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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.
22 May 2026
The Missing Dimension
Public discourse on the repair of constitutional democracy tends to focus on its political dimensions. The Fidesz period, however, demonstrated that markets and democratic governance are deeply interconnected. The restoration of constitutional democracy, which will inevitably involve the reorganisation of the economy, should therefore prompt reflection in public law discourse on the ways in which markets ought to be structured in democratic societies. Public law scholars must engage seriously with the role that competition law reform can play in this process. Continue reading >>21 May 2026
Hungary’s European Rebirth
As Péter Magyar and his Tisza government took office on 9 May, ending sixteen long years of autocratic capture, the crowds outside the Parliament danced and cheered. Now the new government has a constitutional supermajority and a massive democratic mandate. But unlike Orbán’s supermajority, Magyar’s still has to confront veto players. The Hungarian government has a speedy and lawful option for realising its mandate without lurching into extreme scenarios: Using European law as an interim constitution to evade the roadblocks left in place by the Orbán government. Continue reading >>19 May 2026
Rebuilding Markets, Restoring Democracy
After sixteen years, Hungary emerges from an era characterised by illiberal governance, democratic backsliding, and the systematic weakening of rule of law institutions. Rebuilding a credible, stable, and predictable legal system will be essential not only for restoring democratic legitimacy internally, but also for reconnecting Hungary to the core economic structures and values of the European Union. Such a transition requires a broader understanding of the rule of law that extends beyond public institutions to the governance of markets and economic relations. Continue reading >>16 May 2026
The Burden of Victory
At first glance, the over two-thirds majority that TISZA is set to enjoy in the new National Assembly seems to make the Hungarian transition 2.0 look much easier than might have been expected. And yet, this does not mean that there are no vital pitfalls. These challenges lie, namely, in restoring robust and meaningful accountability standards for both past and future power holders and, relatedly, in resisting the temptation to hold onto unconstrained power inherited from the predecessors under the guise of political necessity or expediency. Continue reading >>13 May 2026
The Big Lie of Two Thirds Majority
This is the fifth election in a row in which a party has gained a two-thirds majority. A two-thirds majority has long been the magic of Hungarian politics. Namely, it means domestically unlimited power. But the magic of the two-thirds majority is based on an assumption that has turned out to be a lie: that such a special majority guarantees compromise. As a first step towards a truly functioning pluralist democracy, it is time to disenchant the two-thirds majority. Continue reading >>12 May 2026
Transitional Justice after Hybrid Regimes in Europe
Academic literature and international legal documents on transitional justice have concentrated on transitions from dictatorships or armed conflicts, while neglecting hybrid regimes. In such regimes, corruption, state-organised plunder of resources, and the gradual demolition of democracy and the rule of law during the ancien régime require exceptional transitional measures. Just as the questions of democracy and the rule of law are not binary, transitional measures after hybrid regimes should also be proportionate. In European cases, the case-law of the ECtHR is mostly relevant. Continue reading >>Polish Lessons for the Hungarian Transition
The victory of Péter Magyar and TISZA Party in the parliamentary elections of 12 April 2026 may be seen as a useful illustration of the theory of competitive authoritarianism developed by Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way. It suggests that even under uneven political conditions, electoral victory remains possible when an opposition movement is well organized, presents a credible program, and effectively capitalizes on the weaknesses and mistakes of the incumbent government. Consequently, claims about the demise of liberal democracy appear to be premature. Continue reading >>09 May 2026
Constitutional Repair!
In this post I shall attempt to map some of the most important points where constitutional repair is necessary as well as the limits of such repair that follow from common European standards. This text is emphatically not a summary of a comprehensive constitutional reform, nor is it a proposal at the level of legislative text. Rather, it outlines fundamental issues which, following discussions and the taking of fundamental political decisions, could lead to a proposal for a correction that needs to be adopted within a short timeframe. Continue reading >>01 May 2026
Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah
Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah was a seminal figure in the 20th-century landscape of South Asian and international politics. Her life unfolded at the intersection of private transformation and public upheaval. Born into a family shaped by both Islamic tradition and colonial modernity, she moved between seclusion and Western education before emerging as a scholar, writer, politician and diplomat. She played a role in the formation of Pakistan, the conclusion of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention, as well as in the literary exploration of these political events and the cultural changes of the time. Continue reading >>02 April 2026
Amalia González Caballero de Castillo Ledón
“Will we women have the strength necessary to do away with the traditional Mexican concept of a democracy without women?” What sounds like an oxymoron today was the very real question women all around the world had to face in the 20th century. Fortunately, the answer to this question posed by Amalia González Caballero de Castillo Ledón would eventually be affirmative – after 24 years of struggle to obtain women’s suffrage. Continue reading >>23 March 2026
Zheng Yuxiu
As the first female lawyer in China, Zheng Yuxiu made her mark on legal history. Her achievement was no accident. It rested on a lifelong willingness to question traditions and go her own way – a way that led her through revolution, state-building and women’s emancipation in early twentieth-century China. Continue reading >>04 March 2026
Narratives for Strategic Litigation
To make sense of the migration-related jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), scholars tend to identify a certain logic, story or direction in which the case law develops. My point here is not that a certain narrative is correct or another is wrong. Instead, I want to draw attention to the fact that, as Janna Wessels and Jürgen Bast have recently shown, there are three competing narratives, and that it is important to be aware of these – not only, but especially for actors engaged in strategic litigation. Continue reading >>13 February 2026
Reflexive Law as Anti-Colonial Practice
The adoption of the discourse of decoloniality by the Hindu right in India, as well as by other ethnonationalist governments around the world, points to the problem that any decolonial project faces: Who is to define which normative alternatives we should appeal to when seeking to rid concepts and institutions of their colonial legacies? This brings us to the underlying question: What is the purpose of reflecting on colonial legacies in law? Continue reading >>Disaster Law as Methodology
The pandemic’s disruption of offline commerce revealed how global value chains are bound up with learnt dependency, instant gratification, and an extractivist, always-on economic culture. Recent modern slavery and global value chains legislation signals political awareness, yet its legal impact remains largely symbolic, prioritising disclosure over change. The real crisis is not disruption but the normalisation of persistent exploitation inherent to global value chains. Lawyers must expose law’s role in rendering this ongoing violence as normal. Continue reading >>12 February 2026
Towards an Endogenous African Constitutionalism
African constitutionalism stands at a pivotal moment in its evolution. After more than six decades of independence for most African countries, it has become imperative to examine the nature, foundations, legitimacy, and institutional architecture of the constitutional systems governing the countries making up the continent. Drawing on our different fields of research, we propose to explore pathways towards a truly endogenous constitutionalism, rooted in Africa’s socio-political, cultural, economic, and historical realities. Continue reading >>Liberal Constitutionalism in the Post-Colony
Liberal constitutionalism is much maligned today as, at best, a culturally contingent approach to governance, and, at worst, epistemically hubristic. Concepts like the rule of law and the separation of powers, far from expressing universal truths, are said to be inseparably tied to the European Enlightenment. Their continued presence in constitutions around the world is less an indication of their durability and more a reflection of their current status as conceptual driftwood deposited at the high-water mark of Western hegemony. But is this an accurate account of liberal constitutionalism and does it really square with our understanding of the way legal concepts are recycled between North and South? Continue reading >>11 February 2026
Launch Event of the RefLex Centre for Advanced Studies
Join us for the launch of the RefLex Centre, exploring how globalisation reshapes law, justice, and core legal concepts across disciplines. The event will feature an introduction by RefLex Directors Philipp Dann and Florian Jeßberger, a keynote lecture by Dipesh Chakrabarty, and a panel discussion with Isabella Aboderin (University of Bristol), Natalia Ángel Cabo (Constitutional Court of Colombia), Sebastian Conrad (FU Berlin), John-Mark Iyi (University of the Western Cape), and Kalika Mehta (RefLex). The event will be broadcast live here. Continue reading >>International Criminal Law of “the West”?
The critique of international criminal law as “Eurocentric” or “Western-dominated,” however historically, politically, and analytically valid and necessary, may have reached the limits of its explanatory power. The following passages reflect on the question of whether continuing to frame the problems of international criminal law primarily through a Eurocentrism/West-dominated lens obscures more than it reveals, and whether we should move towards extending our critical analytical frameworks in the interests of the global majority. Continue reading >>International Law and the Imperial Ordering of the International
International law is an ordering language. It is predicated upon an imperial, western-centric, and hierarchical structure. It is a language of domination, of exclusion, of differentiated inclusion, but also of promise. The language of international law, which the Global South uses and appeals to, does not simply hold the promise of rectification; it also reproduces the problems it is supposed to help solve. This short reflection addresses such contradictions and how reflexivity in international law could help mitigate them. Continue reading >>10 February 2026
(Il)legalising the Destruction of the Amazon
The Amazon rainforest is vital for the ecology and agriculture of the South American continent as well as for the world’s climate. At the same time, deforestation in the Amazon is so severe that some scientists see the world’s largest rainforest as close to irreversible “tipping points”. This article will look at cattle supply chains from the Amazon to global markets and will show how law plays an ambiguous role with respect to the Amazon. Continue reading >>Who Decides, Who Pays, Who is Sacrificed
The energy transition has become a central normative axis of global climate action. However, the acceleration of renewable energy, frequently presented as inherently positive, is not politically neutral. On the contrary, it unfolds asymmetrically across territories marked by deep historical power imbalances, particularly in the Global South. This article puts forward the proposition that a truly reflexive energy transition necessarily requires not only recognising harms and measuring impacts but also dismantling entrenched forms of control, authority, and epistemic hierarchy within the governance of the transition itself. Continue reading >>09 February 2026
Method in the Madness
In this article, I will critique the project of a general theory of knowledge and scholarly inquiry using the figure of reflexivity. I understand critique here as a procedure that seeks to ceaselessly subdivide its object and thereby complicate it. This specific conception of critique is restless and – crucially – self-reflexive. It must carry on endlessly and thereby be brought to bear against every distinction it has itself drawn. Against a generalised theory of knowledge and scholarly inquiry, I will contrast an historically unsettled concept of epistemology. Continue reading >>On Eurocentrism
Over roughly the past decade and a half, many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences have undergone what is often described as a “global turn.” This shift starts from a historical insight into the disciplines themselves. As they are institutionalized today across universities worldwide, the modern disciplines largely took shape in nineteenth-century Europe and continue to bear the imprint of that moment of origin. Two features are particularly consequential. First, their close entanglement with the nation-state has fostered a predominantly national framing of research questions, archives, and narratives. Second, they have been shaped by Eurocentric assumptions that were deeply embedded in an age marked by imperial expansion and European global hegemony. Continue reading >>06 February 2026
RefLex and the Possibility of Transformative “North-South” Research Collaborations
On 20 November 2024, Humboldt University of Berlin became a signatory to the Africa Charter for Transformative Research Collaborations. This piece introduces the key argument of the Africa Charter, posits its relevance as a benchmark for RefLex, a new Centre for Advanced Studies at HU, and proposes a set of queries to guide its operationalisation within the Institute and possibly beyond in similar “North-South” initiatives. I offer these reflections drawing on my close involvement in the development of the intellectual underpinnings of the Africa Charter. Continue reading >>The Code Noir as an Archive of Resistance
What does it mean to examine political modernity from below, specifically from the position of the enslaved person – not as a metaphor or a footnote, but as a lens for analyzing foundational political and legal concepts? I argue that foregrounding the position of the enslaved provides a productive point of departure for understanding how colonial and racial epistemologies, imaginaries, and institutions have shaped core Western concepts, such as democracy and the rule of law. Continue reading >>05 February 2026
Reflexive Globalisation, Law and Placemaking
Students demand the decolonization of curricula. Civil society debates the presentation of Non-Western artefacts and entangled histories in museums across the world. European governments apologize for slavery and genocidal killings, while former colonies request reparations, and the Indian legislature decolonizes the Indian Penal Code. The legacies of colonialism and empire are debated everywhere these days. We propose that these developments signal a new phase in the dynamics of globalisation. Continue reading >>02 February 2026
Rosa Luxemburg
Shaping left-wing politics and writing numerous political papers, her name is familiar to many: Rosa Luxemburg. After growing up in Poland, she pursued a broad and interdisciplinary education. Alongside other subjects, she attended law courses and earned a doctorate with a dissertation on Poland’s industrial development. Following her academic years, she began a political career in Germany – a career that would infamously come to a brutal end. Continue reading >>12 January 2026
When Caution is Justified
Little CJEU case law has been as fiercely criticised as that relating to the right to be free from religious discrimination. However, the CJEU recently found a sympathiser in Ronan McCrea. He argues that the approach is one of “justifiable caution”. Despite my disagreements with him, I believe that we must take McCrea’s position seriously to be able to develop a more fine-grained view of when caution is warranted. At the same time, I still firmly believe that the case law on religious clothing reveals deeply troubling attitudes toward Muslim women that have no place under anti-discrimination law. Continue reading >>Religiously Sensitive Union Law in Fundamental-Rights Pluralism
“Doomsday” did not occur. The ghastly fascination with this legal conflict, shared by some observers in the media and in legal scholarship, has not been given new fuel. With its long-awaited order in the Egenberger case, the German Federal Constitutional Court has delivered a prudent and balanced decision. It has neither musealized ecclesiastical labour law and abandoned its established case law, nor initiated a trial of strength with the Court of Justice of the European Union by denying the primacy of Union law. Continue reading >>02 January 2026
