Esohap

In the constitutional democracy, all of the three elements of democracy: input and output legitimacy and the political process through which they are connected, have to take place within the framework of the rule of law. Simultaneously, there can be no rule of law if the laws by which the individuals are ruled do not come into being in a democratic manner. Democracy and the rule of law thus presuppose each other, but at the same time their relationship is not entirely symbiotic. There is a dormant democratic threat that the democratic majority will trump the rights of the outvoted minorities. This is what the rule of law is there for to prevent. This counter-majoritarian problem, as it came to be known, is however only a seeming one. If democracy is not understood as a simple rule by the majority, but rather as a system of the organization of political power whose central value is the protection of equal human dignity, then the constitutional self-limitation of the democratic majority is not democracy’s denial, but its vindication.

Against this theoretical background, the Conference will focus on a very practical challenge. It will proceed from the fact that the constitutional democracy has been in an incremental, but definite decline across the European Union, but in particular and most acutely, in the Central European States. On this basis, the Conference will ask a single question:

How to redeem the status of constitutional democracy properly so-called in the praxis of Central European countries?

Friday and Saturday, 9-10 December 2016
The Graduate School of Government and European Studies and the
European Faculty of Law, Classroom 3, Cankarjevo nabrežje 11, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Poor public resource management and the global financial crisis curbing fundamental fiscal space, millions thrown into poverty, and authoritarian regimes running successful criminal campaigns with the help of financial assistance are all phenomena that raise fundamental questions around finance and human rights. They also highlight the urgent need for more systematic and robust legal and economic thinking about sovereign finance and human rights.

This edited collection aims to contribute to filling this gap by introducing novel legal theories and analyses of the links between sovereign debt and human rights from a variety of perspectives. These chapters include studies of financial complicity, UN sanctions, ethics, transitional justice, criminal law, insolvency proceedings, millennium development goals, global financial architecture, corporations, extraterritoriality, state of necessity, sovereign wealth and hedge funds, project financing, state responsibility, international financial institutions, the right to development, UN initiatives, litigation, as well as case studies from Africa, Asia and Latin America. These chapters are then theorised by the editors in an introductory chapter.
In July 2012 the UN Human Rights Council finally issued its own guidelines on foreign debt and human rights, yet much remains to be done to promote better understanding of the legal and economic implications of the interface between finance and human rights. This book will contribute to that understanding as well as help practitioners in their everyday work. The authors include world-renowned lawyers and economists, experienced practitioners and officials from international organisations. – See more at: http://www.bloomsburyprofessional.com/uk/making-sovereign-financing-and-human-rights-work-9781849464383/#sthash.5kBNbOL3.dpuf