Articles for category: Focus

Towards Equity and Decolonization?

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed systemic problems in the global health system. It revealed that the global health system perpetuates global health inequalities rather than effectively reducing them: The international community, particularly the countries of the Global North, failed to make COVID-19 vaccines widely available to the populations of the world's poorest countries. This blog debate takes stock of the reform debate about a just and decolonizing transformation of the health system. Bringing together scholars from various disciplines, the contributions of this debate ask what a fair global health system could look like and what role the law plays in it.

26. März 2024

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Delegitimation durch Verfahren

Oft firmiert die Annahme, dass soziale Ungleichheit politisch umso umstrittener sei, je weiter die Angleichung zwischen den verschiedenen gesellschaftlichen Gruppen vorangeschritten ist, nach ihrem Entdecker als das Tocqueville-Paradox. Im Hinblick auf ein mögliches Verbotsverfahren gegen die AfD ließe sich weniger bildungsbürgerlich, aber durchaus treffend auf ein „Herr Tur Tur-Paradox“ verweisen. Ähnlich wie der Scheinriese aus dem Kinderbuch Michael Endes wirkt das Instrument des Parteiverbots aus der Entfernung sehr imposant – und schnurrt dann aber immer mehr zusammen, je besser sich die Eröffnung eines Verbotsverfahrens vor dem Bundesverfassungsgericht begründen ließe.

26. März 2024

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Einerseits und Andererseits

Die derzeitige Diskussion um ein Verbot der AfD ist ein anschauliches Beispiel dafür, wie sich die Wahrnehmung auch ganz grundlegender verfassungsrechtlicher Institute im Laufe der Zeit verändern kann. Bis in die siebziger und achtziger Jahre des letzten Jahrhunderts war das Parteiverbot bei vielen geradezu verschrien; es galt zusammen mit den Notstandsgesetzen und dem Radikalenerlass als weiteres Repressionsinstrument eines autoritären Staates, als sichtbarer Beleg für dessen immer nur vorgeschobene Liberalität. Aber ob man den Antrag stellt oder nicht, ist eine schwierige Abwägungsentscheidung, die man auch nicht dadurch unterlaufen kann, dass man sie zu einer rechtlichen erklärt oder sie in der Verfassung schon vorweggenommen sieht.

25. März 2024

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Inquiring into the Technicalities of EU Law

It may sound trivial, but I argue that the technicalities of EU law have been neglected and that an in-depth inquiry is lacking. To see why such an inquiry might be interesting, we must go beyond the traditional understanding of legal technicalities and see them as protagonists in their own right. We need to focus on lawyers’ knowledge practices and to inquire into the transformative power of legal technicalities.

23. März 2024

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A Critical Assessment of How We ›Speak‹ EU Law

Although EU law touches on several profound and complex ontologies of ways of living and being in the European polity, these meanings are usually not reflected in how lawyers and legal scholars ‘speak’ EU law. The reason for this is that EU law is formulated in a strikingly abstract and univocal way, leaving little room for an in-depth consideration of the different interpretations of the law by reference to the various values and conceptions of the individual and social institutions that it underlies.

23. März 2024

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The Janus-Faced Culture of EU Law

Can there be a cultural study of EU law? The notion of legal culture is notoriously tricky. It is both omnipresent and yet seemingly ungraspable. Can we nevertheless hope to dispel the mystery of legal culture, and seize this notion as an object of study? And can it provide a method to improve our understanding of EU law?

23. März 2024

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Studying Migrations and Borders from a Pluridisciplinary Perspective

I chose for years to consider migrations and borders from a pluridisciplinary perspective. Such a pluridisciplinary approach reveals to be demanding: it needs both to be developed with discipline, and to be opened to wanderings. You have to accept to be confronted with personal controversies, to be faced with internal discourse on the method.

22. März 2024

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Europe’s Judicial Narratives

Through the representations of Europe that it conjures up and conveys, the European Court of Justice significantly influences the EU’s self-perceived identity. In that sense, it contributes to the shaping of a European polity, i.e. a European political community united by shared representations about its history and identity.

22. März 2024

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The Triumph of EU Law in Context?

Whereas law-in-context analyses of Community law were relatively rare in the early 1990s, they seemed to flourish from that point onwards. Unsurprisingly, even “mainstream” journals, such as the Common Market Law Review, now strive to attract pieces that combine legal analysis with social, political or economic insights. Does that mean that we are all “contextualists” now? Not in my view.

22. März 2024

Colonialism and EU Law

In 1957, when the Treaty of Rome was signed and founded what later became the European Union (EU), four out of six of the original Member States were colonial powers. An important methodological question for EU law research is how this historical fact has affected the development of EU law. I argue that answering the question of how Europe’s centuries long history of colonialism has shaped EU law is not just a historical exercise but also a starting point for an examination of EU law of today.

21. März 2024

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