The Topic

For a decade now, the European Court of Justice has been integrating its long-standing functional constitutionalism with a new principled layer. Solidarity is the key to this principled constitutionalism.
The lecture will first introduce the new constitutionalism. Second, it will embed it in a European republican tradition that aims at a European democratic society. Third, it will show that this new constitutionalism suggests a new understanding of social and political cleavages, not least those of redistribution: whereas these have hitherto been seen as cleavages between Member States, they are now to be reconceived as cleavages within a society. This has a number of consequences for the interpretation of EU fiscal and social law.

About the Speaker

Prof. Armin von Bogdandy has been director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg since 2002 and Professor for Public Law at Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main. He obtained a PhD in Freiburg and received his Venia Legendi at FU Berlin. Prof. von Bogdandy is recipient of the Leibniz Prize (2014) and was awarded a Professor Honoris Causa and five Doctor Honoris Causa.
In his research, Prof. von Bogdandy addresses the general features of public law, with a focus on its structural changes, be they theoretical, doctrinal, or practical. He is currently working on a book that traces a renaissance of republicanism in the current constitutional development. Together with a group of colleagues, Prof. von Bogdandy is preparing a new edition of the volume on Union constitutional law on this basis.