On October 23rd at 5pm the Institute for European and International Law at the Vienna University of Economics and Business will host the book launch for  Kriszta Kovács new book "The Jurisprudence of Particularism". The book asks whether there is space for particularism in a constitutional democracy which would limit the implementation of EU law.

Prof. Christoph Grabenwarter, president VfGH, will deliver a welcome address.

The editor and the authors

• Associate Prof. Kriszta Kovács, WZB Global Constitutionalism / ELTE University

• Dr. Miluše Kindlová, Lecturer at Charles University Prague

• Prof. Monika Polzin, Vienna University of Economics and Business

• Assistant Prof. Michał Ziółkowski, Kozminski University Warsaw

will present their chapters.

Prof. Konrad Lachmayer (Sigmund Freud University) will comment on the book. The moderator is Prof. Markus Böckenförde (Central European University Vienna).

Our biweekly Colloquium has gone to break and we thank everyone who participated in this seasons edition.

Those presenters included, among others, Alec Stone Sweet, Hiroshi Motomura, Marin Kilanoswki and Micheline Ishay.

We will be back after the winter!

The new book by Mattias Kumm et al "Perspektiven nach dem Ukrainekrieg - Europa auf dem Weg zu einer neuen Friedensordnung?" has been published. He wrote the chapter "Der Ukrainekrieg und die Zukunft der internationalen Rechtsordnung". Here he argues that supporting Ukraine is not enough. The international legal order needs fundamental reforms if it is to serve as a peace order.

Mattias Kumm is the author of the book, along with Julian Nida-Rümelin, Erich Vad, Albrecht von Müller, Werner Weidenfeld and Antje Vollmer. It is published by Herder Verlag.

Kriszta Kovács is the editor of the recently published book The Jurisprudence of Particularism. National Identity Claims in Central Europe (Oxford: Hart 2023). The open-access book asks whether there is space for particularism in a constitutional democracy which would limit the implementation of EU law. National identity claims are a key factor in shaping our times and the ongoing evolution of the European Union. To assess their impact, this collection focuses on the jurisprudence of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, as they play an essential role in giving life to particularism. By taking particularism as the prism through which they explore the question, the contributors, including Mattias Kumm and Kriszta Kovács, offer a new analytical scheme to evaluate the judicial invocation of identity. This requires an interdisciplinary approach: the study draws on comparative constitutional law, theory, comparative-empirical material and normative-philosophical perspectives.

Citizenship was the most important mark of political belonging in Europe in the twentieth century, while estate, religion, party, class, and nation lost political significance in the century of extremes. This is shown by examining the legal institution of citizenship, with its deciding influence on the limits of a political community, on inclusion and exclusion. Citizenship determined a person's protection, equality, and freedom and thus his or her chances in life and very survival. "Struggles for Belonging" recounts the history of citizenship in Europe as the history of European statehood in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It does so from three vantage points: as the development of a legal institution crucial to European constitutionalism; as a measure of an individual's opportunities for self-fulfilment ranging from freedom to totalitarian subjugation; and as a succession of alternating, often sharply divergent political regimes, considered from the perspective of their inclusivity and exclusivity, and its justification.
 

Kriszta Kovács contributes to the volume Constitutionalizing Transitional Justice. How Constitutions and Constitutional Courts Deal with Past Atrocity (London: Routledge, 2022) edited by Cheng-Yi Huang, Academia Sinica, Taipei. Her chapter engages with the constitutional aspects of dealing with the non-democratic legacy during a transition from an authoritarian to a democratic system by focusing on state-sponsored crimes and examining the accountability of perpetrators: retroactive justice and responses to state security measures.

Do you belong here? Or don’t you? This question triggers strong, even conflicting feelings. Many of these feelings are bound together by the idea of citizenship: a legal status that brings some people together while separating others, that fosters a sense of national and political community, but also denotes a set of differences and gives priority over those outside the community. 
Based on three European countries, the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin reveals in its exhibition "Citizenships. France, Poland, Germany since 1789” the changing face of both the meaning of citizenship and its power to galvanize.

On 09-10 February 2023 we organised a two-day workshop in Budapest on Academic Freedom in cooperation with ELTE University and SCRIPTS. The workshop featured, among others, Mattias Kumm and Kriszta Kovács.

The workshop aimed to examine the content of academic freedom as a liberal norm and the patterns in its justification and contestation. First, it looked at the emergence of academic freedom, its spread and its evolution as a global and regional norm. Then the workshop took a closer look at the individual dynamics and causes of contestation, as well as legal and political strategies of resistance in the East Central European region.

For more Information, Panels and Panelists please click here.

Jakob Zollmann has published an entry in the Max Planck Encyclopedia of International Procedural Law. He deals with Mixed Arbitral Tribunals: Post-First World War Peace Treaties.

Since October 2021, Kriszta Kovács has been participating in the Feminist Judgments Project focused on Central and Eastern Europe. The project, supported by University College London, aims at critiquing and eventually rewriting key judicial decisions from the region.

On 12-13 January 2023, we hosted an online workshop on the 50th Anniversary of the Solange Judgment in cooperation with Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg.

For more information, registration and the list of panels, see the event page.

Since 1 September 2021, Mattias Kumm and Kriszta Kovács have been working in the SCRIPTS project "Science Friction: Patterns, Causes and Effects of Academic Freedom Contestations". The project combines the disciplinary perspectives of international relations and comparative politics with constitutional law to analyse, assess and explain the growing contestation of academic freedom worldwide.