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All Debates on Verfassungsblog
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.
06 November 2026
AI, Epistemic Loss and Troubled Visions for Legal Pluralism
The aim of this article is not to simplify, but rather to establish that introducing AI in legal contexts is complicated, since epistemic injustice is entangled with the very design of the technology, its ethics and the socio-political contexts of its possible applications. How AI will change the practice of law through modelling reasons, generating texts, developing arguments for and against a case, predicting and explaining legal outcomes – I leave that for technologists and legal professionals to evaluate for themselves. Continue reading >>Sicherheitshalber für das Recht
„Wenn es ernst wird“, so lautet der Titel dieser Beitragsreihe. Ein Blick in die gegenwärtige Weltpolitik zeigt: Es ist längst ernst. In der Bundesrepublik wird über Kriegs- bzw. Verteidigungsfähigkeit debattiert, über Abschreckung und Aufrüstung, über Wehrdienst und Wehrpflicht. Zugleich gehen mit der Fokussierung auf Sicherheitslogik Gefahren einher: eine Militarisierung von Politik und Gesellschaft, in der Völker- und Verfassungsrecht potenziell zu einer lästigen, notfalls umgehbaren Hürde werden. Dabei ist das Recht kein Hindernis, sondern Kompass, um im unsicheren Gelände zu navigieren. Continue reading >>The Road to the ICC Prosecution of Philippine Warlord Rodrigo Duterte
In 2025, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested and brought before the ICC to face charges of crimes against humanity. But the struggle for accountability began years earlier, amid a brutal “war on drugs” that claimed tens of thousands of lives. As the killings continued, Philippine human rights lawyers turned the law into a tool of resistance and carving out spaces of protection for threatened communities. Their experience reveals how even under conditions of relentless state violence, legal resistance can make a tangible difference. Continue reading >>Defending Indigenous Territories Through Law and Collective Power
Law’s capacity to transform unequal power relations depends on how legal action supports community organising and whether this support remains guided by communities’ own priorities and decisions. This matters because energy projects begin to transform territories before construction starts: Contracts establish claims over land, permits authorise particular uses, and administrative procedures determine whose participation counts. Indigenous peoples challenging these projects must therefore engage with institutions whose decisions helped make them possible. Continue reading >>Das pazifistische Grundgesetz und die „Zeitenwende“
Wenn es um militärische Machtmittel aus verfassungsrechtlicher Perspektive geht, stehen Normen des Grundgesetzes im Mittelpunkt, die zwischen 1954 und 1968 in das Grundgesetz eingefügt worden sind. Im Folgenden sollen demgegenüber Verfassungsnormen in den Blick genommen werden, die bereits in der Urfassung des Grundgesetzes enthalten waren und den Inhalt der „Wehrverfassung“ bis heute determinieren. Der Beitrag will aufzeigen, warum diese Normen das Grundgesetz zu einer pazifistischen Verfassung machen und warum ihre Beachtung gegenwärtig so wichtig ist. Continue reading >>05 November 2026
Gacaca Beyond Retribution
Rwanda’s Gacaca courts should not be understood simply as an alternative to conventional criminal justice or assessed solely against transitional justice models developed elsewhere. Writing from my own experience and situated understanding of Rwanda’s post-genocide context, I recognise that Gacaca emerged at a time when the country faced a devastated justice system, an overwhelming caseload, and the challenge of rebuilding relationships within communities fractured by mass violence. Continue reading >>The Malleability of Transitional Justice
Transitional justice began with mothers marching on the Plaza de Mayo and survivors searching for their dead. It returned to them as a UN toolkit with fixed pillars. Today, critics say the field has reached an impasse. In Guatemala’s Maya Ixil region, genocide survivors are reclaiming it anyway. They are building their own archives and museums, where hunger, harm to the land and five centuries of dispossession are part of the record. Continue reading >>Wenn Zuständigkeiten nicht reichen
Das zentrale Problem der deutschen Gesamtverteidigung sind nicht fehlende Zuständigkeiten, sondern fehlende Anschlussfähigkeit zwischen ihnen. Das Grundgesetz verteilt Verantwortung zwischen Bund und Ländern. Zivile Verteidigung, Katastrophenschutz und private Daseinsvorsorge folgen eigenen Rechts- und Organisationslogiken. Das ist gewollt, ändert aber nichts daran, dass daraus im Ernstfall eine durchgängige Reaktionsfähigkeit entstehen muss. Dafür müssen die Übergänge rechtlich vorbereitet, institutionell verbunden und praktisch eingeübt sein. Gesamtverteidigung muss die Funktionsfähigkeit von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft auch unter extremer Belastung erhalten. Continue reading >>Same same, but different
„Wir sind heute in einer anderen Welt aufgewacht“ – diese Worte wählte die damalige Außenministerin Annalena Baerbock am ersten Tag der russischen Vollinvasion in die Ukraine. Seitdem erlebt die klassische Landes- und Bündnisverteidigung eine Renaissance. Zugleich treten Bedrohungen von vielen Seiten und oft unentdeckt auf, Stichwort: hybride Bedrohung. Unsere Wehrverfassung wurde für den klassischen Fall der Landes- und Bündnisverteidigung geschaffen. Wird sie sich trotzdem auch heute noch bewähren? Diese und weitere Fragen wollen wir in unserem Symposium „Wenn es ernst wird“ beantworten. Continue reading >>04 November 2026
How Do We Determine the Existence of Torture Today?
A key question in the legal scholarship on torture consists in setting the criteria to differentiate it from other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. This blog post shows in which ways the Inter-American Human Rights System can contribute to answering this difficult question. One is the idea of the need to consider both “endogenous” and “exogenous” factors in the determination of the gravity of the suffering. Another one is the understanding of torture as something linked to the attacked person’s personality and capacities. Continue reading >>What Isn’t Organised Crime?
The undeniable danger posed by real criminal organisations justifies offences so elastic that they fit almost any group of people, and whose invocation unlocks consequences bearing no proportion to the conduct. By punishing mere membership, these statutes create what Gerard Lynch called the crime of being a criminal. The vagueness is not a drafting failure. It is by design. A liberal criminal law – understood as one committed to constraining the state’s power to punish – cannot leave that design unanswered. Continue reading >>03 November 2026
The Global East and the Promise of Reflexivity
In 1999, David Kennedy famously affirmed that “international law is different in different places”, a reality that practitioners and scholars around the world had already long experienced. From the Global South’s imperial critique and rejection of international law, to a religiously infused international law in the Arab World, or the recent acknowledgement of European international law as a regional law, one can argue that the “local” in international law is central to any inquiry on reflexivity. Continue reading >>Race, Empire, and the Liberal International Order
The complex set of international laws, rules, norms, and institutions that have shaped global governance since the end of World War II is now subject to an unprecedented set of challenges and reconfigurations. They all raise important questions about what the future may hold for this world order. Yet these debates miss a fundamental aspect about the foundations and predicates of the LIO. Continue reading >>Tracing the Historical Cycle of Colonialism as a Crime Against Peace and Security
This post shows how Global South representatives at the UN sought to redefine the concept of international crimes by arguing for the inclusion of colonialism and neo-colonial practices as a crime against peace and security. The earlier debates on the criminalisation of colonialism expose the uneven distribution of power and voice. Reflexive moments form part of a recurring cycle, where Northern legal norms are critically received and re-negotiated by the South, re-injected into the international legal order, and finally re-appropriated by the North in a way that dilutes their transformative potential. Continue reading >>02 November 2026
Usual Suspects
Thinking reflexively about militant democracy requires us not only to point to party-centrism as a flaw, but to take the opportunity to revisit the doctrine as a whole, particularly since it matters to every democratic society facing anti-democratic threats of various kinds. Below, I trace and define party-centrism and argue more narrowly that moving beyond it is valuable not only because it brings more actors into view, but because it extends to them the same level of protection that parties already receive. Continue reading >>Decentring the State
Research on political parties has become a global enterprise. One area where it remains incomplete is how the condition of plural authority shapes parties. This blog draws on African experiences to consider what plural authority means for party theorising. Its central argument is that taking plural authority seriously raises new questions about parties and challenges some of the assumptions embedded in established theories. African experiences do more than reveal the limits of existing party theory; they provide critical resources for reconstructing it as a more genuinely global comparative theory. Continue reading >>30 October 2026
African Constitutionalism Beyond Reception
African constitutionalism is often approached through the language of reception. International human rights standards are incorporated into constitutions, treaties are given domestic effect, courts draw upon international jurisprudence, and regional instruments adapt international commitments to African contexts. Yet this perspective leaves a fundamental question unresolved: What happens to the legal meaning of an international norm when it is interpreted and applied within an African constitutional or regional order? Continue reading >>Confluence Constitutionalism
What does a Bollywood soundtrack have to do with the future of constitutionalism? More than one might think. Just as Chutney music defies notions of cultural purity, constitutionalism has emerged from centuries of entanglement between Western and non-Western ideas. Challenging both Eurocentric histories and romanticised visions of an authentic indigenous past, the idea of confluence constitutionalism opens up a different path to decolonisation. Continue reading >>Liberal Constitutionalism Beyond the West?
Globalisation has not simply involved the diffusion of a Western constitutional model. It has also involved the transformation of the tradition itself. Liberal constitutionalism is no longer the hegemonic global governance ideology or model it used to be. Rather, it can be understood as an evolving, interpretively open, experimentalist tradition. Starting from these premises, my book engages the five critiques set out above. Continue reading >>29 October 2026
Sharifu Lecture 2026 of the RefLex Centre for Advanced Studies
Join us for the inaugural Sharifu Lecture, with BS Chimni of Jindal Global Law School speaking about “Different Pasts, Multiple Presents: Towards a Materialist History of Imperialism and International Law“. The lecture will be introduced by RefLex Director Florian Jeßberger and will be followed by a panel discussion with Isabella Aboderin (University of Bristol), Fannie Lafontaine (Université Laval) and Valeria Vegh Weis (Universidad de Buenos Aires). Continue reading >>28 October 2026
What We Lose When Lawyers Let LLMs Write
One of the first things a bleary-eyed first-year law student has to hear ad nauseam in their first week of law school is that, over the next three years, they will be taught to “think” like a lawyer. What does that mean exactly? And how is that likely to change in the face of rapid adoption and spread of Large Language Models (LLMs) across law schools, law firms, and in-house legal departments? What do we lose when lawyers let LLMs do their writing for them? Continue reading >>27 October 2026
Estrangement Machines
Computational methods may facilitate a form of estrangement valuable to qualitative and, in particular, ethnographic inquiry: they can help make the familiar strange. Machines may be most useful precisely when they fail to reproduce our categories; they may be less informative when they appear simply to confirm them. Despite their prima facie opposite inclinations, the two approaches can therefore produce considerable synergies. Continue reading >>26 October 2026
Data, Content, Context, Slop
There are many stakeholders in the information economy. For decades, creators, workers, market intermediaries, media companies, and digital platforms have tussled over how information, articulated in different forms such as “works”, “content”, or “knowledge”, can be monetised and who should benefit. More recently, AI firms have entered this contest over how to define and justify the forms of profit that can be drawn off information as it flows from creators to consumers via intermediaries, platforms, and AI models. Continue reading >>23 October 2026
Schambeeinflusste Gesetzgebung
Scham über die NS-Vergangenheit beeinflusst nicht nur die deutsche Erinnerungskultur, sondern auch die Erinnerungsgesetzgebung. Schamvorstellungen übersetzen sich in dieses Recht über Rechtsgüter wie das internationale Ansehen Deutschlands oder das von der öffentlichen Ordnung geschützte Sittlichkeitsempfinden und Selbstbild der Gesellschaft. Dabei wirft gerade der Schutz dieser Rechtsgüter Fragen auf. Continue reading >>Scham-Reflexe
„Meines Erachtens handelt es sich bei § 184l StGB um Moralgesetzgebung ohne hinreichend rationale Grundlage.“ Mit diesem Satz leitet Richter Thomas Offenloch sein Sondervotum zum Sexpuppen-Beschluss des BVerfG ein. Der Fall zeigt: Recht und Rechtsdogmatik können nach wie vor unter einem sittlichen Vorbehalt stehen. Damit verbindet sich ein schamhafter Reflex – die Befürchtung, gegen sittliche Vorstellungen zu verstoßen. Dasselbe Muster prägt die Regulierung von Glücksspiel, Prostitution und Rauschmittelkonsum. Nötig wäre eine Überwindung der Scham im Umgang mit solchen als moralisch problematisch erkannten Verhaltensweisen. Continue reading >>22 October 2026
Shame and Shamelessness in Migration and Refugee Law
States are increasingly trying to renegotiate the foundations of refugee protection, including the right to seek asylum and the principle of non-refoulement. Emotions shape both the adoption and the interpretation of these laws. So far, research has focused on compassion and fear, but has largely left out shame. Yet shame, shaming and shamelessness shape the international refugee protection system: shame acts as its moral guide, and it is also used to sustain racialised and gendered hierarchies within it. Continue reading >>Zur Unmöglichkeit sog. Shame Sanctions als Rechtsstrafe
Im Spätmittelalter stellte man Verurteilte an den Pranger. Heute müssen Täter in den USA T-Shirts mit Hinweisen auf ihre Tat tragen oder mit Plakaten vor Gerichtsgebäuden posieren. Befürworter:innen versprechen sich von solchen sog. „shame sanctions“ Abschreckung und moralische Erziehung. Doch beschämende Sanktionen sind als Rechtsstrafe unmöglich. Das Konstrukt steht exemplarisch für die rechtsbegriffliche Verirrung, Emotionen unter dem Deckmantel der „Moral“ unvermittelt ins Recht tragen zu wollen. Continue reading >>21 October 2026
