Articles for tag: Antisemitismus, Deutschland, Gedächtnisgesetze, Israel, mnemonic constitutionalism, Occupied Territory, Palästina, Portugal, Spain, Staatsbürgerschaft

Jewish Past, Mnemonic Constitutionalism and the Politics of Citizenship

For this symposium essay, I will focus on the Jewish past, with its tragedies extending beyond and preceding the Holocaust as a master narrative unfolded by mnemonic constitutionalism. Specifically, I will reflect on how citizenship laws – as the foundational cluster of constitutional law in liberal democracies, including the countries without a formal constitution – have built constitutional ontologies upon the Jewish past and the “never again” theme through three central examples involving “Jewish citizens”.

28. Juli 2024

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The Response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Portugal: A success story gone wrong.

Following an initial comparatively successful handling of the pandemic, infection numbers began increasing consistently after September in Portugal and reached an alarming rate at the beginning of 2021. A second lockdown started on January 14, 2021, with record infection and mortality rates and the National Health Service near breakdown. On 21 January, the measures were tightened and included the closure of schools and universities. A year later, Portugal is back to square one, and, as the failure to control the growth of the pandemic seems evident, medical and moral despair dominate. The impact of the restrictions on the freedom of movement contributed to a decline in the country’s overall score of The Economist’s Democracy Index 2020, that now qualifies it as a “democracy with flaws”.

4. März 2021

Coping with Covid-19 in Portugal: From Constitutional Normality to the State of Emergency

As we write this report, it is unclear how the Covid-19 outbreak will unfold in Portugal. The country reacted quickly to adopt measures aimed at reducing social contact, including the closure of schools and a general ban on non-essential movement. Whether that will prove efficient to avoid the collapse of the national health system and prevent thousands of deaths, only time will tell. In this contribution, we describe and reflect on the action taken by public powers to address the Covid-19 pandemic, considering the situation as of April 9.

12. April 2020

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