methodological challenge in the interest of moving forward.
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Marten Breuer
Opinion 2/13 is not about pluralism (and, indeed, not about the autonomy of Union law). It seeks to secure the ECJ’s last word in Convention matters. As such, it is an expression of power politics.
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Thomas Streinz
Daniel Halberstam’s “constitutional defense” of Opinion 2/13 is certainly thought-provoking, but it ultimately fails to convince. By taking on the seemingly impossible task of defending the indefensible, Daniel allows us to see more clearly what’s really wrong with the Court’s view. However, he mischaracterizes the Court’s many critics by alleging that “they rushed to embrace Strasbourg while forgetting about the constitutional dimension of EU governance along the way”. Criticism of Opinion 2/13 is grounded in more than amnesia about the distinctive character of EU constitutionalism. Rather, the true problem is precisely the Court’s interpretation of the EU’s constitutional order: it ignores the fact that accession is a constitutional requirement and engages in cherry-picking when it comes to the relationship between EU law and international law. To move accession forward, we need to unpack what I call the “autonomy paradox.”
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Jan Komárek
Risking further escalation of the rhetorical contest over a more catchy title, I would like to comment on Daniel Halberstam’s analysis of the ECJ’s Opinion 1/13 from a wider perspective. I would like to try to challenge the starting assumption which Daniel (and in fact also the commentators who were critical of the Opinion) makes – that the EU has a federal constitutional order, whose autonomy deserves the protection required by the ECJ. It is also because that no matter how much I find Daniel’s technical legal analysis insightful, I do not think the core issue concerns the doctrinal level.
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Andrew Duff
The Opinion is the latest manifestation of the historic tension in post-war Europe between federal and international law. This is important unfinished business. Nobody can be complacent about the opening up of a gap between the human rights regime of the Council of Europe and the fundamental rights regime of the European Union. A fall-out between the ECtHR at Strasbourg and the CJEU at Luxembourg is a bad thing for European rights protection.
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Sionaidh Douglas-Scott
Halberstam is right to highlight the CJEU’s focus on autonomy. But in so doing so we are missing something far more important. Human rights are here the elephant in the room. Accession to a human rights treaty should not be primarily about the autonomy of the EU legal order. It should be primarily about how best to protect human rights.
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Walther Michl
Nobody can tell whether the Court wanted to say “no unless” or simply “no”. The path to accession is very obscure after Opinion 2/13 – so much so that it is unclear if any accession agreement at all would withstand the Court’s scrutiny next time.
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Jörg Polakiewicz, Lucia Brieskova
Prof. Halberstam’s assessment of the Opinion 2/13 is based on the premise that the EU’s constitutional order is, as he put it, a “deep federal-type structure”. This federalist approach to Opinion 2/13 (and the autonomy of EU law) appears to be influenced by US constitutional experience and thinking. It neglects some important features of Europe's multi-layered human rights protection system as well as the EU's own constitutional order.
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Tobias Lock
I read Daniel Halberstam’s eloquent and erudite defence of Opinion 2/13 with great interest and I agree that (some of) the Court’s arguments can be rationally explained. What struck me about his piece, however, is that while it is centred on the concept of autonomy, he doesn’t seem to regard it necessary to provide us with a definition of it. In order to mount an effective defence of the Court’s position, it would have surely been a good starting point to defend the Court’s conception of autonomy as expressed in the Opinion.
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Daniel Halberstam
The Court of Justice of the European Union has arrived! Gone are the days of hagiography, when in the eyes of the academy the Court could do no wrong. The judicial darling, if there is one today, is Strasbourg not Luxembourg. Only hours after Opinion 2/13 struck down the Draft Agreement on EU Accession to the European Convention on Human Rights, scholars condemned the opinion as “exceptionally poor.” Critical voices mounted ever since, leading to nothing short of widespread “outrage.”
I disagree with the critics. In my legal analysis and constitutional reconstruction the Court’s concerns are mostly warranted. I also identify the changes that must be – and reasonably can be – made to move accession forward. Finally, and in a twist of irony, I show that one of the Court’s greatest concerns – mutual trust – goes to the very survival of the Union and demands not an exemption, but full accession.
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Ilya Levin, Michael Schwarz
As part of Verfassungsblog’s topical focus on the prevailing tensions between international and national constitutional law, we go east and take a look at Russia and its unsteady relationship with the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) – particularly the lately arisen tensions between the Russian Constitutional Court (CCR) and Strasbourg in the wake of the ECtHR’s decision in the Markin case. First, and in a more general manner, we briefly review the theories conceptualizing the relationship between domestic and international law, which traditionally go by the names of monism and dualism. In doing so, we do not miss the point that, as national constitutional practice in a variety of member states of the ECHR shows, conceptual clarity in terms of commitment to one or the other grand theory is often blurred, if not contradicted (I.). Clearly, Russia is no exception (II.). The Markin case marks a turning point in the relationship between the CCR and the ECtHR as Strasbourg, for the first time, overruled a decision of the CCR, which spurred a heated constitutional debate. The repercussions are yet to be seen (III.).
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Mark Speich, Christoph Möllers
Welcome remarks by Mark Speich (Vodafone Stiftung Deutschland) and Christoph Möllers (HU Berlin, Verfassungsblog).
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Cass Sunstein, Christoph Möllers
Cass Sunstein's key note lecture in the BBAW Leibniz Hall, Berlin 2015 Jan 12th.
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Alberto Alemanno
Europe has largely been absent from the US-dominated debate surrounding the introduction of nudge-type interventions in policy-making. As the EU and its Member States are exploring the possibility of embracing nudging, it appears desirable to reframe such a debate so as to adapt it to the legal and political realities of the European Union.
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Christoph Engel
In three respects, behaviorally informed governance faces much deeper uncertainty [...]
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Lars Klöhn
The concept of materiality – in the EU known as [...]
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Robert Neumann
While the general approach of choice architecture of altering the [...]
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Martin Eifert
Nudging is about effective solutions for social problems and a parallel case to other regulatory approaches. It fits into the tradition of rational policy-making. It requires a political decision on whether or not nudging should be chosen as an instrument to remedy the social costs entailed with risky behavior. And from a legal point of view it has to be reviewed whether the measure chosen is not a disproportionate loss of freedom for the individual. This requires balancing the interests. As nudging is a matter of politics we have to discuss it in the political arena.
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Oren Bar-Gill
Disclosure mandates are often considered to be the least paternalistic of all regulatory techniques. Indeed, information provision is believed to enhance both autonomy and efficiency by facilitating more informed decisionmaking. According to this traditional approach, disclosure regulation – a key instrument in the Nudge toolbox – is beyond reproach. Legitimacy concerns might be raised with respect to other Nudge-type interventions (specifically, the setting of default rules), but not disclosure. I propose a two-pronged challenge to this conventional wisdom.
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Uwe Volkmann
Liberal political philosophy has two alternative options in principle: It can either stick to its original theorems such as the harm principle or the separation of law and morals and from here try to prove large parts of present social and political reality as wrong, illegitimate, dangerous etc. The other option is trying to adjust the original theorems to the apparent needs of modern societies, which is what I would prefer in the long run.
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Gebhard Kirchgässner
Three theses on the justification and moral problems of soft paternalism.
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Johanna Wolff
The German basic law’s concept of constitutional liberties is difficult to reconcile with an idea of citizens who need to be told by the state what is better for them. Insofar as nudges and incentives affect fundamental rights, the government has to invoke public interests and cannot justify its measures on grounds of the assumed interests of the addressees.
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Christopher McCrudden
Cass Sunstein’s "Why Nudge?" presents a proposal for nudging as an alternative to traditional regulatory mandates and economic incentive-based regulation. I shall suggest that nudging creates considerable tensions with thick conceptions of human dignity.
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Jeff King
Now as ever, I agree with Cass Sunstein’s views on many matters. I above all agree that nudging is compatible with any defensible liberal idea of autonomy, and especially with the undeniable claim that nudges can often enhance autonomy in the empire of caveat emptor. Indeed, my concern is that libertarian paternalism is too libertarian, not too paternalistic.
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Gertrude Lübbe-Wolff
Politically as well as from the point of view of constitutional law, I see neither good reasons to generally reject health-related nudging towards less self-damaging behavior, nor good reasons to issue a general clearance certificate on the grounds that nudging always leaves the addressee “at liberty”. The state is not prohibited from taking sides in matters of public health – neither generally, nor specifically insofar as self-damaging behavior of accountable persons is concerned. However, claiming that people who are just being nudged remain free to resist the nudge falls far short of the constitutional law problems that nudges can raise.
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Cass Sunstein
The last decade has seen a rapid growth of interest in choice-preserving, low-cost regulatory tools, sometimes termed "nudges." Especially in light of that interest, it is important to obtain an understanding of the nature and weight of the ethical concerns.
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Oreste Pollicino
You founded Diritti Comparati in 2010. What motivated you to [...]
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Martin Scheinin
The academic response to CJEU Opinion 2/13 on EU accession to the European Convention on Human Rights can be characterised as a combination of shock, disbelief and protest. Indeed, the Opinion looks like total overkill, as the grounds for rejecting the draft accession agreement are so many and so diverse that they unavoidably give the impression of being primarily based on a defensive and territorial attitude of protecting the exclusive and superior nature of the CJEU’s own jurisdiction. That said, the critical discussion on Opinion 2/13 should include a search for rational explanations as to why the CJEU’s opinion is negative, even if in the extreme. What follows is a short reflection on three factors towards that kind of an approach, without any intention to defend the Opinion itself.
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Sionaidh Douglas-Scott
On 18 December 2014, the ECJ delivered its long awaited Opinion 2/13 on the compatibility with EU law of the draft agreement for EU accession to the ECHR. The ECJ concluded, to the great surprise of many, that the accession agreement is not compatible with EU law. Indeed it found so many obstacles with the agreement that it has now rendered accession very difficult, if not impossible.
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Walther Michl
Opinion 2/13 has already spurred outrage throughout the blogosphere. I concur with the statements published on this site: none of the Court’s arguments is compelling, some can be attributed to its exaggerated cautiousness, some, however, are utterly ill-founded. My contribution will focus on the ECJ’s statements under the caption ‘The specific characteristics and the autonomy of EU law’ (starting at marginal number 179) which I consider to be those with the most glaring blunders and misapprehensions.
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Anne Peters
The Italian Constiutional Court’s decision no. 238 of 22 Oct. 2014 (unofficial [...]
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Leonard F.M. Besselink
The Court’s Opinion on the accession of the EU to the European Convention on Human Rights may have shattered expectations. The revised accession agreement that was renegotiated by the EU and its Member States with the State Parties to the ECHR, after an initial rejection in the Council by the UK and France, has been dodged by the Court. Tobias Lock in his very fast and intelligent comment answered that question by stating that ‘[i]t is clear that the drafters of the DAA will have to return to the negotiating table’. I respectfully disagree.
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Mattias Wendel
So viel scheint sicher: Der 18. Dezember 2014 wird nicht als Ruhmestag europäischen Menschenrechtsschutzes in die Geschichte eingehen. In ungewöhnlich rigoroser Weise hat der EuGH dem Beitritt der Union zur EMRK einen Riegel vorgeschoben und sich hinter einem Bollwerk unionaler Autonomie verschanzt. Es entsteht das Bild eines Gerichtshofes, der seine Kontrollkompetenzen argwöhnisch und unnachgiebig selbst gegenüber einem externen Menschenrechtsorgan abzuschirmen versucht und einen Zugriff desselben selbst dort glaubt verhindern zu müssen, wo sein eigener Arm nicht hinreicht. Dabei scheint der Gerichtshof billigend in Kauf zu nehmen, den primärrechtlich vorgegebenen Beitritt der Union abermals über einen längeren Zeitraum hinweg zu blockieren und die menschenrechtliche Glaubwürdigkeit der Union extern wie intern zu beschädigen.
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Tobias Lock
Heute hat der EuGH die Frage der Europäischen Kommission „Ist der Entwurf des Vertrags über den Beitritt der Europäischen Union zur Konvention zum Schutz der Menschenrechte und Grundfreiheiten mit den Verträgen vereinbar?“ mit einem klaren „Nein“ beantwortet (Guachten 2/13). Diese Antwort ist für viele wohl überraschend, nicht zuletzt für diejenigen, die an der Verfassung des Entwurfs des Beitrittsübereinkommens (ÜE) beteiligt waren. Deren Ziel ein Übereinkommen zu hervorzubringen, das die verfassungsrechtlichen Vorgaben des Unionsrechts mit dem EMRK-System vereinbart, wurde klar nicht erreicht. Nachdem der EuGH einen früheren Versuch eines Beitritts als mit den Verträgen unvereinbar angehesehen hatte (Gutachten 2/94), hat er es nun wieder getan. Er hat damit seinen Widerwillen bestätigt, die Unionsrechtsordnung (und insbesondere seine eigenen Urteile) einer externen Prüfung durch den EGMR zu unterwerfen. Der EuGH nahm an nahezu jedem Gesichtspunkt des ÜE, inklusive dessen Hauptbestandteilen, dem Mitbeschwerdegegnermechnismus und dem Verfahren zur Vorbefassung des Gerichtshofs, Anstoß.
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Robert Frau
Die Einbeziehung von Völkervertragsrecht in die deutsche Rechtsordnung läuft seit [...]
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Jannika Jahn
The ruling Conservative party of Prime Minister David Cameron published [...]
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Alexandra Kemmerer, Christoph Möllers, Gerhard Wagner, Maximilian Steinbeis
Is “nudging” – as outlined by Cass Sunstein and Richard H. Thaler in their controversial concept of libertarian paternalism – a modern and efficient tool of governance or a dangerous attack on freedom and individual autonomy? Legal, economic and other experts will discuss the political, ethical and constitutional ramifications of nudging in a two-day conference at Berlin, beginning with a public lecture delivered by Cass Sunstein.
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Nico Krisch
International courts seem to be living in hard times. The [...]
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Hans Michael Heinig
Ist Nudging – also die Steuerung individueller Entscheidungen im wohlverstandenen Interesse des Entscheidenden – nicht nur eine Frage des Könnens, sondern des Sollens? Cass Sunstein, einer der Protagonisten der Nudging-Debatte, war letzte Woche bei einer Veranstaltung des Bundesjustizministeriums zu Gast. Doch die Frage nach der Rechtfertigung von Nudging tauchte kaum auf. Antworten wird hoffentlich die Nudging-Konferenz des Verfassungsblogs im Januar liefern.
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Hans Michael Heinig
Is nudging – the act of pushing someone in a certain direction in his or her own interest – not just a matter of "could" but of "should"? Cass Sunstein, one of the protagonists of the nudging debate, spoke last week at a conference held by the Federal Department of Justice. The question of the legitimacy of nudging hardly mattered at that conference, though – a question that will be hopefully addressed more comprehensively at the Verfassungsblog Nudging conference in January.
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Filippo Fontanelli
This symposium invites reflections on the intercourse between national courts [...]
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Felix Würkert
In a recent judgement (discussed here and here), the Italian [...]
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Koen Lenaerts, Hannah Birkenkötter
In unserem Symposium diskutieren wir derzeit über Spannungen zwischen Völkerrecht [...]
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Astrid Epiney
In der Schweiz wird in jüngerer Zeit das Verhältnis von [...]
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Hannah Birkenkötter, Raffaela Kunz, Dana Schmalz
Das Urteil des italienischen Verfassungsgerichts vom 22. Oktober 2014 bildet [...]
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Hannah Birkenkötter, Raffaela Kunz, Dana Schmalz
The judgment by the Italian Constitutional Court of 22 October [...]
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Jelena von Achenbach
To constitute a democratic order based on freedom and equality, the political system of a society needs to reflect its complexity. Processes of collective decision-making need to allow for the political expression of societal differentiation and diversity. Bicameralism is a crucial mechanism in this regard. Most basically, bicameralism means a diversification of political institutions. It establishes yet another layer of structural complexity within the legislative branch and the actual law-making procedure. It diffuses and decentres legislative power. Bicameral decision-making tends to articulate conflict rather than consensus. It allows for expressing certain aspects of political pluralism and disagreement. Although or maybe because bicameralism aims for legislation to be grounded in a more inclusive, comprehensive political consensus, bicameral decision-making tends to articulate conflict rather than accord. It therefore is of some intrinsic value and justification in societies that are internally heterogeneous and organized in politically self-governing sub-entities.
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Antonia Baraggia
Italy's unique "perfect bicameralism" has often been criticized for its inefficiency. The latest attempt to reform it, brought forward by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, is still debated in parliament. The destiny of the Italian bicameralism and the resolution of the Italian oxymoron lies on the thin line of the agreement between the main political forces, which seems quite frail and uncertain at the moment.
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Nicholas Aroney, William Isdale
As outposts of the British Empire, the various state parliaments of Australia, and New Zealand as a whole, inherited the Westminster system of government with an elected lower house, in which government is formed, and an unelected house of review. In little under two hundred years, these parliaments have undergone a range of reforms, including democratisation of their upper houses. Two jurisdictions, however, took bolder steps: the Australian state of Queensland, and New Zealand, both demolished their upper houses entirely – with mixed results, at best.
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Caroline van Wynsberghe
The Belgian Senate has just emerged from a major State reform which has significantly reduced its competences. The absence of a federal political culture and the presence of a very strong party system make it hard for the Second Chamber to find a proper role in the political system of Belgium.
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Johannes Saurer
In times of small coalitions the face of bicameralism in Germany oftentimes expresses conflict and stalemate. On the other hand, there is the very different face of bicameralism in times of grand coalitions. These two alternating faces of German bicameralism result from a particular historical decision on constitutional design.
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Eoin Carolan
When the current Government proposed its abolition in a referendum in 2013, perhaps the most notable feature of the debate was the consensus on all sides that there is little, if any, justification for the retention of the Seanad in its current form. In a result that contradicted pre-referendum opinion polls, voters rejected the proposed abolition. Given the widespread agreement during the campaign about the inadequacy of the current institution, attention naturally turned to the question of how the Seanad might be reformed.
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Dawn Oliver
The UK does not have a supreme court with power to strike down laws that are contrary to the constitution, human rights and so on. Instead the system relies heavily on intra-parliamentary mechanisms, operating in the House of Lords. While the current unelected composition of the Lords is controversial and difficult to justify rationally, it is widely agreed across the political spectrum that the Chamber discharges its functions in legislative scrutiny and examination of public polices well.
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Hoi Kong, Kate Glover
The framers of Canada’s Constitution had a vision for the Senate as a complementary, deliberative body bringing regional perspectives to national issues and genuine powers of oversight and sober second thought. It is widely agreed, though, that the Senate’s constitutional configuration stains Canada’s public institutions. The Senate needs change, but the impulse to reform is stifled by the reluctance of officials to open the constitutional amending formula.
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Johannes Bethge
Parliamentary second chambers are a common, yet peculiar feature of constitutions worldwide. Their diversity of design and the assorted roles they play in majoritarian democracies are reason enough for a comparative analysis, but there is more: Bicameralism – and its discontents – is in the air. Countries within and outside of Europe have recently made attempts to reform or abolish their respective upper houses. We have asked distinguished scholars from all of these nations to provide us with accounts of the debates in their countries.
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Sionaidh Douglas-Scott
Is the ‘spectre of disintegration’ haunting Europe? Joseph Weiler fears that it is, and that, were an independent Scotland to be admitted as an EU state, this would lead to a domino effect whereby others would demand independence within the EU – testimony of an atavistic, retrogressive mentality, and adverse to the EU’s raison d’etre. This is a strongly put view, and not all will agree with it. Nonetheless, most of the papers in this highly stimulating symposium address, albeit in very different ways, the concern that lies at the base of Weiler’s argument – namely, the character of the EU, the nature of its values, its very reason for being. They also address the more workaday, but nonetheless critical, legal and practical issues that an independent Scotland’s membership pose.
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Christophe Hillion
Like many participants in this stimulating symposium, I am in agreement with several of Sionaidh Douglas-Scott’s contentions. But like some others, I am less persuaded by one of her conclusions: namely, that a treaty revision based on Article 48 TEU would suffice to codify an independent Scotland’s membership in the EU. While admittedly unprecedented, such a situation could not in itself warrant a complete disregard of EU membership rules, eg Article 49 TEU. As part of ‘the particular constitution and rules of the EU’, they should instead be applied, given their specific function in the treaties, albeit in a ‘pragmatic and purposive fashion’ in consideration of the existing and future ties between Scotland and the EU.
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Carlos Closa Montero
No one disagrees that an independent Scotland qualifies for EU membership and that it would no doubt become an EU member state. Why then is there so much normative argument around “seamless transition”? It may or may not happen and, should it come it pass, I believe that it may be a good thing, albeit that I fail to see a “normative” case which supports it. Why should third parties guarantee to a self-determining self that its constitutive decision will be costless regardless of any other consideration? This would deprive citizenship of an essential responsibility for decisions taken which I consider indispensable to democracy.
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Neil Walker
The presence of the EU both offers a spur to new projects of national sovereignty but also, and in my view more emphatically, it supplies a set of considerations which makes the project of new statehood less pressing, less consequential, and provided we can trust in continuing UK membership of a continuing EU (both of which statuses, of course, need careful attention) less relevant and ultimately unnecessary.
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Stephen Tierney
I agree with Sionaidh that the accession of an independent Scotland to the European Union is not in any serious doubt. I develop this point in a paper written with Katie Boyle here. In this blog I argue that although accession will no doubt take time, there is unlikely to be any period within which Scotland is effectively cast out of the EU. More speculatively I would like to ask whether there might in fact a duty on the part of the EU to negotiate Scotland’s membership, and whether the Secession Reference to the Supreme Court of Canada may provide an interesting analogy supportive of this argument.
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Dimitry Vladimirovich Kochenov
the Union cannot be possibly expected to throw its weight behind ensuring that there is no choice for the nations seeking independence within Europe – it is not the Union’s realm. The contrary would amount to turning the EU into an instrument of blackmail of the emerging states by the existing state entities which is radically deprived of any purpose and is in strong contradiction with the values of democracy and the rule of law which the Union espouses.
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Bruno de Witte
Whereas the Article 48 route has major advantages over the Article 49 route, and would be feasible – in my view at least – as a matter of legal principle, it would create many complications all the same, both for the Scots and for the rest of Europe.
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Michael Keating
To suggest that a nation that has followed the Scottish route should not be allowed into the European family while others with more dubious pedigrees are, would violate basic democratic principles. Effectively, Scotland would be expelled from the union for exercising a widely-recognized democratic right.
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Kalypso Nicolaidis
With the Treaty of Lisbon, the EU formalised and entrenched a right of exit (article 50) which is at the heart of its nature as a polity: the peoples of Europe have come together and will remain together by choice, not under duress. In the same way as the exit clause proclaims loudly and clearly that EU member states and their citizens remain in the EU by choice, leaving the EU should be a collective choice too. It should not be a choice inferred from another choice, that of one part of a country to leave the whole.
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Piet Eeckhout
Constitutional, doctrinal and practical reasons why the EU has to negotiate after a Yes referendum.
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Jo Eric Khushal Murkens
Sionaidh Douglas-Scott’s reliance on Article 48 is far from persuasive on technical legal grounds (is it the correct legal basis to accommodate a new Member State?) as well as for strategic reasons (the negotiation process may well be dominated by the UK’s negotiating team pursuing its own agenda). But even if an independent Scotland’s continued membership in the EU were ‘smooth and straightforward’, Douglas-Scott provides no answer to the question as to what kind of member an independent Scotland would be.
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Joseph H.H. Weiler
It would be hugely ironic if the prospect of Membership in the Union ended up providing an incentive for an ethos of political disintegration. In seeking separation Scotland would be betraying the very ideals of solidarity and human integration for which Europe stands.
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Sionaidh Douglas-Scott
The comments below focus on the importance of an EU perspective on an independent Scotland’s EU membership, highlighting the EU as a distinctive, sui generis and new type of legal organisation. They argue that a strong case can be made for Scotland’s continued EU membership on the basis of EU law itself.
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Maximilian Steinbeis
Obama hat es getan, Cameron hat es getan, und jetzt [...]
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Maximilian Steinbeis
Obama did it, Cameron too, and now Germany seems determined [...]
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Stefan Grundmann
The German Council of Sciences and Humanities calls for an [...]
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Christian Djeffal
‘In the beginning was the word, the commentary followed swiftly…’ This wisecrack applies to many academic disciplines and it certainly applies to German legal academia. There are great many commentaries. As the Wissenschaftsrat very closely observed the practices of German legal academia, it also inquired into the genre of commentaries. What was there to say?
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Stefan Grundmann
Der Wissenschaftsrat ruft in seinem Gutachten zu den “Perspektiven der Rechtswissenschaft in Deutschland” dazu auf, die Rechtswissenschaft sowohl international als auch mit Blick auf die Nachbarwissenschaften zu öffnen. Beide Forderungen verdienen dann Unterstützung, wenn sie als Weiterentwicklung, nicht als revolutionäre Forderung zum Umsturz des bestehenden Systems verstanden werden.
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Jack Balkin, Hannah Birkenkötter, Maximilian Steinbeis
Jack Balkin, professor of constitutional law at Yale University and founder of one of the most widely read blogs on constitutional law in the US, talks about what it means to run a scholarly blog.
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Markus Krajewski
Ein kurzer Blick zurück: Die öffentlich und medial aufgeladene Kritik an einem Investitionsschutzkapitel einschließlich der Möglichkeit von Investor-Staat-Streitbeilegung im TTIP führte dazu, dass sich die Kommission am 21. Januar 2014 dazu genötigt sah, eine öffentliche Konsultation zu diesem Thema durchzuführen. Auf meine Frage, warum die Konsultation nur zu diesem und nicht zu anderen strittigen Themen wie Dienstleistungsliberalisierung und regulatorische Kooperation durchgeführt würde, antwortete ein Kommissionsbeamter aus dem TTIP-Verhandlungsteam: „Wir wurden dazu gezwungen“. Das bedeutet zweierlei: Erstes, von selbst hätte die Kommission diesen Schritt – trotz ihrer Beteuerungen, transparent zu verhandeln und alle Betroffenen ausreichend zu informieren – nicht unternommen. Zweitens, Konsultationen zu anderen Themen wird es nur geben, wenn die Öffentlichkeit sie vehement einfordert.
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Dana Schmalz
Wo enden die universellen Rechte? Das fragt Saskia Stucki in ihrem [...]
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Jochen von Bernstorff
Wenn jede Form der demokratischen Regulierung des Investitionsumfeldes zu einem potenziellen Haushaltsrisiko für den Gaststaat wird, weil er befürchten muss, von einem Investor vor einem privaten ad-hoc-Schiedsgericht auf Entschädigung verklagt zu werden, wirft dies fundamentale Fragen der demokratischen Selbstbestimmung und der innerstaatlichen Gewaltenteilung auf. Das über mehr als 3000 bilaterale Verträge inzwischen weltweit etablierte System der Investitionsschiedsgerichtsbarkeit geht über das ohne Zweifel berechtigte Anliegen von Investoren, wirkungsvoll gegen willkürliche Enteignungen geschützt zu werden, inzwischen weit hinaus. Ist die Schraube überdreht worden?
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Stephan Schill
Die Diskussionen um das Transatlantische Handels- und Investitionspartnerschaftsabkommen (TTIP) zwischen der EU und den USA fokussieren häufig in erster Linie auf die konkrete Ausgestaltung der materiell-rechtlichen und prozessualen Regelungen des Investitionskapitels. Führt die Formulierung des Grundsatzes billiger und gerechter Behandlung zu einem angemessenen Ausgleich von Investoreninteressen und staatlichen Regulierungsinteressen? Schiedsgerichtsbarkeit: ja oder nein? Wird die Öffentlichkeit an Schiedsverfahren angemessen beteiligt? Werden Interessenkonflikte bei Schiedsrichtern effektiv verhindert? Ist die Behandlung der Verfahrenskosten adäquat? Weniger im Zentrum steht die Frage, an welchem Maßstab die künftige EU-Investitionsschutzpolitik zu messen ist und woran sich Reformbestrebungen im Investitionsrecht orientieren sollten. Geht es rein um außenwirtschaftliche Opportunität? Oder spielen nicht, wie im Folgenden argumentiert, Wertungen des Verfassungsrechts von Union und Mitgliedstaaten eine bedeutende Rolle?
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Peter-Tobias Stoll
Eine im Umfang einzigartige wechselseitige Investitionstätigkeit prägt seit Jahrzehnten die transatlantischen Wirtschaftsbeziehungen. Sie hat sich über die Jahre als wesentlich problemloser erwiesen als der Handel, der mit dem Vorhaben einer transatlantischen Handels- und Investitionsinitiative (TTIP) in vieler Hinsicht erleichtert werden kann. Das kann man von dem Investitionskapitel in dem jetzt verhandelten Abkommen kaum sagen.
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Axel Flessner
Die Verpflichtung der Staaten zur „gerechten und billigen Behandlung“ der Investitionen aus dem Ausland und die Unterwerfung des Staates unter Schiedsgerichte, die von den Investoren selbst angerufen werden und den Staat zu Entschädigungen verurteilen können, widerspricht mehrfach dem deutschen Grundgesetz. Sie bringen die demokratisch begründete Staatsgewalt unter Fremdbestimmung (1), verdrehen die Garantie des Rechtsweges (2), zwingen den Staat zur Ausländerprivilegierung und Inländerdiskriminierung (3) und enthalten eine Selbstermächtigung der Europäischen Union (EU), die dieser nach den EU-Verträgen nicht zusteht (4). Auch mit dem Verfassungsrecht anderer Staaten, namentlich dem der USA, dürften sie nicht vereinbar sein (5).
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Isabel Feichtner
This article is available only in German.
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Isabel Feichtner
Bevor wir einen „besseren“ Investitionsschutz und „besseres“ ISDS akzeptieren, sollten wir verstehen, warum wir dies tun. Bloße Verweise auf Grundrechte, Gleichgewicht und Rule of Law überzeugen mich nicht.
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Matej Avbelj
A view from Slovenia: Matej Avbelj on the "Spitzenkandidat" process and its possible implications for the legitimacy of the EU commission.
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Matej Avbelj
Ein Blick aus Slowenien: Matej Avbelj über den "Spitzenkandidatur"-Prozess und die Legitimation der künftigen EU-Kommission.
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Pasquale Pasquino
Fünf sehr kurze Antworten des New Yorker Verfassungstheoretikers Pasquale Pasquino auf unsere fünf Fragen zum Vorhaben der europäischen Parteien, Spitzenkandidaten für das Amt des Kommissionspräsidenten zu nominieren.Five very brief answers by Pasquale Pasquino, political scientist from New York, to our five questions on the "Spitzenkandidat" process.
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Pasquale Pasquino
Five very brief answers by Pasquale Pasquino, political scientist from New York, to our five questions on the "Spitzenkandidat" process.
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Marco Dani
Für die kommenden Europawahlen haben die meisten Parteien europäische Spitzenkandidaten nominiert, die im Fall ihres Wahlsiegs EU-Kommissionspräsident werden sollen. Wie deutsch ist diese Idee? Kann sie der europäischen Gesetzgebung mehr demokratische Legitimation verleihen? Wird sie die Machtbalance in der EU in Bezug auf die Mitgliedstaaten verändern? Diese und andere Fragen haben wir einer Reihe von Experten gestellt. Marco Dani von der Universität Trient war der erste, der geantwortet hat.
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Marco Dani
For the upcoming European elections, most European parties have nominated candidates for President of the EU Commission. In the Brussels jargon, this issue is called the „Spitzenkandidat process“. How German is this idea? Can it bestow more democratic legitimacy on the European law-making process? How will it affect the power balance in the EU with respect to the member states? We have asked these and other questions to a number of experts. The first to answer was Marco Dani from University of Trento.
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Juan Fernandez-Armesto, Justus von Daniels
Wie arbeiten internationale Schiedsgerichte? Wozu sind sie gut und wozu nicht? Juan Fernandez-Armesto war in mehr als 100 Fällen als Schiedsrichter in internationalen Wirtschaftsschiedsverfahren und Investoren-Staatsschiedsverfahren tätig. Im Interview mit Justus von Daniels gibt er Auskunft, wie diese wenig bekannten und doch immer einflussreicheren Gerichte funktionieren.
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Monika Polzin
Ich möchte mich in meinem Beitrag zur Bewertung des Investitionsschutzrechts im Rahmen des Transatlantischen Handels- und Investitionspartnerschaftsabkommens („TTIP“) dem bislang eher wenig beachteten Vorschlag der Kommission widmen, die Auslegungskompetenzen der Schiedsgerichte zu begrenzen (Frage 11 des Konsultationsdokuments). Die Kommission möchte Regelungen einführen, die es der EU (gemeinsam mit den USA) ermöglichen, auf die Auslegung der Investitionsschutzbestimmungen durch Schiedsgerichte einzuwirken. Die Kommission will durch solche Regelungen fehlerhaften Interpretationen der Investitionsschutzbestimmungen durch Schiedsgerichte entgegenwirken. Ist diese begrenzte Auslegungskompetenz der Schiedsgerichte nun der richtige Weg, Fehlurteile zu vermeiden und sicherzustellen, dass die Investitionsschutzbestimmungen stets im Einklang mit den Parteiwillen ausgelegt und so die regulatorischen Interessen der Staaten (aus Sicht der Vertragsparteien) ausreichend beachtet werden? Oder wird hier das „Kind mit dem Bade ausgeschüttet“ und die Unabhängigkeit der Schiedsgerichte so sehr eingeschränkt, dass faire Verfahren nicht mehr möglich sind?
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Monika Polzin
This article is available only in German.
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Steffen Hindelang
Since the 1970s, almost any bilateral and regional investment treaty has provided for investor-state dispute settlement (“ISDS”). Based on these agreements, foreign investors can commence international arbitration against their host states, claiming administrative, regulatory, or judicial measures are in violation of substantive investment protection standards.
At a global level rising numbers of investor-state disputes and newly signed investment agreements suggest the continuous importance and attractiveness of this dispute settlement mechanism. Yet, we also see contestations. A few countries did not renew or even terminated existing investment instruments. Others have withdrawn from the ICSID-Convention.
What does this mean for the European Union? Simply carrying on appears no sustainable option anymore. Since the 1970s, almost any bilateral and regional investment treaty has provided for investor-state dispute settlement (“ISDS”). Based on these agreements, foreign investors can commence international arbitration against their host states, claiming administrative, regulatory, or judicial measures are in violation of substantive investment protection standards.
At a global level rising numbers of investor-state disputes and newly signed investment agreements suggest the continuous importance and attractiveness of this dispute settlement mechanism. Yet, we also see contestations. A few countries did not renew or even terminated existing investment instruments. Others have withdrawn from the ICSID-Convention.
What does this mean for the European Union? Simply carrying on appears no sustainable option anymore.
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Jörn Griebel
This article is available only in German.
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Eberhart Theuer
Ist „Person“ eine abgeschlossene rechtliche Kategorie, die außer dem Homo sapiens keiner weiteren Spezies mehr offen steht? Schon seit einigen Jahren empfehlen sich Schimpansen und andere Non-Homo-sapiens-Menschenaffen als mögliche Kandidaten. Der Diskurs um deren Rechtsstatus wird nicht nur de lege ferenda geführt. Und er ist nicht nur theoretisch.
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Charlotte Blattner
„Global Animal Law“ glänzte bis vor wenigen Jahren primär durch seine Absenz. Trotz der Tatsache, dass sich dieses Rechtsgebiet in statu nascendi befindet, vermochten die ReferentInnen des Panels bemerkenswert komplexes und packendes Wissen zu vermitteln. Der „Animal Turn“ wurde in diesem Panel nicht nur im klassischen Sinne als Wendepunkt aufgefasst, sondern ist als Ausgangspunkt einer ganz neuen Debatte zu verstehen.The "animal turn" in this panel was not only understood in its traditional sense as a turning point, but to some extent also as the starting point of completely new debates. Until few years ago, global animal law was notable primarily for its absence. Despite the fact that this field of law is still in its nascent state, the panelists successfully transmitted remarkably complex and thrilling knowledge.
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Amelie C. Buhl
Am 4. und 5. April kamen an der juristischen Fakultät der Universität Basel Rechtswissenschaftlerinnen und Rechtswissenschaftler und Vertreterinnen anderer Disziplinen zur ersten jährlichen europäischen Tierrechtskonferenz zusammen. Ein breiter interdisziplinärer Ansatz versprach den Animal Turn in the Law aufzugreifen. Am Anfang stand dabei die rechtsphilosophische Frage, wie sich das Thema Tiere im Recht zu der seit einigen Dekaden bestehenden Tierrechtefrage der Tierethikdiskussion verhält. Gibt es eine Mensch-Tier-Grenze? Wie betrachten wir eigentlich andere Tiere?On 4 and 5 April 2014 the first European Annual Animal Law Conference took place in Basel´s law faculty, Switzerland. The first panel involved the human animal boundary from a biological – philosophical approach, the second panel concerned global animal law, the third panel was called “Are animals the New Women?” and the fourth panel finally discussed ground-breaking cases in animal law.
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Anne Peters, Saskia Stucki, Livia Boscardin
After the linguistic turn and the iconic turn, we have been witnessing an animal turn in the social sciences and the humanities. What do we mean by animal turn? We mean an increasing scholarly interest in animals, in the relationships between humans and other animals, and in the role and status of animals in (human) society. The animal turn is an academic focus on animals in new terms and under new premises.After the linguistic turn and the iconic turn, we have been witnessing an animal turn in the social sciences and the humanities. What do we mean by animal turn? We mean an increasing scholarly interest in animals, in the relationships between humans and other animals, and in the role and status of animals in (human) society. The animal turn is an academic focus on animals in new terms and under new premises.
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Anne Peters, Saskia Stucki, Livia Boscardin
After the linguistic turn and the iconic turn, we have been witnessing an animal turn in the social sciences and the humanities. What do we mean by animal turn? We mean an increasing scholarly interest in animals, in the relationships between humans and other animals, and in the role and status of animals in (human) society. The animal turn is an academic focus on animals in new terms and under new premises.After the linguistic turn and the iconic turn, we have been witnessing an animal turn in the social sciences and the humanities. What do we mean by animal turn? We mean an increasing scholarly interest in animals, in the relationships between humans and other animals, and in the role and status of animals in (human) society. The animal turn is an academic focus on animals in new terms and under new premises.
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Kaarlo Tuori, Klaus Tuori
Our book on Eurozone Crisis has been reviewed and commented [...]
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Daniela Jaros
Kaarlo Tuori’s and Klaus Tuori’s account of the the Eurozone [...]
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Matthias Ruffert
The spectacular events that shook the European Economic and Monetary [...]
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Matthias Ruffert
The spectacular events that shook the European Economic and Monetary [...]
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Andromachi Georgosouli
The Eurozone Crisis: A Constitutional Analysis by Kaarlo and Klaus [...]
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Andromachi Georgosouli
The Eurozone Crisis: A Constitutional Analysis by Kaarlo and Klaus [...]
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Christian Joerges
“Die Wirtschaft ist das Schicksal” (the economy is our destiny) [...]
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Christian Joerges
“Die Wirtschaft ist das Schicksal” (the economy is our destiny) [...]
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Kaarlo Tuori, Klaus Tuori
Our book on the Eurozone crisis is built on two [...]
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Kaarlo Tuori, Klaus Tuori
Our book on the Eurozone crisis is built on two [...]
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Isabel Feichtner
Kaarlo Tuori, Klaus Tuori. The Eurozone Crisis. A Constitutional Analysis. [...]
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Isabel Feichtner
Kaarlo Tuori, Klaus Tuori. The Eurozone Crisis. A Constitutional Analysis. [...]
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Joris Larik
„Der Papst? Wie viele Divisionen hat der denn?“ Mit diesen Worten verhöhnte Josef Stalin im Jahre 1935 den Vatikan und sprach diesem somit jede außenpolitischer Beachtung aus Sicht der Sowjetunion ab. Heute, fast achtzig Jahre später, gibt es schon lange keine Sowjetunion mehr. Der Papst, seinerseits, herrscht auch weiterhin ohne die Hilfen von Panzerkolonnen im Vatikan und zieht regelmäßig Menschenmengen auf den Petersplatz in Rom oder auf seinen Auslandsreisen um die Welt an. Auch die EU hat keine Divisionen, wenn wir einmal von den kleinen und eher auf Papier ihr Dasein fristenden „Battle Groups“ absehen, und verschreibt sich einer Außenpolitik basiert auf ‚soft power’ und normativen Inhalten. Doch auch sie wird Putins Russland überdauern.‘The Pope? How many divisions has he got?’ With these scoffing words, Joseph Stalin dismissed in 1935 the Vatican as a factor of any significance for the Soviet Union and its foreign policy. Today, almost 80 years later, the Soviet Union is long gone. The Pope, on his part, continues to rule from the Vatican without the help of armored divisions and attracts on a regular basis vast crowds to St. Peter’s Square or on his trips abroad. The European Union does not have any divisions either, if we leave aside the small ‘battle groups’, which in any event exist to a greater extent on paper than on the ground. It, too, commits itself to a foreign policy based on ‘soft power’ and normative influence. And it, too, will outlast Putin’s Russia.
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Ilya Levin
Wie einst Lyndon B. Johnsohn behauptet die EU, in ihrer Außenpolitik auf die Eroberung der Herzen zu setzen. Sie positioniert sich als Wertegemeinschaft und transferiert und implementiert ihre (exklusiven und richtigen) Werte auch in die Welt, denn diese sind übertragungsfähig und befolgungswürdig, sie machen das Leben der Völker weltweit besser und die Missionare dieser Werte zu besseren Menschen. Dabei bleibt leider die Frage offen, ob diese Werte wirkungsvoll in der empirischen Realität einer höchst heterogenen Gesellschaft implementiert werden können. Like Lyndon B. Johnsohn, the EU claims to struggle with its foreign policy for the "hearts and minds" of people. It itself as a community of shared values that is exporting its (exclusive and universally valid) values to the entire world. This export is the “thing to do” because these European values (are likely to?) improve the living conditions of people worldwide and at the same time morally perfect the missionaries of the right. Still the question remains whether it is empirically possible to realise such noble ideas within the deeply heterogenous Ukranian enviroment.
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Niklas Helwig, Tuomas Iso-Markku
The current crisis has put the spotlight on a source of threat that already seemed forgotten in the European context: aggression against states on their own territory. Not just NATO, but also the EU has a clause in place, which specifically refers to cases in which one of the member states would fall victim to an armed attack. EU member states introduced the so called ‘mutual defence clause’ with the Lisbon Treaty as a carefully worded compromise. Since then, the clause has remained merely symbolic with little political, let alone operational, relevance. However, the current crisis raises the question whether the ‘mutual defence clause’ could receive new political or even practical significance in the development of Europe’s common security and defence policy.The current crisis has put the spotlight on a source of threat that already seemed forgotten in the European context: aggression against states on their own territory. Not just NATO, but also the EU has a clause in place, which specifically refers to cases in which one of the member states would fall victim to an armed attack. EU member states introduced the so called ‘mutual defence clause’ with the Lisbon Treaty as a carefully worded compromise. Since then, the clause has remained merely symbolic with little political, let alone operational, relevance. However, the current crisis raises the question whether the ‘mutual defence clause’ could receive new political or even practical significance in the development of Europe’s common security and defence policy.
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Silvia von Steinsdorff
Der größte Fehler der EU im Konflikt um die Ukraine besteht in der offensichtlichen Kurzsichtigkeit des eigenen Handelns. Gerade wenn damit zu rechnen war, dass Russland jeden Moment sein „wahres Gesicht“ zeigen und militärisch eingreifen würde, bleibt unverständlich, warum sich offenbar bislang niemand in der EU Gedanken über mögliche Reaktionen auf diesen worst case gemacht hat.
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Caroline von Gall
Demokratie, Rechtsstaatlichkeit und Menschenrechte sind Grundsätze, die die Gemeinsame Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik leiten sollen. Gleichwohl hat die EU in der Vergangenheit keine Strategien gefunden, die Ukraine bei der Umsetzung dieser Werte wirkungsvoll zu unterstützen. In der Zeit nach der Orangen Revolution wurde das Feld im Bereich der Verfassungskonsolidierung weitgehend dem Europarat überlassen. Stattdessen ließ sich die EU auf die Putinsche Logik der Integrationskonkurrenz ein. Will die EU aber ihre rechtsstaatlichen Ziele ernstnehmen, muss sie ihre Strategien zur Rechtstaatsentwicklung deutlich erweitern. The European Neighbourhood Policy, the Eastern Partnership and the EU’s negotiated Association Agreement with Ukraine are based on the joint undertaking to strengthen democracy, the rule of law, human rights and good governance. The special significance of these values reflects the normative requirement relating to the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy based on Art. 21 of the EU Treaty.
Nevertheless, the EU has not in the past found any strategies to effectively support Ukraine in its implementation of these values. During the period after the Orange Revolution, the field of constitutional consolidation was largely left to the European Council. Instead of making concentrated efforts to counteract Ukraine's constitutional decline, the EU accepted Putin’s concept of integration rivalry. If the EU plans to take its targets of establishing the rule of law seriously, it will have to significantly extend its relevant strategies.
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Kirsten Westphal
Sanktionen gegen Russland zu verhängen würde wegen der deutschen Abhängigkeit vom russischen Gas die Energiewende in Gefahr bringen. Stimmt das überhaupt?
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Timm Beichelt
Gegenwärtig kann es in Kiew, Berlin und Brüssel nur um Schadenbegrenzung gehen. Auf der Ebene der internationalen Politik müssen Signale an Russland ausgesandt werden, dass seine Aggressionspolitik keine Zukunft hat. Hier muss dem Denkmodell des Völkerrechts gefolgt werden. Auf der Ebene des Selbstbestimmungsrechts sollte die ukrainische Regierung dagegen davon überzeugt werden, der Selbstbestimmungsdiskussion in der Ostukraine konstruktiv entgegenzutreten.
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Ariane Grieser
Picking up some of the threads of the current debate [...]
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Russell A. Miller
Introduction For all the noise it makes about internationalizing German [...]
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Jan Klabbers
Had the German Wissenschaftsrat hired an advertising agency to extol [...]
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Anne Griffiths
What is striking to an outsider about the focus of [...]
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Ralf Michaels
Michaela Hailbronner makes important arguments in her informed and carefully [...]
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Michaela Hailbronner
The debate on the Wissenschaftsrat-Report has quickly turned into one [...]
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Ralf Michaels
I want to decline Rob Howse’s invitation to talk about [...]
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Virgílio Afonso da Silva
A few years ago, a New York Times editorial declared: [...]
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Robert Howse
Ralf Michaels describes me as having “taken offense” to his [...]
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Ralf Michaels
In a post on verfassungsblog.de I compare two reports on [...]
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Christopher McCrudden
The main issue I wish to focus on in this [...]
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Robert Howse
Germany's Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat) has issued a report on the state of legal scholarship in the country. At first glance it is fairly interesting as an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the discipline. The report has attracted, however, a rather unusual response at Verfassungsblog from a professor at Duke, Ralf Michaels, who seems to hold to theories of cultural determinism in legal education. According to Michaels, "German doctrinal scholarship will always be superior to that of other countries,.."
Always? I am not sure what to make of this.Germany's Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat) has issued a report on the state of legal scholarship in the country. At first glance it is fairly interesting as an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the discipline. The report has attracted, however, a rather unusual response at Verfassungsblog from a professor at Duke, Ralf Michaels, who seems to hold to theories of cultural determinism in legal education. According to Michaels, "German doctrinal scholarship will always be superior to that of other countries,.."
Always? I am not sure what to make of this.
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Ralf Michaels
The German Council of Science and Humanities’ report on “Prospects [...]
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Hannah Birkenkötter, Alexandra Kemmerer
this is Structural changes in the law present challenges to [...]
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Ingolf Pernice
Das Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG) hat einen historischen Schritt getan: Die Abtrennung der Fragen zum Ankaufprogramm von Staatsanleihen (OMT) der Europäischen Zentralbank vom Verfahren zum Europäischen Stabilitätsmechanismus ESM und die Vorlage der Fragen zum OMT an den Gerichtshof der Europäischen Union (EuGH): Nie zuvor hat das Gericht eine Frage im Vorlageverfahren nach Art. 267 AEUV an den EuGH gerichtet.
Schade allerdings wäre es, wenn der EuGH die Vorlage als unzulässig abweisen müsste, weil die Fragen hypothetischer Natur sind und das Vorlageverfahren nicht als Gutachtenverfahren oder sonst missbraucht werden darf. Während normalerweise die Gerichte dem EuGH die Frage nach der Gültigkeit von Rechtsakten der Unionsorgane vorgelegt wird, fragt das BVerfG hier, ob das Programm der EZB zum Ankauf von Staatsanleihen OMT unvereinbar mit den Unionsverträgen ist und macht sehr deutlich, dass es von der Ungültigkeit ausgeht.
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Daniel Thym
Among domestic commentators, the initial response was amazement: the reference by the German Constitutional Court was perceived as a sensation and turning point. My reaction is more moderate. Judges in Karlsruhe recognise their limits and try to push the ECJ in their direction.
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Daniel Thym
Die Medien waren sich schnell einig: eine Sensation, ein Paukenschlag, ein Wendepunkt. Mein Fazit ist nüchterner. Karlsruhe erkennt die eigenen Grenzen und versucht den EuGH als Verbündeten zu gewinnen.Among domestic commentators, the initial response was amazement: the reference by the German Constitutional Court was perceived as a sensation and turning point. My reaction is more moderate. Judges in Karlsruhe recognise their limits and try to push the ECJ in their direction.
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Maximilian Steinbeis
Wer sich angesichts der heutigen Entscheidung aus Karlsruhe verstört fragt, [...]
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Andrew Weissmann
Mr. Weissmann, you were the General Counsel of the Federal [...]
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Alexandros Kioupkiolis
In the fall of 2013, Greek universities are on the verge of a terminal collapse. As the production of critical academic discourse and opposition to the neoliberal orthodoxies and the prevailing policies in Greece continues unabated, it is little wonder that a predominantly conservative, rightwing government would seize the opportunity of the debt crisis and the obligations to Greece’s lenders to give vent to its long-felt resentment and to teach the disobedient universities a disciplinary lesson.
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Dimitry Vladimirovich Kochenov
Coming from such an established voice advocating the protection of rule of law at the national level, Kim Scheppele’s proposal definitely enjoys sufficient legitimacy to be taken very seriously. In what follows, I look at the “problem” of democracy (1.), the “problem” with bundling infringements (2.), the problem of determining the meaning of “values” (3.), and the problem with penalties (4.). I conclude that two problems are fictitious but two others are real.
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Matej Avbelj
Can the values and objectives of the European Union really (or even at all) be systematically protected and ensured, not just on books but in practice, by legal means, and in particular by courts, let alone the supranational ones? I believe the answer is no.
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Paul Blokker
Kim Lane Scheppele suggests a comprehensive, holistic approach to deal with prominent challenges to the basic principles of the European Union. I very much sympathize with this idea, but believe a purely legal approach in itself is not sufficient (and might even be counter-productive).
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Jan Komárek
While I agree with Kim Scheppelle’s "systemic infringement action" proposal, I am not so sure that it can be accomplished under the existing legal authority. Or better put, the prevailing understanding of what EU Treaties allow the Commission to do requires a much deeper transformation of the Commission’s role than Scheppelle suggests.
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Kim Lane Scheppele
What can the European Union – and in particular the European Commission – do about Member States that no longer reliably play by the most fundamental European rules? The question is now urgent because several Member States are already posing such challenges. Treaty reform could give the Commission new powers. But can the Commission act without waiting for the long and arduous process of treaty reform to provide new tools? Kim Lane Scheppele proposes a new approach, a simple extension of an existing mechanism: the infringement action.
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Kim Lane Scheppele
Was kann die Europäische Union – und vor allem die Kommission - gegen Mitgliedsstaaten unternehmen, die sich nicht länger an die grundlegendsten europäischen Regeln halten? Die Frage drängt, weil bereits mehrere Mitgliedsstaaten uns bereits vor solche Herausforderungen stellen. Eine Vertragsreform könnte die Kommission stärken. Aber kann sie handeln, ohne abwarten zu müssen, bis sie nach einem langen und mühevollen Prozess der Vertragsreform neue Kompetenzen erhält? Kim Lane Scheppele schlägt einen neuen Ansatz vor, die schlichte Ausdehnung eines existierenden Mechanismus - des Vertragsverletzungsverfahrens.
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Franz C. Mayer
Anders als bei den USA erscheint im Fall des britischen Geheimdienstes GCHQ der Konnex zum Europarecht nicht sonderlich fernliegend. Großbritannien ist seit 1973 Mitglied der EWG bzw. heute der EU. Die verdeckte, systematische, großflächige und anlasslose Sammlung von personenbezogenen Daten von Unionsbürgern durch einen Mitgliedstaat berührt Garantien, wie sie in Art. 8 Charta der Grundrechte sowie in Art. 16 AEUV und im geltenden Sekundärrecht niedergelegt sind. Dass hier Kerngewährleistungen des Unionsrechts berührt sind ergibt sich bereits aus folgender Testfrage: Würde man einen Beitrittskandidaten in die EU aufnehmen, der einen solchen Datenstaubsauger wie die GCHQ betreibt? Die Antwort ist ziemlich klar: Nein. Die Mitgliedschaft in der EU setzt das Einhalten bestimmter Grundrechtsschutz- und Rechtsstaatsstandards voraus.
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Christoph Tometten
Asyl für Edward Snowden in Deutschland? Der Bundesinnenminister hält es für ausgeschlossen. Doch ist es tatsächlich unmöglich, Snowden Schutz zu gewähren? Bei genauer Lektüre des Gesetzes muss die Antwort differenzierter ausfallen.
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Christoph Tometten
Asyl für Edward Snowden in Deutschland? Der Bundesinnenminister hält es für ausgeschlossen. Doch ist es tatsächlich unmöglich, Snowden Schutz zu gewähren? Bei genauer Lektüre des Gesetzes muss die Antwort differenzierter ausfallen.
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Anja Mihr
Eine Folge wird die NSA-Affäre immerhin haben: Die Regulierung des Internets und den Schutz der Privatsphäre des Einzelnen werden neu diskutiert. Deutschland und Brasilien, deren Präsidentin Dilma Rousseff ebenfalls von der NSA abgehört wurde, haben dazu einen Resolutionsentwurf in der UN-Generalversammlung vorgelegt. Wie ist dieser Vorschlag zu bewerten? Anja Mihr spricht über Privatsphäre, Internet und verschiedene Akteure.
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Evin Dalkilic
“One of the most disturbing aspects of the public response to Edward Snowden’s revelations about the scale of governmental surveillance is how little public disquiet there appears to be about it.“ But why should we care when most likely the majority of us will never even notice that their data are being stored and can easily be accessed by State authorities? To put it simply: because it is against the law.
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Ioanna Tourkochoriti
Prosecution is pending in Greece against the Right Wing extremist party “Golden Dawn”. The accusations concern the criminal activity of the organization which is also a political party represented in Greek Parliament by 18 members. The accusation of having committed criminal acts is enough from the point of view of political liberalism for the criminal process to begin against them. Criminal prosecution for the accusation of acts and not only ideological discourse is justified and imposed under political liberalism since such acts directly harm others.
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Kleio Papapantoleon
In den letzten Wochen befindet sich der griechische Staat in einer beispiellosen verfassungsrechtlichen und politischen Lage: Die „Goldene Morgenröte“ (GM), eine parlamentarische Partei, die staatliche Finanzierung erhält (bis vor kurzem zumindest), besteht offenbar zum Teil aus einer kriminellen Vereinigung. Drei Abgeordnete dieser Partei sitzen bereits in Untersuchungshaft, sechs weitere wurden angeklagt. Alle werden schwerer Verbrechen beschuldigt. Zwar kennt die europäische politische Geschichte Beispiele von Abgeordneten, die in Strafverfahren verwickelt wurden, meist wegen ökonomischer Delikte. Es ist jedoch das erste Mal, dass in einer parlamentarischen Demokratie Abgeordnete, unter ihnen der Chef einer Partei, verhaftet werden, weil sie der Anklage zufolge Gründer und Anführer einer kriminellen Vereinigung sind, die Verbrechen bis hin zu Morden verübt hat. Dieser Beitrag beleuchtet kritisch den Weg bis zur Verhaftung der Leitungsgruppe von GM. Dabei wird berücksichtigt, dass rassistische und gewaltsame Ideologien, die der Kern des politischen Diskurses und der Praxis von GM bilden, weit verbreitet und in der griechischen Gesellschaft tief verwurzelt sind.
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Anna Katharina Mangold
At the moment, rapid changes are happening in Greece on a daily, even hourly basis. In such a volatile situation, it is impossible to already provide a final analysis. It is, however, possible and desirable to document the events and provide a preliminary explanation and contextualisation. This is the aim of our online symposium on Verfassungsblog in the weeks to come. Greek scholars and practitioners will offer their analyses and shed a light on the crisis in Greece, from constitutional law and political science perspectives, among others.
The contributions will cover three particularly drastic and constitutionally relevant topics: the imminent collapse of the academic system, the events surrounding the neonacist party “Golden Dawn”, and the transformation of labour law which directly affects public servants and is constitutionally questionable.
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Anna Katharina Mangold, Stelios Chronopoulos
Rasante Veränderungen vollziehen sich in Griechenland derzeit täglich, mitunter gar stündlich. In solch einer volatilen Situation ist es unmöglich, eine endgültige Bilanz zu ziehen. Möglich und erstrebenswert ist es aber, die Geschehnisse zu dokumentieren und eine vorläufige Einordnung zu versuchen. Dies soll in den kommenden Wochen in einem Online-Symposium auf dem Verfassungsblog geschehen. Griechische Wissenschaftler_innen werden die Krise in Griechenland verfassungsrechtlich und politikwissenschaftlich beleuchten und ihre Einschätzungen vorstellen.
Die Beiträge werden sich drei besonders einschneidenden und verfassungsrechtlich bedeutsamen Themen widmen: dem drohenden Kollaps des akademischen Systems, dem Umgang mit der neonazistischen Partei „Goldene Morgenröte“ und der Umgestaltung des Arbeitsrechts, die besonders auch den öffentlichen Dienst betrifft und verfassungsrechtlich angegriffen wird.
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Anne Peters
Es wird oft behauptet, völkerrechtlich seien die Abhörmaßnahmen der NSA gegen die deutsche Bevölkerung und ihre Kanzlerin nicht verboten, wenn nicht gar ausdrücklich vertraglich gedeckt. Stimmt das? Nicht unbedingt, sagt Anne Peters, Direktorin am Max-Planck-Institut für Völkerrecht in Heidelberg.
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Anne Peters
Is it against international law to spy on mobile phone [...]
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Russell A. Miller
Russell Miller, a leading expert on German constitutional law in the USA, explains the American perspective on the NSA affair - why Americans don't see it as a legal problem or even as a problem at all, and why the German alarm one month after the Constitutional Court declared the surveillance of members of the Bundestag by the German internal intelligence service unconstitutional appears somewhat hypocritical to American eyes.
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Russell A. Miller
Russell Miller, einer der besten Kenner des deutschen Verfassungsrechts in den USA, erklärt die amerikanische Sicht auf die NSA-Enthüllungen - warum sie vielfach nicht als Problem und jedenfalls nicht als rechtliches Problem gesehen werden und weshalb die zur Schau getragene Empörung der Bundesregierung einen Monat, nachdem das BVerfG die Überwachung von Bundestagsabgeordneten durch den Verfassungsschutz für grundgesetzwidrig erklärt hat, nicht frei von Heuchelei ist.
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Dieter Grimm
Dieter Grimm is in South Africa at the moment. We could send him a couple of questions, though: about the NSA affair and its consequences, the American understanding of constitutional protection and the many small steps we will have to take to achieve a global rule-based order.
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Dieter Grimm
Dieter Grimm weilt zurzeit in Südafrika. Wir konnten ihm trotzdem einige Fragen zu den Folgen der NSA-Affäre stellen, zum amerikanischen Verfassungsverständnis und zu den vielen kleinen Schritten, die auf dem Weg zu einer globalen Rechtsordnung noch zurückzulegen sind.
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Christopher McCrudden
Hans Joas’ book on the genealogy of human rights, Irish detective stories, a certain American classic, and a book on labor law in the context of changing social and political environments – Christopher McCrudden did quite a bit of reading over the summer, enjoying the privilege of delving into some non-legal literature for a change.
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Thomas Streinz
Since 4 July 2013 the draft agreement for the EU’s accession to the ECHR has been under scrutiny by the ECJ. In this context, Daniel Thym opened up a debate, concerning whether the EU’s accession to the ECHR might be a “Trojan Horse” within the walls of EU law endangering its primacy. Marten Breuer rejected this insinuation: There is no “Donum Danaorum”. While I share Breuer’s result wholeheartedly, my line of reasoning differs, at least partly.
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Thomas Streinz
Seit dem 4. Juli 2013 liegt der Entwurf eines Übereinkommens zum Beitritt der EU zur EMRK auf dem Prüfstand des EuGH. In diesem Zusammenhang hat Daniel Thym die Frage aufgeworfen, ob ein EMRK-Beitritt der EU als „trojanisches Pferd“ in den Mauern des Unionsrechts dessen Effektivität bedrohe. Marten Breuer hat diesen Vorwurf zurückgewiesen: Von einem Danaer-Geschenk könne keine Rede sein. Diesem Ergebnis schließt sich auch Thomas Streinz an – wenn auch mit zum Teil anderer Begründung.
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Sophie Schönberger
If it were the case that last Sunday the five procent threshold had turned unconstitutional - what exactly has caused this unconstitutionality over night? Can an election make the electoral law unconstitutional? Sophie-Charlotte Lenski suggests to flexibilize the threshold: If the number of discounted votes exceeds a certain quorum the five percent threshold turns into a three percent threshold.
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Sophie Schönberger
Wenn es so wäre, dass am Sonntag die Fünfprozenthürde verfassungswidrig geworden ist, was genau hat dann zu dieser Verfassungswidrigkeit über Nacht geführt? Kann eine Wahl das Wahlrecht verfassungswidrig machen? Oder gar der Wähler selbst? Sophie-Charlotte Lenski schlägt vor, die Sperrklausel zu flexibilisieren: Wenn ein bestimmtes Quorum unberücksichtigter Stimmen überschritten ist, wird die Fünf- zur Dreiprozenthürde.
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Christoph Schönberger
The five percent hurdle is far from having lost its justification. It structures and channels the later parliamentary decision-making process. But that means that as a countermove the public discussion must be all the more free, open and varied in the pre-parliament space. The five-percent hurdle loses its democratic legitimacy if enjoined to also perform the role of thought-police of the public space.
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Christoph Schönberger
Die Fünf-Prozent-Klausel hat ihre Berechtigung mitnichten verloren: Sie verlangt vom Wähler eine Stimmabgabe, die nicht allein höchstpersönliche Gesinnungen ausdrückt, sondern sich bereits in bescheidenem Maß einem Test auf ihre Verallgemeinerbarkeit unterzieht. Sie strukturiert und kanalisiert die spätere parlamentarische Willensbildung vor. Um so freier, offener und vielfältiger muss aber im Gegenzug die öffentliche Diskussion im vorparlamentarischen Raum sein. Die Zugangshürde verliert ihre demokratische Legitimität, wenn ihr angesonnen wird, zugleich Ideenpolizei des öffentlichen Raums zu sein.
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Dean Spielmann
A biography of his predecessor René Cassin, a history of Napoleon's Russian campaign from the view of the soldiers and a novel set in 19th century Den Haag - that is what ECtHR President Dean Spielmann had packed for his summer vacation.
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Martti Koskenniemi
Two graphic novels did Martti Koskenniemi pack for his summer vacations, plus several books about Heidegger, Thomasius and Christian Wolff, novels about Trieste and the parodies going on at academic conferences, and an Australian novel he finds increasingly hard to finish...
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Maximilian Steinbeis
Ob die Fünfprozenthürde mit dem Grundgesetz, das gleiche Wahlchancen für [...]
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Marten Breuer
Does the draft agreement on the accession of the EU to the ECHR challenge the primacy of EU Law? Marten Breuer, unlike his colleague from Konstanz Daniel Thym, does not think so.
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Marten Breuer
Beeinträchtigt das Abkommen für den Beitritt der EU zur EMRK den Vorrang des Unionsrechts? Anders als Daniel Thym hält Marten Breuer diese Bedenken für unberechtigt.
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Daniel Thym
The negotiations for a draft agreement on the accession of the EU to the ECHR was quite successful – and yet the draft provokes a couple of questions, bringing us back to the original challenges to the primacy of Union law, which the CJEU has always been eager to deter. It might do so again: just before the summer recess, the European Commission referred the matter to the CJEU in Luxembourg, in Opinion 2/13 whether the Draft Accession Agreement falls foul of the EU Treaties.
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Daniel Thym
Der Entwurf für den Beitritt der EU zur Europäischen Menschenrechtskonvention steht. Aus EU-Sicht verliefen die Verhandlungen durchaus erfolgreich – und dennoch wirft der Vertragsentwurf eine Reihe von Fragen hinsichtlich des Vorrangs des Unionsrechts auf. Eben diese Fragen wird der EuGH alsbald zu beantworten haben: vor der Sommerpause verwies die EU-Kommission den Beitrittsentwurf nach Luxemburg, auf dass dieser im Gutachten 2/13 über die Vertragskonformität entscheide. Nach den EU-Verträgen dürfen völkerrechtliche Verträge, wie derjenige über den EMRK-Beitritt, nämlich nur in Kraft treten, wenn Sie mit den EU-Gründungsverträgen der vereinbar sind.
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Kim Lane Scheppele
The Tavares Report, adopted by the European Parliament with a surprisingly large majority, provides a bill of particulars against the Hungarian government and lays out a strong program to guide European Union institutions in bringing Hungary back into the European fold. With the passage of this report, Europe has finally said no to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his constitutional revolution.
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Kim Lane Scheppele
The Tavares Report, adopted by the European Parliament with a surprisingly large majority, provides a bill of particulars against the Hungarian government and lays out a strong program to guide European Union institutions in bringing Hungary back into the European fold. With the passage of this report, Europe has finally said no to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his constitutional revolution.
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Jan-Werner Müller
Im Umgang mit Mitgliedsstaaten, in denen Demokratie und Rechtsstaatlichkeit ins Rutschen kommen, zeigen sich EU-Kommission und EU-Parlament weniger hilflos und unentschlossen, als manche befürchtet hatten. Doch reicht solch punktueller Druck aus? Jan-Werner Müller berichtet über die jüngsten Entwicklungen in Brüssel und antwortet zum Abschluss des Verfassungsblogs-Symposiums "Ungarn - was tun?" auf die Kritiker seines Vorschlags, als unabhängige Instanz eine "Kopenhagen-Kommission" einzurichten.
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Jan-Werner Müller
The EU Commission and the EU Parliament seem to be less ineffective than some expected in responding to deteriorations in democracy and rule of law within member states like Hungary. But will such selective pressure suffice? Jan-Werner Müller reports on the most recent developments in Brussels and, in a final contribution to Verfassungsblog's online symposium "Hungary – Taking Action", answers to the critics of his suggestion to install an independent "Copenhagen Commission".
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Dimitry Vladimirovich Kochenov
Following the recent fascinating exchange in the ‘pages’ of the [...]
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Dimitry Vladimirovich Kochenov
Following the recent fascinating exchange in the ‘pages’ of the [...]
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Edward Kanterian
Hungary’s political development under the Orbán government is by now [...]
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Edward Kanterian
Hungary’s political development under the Orbán government is by now [...]
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Matej Avbelj
The constitutional and political developments in Hungary in the last [...]
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Matej Avbelj
The constitutional and political developments in Hungary in the last [...]
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Claudio Franzius
1. Failings The political actors themselves admit that it was [...]
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Claudio Franzius
1. Versäumnisse Von den politischen Akteuren wird eingeräumt, dass es [...]
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Marco Dani
Over the last two years, the adoption, implementation and, more [...]
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Saskia Sassen, Richard Sennett
Hamburg, March 23th, 2013. The opening of the „Internationale Bauausstellung“ [...]
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Saskia Sassen, Richard Sennett
Hamburg, 23. März 2013. Die Eröffnung der Internationalen Bauausstellung lockt [...]
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Maximilian Steinbeis
Zehn Zeilen Begründung: Mehr braucht die 2. Kammer des Ersten [...]
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András Jakab
The European Union is not just a community based on [...]
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András Jakab
The European Union is not just a community based on [...]
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Jan Komárek
Jan-Werner Müller’s eloquent proposal on what the EU should do [...]
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Jan Komárek
Jan-Werner Müller’s eloquent proposal on what the EU should do [...]
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Floris de Witte
While I share Müller’s concern about the situation in Hungary [...]
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Floris de Witte
While I share Müller’s concern about the situation in Hungary [...]
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Kalypso Nicolaidis
As we all know, observance of the “Rule of Law” [...]
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Kalypso Nicolaidis
As we all know, observance of the “Rule of Law” [...]
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Jan-Werner Müller
Could there be a dictatorship inside the European Union? If [...]
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Jan-Werner Müller
Kann es innerhalb der Europäischen Union eine Diktatur geben? Vor [...]
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Maximilian Steinbeis
The Hungarian Parliament has enacted a package of constitutional amendments [...]
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Maximilian Steinbeis
Am Montag hat das ungarische Parlament ein Paket von Verfassungsänderungen [...]
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Beate Kohler-Koch
Was sehen Sie vor sich, wenn Sie an Europa 2023 [...]
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Christian Joerges
Wenn Sie an Europa 2023 denken, welche Veränderungen fallen Ihnen [...]
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Frank Schorkopf
An was denken Sie, wenn Sie an die EU in [...]
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Giandomenico Majone
When you think of Europe ten years from now – [...]
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Giandomenico Majone
When you think of Europe ten years from now – [...]
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Christian Hillgruber, Josef Isensee
Herr Isensee, Herr Hillgruber, Sie stehen beide in der Tradition [...]
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Christoph Möllers
Wenn Du die Augen schließt und an Europa 2023 denkst, [...]
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Ulrich K. Preuß
Wenn Sie die Augen schließen und sich Europa 2023 vorstellen, [...]
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Jo Shaw
Do you think the EU and the United Kingdom will [...]
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Jo Shaw
Do you think the EU and the United Kingdom will [...]
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Mattias Kumm
Wenn Sie an Europa im Jahr 2023 denken – woran [...]
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Franz C. Mayer
Das ganze Jahr 2012 haben wir viele große Visionen über [...]
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Hans Michael Heinig
I. Der Deutsche Bundestag hat heute eine gesetzliche Regelung zur [...]
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Daniel Bogner
Der Bundestag hat am 22. November 2012 in erster Lesung [...]
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Andreas Gotzmann
Wie das Judentum mit unbeschnittenen Mitgliedern umgeht, muss den Gesetzgeber [...]
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Andreas Gotzmann
Seit Monaten ergießt sich auf allen Kanälen eine Flut von [...]
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Andrew Hammel
The Cologne Landgericht decision proclaiming religious circumcision to be a [...]
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Maximilian Steinbeis
Extreme Positionen wie die des Kölner Landgerichts in punkto Kriminalisierung [...]
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Mark Swatek-Evenstein
Man könnte meinen, in der Debatte um das Beschneidungsurteil des [...]
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Alexandra Kemmerer
Some days ago, Reut Yael Paz published a critical comment [...]
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Alexandra Kemmerer
Unlängst hat Reut Yael Paz hier kritisch Stellung genommen zum [...]
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Reut Yael Paz
In his preface to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the [...]
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Hans Michael Heinig
Die Entscheidung des LG Köln vom 07.05.2012 in der Rechtssache [...]
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Georg Neureither
Religion geht dem Recht nicht vor. Das ist die Quintessenz [...]
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Alexandra Kemmerer
In these last few days, I have repeatedly been asked [...]
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Hans Michael Heinig
Ist die religiös motivierte Beschneidung eines minderjährigen Jungen als Körperverletzung [...]
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Maximilian Steinbeis
Eigentlich staunt man fast, dass in der ganzen aufgeheizten und [...]
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Michaela Hailbronner
The Heidelberg proposal, with its suggestion of the adoption of [...]
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Daniel Halberstam
Peter Lindseth’s post directed at my own intervention on the [...]
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Antje Wiener
Auch wenn „Rettungsschirm“ nicht unbedingt das Wort des Monats ist [...]
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Antje Wiener
While “safety umbrella” (German: “Rettungsschirm”) is perhaps not the word [...]
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Mattias Kumm
Ungarns Ministerpräsident Victor Orban und die von ihm kontrollierte Regierungspartei [...]
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Mattias Kumm
Hungarian Premier Victor Orban and his ruling party Fidesz, after [...]
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Peter Lindseth
It is a tribute to the thoughtfulness of the Heidelberg [...]
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Renáta Uitz
In order to full appreciate the Heidelberg proposal, I believe [...]
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Dimitry Vladimirovich Kochenov
Armin von Bogdandy and his team have come up with [...]
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Wojciech Sadurski
The Hungarian debacle is both a challenge and an opportunity [...]
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Daniel Thym
The parallels between the emergency rescue operations for the Euro [...]
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Daniel Thym
Die Parallelen zwischen den Notoperationen zur Euro-Rettung und einer EuGH-Grundrechtsintervention [...]
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Daniel Halberstam
I welcome the Heidelberg proposal! Several years ago – long [...]
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Peter Lindseth
I’d like to thank Alexandra, Max, and Christoph for inviting [...]
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Anna Katharina Mangold
In their post on Verfassungsblog, the Heidelberg research team around [...]
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Anna Katharina Mangold
Die Heidelberger Forschergruppe um Armin von Bogdandy schlägt in ihrem [...]
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Pál Sonnevend
The European Union could not be imagined without respect for [...]
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Armin von Bogdandy
By ARMIN VON BOGDANDY, MATTHIAS KOTTMANN, CARLINO ANTPÖHLER, JOHANNA DICKSCHEN, [...]
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Maximilian Steinbeis
The constitution of the European Union depends on the fundamental [...]
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Maximilian Steinbeis
Die Konstitution der EU wird bestimmt durch die Grundrechtslage in [...]
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Franz C. Mayer
Bis März 2012 wollen die Staats- und Regierungschefs des Euro-Währungsgebietes [...]
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Frank Schorkopf
Ist nicht jeder Rechtssatz, jedes Gesetz, ist nicht jeder Vertrag [...]
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Martin Nettesheim
Es gehört zu den angeborenen Instinkten von Europapolitikern und Europarechtlern, [...]
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Daniel Thym
In den ersten Reaktionen auf das britische Veto des „Fiskalpakts“ [...]
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Maximilian Steinbeis
Last week’s EU summit has sent a shock wave through [...]
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Maximilian Steinbeis
Bislang hatte bei der Euro-Rettung die Politik weitestgehend das Heft [...]
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