How to Restore a Democracy: Lessons from the EU and the US
Very unexpectedly, Professor Helen Hartnell, Ph.D. passed away in September 2023, at the age of 68. Like hardly anyone else in German socio-legal studies, she crossed the borders between different academic cultures and disciplines. From 1997 to 2013, she was a Professor of Law at Golden Gate University in San Francisco and subsequently remained a professor emerita. Throughout the years, Helen Hartnell maintained close contact with the socio-legal community in Berlin, showing great dedication to supporting young scholars. Her family has generously bequeathed her outstanding collection of more than 1,000 academic books, among them many fundamental works of socio-legal research and theory, to the WZB. This new book collection is intended to become a place for scholars, especially early career researchers, who wish to pursue a socio-legal project at the WZB.
The inauguration of the book collection will feature a tribute by Anne Griffths, Emeritus Professor at the University of Edinburgh, and a (live) remote talk by Kim Lane Scheppele from Princeton University on how to restore a democracy in times of rising authoritarianism.
Kim Lane Scheppele has studied the rise and fall of democracy in Eastern Europe and now in the US for more than 30 years. She met Helen Hartnell in the 1990s in Budapest when both taught at Central European University and witnessed the meteoric rise of democracy in the region. Once democracy faltered in Hungary and Poland after 2010, Kim used the European Law Helen taught her to attempt to restore democracy in rogue EU Member States. Now Kim is fighting for democracy in the US, generalizing what she learned from Europe to the US context. Helen was a sounding board and inspiration for Kim's work in the EU and the US until she left this earth.
Everyone is warmly invited.
Program
-
Welcome by Michael Wrase, Head of the Research Group Law and Governance in the Context of Social Inequalities, and Silvia Höhne, librarian of WZB Research Information Department
-
Tribute to Professor Helen Hartnell, PhD. by Prof. Dr. Anne Griffiths, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology of Law at the School of Law, University of Edinburgh
-
Lecture by Kim Lane Scheppele, Princeton University: "How to Restore a Democracy: Lessons from the EU and the US"
-
Reception
Please register until November 4th at the following email address: lgi.events [at] wzb.eu