The burgeoning literature on the democratic deficit of international organizations, and the United Nations in particular, has, for the most part, inherited a pervasive state-centrism commonly associated with conventional approaches to international law more generally. While this approach is understandable, it appears incompatible with a holistic account of democracy, especially accounts that seek to situate the locus of power within the individual. Drawing on attempts to empower individual citizens to influence global governance decision-making in other contexts—especially the experience of the European Citizens’ Initiative—this Article considers a bold idea: The establishment of a “World Citizens’ Initiative,” through which individuals could directly influence the agenda of the primary organs of the United Nations. This Article critically analyzes the legal feasibility of such an initiative and the challenges of implementation. In doing so, it offers both a theoretical and institutional contribution to the debate about the normative case for the democratization of global governance through effective citizen participation.

Contrary to predominant European constitutional narratives assuming the alignment between the European Union legal framework and national constitutional orders, this Article points at the current misalignment between the prevailingly purposive European Union institutional order and the prevailingly open character of the Democratic and Social Constitutional State. The evolutionary trajectories leading to the current status quo are examined by distinguishing an age of openness, in which the institutional frameworks of both the European Economic Communities and the Democratic and Social Constitutional State lent themselves to a range of competing legislative renderings, from an age of purposiveness opened by the Treaty of Maastricht, in which a neoliberal policy agenda was gradually entrenched in the Treaties, with the result of undermining the adaptability and inclusiveness of European public law structures. To counter this development, this Article identifies in a drastic deconstitutionalization of the Economic and Monetary Union the key move to favor the realignment of the European Union and the Democratic and Social Constitutional State.

Faced with a changing geopolitical environment, the European Union has embarked on a legislative program to upgrade its unilateral trade instruments toolbox. By reforming existing instruments—for example, anti-dumping—and by adding new instruments to the European Commission’s toolbox (foreign subsidies instrument, international procurement instrument, anti-coercion instrument, and others), the EU legislature is significantly strengthening the position of the Commission in the governance of unilateral trade policy in the EU. This development raises accountability questions. By means of a comparative analysis of democratic accountability in unilateral trade policy in the United States and the EU, I describe this transformation of executive power in the EU and I argue that a further strengthening of democratic accountability mechanisms is needed to match the Commission’s growing responsibilities in this underexamined corner of EU trade policy.

In 2021, the German and Namibian governments published a Joint Declaration as a result of their negotiations on reparations. Ovaherero and Nama representatives strongly criticized the violation of their participation rights during the negotiations and the reproduction of colonial racism. In 2023, a lawsuit was filed with the Namibian High Court. This litigation could become a milestone in the history of legal struggles for reparations for colonial crimes worldwide. In addition to the litigation, several United Nations Special Rapporteurs were contacted and published their joint communication in April 2023, essentially confirming the lack of effective participation and the obligation to grant reparations.

This Article gives an overview of the most important historical events during German colonial rule and the most significant efforts to legally come to terms with it since 2006. It analyzes the main legal issues in this context: Have the acts committed by German colonial troops violated the laws in force at the time? Is the current application of the doctrine of intertemporal law by the governments a reproduction of racism? Might it be a new act of racism? What challenges and limits do courts face when they attempt to retrospectively reconstruct legal systems and legal norms in force 100 years ago? Does the German state have a legal obligation to enter into negotiations over reparations? What participation rights do affected communities have in processes of legal reappraisal of colonialism?

In view of the growing demands for reparations worldwide, it is timely to deal with the underlying legal issues in an exemplary manner. The legal intervention of the German-Namibian reappraisal could set a precedent. The Article aims at establishing minimum legal standards for reparations processes for colonial crimes worldwide.

If Derrida once praised English for the richness of the expression “to enforce the law,” in this article I return the favor and embrace the ambiguity of the French word endroit. While it means nothing more than place, I suggest one could draw from Benjamin’s work on dwelling to ponder on the meaning of being within the spaces of 19th century (counter) revolutionary internationalism. In this vein, I read Benjamin’s unfinished Arcades Project—and, in particular, its analysis of the rise of iron & glass architecture that accompanied the conquering bourgeois and the persistent aristocracy—to analyze the new built environments of the fin de siècle North Atlantic diplomacy. Despite the growing interest in the history of global governance, for historians and critical legal scholars alike, the spatial dimension of “the international” have been a largely unexplored affair. Conversely, I suggest Benjamin’s insistence on the materiality of architecture reminds us that international law’s castles were not built solely in the air. In this vein, I suggest one can trace a material history of the spaces in which revolutionary and counterrevolutionary internationalisms struggled to fashion a shell for themselves during Europe’s turbulent 19th century.

With the promulgation of the Autonomous Driving Act in summer 2021, Germany took the worldwide lead on regulating self-driving cars. This Article discusses the (non-)regulation of moral dilemmas in this act. To this end, it clarifies the role of the so-called trolley problem, which influenced the report of the German Ethics Commission that paved the way for this act in particular and the relationship between philosophical reasoning, empirical studies, and the law in general. By introducing the international legal community to the (non-)regulation of moral dilemmas in the German act, the Article critically reviews the German goal, which is to serve as a European and international role model. This will be preceded by a discussion as to why self-driving cars should be allowed as well as the moral dilemmas they cause which should be regulated by the law.

Happiness and well-being are now explicitly enshrined in a myriad of national constitutions. As of 2022, the terms “happiness” and “well-being” form part of the constitutional lexicon of more than 20 and 110 states respectively. These “happiness provisions” epitomize the phenomenon of the “constitutionalization of happiness,” which denotes the process of elevating happiness to the constitutional echelon, thereby bearing discernible legal and political implications. An audit of all happiness provisions reveals that they boil down to three categories—happiness as a national objective, happiness as a policy paradigm, and the pursuit of happiness as a human right. The meaning and jurisprudential landscape of happiness provisions within a specific constitutional framework is molded by, on top of the semantic and structural configuration, a dynamic interplay among three factors, which include the indigenous and socio-cultural conception of happiness of that state, interpretations put forward by judges and other constitutional actors, and transnational influences such as the migration of constitutional ideas and jurisprudence. This article draws upon an extensive array of case studies, covering among others Bhutan, Bolivia, Ecuador, Japan, Korea, and Nigeria, to illustrate the breadth and diversity that enliven the universe of happiness provisions.