Ongoing projects
„Wandel im und durch Recht – Digitale Transformation und Klimawende“
The project, carried out by Prof. Dr. Angela Schwerdtfeger together with Prof. Dr. Roland Broemel, Maîtrise en Droit, and Prof. Dr. Mareike Schmidt, LL.M., is funded by the Volkswagen-Foundation for 2 years in the programme "NEXT – Law between Normativity and Reality".It analyses how descriptions of reality from other disciplines are methodically processed in law. Two fundamental and complex changes in reality, the digital transformation and climate change, serve as contrasting analytical foils for the study. On the one hand, a comparative analysis of the legal handling of these processes of change is intended to reveal overarching methodological approaches that go beyond sector-specific special dogmatics to incorporate complex and divergent bodies of knowledge from other disciplines. On the other hand, the comparison is intended to sensitise for specifics, especially for the medial transformation of the application of law itself through legal tech as well as for legislative processes in view of uncertain (causal) relationships in measures to reduce greenhouse gases. In addition, the digital transformation primarily brings about a change in the law through changes in the subject areas and the media framework conditions, while climate change calls for social change through law. By analysing the methodological handling of these challenges across different areas of law, impulses for dogmatic methodology and its rational handling of structural social change will be developed. Based on a description of the change in reality, three methodological dimensions will be analysed: legal doctrine, the methodology of applying the law and legislative theory. These are supplemented by teaching concepts that address the resulting need for change in law studies.