Thema: Verfassungstheorie & Methodik

Verfassungsinterpretationstheorie, verfassungsrechtliche Methodik, theoretische Grundlagen der Verfassungsanalyse und Verfassungsphilosophie. Umfasst Originalismus, dynamische Verfassungsauslegung, Verfassungskonstruktion und methodische Ansätze der Verfassungsinterpretation. Auf spezifisch verfassungsrechtliche Themen fokussiert, allgemeine akademische Themen sind nun unter Wissenschaft und Recht kategorisiert.

Ein resilientes Strafrecht braucht starke Grenzen

Vage Rechtsgüter und unbestimmte Tatbestände öffnen dem Strafrecht Türen, durch die populistische und autoritäre Kräfte es zur politischen Waffe machen können. Seine wirksamsten Schutzbarrieren sind klare Rechtsgüter, das Ultima-Ratio-Prinzip und der Bestimmtheitsgrundsatz. Doch gerade im Staatsschutzrecht werden diese Grenzen durch vorverlagerte Tatbestände und offene Begrifflichkeiten ausgehöhlt. Umso entscheidender ist eine starke, unabhängige Strafverteidigung als letzte Verteidigungslinie.

14. August 2025

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Three Opposites in Taiwan’s Refracted Constitution

Civil society groups have initiated a mass recall movement in Taiwan, targeting the main opposition party KMT. On 26 July, it received an electoral setback. The movement has been hailed as the most recent evidence for Taiwan’s robust democracy. But its result suggests a more complicated and nuanced story concerning Taiwan’s constitutional image.

7. August 2025

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Crisis and Legal Scholarship

References to crisis abound. Since the 2008 financial crash and with the popularisation of the term “polycrisis” after the COVID-19 pandemic, the idea that we live in times of crises shapes public opinion, political discourse, and academic debates. A review of posts published on Verfassungsblog between January and July 2025 reveals an average of 15 posts per month mentioning some kind of crisis. Crisis is certainly a catchword, and these are hard to resist. But the pervasiveness of this term can also tell us something about the kind of knowledge produced by legal scholarship.

6. August 2025

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Parteiverbotsverfahren in der öffentlichen Debatte

In der seit einigen Monaten kontrovers geführten Debatte um ein mögliches AfD-Verbot werden immer wieder Positionen mit rechtlichen Argumenten unterfüttert, die mit Blick auf das Verfassungsrecht kaum haltbar oder zumindest stark umstritten sind. Ihnen soll im Folgenden besondere Aufmerksamkeit gelten: als Mahnung an alle, die sich öffentlich zu diesem Thema äußern, dass die juristische Methodik auch dort nicht vernachlässigt werden darf, wo (gefühlte) politische Dringlichkeit auf normative Komplexität trifft.

30. Juli 2025

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The Great Recall Movement

Confronted with lawmakers they themselves elected just eighteen months ago, Taiwanese citizens have creatively repurposed the antiquated mechanism of "recall" as a last-resort check on a runaway legislature. Sparked by a year of legislative overreach and erosion of constitutional checks, this unprecedented campaign reflects Taiwan's spirit of civic constitutionalism, and its determination to defend its democratic institutions.

24. Juli 2025

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The Liberal Litigation Trap

The progressive legal movement faces a harsh reality: its reliance on federal courts has become a strategic liability in an era of conservative judicial dominance. Rather than continue on its current path or abandon impact litigation entirely, liberal cause lawyers should embrace “resistance through restraint” – tactically starving conservative appellate courts of cases while redirecting their energy toward democratic organizing, state-level advocacy, and defensive litigation.

9. Juli 2025

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Trump’s Final Frontier?

Trump nominated Emil Bove III, a former attorney of his, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The Bove nomination signals a turn away from the Federalist Society, the signature institution of the conservative legal movement. With it, the radical forces of the New Right movement are now making inroads into the inherently conservative judiciary. This is a development that could be a key step in consolidating Trump's power.

9. Juli 2025

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The Limits of Limiting Democracy

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The intellectual and institutional architectures built around democracy are under pressure – and evolving: Germany reformed its fiscal constitution in March, Europe’s Stability and Growth Pact is undergoing a stress test, and in the United States, the White House is questioning the independence of monetary policy. Historically, democracy has an ambivalent reputation: Plato described it as both the freest and the most unstable of governments. But how far and in what ways can democracy be limited before it loses its democratic nature?

4. Juli 2025

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A European Charter of Fundamental Human Obligations

The effort to anchor animal rights in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights has gained relevance in light of the widespread commodification of animals within the EU’s market-driven integration process. While commendable in principle, incorporating animal rights into the Charter risks serving a largely symbolic function if it diverts attention from the more pressing task of reconfiguring what I take to be the six foundational institutions of private law in capitalist political economy: property, contract, corporation, tort, labor, and consumption. These institutions reinforce the binary between the human subject and the other-than-human object, a division that enables the commodification of non-human beings.

30. Juni 2025

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Democracy Washing

The Israeli Supreme Court has recently adopted a highly activist approach in rulings that claim to strengthen the structural foundations of democracy, while neglecting its role in protecting the basic human rights of Palestinians. The stark contrast between the Court’s handling of cases involving Palestinians detained incommunicado and its swift intervention in the dismissal of the Shin Bet Director reflects a deeper pattern in the Court’s recent jurisprudence, one that can be described as “democracy washing”.

20. Juni 2025

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