Summer plans
Dear Friends of Verfassungsblog,
today there will be no lengthy editorial plus review of the week as usual, but only a few notes on our own behalf. After a spring season which was extreme in so many ways, I’ll take some days off now. Even though the world shows now intention to let up in producing reasons to write alarmed constitutional commentary from dusk till dawn: it’s summer, the cherries are ripe, and I won’t lie to you: I’m a tad worn out, too.
I have no reason to complain, though, on the contrary. For one thing, next week I have the honour and pleasure of being elevated to the rank of playwright. Well, not quite, but after all, my scenario “A People’s Chancellor”, which appeared last autumn in the Süddeutsche Zeitung and caused quite a stir, will be brought to the stage as a one-woman play evening with Ruth Marie Kröger and directed by Helge Schmidt.
Premiere is next Friday at the Asphalt Festival in Düsseldorf, further performances on Saturday and Sunday. All three nights are sold out, as far as I know, but I have three tickets left for the premiere on Friday and two for Saturday and I am giving them away to readers of this editorial. Just send me an email (first come, first serve). At end of August, the production can also be seen in Hamburg, at the Lichthof Theater.
On the other hand, we will use this summer to tackle a project that has been on my mind for quite some time. I don’t want to give too much away, especially as much of it is still rather sketchy, but the aim will be to establish Verfassungsblog as an open access platform. We hope that this will help us to finally achieve our goal of providing the blog with a sustainable infrastructure. Then even a situation like in March/April, when we had to process up to ten or twelve articles a day, will no longer be able to blow us away.
At this point, three cheers for Christian Mathieu from the Berlin Staatsbibliothek, who has been supporting us for many years with his fabulous Intr2Dok repository. It was him who gave me the impetus to realise that an open access platform is exactly what we have been almost from the start without ever realizing it.
Speaking of infrastructure: If you are a Rechtsreferendar and are looking for an interesting, multifaceted and challenging Wahlstation, in a great team and in out great new office in Berlin-Kreuzberg – then we look forward to receiving your application! If you know someone who might be interested, please forward this to her/him. Thanks a lot!
And there is another project we want to tackle this summer: a 12-part podcast on the rule of law in Europe, which we will produce together with the German Bar Association (Deutscher Anwaltverein). The idea is to initiate a truly European discussion on all the related aspects that are currently becoming acutely topical, with discussion partners from all over Europe.
This editorial will now take a summer break, too, at least as far as I’m concerned (next week and the week after you’ll still get mail, but see for yourself…). All the best to you, enjoy the summer and stay tuned!
Max Steinbeis