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Information for students
Our chair usually offers a seminar in both the fall and spring semesters. Information on this can be found here on the website at the latest by the time the faculty publishes the list of seminars offered.
After booking our seminar, you will be contacted by the chair after the cancellation period to discuss how to proceed. The obligatory preliminary meetings for the seminars usually take place one to two months after the end of the cancellation period.
Please note that a reasonable contribution towards expenses may be charged for the seminars.
Seminar Announcement Fall Semester 2025 (PDF, 93 KB)
What seemed unimaginable just a short time ago is now at the center of public debate: democracies worldwide are under such great pressure that their transformation into authoritarian forms of rule, with or without a democratic façade, no longer seems impossible to many. A variety of factors – economic, social, and cultural developments, new forms of communication, and global issues such as migration, war, and climate change – are combining to create an explosive mixture that is challenging democracies as never before since the end of World War II. In this situation, it is important to clarify the legal architecture of democracy and its philosophical and cultural foundations in order to be able to keep this vulnerable, indispensable and hard-won form of realizing political autonomy alive.
The seminar will deal with the legal foundations of democracies, starting with Swiss constitutional law and then moving on to include other democratic systems in a comparative constitutional analysis. The philosophical foundations of democracy will be discussed, as will its cultural roots. In doing so, particular attention will be paid to literary interpretations of the idea of democracy.
The seminar will be held together with Prof. Dr. Mordechai Kremnitzer, Israeli Democracy Institute and Lukas Bärfuss:
Prof. Dr. Kremnitzer is an important voice among those who work to preserve a democracy that respects human rights, not only in Israel.
Lukas Bärfuss is one of the most prominent contemporary Germanlanguage authors and the winner of the 2019 Büchner Prize.
Topics include, with several presentations possible on subtopics (in particular, the topic of democracy in literature should be covered by several presentations):
1. History of democratic forms of government
2. Philosophical foundations of democracy
3. Philosophical criticism of democracy since Plato
4. Swiss constitutional law
5. Direct democracy – theory and practice
6. Human rights and democracy
7. Comparative democracy (e.g. USA, England, France, Germany, EU, South Africa, India)
8. Democracy in Public International and European Law
9. Contemporary illiberal democracies
10. Contemporary anti-democratic ideologies
11. Protection of democracy by constitutional law
12. What are the cultural foundations of a democracy?
13. Traces of democracy in literature (e.g. Sophocles, Schiller, Keller etc.)
The seminar papers can be written in German or English. The topics will be determined in a preliminary discussion after the seminar places have been allocated, based on the students' preferences. Please direct questions to: lst.mahlmann@ius.uzh.ch.
Seminar Information Spring Semester 2025 (PDF, 150 KB)
Until a few years ago, democracy was regarded as an undisputed model for the organization of political communities. The future seemed to hold out the promise that authoritarian states could also find their way to democratic structures. Since then, the situation has changed fundamentally. Democratic constitutional states are under pressure – from outside by authoritarian regimes and from within by political forces that seek authoritarian structures, albeit with a continuing democratic façade, often discussed under the heading “populism”. A crisis of democracy is widely recognized and discussed. It has become a core topic in discussions of constitutional and legal issues.
In this context, the seminar will examine the constitutional foundations of democracy from a comparative constitutional perspective. The constitutions of Switzerland and India will be the focus of the seminar, providing different and instructive case studies for how democracy can be realized, what problems need to be overcome, and how a democracy can be preserved even in times of crises and profound global challenges. The comparison should highlight similarities and differences in the regulations and their reasons and determine what could be learned from the comparative findings in terms of constitutional doctrine and constitutional theory. Not least, it will be a matter of ascertaining the normative foundations of democracies and asking how the idea of realizing dignity and autonomy of people in democratic orders can be kept alive in the future as well.
The seminar will address these questions from a constitutional, historical, and legal-philosophical perspective. The constitutional order of India is a particularly fascinating subject of study. It is of great international importance. It regulates the lives of 1.3 billion people. It is the outstanding example of a post-decolonial constitution of a country in the Global South that has created and continues to uphold a democratic order bound by fundamental rights. In addition, a free trade agreement was concluded in 2024 between the EFTA states, including Switzerland, and India, which promises closer relations between these states.
The seminar will be taught by the outstanding constitutional lawyer Prof. Dr. Arun Thiruvengadam, National Law School, Bangalore, India's leading law school, with which the Faculty of Law also has a partnership including student exchange programs.
The seminar papers can be written in German or English. The topics will be determined in a preliminary discussion after the seminar places have been allocated, based on the students' preferences.
Please direct questions to: lst.mahlmann@ius.uzh.ch
Topics:
Within these thematic blocks, different areas of focus can be selected depending on the student's interests.
