The European Legal Studies Department organized a conference that brought together world-leading academics and practitioners, to reflect critically yet constructively on the current state of constitutional democracy in the European Union, and its future. In this assessment, comparisons have been drawn with the United States on the one hand, and the EU Member States on the other hand, in order to understand both the commonalities and the differences in the challenges faced, which include populism, a lack of trust in political and legal institutions, de-parliamentarization and a degradation of the rule of law. While topical, current developments were at the heart of the discussions, the conference also sought to tie current issues into the more perennial, theoretical debates about the balance between democracy and constitutionalism, and their place beyond the confines of the nation state. This subject matter necessitates a broad, interdisciplinary approach to a certain extent, but had a mainly legal focus, in that a central underlying question running throughout the conference was what the role of law is and should be, in the future of the European Union.
Please find here the programme.
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