Why There Is No Governing With Judges

Christoph Möllers is Professor of Public Law and Jurisprudence at the Faculty of Law, Humboldt-University Berlin. He was a Fellow at NYU School of Law and at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. Since January 2011 he has acted as a judge at the Superior Administrative Court in Berlin.

This discussion takes place within the colloquium series "Rethinking Law in a Global Context" that this summer semester focuses on "Law‘s Conception of Politics and Political Conceptions of Law".

The distinction between law and politics is central to modernity. Law and politics refer to each other and are structurally connected. But how exactly are they interconnected? Is law the result of political decision? Is politics, even the exercise of constituant power, legally constrained? To what extent is politics constituted by law? Which conception of the political is connected to the liberal- democratic constitutional state?

For details, please see http://www.wzb.eu/berlin-colloquium