This workshop is being hosted by the Max Planck Law Institutes in association with the Hertie School's Centre for Fundamental Rights and iCourts.
Recent decades have seen unprecedented levels of pressure on democracies in Europe and elsewhere from both state and market forces. Democratically elected governments have in some countries centralized executive power, stifled democratic dissent, and weakened the independence of the judiciary. Simultaneously, the unmediated and largely market-driven development of digital technologies has allowed for major disinformation campaigns, undermining the informed decision-making capacity of both politicians and citizens. Lawyers and civil society organizations have in different ways responded to these developments, in particular through legal mobilization before courts, domestic or international, but with mixed levels of success.
This workshop will explore the conditions and constellations through which law, legal institutions, and lawyers in today’s Europe (and beyond) effectively provide a critical infrastructure for maintaining and defending an inclusive and equally open public sphere in-between market and state pressures. It does so by transplanting the notion of ‘infrastructural power’ initially coined by Michael Mann to seize States’ concrete capacity to deploy and implement policies (Mann 2008). By ‘legal infrastructures’, we mean to look at both the units of governance of legal fields (bar associations, judicial councils, law schools, legal NGOs, etc.) and the related set of legal categories and theories that have been used to ground their autonomy from / proximity to States and markets (independence, separation of powers, rule of law, human rights, constitutionalism, etc).
The workshop also aims to generate theoretical and comparative insights on this crucial question, and to provide a thicker description of the changing capacity of ‘legal infrastructures’ to contribute to the defence of the democratic potential of the ‘public sphere’ over time and from comparative perspectives. In doing so, it invites its contributors to think critically through the contemporary challenges of the rule of law and democracy between the (oft-combined) pressures of the state and the market; and it looks for a variety of disciplinary perspectives (historical, legal, political science, sociological, as well as normative theory) and an exploration of these processes.
We welcome papers that approach law not simply as doctrinal knowledge, but as a key infrastructure of democratic (ie inclusive and equally open) processes. These may be grounded in socio-legal studies, theories of democracy, law-in-context, critical legal studies, European studies, human rights studies, or others. We particularly welcome papers drawing on empirical and qualitative research methods.
Submissions
The workshop is open to both established and early-career scholars. Interested participants should provide an abstract in Word format of no more than 500 words. Together with their abstract, in the same Word document, applicants should provide the following information: name, affiliation, the title of the proposed paper, and an email address. Interested participants should also indicate whether they are able to present in person in Frankfurt on the dates of the conference.
Read the full Call for Applications here.
To submit an abstract please email antoine.vauchez[at]univ-paris1[dot]fr by 13 March 2023 with the heading ‘Legal Infrastructures of Democracies Workshop’. Work already published, or under review for publication, is not eligible for submission, since we may produce special issues or edited volumes based on the conference. Speakers will be informed of the acceptance of their proposals by 25 March 2023 and will be required to submit a draft think paper of 5 pages by 10 July 2023.
Workshop Format
A two-day workshop will be held in person in Frankfurt, 7–8 September 2023. However, the workshop may be made hybrid to accommodate presenters online at the sole discretion of the organizers. The organizers will cover economy class travel, accommodation, and meals for all invited paper presenters.
Convenors
Başak Çalı is Professor of International Law at the Hertie School and Co-Director of the School’s Centre for Fundamental Rights. She is an expert in international law and institutions, international human rights law and policy.
Mikael Rask Madsen is Professor of Law at the University of Copenhagen. His research is focused on globalization and the role of legal institutions and professionals.
Antoine Vauchez is a CNRS Research Professor in political sociology and law and a member of the Centre européen de sociologie et science politique-CESSP (Université Paris 1-Sorbonne). His work lies at the crossroads of the socio-history of transnational power centres and the sociology of legal knowledge and forms of expertise.
