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Verfassungsblog hosts online symposia on topical events and developments in legislation and jurisdiction and puts cutting-edge scholarship up for discussion. Our aim is to create a lively and multi-faceted constitutionalist public sphere in Europe and beyond. Since 2011 high-profile issues of public interest in constitutional law and politics have been at the center of controversial debates on Verfassungsblog on a regular basis, including the constitutional decline in EU member states like Hungary, the regional separatism in Scotland and Catalonia, European constitutional courts and their fraught relationships et.al.
20 December 2025
The Battle over the Sacred and the Profane
Struggles around sexual and reproductive rights pit more liberally, progressive-oriented or “frontlash” actors against other, including non-liberal, often radical-conservative “backlash” organizations. In the actions of the latter, religion is an explicit and core dimension. This struggle is about a political and religious backlash to a largely secular, progressive cultural and human rights revolution. It confronts opposing sides of (transnational) civil society, who both make moral, “sacred” claims, while profaning the opponent. Continue reading >>Beyond Religious Freedom
In contemporary Europe, the protection of religious minorities continues to rest predominantly on the constitutional architecture of religious freedom and non-discrimination. Yet this framework often proves insufficient to capture the specific vulnerabilities and identity-based claims of minority communities. Protecting minorities therefore demands recognising the specific forms of vulnerability produced by their social and constitutional position. Continue reading >>19 December 2025
Rechnungshof statt Redaktionsschluss
Journale wie aus dem Jahr 1665, Preise wie bei MrBeast-Meet&Greets, Datenschutz wie bei Facebook, Verlässlichkeit wie bei TikTok-Lifehacks: Warum es höchste Zeit war, dass die EU die Wissenschaft befreit. Wenn man sie denn lässt. Continue reading >>Compulsion to Freedom
On 11 December 2025, the Austrian National Council adopted a headscarf ban for students under 14 in the name of protecting children’s freedom of development and fulfillment. A first attempt of banning headscarves in 2019 was overturned by the Constitutional Court. The legislator has to a large extent taken the requirements of the Constitutional Court into account. However, two crucial aspects have been overlooked: the resulting stigmatisation and the underlying patriarchal structures. Continue reading >>State-Approved Information
As the infrastructures for creating, replicating, and disseminating information have increased significantly since the advent of the World Wide Web, the tools used by nationalist governments to control those infrastructures have expanded and evolved to keep pace with technological change. Nationalist governments seek control of knowledge infrastructures both to promote their supporters and beliefs and to erase positions and people who they fear. The United States (US) provides an especially stark example of how rapidly a nationalist government can gain political control of knowledge infrastructures to advance its preferred beliefs and silence opposing views. Continue reading >>Lifting the Veil? Oops, They Did it Again
From September 2026 onwards, girls up to the age of 14 will be prohibited from wearing Islamic headscarves in Austrian public and private schools. The girls’ freedom of religion, as well as the principle of equality and neutrality, pose significant obstacles to the constitutionality of such a selective restriction. However, in view of many reports from teachers and sociologists stating that the autonomy and determination of many girls’ identities in schools are increasingly threatened by societal forces, the Constitutional Court might reassess its jurisprudence and adapt it accordingly. Continue reading >>18 December 2025
The Revolution Will Not Be Institutionalized
The academic publishing system is expensive and generates staggering profits for a few enterprises, while they outsource a considerable amount of the work to the scientific community. Despite ever-growing criticism, there appears to be no alternative to those commercial structures, but measured against the nearly 400-year history of modern scientific publishing, they are quite new and only emerged after the Second World War. Continue reading >>The Revolution Will Not Be Institutionalized
Das wissenschaftliche Publikationssystem ist teuer und beschert einigen Unternehmen schwindelerregende Profite, während sie einen beträchtlichen Teil der Arbeit an die Wissenschaft auslagern. Trotz stetig wachsender Kritik erscheinen die kommerziellen Strukturen als alternativlos, aber gemessen an der fast 400-jährigen Geschichte des wissenschaftlichen Publizierens sind sie recht neu und haben sich erst nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg herausgebildet. Continue reading >>Headscarves and the Wrong Balance
To date, the CJEU has decided 6 cases concerning women who wanted to wear a headscarf at work. All judgments suggest that considerations of neutrality can trump religious freedom. Although the CJEU made some general and abstract comments about the importance of freedom of religion, it did not really address what the bans, in practice, meant for the individual women involved, neither did engage with the possibility that these neutrality rules could constitute sex, race and/or intersectional discrimination. The CJEU thus provide little protection for the rights of headscarf wearing Muslim women. Continue reading >>Playing with Fire
The Court of Justice’s narrow understanding of religious freedom under EU law is playing with fire. In the name of anti-discrimination and neutrality, it risks undermining religious freedom in ways that are particularly detrimental to Muslim minorities. At the same time, the Court proceeds as if European constitutional systems were roughly homogeneous, disregarding the profound diversity of church–state relations. This double-blind spot makes the CJEU’s approach not only normatively troubling, but structurally ill-suited to the realities it seeks to address. Continue reading >>17 December 2025
Justifiable Caution
Religion in the workplace brings together two areas of law in which the CJEU has taken markedly different approaches. This has left the Court torn between following its assertive approach in relation to discrimination in the workplace and its deferential approach in relation to religion’s role in society. This sets wide but meaningful boundaries on Member State autonomy regarding religion’s place in their societies. While this caution has been heavily criticised, in the context of the rapid and unprecedented religious change in Europe, it is the most prudent and politically sustainable approach for the time being. Continue reading >>In Good Faith
Debates over the role of religion in contemporary European constitutional orders have increasingly shifted from the national to the European level, placing EU law and the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice under sharper scrutiny. In our view, despite imperfections in the CJEU’s case law, the external and differentiated role of the Court and of EU law can challenge claims of self-referential sufficiency. EU law provides a mirror and necessitates a dialogue in which these convictions are tested and, where necessary, redefined. Continue reading >>12 December 2025
Afterword
This post synthesises key insights from the AFAR symposium on fairness and AI in asylum, migration and border management. While EU policy frames fairness as a core requirement of trustworthy AI, contributors show how discrimination, opacity, privatisation and weak procedural safeguards undermine that promise. Examining risks from biased data to secrecy in high-risk systems, the post highlights structural obstacles to fair decision-making and calls for sustained oversight, participatory governance, and research grounded in the lived experiences of those most affected. Continue reading >>09 December 2025
Seventy-Five Years of the European Convention on Human Rights
Seventy-five years ago, Europe made a bold promise: That the dignity of every individual would be safeguarded by law. And that an independent court would hold us to that promise. Today, as we close our discussions, we face two truths: First, the extraordinary resilience of that promise. And second, the magnitude of the challenges still before us. Continue reading >>Happy 75th Anniversary to the ECHR
It is not very often that I get invitations to big birthday parties for human rights conventions, so it was an immense honour to deliver the concluding remarks at this event that examined the 75 years of the Convention from transnational and global perspectives in the presence of so many who breathe life to this Convention across Europe and the Presidents of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the African Court of Human and Peoples Rights. This birthday party has personal importance for me. I am, after all, alongside hundreds of thousands of others across the Council of Europe, a child of this Convention. Continue reading >>Human Rights and Digital Border Governance
OHCHR’s forthcoming guidance on human rights-based digital border governance consolidates legal standards for data-intensive migration and border control. This contribution identifies where such guidance can help, and where a significant shift in current State practice is needed: clear legal basis and safeguards for intrusive practices, data sharing and interoperability, oversight of algorithmic systems, human rights impact assessment, and the use of security and emergency regimes that dilute rights protections. Each area is framed by the need to ensure legality, necessity and proportionality, non-discrimination, and effective remedy. Continue reading >>08 December 2025
Privatised Digital Borders
Digitisation and the growing reliance on private intermediaries are transforming visa systems from paper-based procedures into opaque digital-commercial infrastructures. Drawing on findings from the AFAR project, this contribution shows how automation, outsourcing, and fragmented accountability reshape rights protection in migration governance. Using visa applications as a case study, it argues that existing regulatory frameworks remain insufficient and calls for new methods of scrutiny — including participatory, co-designed approaches that centre migrants’ perspectives and reimagine transparency, oversight, and responsibility in digital border regimes. Continue reading >>Automating International Human Rights Adjudication in Strasbourg and Beyond
The future lies in the adoption and refinement of semi-automated tools – AI and algorithms that issue recommendations that human decision-makers are free to accept, reject, or modify – supported by robust institutional oversight and explainability. Full automation of decisions, especially those pertaining to treaty violations, is never appropriate. As automation tools continue to evolve, we expect that more fundamental changes to the process of international human rights adjudication – including at the ECtHR –may ultimately be required. Continue reading >>Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights Courts
The adoption of AI in Human Rights Courts' operations offers opportunities for improvement in terms of efficiency and access, but it also poses significant challenges. When implementing these tools, Human Rights Court must ensure that they do not compromise the very rights they are tasked to protect. At the same time, Human Rights Court will increasingly engage with cases involving AI, and they will need to develop greater awareness of the complex implications of technology for human rights. Continue reading >>AI and Human Rights at the European Court of Human Rights
The development of a legal framework for the use of AI is still at an early stage. Moving forward, it is necessary to take into account both the inherent features of the technology and the rights that come under pressure by our use of it. The approach of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) will have to be on a case-by-case basis, building on the Convention’s transversal values, applying existing jurisprudence as a stepping stone and making wise use of the “living instrument doctrine”. Continue reading >>07 December 2025
Four Scenarios and a Proposal for the Future of the ECHR’s Dynamic Case Law on Asylum
Seventy-five years after its creation, the European Convention on Human Rights stands at a crossroads. A quarter century of dynamic Strasbourg judgments has significantly expanded rights in asylum and migration, but this very dynamism has produced a “lock-in” effect that limits political room for manoeuvre. This contribution outlines four scenarios for the future development of the case law and the possibilities for transformation. Continue reading >>Migrants’ Rights Before the European Court of Human Rights
As we are celebrating the 75th anniversary of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the topic of migration stands at the center of concerns about the Convention’s state of health. In this blogpost adapted from my remarks at a Conference in the Federal Ministry for Justice and Consumer Protection, I argue that those attacking the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for an over-reaching jurisprudence regarding migrants’ rights misconstrue the actual case law. Continue reading >>06 December 2025
The European Approach to Human Rights-Based Climate Litigation in Global Context
Human rights-based climate protection does not stem from a single, coherent regime but from a plurality of intersecting normative orders. This contribution examines how divergent approaches to climate-related obligations unfold across regional systems, UN bodies, and the ICJ, with particular attention to the contours of the European approach. Continue reading >>Lost in Translation?
Judicial conversations and interactions take place in different settings – sometimes behind closed doors, sometimes out in the open. One open form of conversation is the use of comparative analysis in legal arguments. Focusing on comparative arguments in policy discussions on the right to a healthy environment within the Council of Europe, I will argue that comparative arguments are too often cursory and superficial and that calls for the transferral of elements from one human rights system to another tend to underestimate the complexities involved in such legal transplants. Continue reading >>05 December 2025
Navigating Technologies in Asylum Procedures in Austria
Across Europe, asylum authorities increasingly deploy AI tools in the name of speed and efficiency—from automated translation to LLM-based text processing and chatbot-assisted country-of-origin research. Yet Austria’s experience, mapped by the AISYL project, shows how these technologies amplify a wider political trend: the erosion of the right to asylum. Far from neutral administrative aids, AI systems introduce errors, bias, and opacity into high-stakes procedures, risking further harm in an already restrictive asylum landscape. Continue reading >>The ECHR’s Contribution to European Society
On the Convention’s 75th anniversary, this essay highlights its contribution to “European society” as stated in Article 2 TEU. It sketches how the Convention, as operationalized by the Strasbourg institutions, has shaped European society’s constitutional core, provided a general structure of rights, supported a culture of justification, and contributed to making European society democratic. Finally, it speculates on how the Convention’s significance might evolve so that it can be celebrated again at its 100th anniversary. Continue reading >>Leading Through Dialogue
The ECtHR’s next decades will be shaped by its capacity to lead through dialogue rather than dominance. The goal is not a universal model, but a network of courts engaged in reciprocal learning. The 75th anniversary coincides with unprecedented global challenges – climate change, digital governance, mass displacement – that no regional system can tackle alone. Coordinated jurisprudential development, joint thematic reports, and open-access repositories of case law can enhance coherence without sacrificing diversity. Continue reading >>The European Convention on Human Rights at 75
In the 75 years of its existence, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) has proven remarkable resilience as a safeguard for democracy, human rights and the rule of law. With this symposium, we aim to continue thoughtful, constructive and sometimes also critical dialogue between academia and practice, intended to deepen understanding of the impact and influence of the European Convention system on other international and national human rights protection systems – and vice versa. Continue reading >>04 December 2025
Rethinking the Notion of the File
As automated decision-making reshapes administrative procedures, long-standing guarantees like access to the file, the right to be heard, and effective judicial remedies risk losing their meaning. When AI systems collect, process and weigh information invisibly, individuals and courts cannot understand or contest how decisions are made. EU procedural law must rethink the very notion of “the file” to ensure traceability, human oversight, and genuine accountability. Continue reading >>03 December 2025
