Not Against Constitutionalism: A German Perspective on Judging and the Defence of Democracy

Prof (Retd Justice) Susanne Baer will be speaking on the topic 'Not Against Constitutionalism. A German Perspective on Judging and the Defence of Democracy'. The discussion will pertain to "militant democracy", or, as the German Federal Constitutional Court calls it, "streitbare Demokratie", a courageously deliberative version of the concept, and the role of constitutional or supreme courts with their power of judicial review.

Professor Susanne Baer is the Professor of Public Law and Gender Studies at Humboldt University Berlin and a Lea Bates Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan Law School. She is also a Visiting Professor at LSE. From 2011 until 2023, she served as Justice of the Federal Constitutional Court in Germany. She also received honorary doctorates from the University of Michigan (2014), the University of Hasselt (2017) and the University of Lucerne (2018). In the UK, she is a Corresponding Fellow at the British Academy of Arts and Scienes, where she gave the Maccabean Lecture in 2019. She has taught at CEU Budapest, in Austria, Switzerland and, most recently, at University of Toronto, with former Canadian Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella.

Currently at Humboldt, Susanne teaches the mandatory lecture course on law and sociology, an advanced course on interdisciplinary analyses of law-making, and a colloquium on classics of feminist jurisprudence. She also regularly teaches a course on comparative constitutionalism, focusing on inequalities and judging under pressure.

Susanne studied law and political science in Berlin and Michigan. She was active in movements against discrimination, including pornography, sexual harassment and domestic violence. At Humboldt University, she directed the GenderCompetenceCentre to advise the German government on gender mainstreaming 2003-2010. She has also served as Vice-President for International and Student Affairs, as Director of Gender Studies and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Law. There, she initated the Law and Society Institute Berlin and the Humboldt Law Clinic of Fundamental and Human Rights. Currently, beyond serving on editorial boards, she is the director of the board of the Stiftung Forum Recht, a federal foundation of the German Bundestag to explain, defend, and reflect on rule of law.