Arbitrariness is detrimental to the legitimacy of any rule in a deep and decisive way. Yet, it is poorly understood and underexplored. This is regrettable because we need a better and more articulate understanding of it in order to use this key notion, in particular with regard to the so-called constitutional quality of legislation. In...
Artificial Intelligence – new challenges for public law and the human rights‘ doctrine
We stand on the edge of a new technological revolution. The era of digital communication is slowly becoming a thing of the past. Now, we are entering the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI) – robots that able to communicate with humans, learn independently and work outside the algorithms. This is not science fiction. In 2017...
Brexit and Misconceptions of Governance
Brexit has been understood as a triumph of populism and nationalism, in conflict with the ethos of the Union. But Brexit should not be understood as a mere aberration, but instead indicative of exhausted thinking about EU and (transnational) law in general. From the perspective of “pure“ legal theory, Brexit is self-referential. The discussion thereof...
Buddhism‘s Influence on Thailand‘s Constitutional Arrangement
Since 2006, Thailand‘s democracy has been in serious decline. Political power is allocated to a small elite whose control of Thai politics become increasingly pervasive and entrenched. Thailand‘s constitutional design is influenced by two forces; the liberal democratic ideas and the traditional Buddhist values. And the latter is prevailing over more recent developments. Buddhism is...
Building the Fourth Pillar: Towards a Socially Secure Europe
The European Parliament, the Council and the Commission proclaimed the European Pillar of Social Rights twenty years after the last Social Summit and the inclusion of social rights in the Treaty of Amsterdam. Ten years of financial turmoil have cut the implementation of social policies in the Member States. Taking into account the European Institutions’...
Constitutional populism and democracy – the case of Israel
My paper will look at the current attack on constitutionalism in Israeli through the lens of the discussion on constitutional populism in Europe and elsewhere. It will argue that the Israeli case cannot be analyzed out of the context of the Israeli occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, an undemocratic situation typified by dispossession of...
Constitutions and Markets: A Reply
The final intervention will reply to the previous four papers and will serve as the starting point for a round-table discussion which will extend to contemporary constitutional issues concerning the dominance of market rationality
Developing a Right to Democracy in International Law: Protection by the Rule of Law?
“We reaffirm that human rights, the rule of law and democracy are interlinked and mutually reinforcing and that they belong to the universal and indivisible core values and principles of the United Nations.“ (United Nations Declaration of the High-level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Rule of Law at the National and International Levels...
Does Discretion in Citizenship by Investment Programs Affect the Quality of Legislation?
Citizenship by investment programs (CIPs) – granting citizenship on grounds of economic transactions – have been catching the attention of scholars during the last decade. Most agree that CIPs represent a form of selling citizenship. The introduction of the Maltese program, which grants not only national but also European citizenship, represented a turning point. Although...