Articles & Papers

This paper discusses how the category of declarative speech acts can be used in the context of discourse analysis. For this purpose, similarities as well as differences between the works of Searle and Foucault are being discussed in order to illustrate the possibilities and challenges of theorizing declarative speech acts as discursive practices. To elaborate on these problems, a study on the felicity conditions of marriage in Islamic as well as Christian cultures is critically reviewed. The paper ends with an analysis of the discourse of same-sex marriage as well as blessing ceremonies in German churches and the discursive conflicts revolving around those practices.

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) represents positions that contradict fundamental trade union values. Trade union representation of employees’ interests is not compatible with membership of the AfD. Trade unions can therefore declare the AfD to be an opposing organization by means of an incompatibility resolution and exclude members who are also members of the AfD – and should do so.

In this first part, I will show why an incompatibility resolution is possible with the AfD. The second part will be published in the next few days and will address whether and how AfD members can be excluded from the union following such an incompatibility decision.

The full constitutional blog post can be found here.

European demand for raw materials is growing as part of the energy transition. Many of the raw materials required for the energy transition are located on the territories of indigenous peoples, which often leads to conflicts. Against this backdrop, it is surprising that the planned agreement between the EU and the Mercosur states does not contain any provisions regarding the participation and protection of indigenous peoples. A reference to such provisions, in particular from ILO Convention 169, would be required under international law and would help to make the conflicts and contradictions of the concept of sustainability negotiable.

In this article, the proposal is made to analyse practices of contradiction with regard to their aesthetic potential. On the one hand, this is intended to demonstrate the diverse possibilities of contradiction studies and, on the other, to emphasise the role of aesthetic texts in protest discourses. Texts from the feminist abortion discourse will be used as examples.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed systemic problems in the global health system. It revealed that the global health system perpetuates global health inequalities rather than effectively reducing them: The international community, particularly the countries of the Global North, failed to make COVID-19 vaccines widely available to the populations of the world’s poorest countries. This blog debate takes stock of the reform debate about a just and decolonizing transformation of the health system. Bringing together scholars from various disciplines, the contributions of this debate ask what a fair global health system could look like and what role the law plays in it.

The Bremen Überseestadt, constructed as a new harbor between 1875 and 1913, reflects the close connections between harbor infrastructure and European colonialism. The increase in cargo handling, particularly of colonial commodities, necessitated new port facilities and the deepening of the Weser River. Despite its transformation into a modern urban area, the colonial past remains inadequately addressed to this day. The text calls for making the colonial entanglements visible as an integral part of Bremen’s trade history.

On 13.11.2024, a group of 113 members of the German Bundestag tabled a motion to initiate proceedings to ban the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. The debate to date has focused on the requirements and prospects of success of a (partial) ban of the party from a constitutional perspective (in particular here and here). The national perspective threatens to distort the view of transnational interlegalities and does not do justice to the state of European integration.

The need for reform of the global health system is openly on the table. Many stakeholders agree that the WHO has not been able to adequately address the political and social problems, global health emergencies triggered or exacerbated by epidemics and pandemics, malnutrition, and access to clean water in recent years. Against this backdrop, there is a widespread call for more equity and solidarity in the global health system.

Corona infections, childhood memories, presidential elections, avalanches: everything we experience and witness and all external events can be ordered in time – according to their succession. Time is therefore an ordering parameter, or dimension, of events. There is disagreement about what else time is on the “battlefield of eternal disputes” – as Kant once called philosophy (or more precisely: metaphysics): Is time relative or absolute? Is it continuous or discrete? Is it a substance in its own right or is it constituted by relationships between events?

In the psychology of music and basic auditory research, there is talk of “paradoxes of hearing” or “musical paradoxies” (Deutsch 1986, 275-280; Utz 2015, 22-52; Deutsch 1995). But can auditory impressions really be paradoxical? What exactly should it mean what exactly should it mean to “hear paradoxes” or even to “hear paradoxically”? We will pursue this question in the following and in doing so, we will first define the concept of paradoxia for the present context – namely in the sense of ambiguity and discrepancy ambiguity and a discrepancy. We will then develop a typology, which at the same time shows the fundamental significance that ambiguities have for music – or more precisely: for the enduring appeal of pieces of music.

Legal research is usually done at a desk, discussions are possible by telephone and even archives are usually accessible online, and most work is based on academic literature. But what insights, perspectives and research subjects are missed by legal research for which researchers do not leave their desks? And how can the gaps be filled? One possibility for empirical research into the law is the method of ethnography. The starting point for legal ethnographic research is a critique of legal research, which often examines law from the same
the same direction: as a text1, as positive law, as “applicable law from the perspective of the state “2, as uniform law, as formal law. Legal ethnographic research entails a departure from this legal positivist uniformity of law, legal dogmatics as the supreme discipline and interpretation as the highest goal – and thus also as a methodological limit. It opens the door to other perspectives, topics and problems. It is suitable for theoretically and empirically based critiques of legal orders and shows perspectives for an emancipatory change in the law.