Wednesday, 20 January 2010, 6.15pm
Campus Westend, Hörsaalzentrum HZ 3
Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Gunther Teubner, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität und London School of Economics
Verfassungen ohne Staat?
Zur Konstitutionalisierung transnationaler Regimes
Biographical sketch
Gunther Teubner is Professor of Private Law and Sociology of Law and is Principal Investigator of the Cluster of Excellence ‘The Formation of Normative Orders’ at the Goethe University Frankfurt and is Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics. He has held guest professorships in Berkeley, Stanford, Ann Arbor, Toronto, Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin, and The Hague. He has received honorary doctorates from the universities of Lucerne, Naples, Tiflis, and Macerata. The principal focus of his research is on the theoretical sociology of law, the theory of private law, and contractual law. Recent publications: Nach Jacques Derrida und Niklas Luhmann: Zur (Un-)Möglichkeit einer Gesellschaftstheorie der Gerechtigkeit (2008); Regime-Kollisionen: Zur Fragmentierung des Weltrechts (2006); Transnational Governance and Constitutionalism (2004).
Abstract
In recent years a series of political scandals has revealed the problems posed by a constitutionalism beyond the nation-state. Violations of human rights by multinational corporations; controversial decisions by the WTO which jeopardise environmental protection or public health in the name of global free trade; threats to freedom of opinion by private intermediaries in the Internet; and, recently, the overwhelming impact of the unleashing of catastrophic risks on the worldwide capital markets – all of these phenomena pose not only problems of political and legal regulation but also constitutional problems in the strict sense. Transnational constitutionalism signifies two things: the constitutional question arises beyond the boundaries of the nation-state within transnational political processes and, at the same time, beyond the institutionalised political sector within the ‘private’ sectors of the global economy.
