Laws, Conventions, and Fake Constitutions
In January 2011, Ronald Dworkin gave a talk about democracy to a large audience at Central European University in Budapest. A few months earlier the then-opposition party, Fidesz, had won a landslide...
View ArticleHow Can a Democratic Constitution Survive an Autocratic Majority? A Report on...
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...
View Article“Constitutional Resilience – How Can a Democratic Constitution Survive an...
1. When Dieter Grimm, then-Justice of the German Constitutional Court, received death threats, had bodyguards watching after him and bulletproof window glasses installed in his home in Karlsruhe –...
View ArticleHow to Abolish Democracy: Electoral System, Party Regulation and Opposition...
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...
View ArticleConstitutional Resilience to Populism: Four Theses
Mattias Kumm argues that the populist challenge to constitutional democracy is systemic, because it takes aim at all of the core features of constitutional democracy, as opposed to targeting one of...
View ArticleNo Case for Legal Interventionism: Defending Democracy Through Protecting...
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...
View ArticleHow can a democratic constitution survive an autocratic majority?
If I try to derive the answer to this question from what we heard about the cases of Hungary and Poland, I am afraid I have to say: hardly. Each of the three panels of this workshop showed the same...
View ArticleThe Democratic Backsliding and the European constitutional design in error....
Constitutional design of the post – 1945 liberal consensus When is the constitutional design of any (domestic, international, supranational) polity in error? On the most general level such critical...
View Article1095 Days Later: From Bad to Worse Regarding the Rule of Law in Poland (Part I)
On 13 January 2016, exactly three years ago today, the Commission activated the so-called rule of law framework for the very first time with respect to Poland. This was justified by First...
View Article1095 Days Later: From Bad to Worse Regarding the Rule of Law in Poland (Part II)
(Part I here) 4. One missed opportunity: The ECJ ruling of 25 July 2018 concerning the European Arrest Warrant The knock-on effects of the deteriorating situation in Poland became notably visible...
View ArticleFrom Constitutional to Political Justice: The Tragic Trajectories of the...
The story of an institution in decline The Polish Constitutional Court, once a proud institution and an effective check on the will of the majority, is now a shell of its former self. The...
View ArticleCountering the Judicial Silencing of Critics: Novel Ways to Enforce European...
The Polish government is stepping up its repression. Or so it seems. After packing the Constitutional Tribunal, dismissing more than 150 (out of 700) presidents and vice-presidents of ordinary courts,...
View ArticleStraßburg und das Anti-Richter-Dilemma
Wenn ein Staat anfängt, bei der Ernennung von Richter_innen herumzutricksen, bringt er das Recht in ein Dilemma: Kann eine solche Richter_in trotzdem wirksam Urteile fällen, als wäre nichts geschehen?...
View ArticleFight Fire with Fire – a Plea for EU Information Campaigns in Hungarian and...
“Be great in act, as you have been in thought! […] Be stirring as the time, be fire with fire, Threaten the threatener, and outface the brow.” William Shakespeare, King John Even though this advice to...
View ArticleThe Role of Citizen Emotions in Constitutional Backsliding – Mapping Out...
Liberal, constitutional democracy is decaying in Eastern Europe. Important liberal institutions and norms face threats even in stronger and more stable democracies in Western Europe, and perhaps...
View ArticleHow to Defend the Integrity of the EP Elections against Authoritarian Member...
The elections to the European Parliament will take place in a few weeks’ time. There is a clear danger that some of the new MEPs will gain their mandates in elections organised by Member States that...
View ArticleThree Steps Ahead, One Step Aside: The AG’s Opinion in the Commission v....
On 11 April Advocate General Tanchev issued his long-awaited opinion in Case C-619/18 Commission v Poland concerning Polish measures (i) lowering the retirement age of the judges of the Supreme Court...
View Article22 Years of Polish Constitution: Of Lessons not Learnt, Opportunities Missed,...
In memory of Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Prime Minister of the first non-communist government in Central and Eastern Europe, the spiritus movens of the Polish Constitution of April, 2, 1997 The Polish...
View ArticleOpen Letter in Support of Professor Wojciech Sadurski
Two months ago Armin von Bogdandy and Luke Dimitrios Spieker highlighted the plight of our colleague Wojciech Sadurski, a distinguished professor of law at the Universities of Sydney and Warsaw, and...
View ArticleOffence Intended – Virgin Mary With a Rainbow Halo as Freedom of Expression
The news that a 51-year-old activist, Ms Elżbieta Podleśna, was detained and interrogated by Polish authorities shocked the public in Poland. She was interrogated for five hours, had her car and home...
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