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Working group

Juridic Governance: On Power, Adjudication, and Participation beyond the State

Add to calendar 2021-12-14 16:30 2021-12-14 17:30 Europe/Rome Juridic Governance: On Power, Adjudication, and Participation beyond the State Sala del Consiglio and ZOOM YYYY-MM-DD
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When

14 December 2021

16:30 - 17:30 CET

Where

Sala del Consiglio and ZOOM

Organised by

The Digital Public Sphere Working Group hosts a presentation by Moritz Schramm.

Abstract

A famous modernist architect once mused about the accruing skyscrapers in North America, that it is the law pervading all things […] that form follows function. Form follows function. That is the essence of my project. I argue that in post-state governance, adjudicatory bodies beyond courts – often labelled ‘quasi-judicial’ or ‘de facto judicial’ – assumed the function of courts in the context of the state: controlling power using rights-based review. Today, a private company claims to have a ‘Supreme Court’. The EU relies on administrative ‘quasi-courts’ to control its agencies and transplants ideas of administrative self-control and judicial review to powerful companies. All these bodies emulate and reference traditional forms, narratives, and institutional designs of courts and the rule of law. Yet, none of them is a court in the traditional sense as they are either entirely private or specifically designed not be a court.

My project conceptualises this as Juridic Governance. First, Juridic Governance provides an analytical and conceptual framework to shed light on the genesis, the practice, and the legitimacy of adjudication beyond courts in post-state governance. Second, the project empirically investigates three examples of Juridic Governance, flashing out the practice as well as the sociological and discursive context of Juridic Governance. Third, the project normatively draws from political and administrative theory to contrast adjudicatory ex-post control of power with participatory ex-ante influence over power.

In course of my introductory presentation, I touch upon a few of the following questions: Can we dissect judicial decision-making from the institution of courts? What is the socio-cultural and political context of this adjudicatory turn in post-state governance? What is the role of language and academics in constructing and legitimizing our understanding of such quasi-judicial bodies? Do different quasi-judicial bodies reflect diverging societal, political, and legal preconceptions depending on their discursive and personal context? And how to square quasi-judicial bodies in post-state governance with democratic theory?

Contact(s):

Anna Di Biase

Discussant(s):

Valerie Albus (EUI)

Speaker(s):

Moritz Schramm (Humboldt-University of Berlin)

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