CONSTITUTION AND MATERIAL CONDITIONS OF DEMOCRACY

This represents a specific focus within the broader concentration area. While the overarching area examines the various levels of relationship between fundamental rights and democracy, this research line directs attention to a specific perspective: how fundamental rights and certain foundational institutional arrangements function as prerequisites for democracy. It explores how these elements expand democratic processes in their diverse manifestations or enhance deliberative practices.
The line focuses on the materiality of democracy and fundamental rights within the constitutional framework, emphasizing the necessary interconnections between these concepts. Fundamental rights cannot be fully realized outside a democratic state, and a true democracy cannot exist without promoting the conditions for their materialization. This research line deepens investigations into the interplay between these two pillars—fundamental rights and democracy—by asking: How do fundamental rights serve as prerequisites for democracy?
For example, it examines how public service delivery (as a guarantor of social and individual rights), conceptions of dignity and family (in the private sphere), institutional relationships, taxation, and revenue collection function as democratic prerequisites and improve deliberative processes. It also addresses the constitutionalization of rights and the unique legal regime of fundamental rights, recognizing that not all forms of constitutionalizing infraconstitutional law inherently democratize institutions.

This line does not merely analyze fundamental rights in isolation but through a democratic lens, acknowledging that enhancing deliberation and democracy must transcend traditional public-private law distinctions, as democracy expands into non-state spheres.

JURISDICTION AND DEMOCRACY

The relationship between fundamental rights and democracy (the broader concentration area) reveals tensions, particularly in procedural dimensions. While Research Line 1 positions fundamental rights as prerequisites for democracy, Line 2 frames them as limits to democracy—especially when they act as "trumps" against majority rule.

Even the most formal constitutional procedures cannot be understood or applied without a theory of fundamental rights, which demands substantive, contested choices beyond electoral and parliamentary processes. These choices must permeate all dimensions of social life in a democratic state. This line critiques institutional models of civic participation and examines procedural and processual nuances in balancing rights and democracy.

Research under this line focuses on:
- The concrete implementation of fundamental rights and how they impose limits to be overcome or softened to strengthen democracy.
- Jurisdiction in a broad sense: constitutional review, adjudication mechanisms for rights protection, conventionality control (international courts), and non-judicial state mechanisms (e.g., international cooperation for non-state conflict resolution).

Democracy relies on legally safeguarded procedures that balance substantive values (like self-governance) with processual fairness. This is critical as traditional frameworks for legitimizing political and administrative structures erode, demanding new participatory and communicative tools grounded in public reason. Such tools shape judicial, parliamentary, and civil society processes.

This research line vertically explores jurisdiction, proceduralist, and the procedural dimensions of fundamental rights in relation to democracy, aligning with the broader concentration area through faculty research projects, scientific output, and course offerings.