About The Workshop
SW 82- Constitutional Interpretation in Times of Crisis – On the Relationship between Methods of Interpretation and Constitutional Theory
Convenors: Sabine Müller-Mall; Pierre Brunet; Sabrina Zucca-Soest
Contact: sabrina.zucca-soest@tu-dresden.de
Constitutional orders are repeatedly confronted with multiple crises: pandemics, climate change, security threats, financial instability, and democratic erosion. How do constitutions respond to this, and what role does constitutional interpretation or constitutional adjudication play in this context? Does the use of different techniques have repercussions on fundamental aspects of the respective constitutional theories?
The workshop aims to examine constitutional development in the context of crises from methodological and theoretical perspectives, without immediately resorting to the rhetoric of a state of emergency. The focus will be on methods of constitutional interpretation and techniques of judgment.
In times of multiple crisis, constitutional adjudication does not merely produce controversial outcomes; it often exhibits noticeable shifts in interpretive technique – shifts that directly affect questions of constitutional legitimacy and institutional resilience.
Standards of review are recalibrated, proportionality analysis becomes more deferential or more demanding, executive discretion expands or contracts, temporal dimensions of rights are reformulated, and structural reasoning gains prominence. While much scholarly attention has focused on the substantive outcomes of crisis adjudication, comparatively less attention has been paid to this more structural phenomenon: possible changes in interpretative methods and the question of what constitutional problems might arise as a result.
This workshop proceeds from the premise that these methodological shifts are not merely pragmatic responses to exceptional circumstances. Rather, they reflect underlying, often implicit, constitutional theories and the understanding of normativity, the role of courts and their relationship with other branches (legislative and executive), the relationship between democracy and rights, and the conditions under which public authority can claim legitimacy.
Possible Research Questions
- How do interpretive methods change in times of crisis?
- What implicit constitutional theories are revealed through these methodological adjustments?
- Do crises merely test constitutional theory, or do they transform it through doctrinal innovation?
- Does crisis adjudication reinforce constitutional resilience, or does it subtly transform the normative architecture of constitutionalism itself?
