The Department of Legal Studies
cordially invites all to
a distinguished public lecture
THE GERMAN CONSTITUTIONAL COURT
AS A GUARDIAN OF GERMAN CONSTITUTIONAL IDENTITY
ALEXANDER BLANKENAGEL
(HUMBOLDT UNIVERSITY, BERLIN)
Constitutional identity has been one of the most popular concepts in constitutional law for more or less the last 10 years: Especially the influential German constitutional court has used this concept quite often and constitutional scholars have straightaway fallen in love with the concept. In a first part, the lecture shall deal with the respective adjudication of the German constitutional court; by respective adjudication all those decisions are meant, which explicitly deal with “constitutional identity”. A second short part shall look at some decisions of the court, in which on second thought one would expect a reasoning with constitutional identity; the lecture shall check, whether this expectation is justified. A third part of the lecture will, leaving its subject to some degree, have a look at veiled instances of launching other ideas of identity by the German constitutional court – not constitutional identity, but collective identity. A fourth part will have a look at concepts of identity.
Alexander Blankenagel is emeritus professor at Humboldt University, Faculty of Law. Between 1997 and 2017 he served as a recurrent visiting professor at the Department of Legal Studies.
Reception to follow.
