Constitutional Adjudication, Politics, and the Future


Dr. Max Steuer
Type
Open Panel
Language
English
Description

The relationship between constitutional adjudication and politics remains contested all over the world. Views that constitutional courts are—as an extension from general courts—isolated from politics are rarely supported, not least because of the common involvement of political parties in the selection process of constitutional judges and in shaping the competes of constitutional adjudication. However, it is unclear whether the optimal future of constitutional adjudication should be tied to reducing or increasing political influences. The widespread distrust and evidence of failures of constitutional courts in countries with different historical trajectories (such as Hungary, India, Poland or the United States) gave rise to arguments against formally powerful constitutional courts isolated from partisan politics. Yet, this discourse typically equates ‘political’ with ‘partisan’ interventions, thus omitting the study of the interaction between politics and constitutional courts in a broader sense—including judges’ engagements in the public sphere, their personalities and philosophies independent from partisan connections, or the networks constitutional courts build between each other and with other organizations, within and beyond standard state boundaries. This Panel invites contributions that address the gap of the variety of political engagements of constitutional courts, with particular regard to calibrating their practices vis-à-vis present and future challenges, including climate degradation, traditional and new forms of authoritarianism (including algorithmic and technocratic autocratization), or demographic changes challenging current and future generations’ rights standards and societal well-being. Individual or co-authored comparative contributions and contributions on specific research questions engaging with jurisdictions or thematic areas less represented in studies of constitutional adjudication are particularly welcome. Ultimately, the panel encourages the use of diverse methods to help understand the avenues of positioning constitutional courts vis-à-vis politics in various contexts, and the implications of these avenues for understanding the dimensions of the very concept of politics.

Onsite Presentation Language
Same as proposal language
Panel ID
PL-4294
Submit a paper to this panel