“The Future of Public Law: Resilience, Sustainability and Artificial Intelligence”, Madrid, Spain (July 8-10), IE Law School

Jan Komárek convened one panel on “The infrastructure of the Digital Public Sphere of European Law”

Description: While European law professors have been blogging and tweeting for a while, only recently has this mode of expression by legal academics attracted scholarly reflection. In two related pieces Elisabeth Paar and Alexander Somek conceptualized this communication as being part of the “public sphere of European constitutional law”. They take the term from Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, as “there is the basic commitment to yield to others subject to negotiated or renegotiated conditions and to sustain a common practice despite striking differences of opinion”. This applies not only to scholars participating in various debates on the Verfassungsblog, but also to legal institutions, particularly courts. They all share a “common world”.

In a reply to their article, Jan Komárek argued that if “public sphere” is to be used to conceptualize European constitutional law, one should rather take cues from Jürgen Habermas and particularly those who criticized him. First, to share a “common world” can basically mean that only like-minded people can express themselves – as Somek and Paar in fact admit: “The contributors engage in the advocacy of constitutionalism (and do not publish diatribes ‘against constitutionalism’)”. But there is a larger point about the public sphere in the digital world: as much as Habermas was talking about the “transformation” of the originally bourgeois public sphere into a place of endless entertainment for the consumer society, we should be talking about the transformation of the public sphere in the digital age, with platforms being used to generate profit in the first place, and only then possibly allow for an exchange of opinions.

To comment on our debate we invited Daniel Sarmiento – the founder of EU law live, and Alexandra Kemmerer, who was actively involved in the establishment of pioneering digital media such as Verfassungsblog and German Law Journal and continues to shape the field as an institutional actor, advisor, critical observer and academic entrepreneur.

He and Elisabeth Paar also put together interest group entitled “Staying home and going international: the challenges of living in two provinces of public law”

Description: Many ICON-S members have a similar experience: after obtaining a law degree in their home country, they went abroad. After pursuing postgraduate studies or a post-doc there, they have to decide: should I stay or should I go (back home)? Only few have the luxury of coming from jurisdictions where a successful (and fulfilling) international scholarly career can be combined with staying home. Except for the UK, the Netherlands and possibly some Nordic countries (if we talk about Europe), where it is possible to “do things” that fully count at the international level and climb the career ladder at the university at the same time, scholars mostly have to choose whether to devote their energy to country-specific requirements such as a habilitation, thereby opting for a medium with an inherently limited outreach, or to rather focus on publishing articles in leading journals, be active on blogs and Twitter, without any certainty of finding an academic home – at home or somewhere else.

The interest group will discuss these issues and provide a forum for sharing experience and creating networks that may help to overcome these pitfalls, which concern not only one’s professional, but also private life. The convenors either face or faced the above challenges and now find themselves at various stages of their career. Any ICON-S member is invited to join. However, we are particularly encouraging those who come from jurisdictions where it is difficult to “stay home and go abroad” at the same time.

Plans for the interest group
We would like to discuss at the conference the best ways of supporting each other in the struggle between the two worlds.