Date:02Sep 2016
Democracy, human rights, and the rule of law are said to be core values of the European public order, stretching from the west coast of Ireland to the east coast of Russia, from the Arctic Circle to the southern border of Turkey. However, in recent years these values have been placed under severe pressure in both states within Europe and the European institutions. In its reactions to security and financial crises, war, migration, and domestic political upheaval, the effective commitment of ‘Europe’ to its own self-declared fundamental values has wavered to the extent that there is now, arguably, a constitutionalist crisis in Europe. In this seminar, I trace some of these developments and argue that they reflect a deep-seated popular and institutional resistance to the idea that state power is and should be limited by transitional norms and institutions; that there is truly an international rule of law.
Fiona de Londras joined Birmingham Law School as the inaugural Chair in Global Legal Studies in the summer of 2015, following time as professor of law at Durham Law School and a lecturer at University College Dublin. Fiona’s research and teaching are in the fields of human rights and comparative constitutional law with a particular focus on counter-terrorism. She is a visiting professor at UCD School of Law, adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales (Sydney), and Global Affiliate of the Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative at Emory University.
Professor de Londras is the joint editor-in-chief of the Irish Yearbook of International Law and co-editor of Legal Studies, the journal of the Society of Legal Scholars of the UK and Ireland. She is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Society of Legal Scholars, and a member of the advisory boards of the Centre for Comparative and European Constitutional Studies at the University of Copenhagen, the UCC Department and Faculty of Law, and the Centre for Global Public Law at Koc University, Turkey. In 2009, Fiona founded Human Rights in Ireland, a collaborative academic blog with a focus on human rights issues in Ireland and on Irish scholarship about human rights theory, practice, law and politics. Professor de Londras regularly appears in print, online, radio, TV and documentary media discussing human rights and comparative constitutional law as well as current affairs more generally.
