Public International Law: A Multi-Perspective Approach

Although international law – like no other area of law – is characterized by a global, universal claim, its mediation is limited in financial, personnel, geographical and epistemological terms. Against this background, Dr. Raffaela Kunz, Dr. Sué González Hauck and our research associate Max Milas decided to publish an open and multi-perspective textbook of international law, in which 41 authors from all over the world were involved.

"Public International Law: A Multi-Perspective Approach" is the first English-language textbook on international law, which can be downloaded, used and processed free of charge under an open access license. In addition to this financial opening, the textbook also addresses the epistemological, geographical and personnel barriers to the mediation of international law: never before have so many critical international law scholars participated in a textbook. Never before have people of all inhabited continents been involved in an international law textbook as authors. Never before have more women and non-binary people contributed to an international law textbook.

The textbook is distributed by Routledge, can be downloaded free of charge on the publishing page and used as part of the open CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

70 years of status monument to the Federal Constitutional Court

The Federal Constitutional Court is now regarded as the constitutional institution par excellence. What may be surprising today: His superior position was not placed in the cradle of the judgment. The mothers and fathers of the Basic Law had left it to the Bundestag to regulate important details. The Adenauer government, however, was suspicious of the new institution. The Federal Constitutional Court therefore had to fight for its authority. It did so primarily through groundbreaking judgments, but also by doing so on the 27th. June 1952 with the so-called. Status monument confidently demanded the due recognition as a constitutional body. The originator of the memorandum was the judge and Professor Gerhard Leibholz (1901–1982), who thus became the pioneer of constitutional jurisdiction after his return from emigration.

More about the status thinking font and its exciting context of origin can be found in  a contribution of our Academic Council Dr. Konstantin Chatziathanasiou published in the "Law". The article was part of one of Kathrin Strauss (Münster) and Jun.-Prof. Dr. Fabian Michl (Leipzig) organized conference at the University of Münster on "A legal system is created ". On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the status memorabilia, the Nomos-Verlag makes the contribution until 30. July 2022 freely available.

Experiment on coup and distribution published in the Journal of Legal Studies

Constitutionalization, democratization, welfare state: Weighty voices in the social sciences explain these historical phenomena as concessions with which elites responded to social unrest. This threat of revolution hypothesis is of high plausibility, but cannot be proven empirically. In view of this difficulty, a team of researchers with Münster participation has broken new ground.

Together with JProf. Dr. Svenja Hippel (University of Bonn) and Prof. Dr. Michael Kurschilgen (UniDistance Suisse) is Dr. Konstantin Chatziathanasiou, Academic Councillor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Münster, experimentally investigated the motivating effect of a looming overthrow. In a laboratory study, participants were provided with different privileges, so there were low- and high-status players. In the subsequent, non-simulated economic games, the “elites” benefited more. The researchers now varied whether the other players had the opportunity to “coup” and whether the “elites” could avert the “coup” by transfer payments. However, most “elites” acted more short-sightedly than expected and lost their position. Thus, the historical threat of revolution hypothesis is not refuted, but the behavior acceptance behind it can no longer be maintained in a blanket manner.

The study, titled "Does  the  Threat  of  Overthrow  Discipline  the  Elites? Evidence  from  a  LaboratoryExperiment" has now appeared in the University of Chicago Law School's prestigious Journal of Legal Studies. A preprint version is freely accessible here.