Articles for category: English Articles

„The Eurozone Crisis“: Introduction by the Authors

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Our book on the Eurozone crisis is built on two central premises; a substantive one and a methodological one. According to the substantive premise the Eurozone crisis has not been merely an economic crisis and a crisis of the European macroeconomic constitution but has had significant consequences in the dimensions of the political and social constitution as well. This substantive premise is linked to our understanding of the European constitution as a multidimensional and multitemporal process of constitutionalisation. The methodological premise concerns the relationship between constitutional and economic analysis. Our objective has not been to complement constitutional with economic analysis ... continue reading

12. April 2014

»The Eurozone Crisis« – A Book Debate

Kaarlo Tuori, Klaus Tuori. The Eurozone Crisis. A Constitutional Analysis. Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. 285. £19.99. ISBN: 9781107649453. Taking a break from the ILA Biannual Conference and ASIL Annual Meeting in Washington D.C. to launch this book debate on Kaarlo Tuori’s and Klaus Tuori’s new book I need not stray from the Ronald Reagan Building to find illustrative examples that the Eurozone crisis is far from resolved and will haunt us for years to come. The New York Times reports today on the run of investors on the newly issued Greek debt and notes the disconnect between »the rush ... continue reading

12. April 2014

Translating Ideas

Picking up some of the threads of the current debate on this blog, I would like to focus on an aspect that to my mind is of crucial importance in the matter: the necessity of translation. What I mean by that will hopefully become clear in the course of the following three steps: First I would like to argue why and in what sense doctrinal scholarship is (or at least can be) at the very core of law. In a second step I would like to explain why – therefore and nevertheless – it needs interdisciplinarity and internationalization/comparative legal studies. ... continue reading

28. Februar 2014

Poor Prospects for Internationalization: Germans and Americans in Law Faculties Jenseits des Atlantiks

Introduction For all the noise it makes about internationalizing German legal scholarship, the Council’s Report only makes a feeble pass at the deeply parochial culture that dominates the German legal academy. One of the gravest consequences of that parochialism is the exclusion of foreign legal scholars from Germany’s law faculties. This, in turn, undermines other attempts at internationalizing German legal scholarship. I hope to illustrate the extent of this problem with a survey that shows how few American jurists are teaching in Germany and how many Germans have succeeded in becoming law professors in America. Globalizing Legal Education The German ... continue reading

26. Februar 2014

Wissenschaftsrat in Wonderland

Had the German Wissenschaftsrat hired an advertising agency to extol the virtues and challenges of German legal education at the dawn of the 21st century, the publicist could hardly have done a more positive job than the Wissenschaftsrat itself. Its report signals that all is remarkably well with the state of legal education and research in Germany: there are more chairs than ever, and those chairs attract more research funding than ever before. German legal scholarship is internationalizing, and coming to terms with the increasing juridification of society and deformalization of law. All is great. Of course, all could be ... continue reading

25. Februar 2014

Expanding the Legal Curriculum: Rethinking the Teaching of Law

What is striking to an outsider about the focus of German legal scholarship is the extent to which it centres on a canonical and dogmatic approach to the interpretation of law. This emerges very clearly from the report prepared by the German Council of Science and Humanities and translated under the auspices of the programme Rechtskulturen. At the same time, there is recognition of the need to develop legal scholarship beyond these frames of reference to engage law in a wider system of higher education and academic research. This not only requires a rethinking of the curricular design to allow ... continue reading

24. Februar 2014

Courage to be wrong, or education to get it right? A response to Michaela Hailbronner

Michaela Hailbronner makes important arguments in her informed and carefully balanced post. I agree with much of what she says. I just think the main problem of interdisciplinarity in Germany is not lack of courage. It is lack of expertise. Much of her analysis strikes me as sound. I would agree that many US law professors have few scruples to write on topics and in areas about which they know very little. But regardless of whether one finds that refreshing or annoying, I do not think it is a relevant factor in the creation of scholarly knowledge. I also think ... continue reading

23. Februar 2014

On the courage to be wrong

The debate on the Wissenschaftsrat-Report has quickly turned into one about the comparative advantages of German doctrinal vs. US interdisciplinary legal scholarship and education. This is not surprising because much of the Report reads like a recommendation to go further down the American path, while at the same time still taking doctrine seriously – very seriously indeed. In taking this ›middle path‹, the authors seek to take the best of what are two very different academic worlds. This effort is admirable, but I am skeptical about its prospects. The attempt itself stems, I think, from a deeper dilemma that has ... continue reading

22. Februar 2014

Free Trade in Legal Scholarship?

I want to decline Rob Howse’s invitation to talk about my own residual anxieties, because he introduces another more interesting theme into the debate: whether scholarship can actually be traded between countries. He suggests that such trade exists, though apparently only in one direction: »It is not as if Americans are going to buy their doctrinal scholarship from Germany […]; on the other hand, some forms of interdisciplinary scholarship from the US may well be exportable to Germany.« But it was not always so. There was a time, prior to World War I, when many Americans were indeed eager to ... continue reading

22. Februar 2014

Beyond curricular design: why internationalisation matters in legal education

A few years ago, a New York Times editorial declared: »American legal education is in crisis«! It sounds dramatic and exceptional, but actually quite often, and almost everywhere, there is a feeling that legal education is not going well. When I was a law student at the University of São Paulo, in the early 1990s, legal education reform was on the agenda; as a law professor at the same university, almost 25 years later, I keep hearing similar anxieties about this issue. In this context, the document delivered by the German Council of Science and Humanities (hereafter, »the Council« or ... continue reading

21. Februar 2014