Organised Irresponsibility and Communities of Risk in a Pandemic

Organised by

• Department of Law

The global COVID-19 pandemic has created challenges for responsibility frameworks and practices in law. Building on Ulrich Beck’s account of the risk society, we can understand the basic qualities of COVID-19 related risks, when juxtaposed with the standard legal framework for responsibility, as resulting in organised irresponsibility in law (OI). This presents a metamorphosis of the current responsibility framework.

Conceptually speaking, this metamorphosis should be based on the commonality of risk experience – on ‘shared risk communities’. Possible normative (‘common but differentiated responsibility’ principle) and institutional (alternative compensation programmes) consequences are discussed in terms of their potential to contribute to the metamorphosis.