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9/119/11 jährt sich zum 20. Mal. Welche Spuren hat dieses Ereignis in der globalen und nationalen Verfassungs- und Menschenrechtsarchitektur hinterlassen? Dieser Frage wollen wir in einer Folge von Online-Symposien nachgehen. Gefördert von der Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung bringen wir Rechtswissenschaftler_innen aus verschiedenen Regionen und Rechtskulturen darüber ins Gespräch, was aus den Erfahrungen der vergangenen zwei Jahrzehnte in Hinblick auf Völkerrecht und internationale Menschenrechte, Asyl und Migration, Überwachung im öffentlichen und privaten Raum, Presse- und Informationsfreiheit, Menschenwürde sowie Rechtsstaatlichkeit und Justiz zu lernen ist.
Corrupting Democracy?
This blog symposium introduces a new collaborative format between Verfassungsblog and the journal Verfassung und Recht in Übersee (VRÜ) / World Comparative Law (WCL). In this first symposium, we interrogate the role of law in the fight against corruption and its Impact on (democratic) politics.
Rimdolmsom Jonathan Kabre
The Interplay Between International and National Institutions in Fighting Corruption
The topic of corruption plays a particular role in the international investment regime, as is evidenced by the large number of corruption-based investment cases and the abundant literature on this topic. This blog post discusses the role of arbitral tribunals and local institutions (notably courts and bar associations) in addressing the challenges of corruption by focusing on the so called Piero Foresti, Laura de Carli & Others v. The Republic of South Africa case (hereinafter, the Foresti case). I argue that the reaction of the arbitral tribunal to the allegation of corruption is unsatisfactory and that international and national institutions should operate in complementarity given the transnational nature of the phenomenon of corruption. Continue reading >>
Till Zimmermann
Fighting Corruption with Criminal Law
Criminal law serves as the primary tool of choice in Germany's combat against corruption. Yet, apart from the truism that merely tightening the penal framework to combat corruption is useless anyway, there remain deficits. This blog post argues that some of those deficits are to be found not on the level of law in action, but in the law in the books. Continue reading >>
Maria Paula Bertran, Maria Virgínia Nabuco do Amaral Mesquita Nasser
Whistleblowing to a Latin Tune
When the anti-corruption systems whistleblowed to a Latin tune recently, the resulting sound was remarkably ugly. It was loud, as the Odebrecht, Petrobras, and J&F cases revealed a wide-spread, refined system of corruption involving prominent politicians and businesspeople in 12 countries from Latin America and Africa named as "Operation Car Wash". But the sound was also dissonant, as it played tunes that did not represent the patterns of justice expected from the Latin legal systems. That sound had a peculiar U.S. American accent. Continue reading >>
Michael Kubiciel
Beyond Impunity
When people talk about the connection between internal and external security, which was occasionally the case during the election campaign for the German Bundestag, they usually mean international terrorism, transnational drug trafficking and organized crime. Yet, various events in the recent months reminded us that rampant corruption in foreign states can also have consequences for our external security. Continue reading >>
Su Bian
Legalising Anti-Corruption Efforts in China
In 2018, the Chinese central government professed its determination to combat 'corruption' at a new level by promulgating the Supervision Law (SL). Supervisory commissions (SCs) from the national level down to the county level were systematically set up and became the sole supervisory organ, which has largely modified the constitutional division of powers. I argue that the SC shares much in common with the hybrid type of ombudsman but lacks adequate external constraint mechanisms. Continue reading >>
Steven Pierce
The Changing Culture and Perception of Corruption
In Nigeria, coups d'etat have often been a cause for celebration. Ironically, even as a series of juntas promised to reform corrupt practices Nigeria's perceived problems grew worse, leading to ever-more stringent rhetoric against corruption and, as Ugochukwu Ezeh suggests in his contribution to this symposium, a near consensus that corruption represents a fundamental threat to Nigerians' personal security and that of the nation itself. While it is challenging to measure the prevalence or magnitude of corruption objectively, the perception of corruption is that it gets worse and worse, despite the struggle against it. Continue reading >>
Anne van Aaken
Behavioral Approaches to International Corruption Fighting
Corruption is a huge challenge and needs all available means to fight it – the call of the United Nations for using behavioral sciences to understand and fight corruption needs to be heeded urgently. Continue reading >>
Gwendolyn Domning
Restoring Public Trust
Slipping in and out of the academic spotlight, the topic of corruption has persistently raised the interest of scholars, international organizations, and societies all over the world since the 1990s. I focus on the Republic of Korea's (ROK) establishment of a new anti-corruption agency, the Corruption Investigation Office for High-Ranking Officials (CIO), and argue that the CIO provides new anti-corruption 'services' on the one hand and strengthens state accountability mechanisms on the other. Continue reading >>
Ugochukwu Ezeh
Of Vampires and Enemies
Anti-corruption legalism is often a symptom of a broader phenomenon: the securitisation of corruption. Taken together, securitisation and anti-corruption legalism are counterproductive approaches: they undermine the evolution of democratic values, political accountability mechanisms, and independent constitutional institutions that form the bedrock of meaningful and sustainable anti-corruption strategies. Continue reading >>
Enforcement is the central challenge in anti-corruption law. Ironically, in many societies the problem is that there are too many enforcement agencies rather than too few, mainly because those agencies' actions are poorly coordinated. In the early years of the twentieth century, Brazil's anti-corruption agencies developed an intriguing response to this conundrum. They embraced what I and my co-authors call institutional modularity. Continue reading >>
Fabia Fernandes Carvalho, Florian Hoffmann
This blog symposium introduces a new collaborative format between Verfassungsblog and the journal Verfassung und Recht in Übersee (VRÜ) / World Comparative Law (WCL). Today, we inaugurate these joint symposia with the theme of the recently published VRÜ/WCL Special Issue on "Corrupting Democracy? Interrogating the Role of Law in the Fight against Corruption and its Impact on (Democratic) Politics". It thematises corruption and its conceptual pendant anti-corruption as prototypical hard cases for both the rule of law and for democratic politics. Continue reading >>
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