Research focus 2024-
CECS conducts research and teaches within Constitutional Law, Comparative Constitutional Law, EU Constitutional Law, EU Law, International Law, International Criminal Law, Legal Cultural Studies, and Political Science, and not least the cross-fields between these disciplines.
CECS – Centre for European, Comparative, and Constitutional Legal Studies was first established in 2008, and has been prolonged for the third time from mid-June 2019. The name of the research center signals its present general focus, and refers to a substantive area, European law in a wide sense, as well as to approaches or methodologies, especially comparative legal studies. EU law and constitutional law are central research areas, while areas such as legal cultural studies and international (criminal) law play an important role. While Europe is taken to be the Centre’s primary point of departure, the research conducted by CECS members has a broader global outlook. CECS continuously strives to address important challenges and changes in society from legal perspectives and to reconsider present paradigms. The focus is on mapping, understanding and critically reflecting on these.
As we enter the next decade, democracy continues to be challenged due to nationalism, populism, demography as well as financial, migration, and climate crises, and increased economic inequality threatening the old forms of welfare of citizens. Moreover, the intensification of digitalization increasingly challenges societies, communities, cities, and individuals with surveillance by both the state and market. This development affects the form and protection of norms and values, attitudes and orders. As we are moving into the Anthropocene era, legal studies are surpassing the national, regional, anthropocentric as well as text-based paradigms. These changes require a research program, which is flexible, resilient, interdisciplinary and adaptive. A program, which simultaneously manages to focus on both long term and short term perspectives, while shifting between them according to changing needs and resources.
CECS is committed to high quality research and seeks to push the state of the art of research. This is particularly the case in relation to conceptual, theoretical and methodological fields and developments. In this regard, special attention is paid to generating significant new insights with regard to the subject matter that is under study, and the production of research results that can then be generalized beyond the immediate subject that is being studied.
CECS is also attempting to develop an approach to research, which creates a desire to research better, not necessarily more. We attempt to make it attractive, exciting and meaningful to do research, as well as to change a research lifestyle, which often creates problems for both researchers, their environment and even the climate. We strive to develop research with a long-lasting impact, while at the same time making it possible to adapt ongoing research to different contexts and continuous challenges. We hope to be able to present visionary and ambitious research, which can create new standards, and be exemplary through improving its own sustainability. Our aim is to create hope and action beyond the research community reaching out to the public. We strive to cooperate with other researchers and relevant partners locally and globally.
CECS' Key Research Themes
In the coming period, CECS will focus on the following common main research themes:
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Contemporary Challenges to Democracy
Political turmoil in terms of populism, weakening of courts, surveillance, financial crimes, and lack of transnational solidarity challenge democracy. -
Constitutions, Colonialism, and Cultures
Under this tranche of their work, researchers at CECS look at conceptualisations of the past to reimagine the future. -
The Green Transition and Constitutionalism
This research theme focuses on how public and constitutional law both creates and addresses the triple planetary crisis (climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss). -
Security Challenges and New Legal Order(s)
In the wake of the rising global challenges, the limitations of international law and international institutions to address multiple crises and restore the world order have been laid bare. -
New and Emerging Technologies
Research on new and emerging technologies is more often than not an exercise of hyperbole. On one hand, we are told that technology will completely overturn our world, and on the other, that there is nothing new under the sun.
Research projects
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Climate Change and the Protection of Indigenous Peoples
This project examines how the international legal (human rights) obligations of a colonizer state transcend into its overseas territories in the context of climate change and its impact on Indigenous Peoples. -
Error and Accountability in Digitised Public Decision Making (ERRATUM)
Public authorities increasingly invest in automated decision making to streamline their resources. -
Nordic Network on Climate Related Displacement and Mobility
The Nordic Network on Climate Related Displacement and Mobility brings together scholars, practitioners and stakeholders, to contribute to policy and regulatory questions associated with climate change related displacement as it impacts this region.