Research

Online platforms are the ‘new governors’ of our digital public sphere. This notion is central to the EU’s sweeping Digital Services Act (DSA) which, after coming into full force and effect on 17 February 2024, aims to foster a safer, more predictable, and trustworthy online environ­ment for all EU Member States. Articles 34 and 35 of this professed ‘constitution of the Internet’ require large privately-owned digital intermediaries (eg Meta (formerly Facebook), X (formerly Twitter)) to identify and mitigate their ‘systemic risks’ to online discourse and electoral processes. Yet despite its civic-minded objectives, the DSA is silent on what ‘systemic risks’ are and how they should be regulated.

This doctoral project responds to these definitional and operational uncertainties by investi­gat­ing the increasing normative conflicts between speech regulation, privatised power, and corporate responsibility. It aims to do so through a statutory and doctrinal analysis of the DSA and its foundational values. Rejecting the notion that this risk mitigation framework is only meant as a conversation-starter, the project will explore ways in which the DSA can lead to meaningful accountability in the digital sphere. Expected knowledge outcomes include providing guidance for legally compliant and democratically-compatible platform content moderation, and laying the foundation for the regulation of structural changes to a platform and its provider.

While this project resonates with each component of the Public Law Department’s tripartite research agenda, its overall focus reflects the second axis dedicated to exploring the regulatory implications of public security law’s three major trends of internationalisation, digitalisation, and fragmentation.

The business model of some of today’s largest, most valuable, and socially influential companies such as Google (Alphabet), Facebook (Meta), and Twitter can be described as capturing human attention and selling it to advertis­ers. Using powerful AI and sophisticated behavioral science and psychology, their services are optimized to max­im­ize the attention spent by users. Despite great positive potentials of these services, this systematic and highly effective capture of human attention has problematic effects, including – at the individual level – loss of personal autonomy, mental health impacts, and challenges to the development of one’s personality, and – at the societal level – polarization and reinforcement of hate speech, conspiracy theories, and fake news. This interdisciplinary project aims to explore the legal implications of the digital attention economy, focusing on German constitutional law as well as European and international public law.

Two main questions will be addressed in this context. The first is whether and to what extent the state is author­ized to intervene in the digital attention economy. This raises more fundamental issues such as the problem of the legitimacy of paternalism, the relationship between public and private spheres, and to what extent the state is obliged to maintain ethical neutrality. The second question is whether the purposeful, systematic, and highly ef­fec­tive capture of users’ attention concerns fundamental rights of the German Basic Law and of international funda­men­tal rights instruments and, if so, whether this leads to third party effects or a state duty to protect. Essential issues to be addressed here include the autonomy concepts underlying the respective fundamental rights, the rele­vance of empirical findings about the human condition in legal interpretation, and the notion of manipulation, in­cluding its legal implications and relationship to related phenomena like persuasion.

While certain problems caused by social media have been discussed at length (eg data protection, hate speech and threats to freedom of expression and information), the aspect of human attention – particularly manipulation of attention and its effects – has been largely overlooked. Drawing from legal as well as philosophical, psychologi­cal, and behavioral science literature, this project lies at the intersections of the Department’s tripartite research agenda, ultimately aiming to initiate and refine the discussion of this increasingly relevant issue in the German-language public law debate.

TBD

Railways, water and sewage systems, and power grids—many built in the 19th century—still carry daily life. What does this legacy imply for the way we use, govern, and protect them today? What makes infrastructures truly serve democracy—beyond merely existing within it? In this project, Sebastian Schwab investigates how democratic change has reshaped regulatory regimes, and how these regimes have shaped the way we look at ourselves.

What we live by

When trains run, taps flow, and lights stay on, we barely notice the systems behind them—until they fail or are threatened. Yet such an attitude of ignorance is no longer affordable. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the crucial role infrastructures play in sustaining democratic resilience has become increasingly clear. On a conceptual level, though, it is hardly self-evident how resilience and democracy are intertwined. Since many of the 19th-century structures remain in use, we are surrounded by strongholds of political and social networks that have long since passed. Yet even if these structures have not changed, their governance most certainly has.

Making democratic core issues explicit

In this postdoctoral project, Schwab aims to reconstruct infrastructures as essential components of a functioning participatory and social democracy. By tracing how altered constitutional frameworks have influenced regulatory debates and regimes, he asks:

• Who owns critical infrastructures in a democracy—and who should?
• How can infrastructures be protected while remaining accessible to the public?
• When, if ever, do democratic commitments justify excluding certain actors or services?
• Whose needs do infrastructures serve?
• Who is heard in planning processes—and who is left unheard, intentionally or not?

Infrastructures as tangible interpretation

Informed by urban geography and grounded in historico-legal as well as doctrinal analysis, Schwab aims to broaden our understanding of democracy by discussing its core issues of participation and exclusion in the context of a concrete example. He also foregrounds the importance of constitutional law in questions too long treated solely as matters of economics. Situated between the ‘Fundamentals’ and the ‘Challenges: Democracy’ strands of the Department’s tripartite research matrix, the study’s expected knowledge outcomes notably exemplify the self-reflexivity of embodied hermeneutics. This is to say, what we mean by a concept not only shapes its expressions but, at the same time, how we live inevitably shapes the way we think.

TBD

This comparative law project examines the impact of the Internet and digital communications on networked accountability mechanisms in contemporary democracies (ie Germany, USA, UK, and Canada). Concentrating on modern-day intelligence gathering trends, my principal re­search question is whether mass ‘full-take’ information surveillance (and its legal authori­sa­tion) is consistent with established principles of self-governance, principally theories of sepa­ra­tion of powers, judicial review, and democratic accountability. The scholarship addressing these issues is scarce and exposes a necessity for more integrative methods and synthetic thinking. Given that public accountability theory itself has been slow to progress, new ideas and innovative scholarship are urgently required to prevent fast-paced technological devel­op­ments from overcoming our global freedom of expression laws, conceptual models, and cen­turies-old accountability networks and constitutional structures. Aimed at the intersections of digitization, domestic intelligence gathering laws, and the efficacy of our public accountability networks, this project addresses a combination of contextual, legal, and normative questions reflecting the Department’s research agenda. To position scholarly debate within an appro­pri­ately sophisticated framework, this project incorporates a methodological blend of function­al­ism, interdisciplinarity, democratic theorising, statutory interpretation, and doctrinal analysis. Preliminary results indicate that due to radical changes in our digital media landscape, both the institutional press and the judiciary remain critically undertheorised as accountability mechanisms. By failing to account for technical ex ante strategies that function as judicial prior restraints without the need for ‘open-court’ proceedings, increasing risks of privatised government censorship and regulatory capture present novel lower-salience structural threats to our democracies. Substantive outcomes will include a revised, more rigorous understanding of accountability dynamics in contemporary intelligence gathering, an improved ‘systems-based’ model for evaluating democratic accountability dysfunctions, and important public policy and law reform recommendations applicable to both common law and civil law jurisdictions.

How do social and spatial contexts shape trust in law enforcement and community conflict resolution among Palestinian Arab citizens in Israel? Shadi Akariya examines differences between ethnically mixed (Jewish-Arab) and homogeneous Arab localities to understand police legitimacy, willingness to assist the police, and the role of community mediation.

Within-minority differences

Most research on public attitudes toward the police compares majority and minority groups and treats minorities as socially uniform. While minority status is consistently linked to more negative views of law enforcement, less attention has been paid to variation within minority populations and to the social and spatial mechanisms that drive these differences. Drawing on environmental criminology and scholarship on police legitimacy, this project examines how place-based dynamics shape police legitimacy, cooperation with law enforcement to prevent crime, and community-based conflict resolution in divided societies.

From numbers to narratives

The research proceeds in two stages. Stage one, published in a peer-reviewed outlet, quantitatively compared the Jewish majority with Palestinian Arab citizens in mixed and homogeneous localities, finding that Arab citizens living in mixed localities reported lower police legitimacy and lower willingness to cooperate with the police. Stage two uses qualitative, in-depth interviews with key informants and community representatives from mixed and homogeneous localities to explain these gaps; preliminary analysis highlights the roles of social cohesion, informal social control, relative deprivation, and policing patterns. The project also investigates community mediation and alternative dispute resolution within Arab society, using a mixed qualitative-quantitative approach to assess how these mechanisms influence the effectiveness of mediation and dialogue centers in preventing escalation to serious violence, and individuals’ willingness to engage in mediation processes involving law enforcement.

Insights for police legitimacy, community mediation, and mixed-city governance

The study contributes to research on police legitimacy, minority-police relations, community mediation, and violence prevention in divided societies. It also generates practical guidance for socially calibrated approaches to violence prevention and police-community relations in mixed cities and marginalized minority communities.

TBD

Over the past thirty years, cooperation with foreign police forces not directly bound by national police law has become more frequent and diverse in EU member states. In addition to more traditional forms of co-operation, such as the exchange of information in the context of mutual legal assistance requests, there are now temporary deployments of police officers to other countries for operational measures and permanent bilateral joint task forces between individual member states. This operational shift reveals important regulatory deficits, prompting a legal dilemma regarding application of respective constitutional and police legal frameworks in the countries where foreign police officers are deployed.

In response, by undertaking a French-German comparison, this project aims to identify and investigate emergent problems arising from contemporary forms of transnational security cooperation, and to suggest a more coherent legal framework for resolving them. Employing an innovative blend of comparative law, empirical, and doctrinal methods, the project proceeds by first surveying current transnational security cooperation in France and Germany using field studies of the 2024 European football championship in Germany, and the 2024 Olympic Games in France. It then seeks answers to constitutional and doctrinal questions arising from such transnational security cooperation, specifically, what established constitutional principles can be identified in view of mounting transnational security cooperation, and how the involvement of and liability for foreign police forces is currently organised—and might be optimally restructured—in Germany and France.

While aiming to enhance contemporary doctrinal frameworks and solutions, the project’s main focus on the growing internationalisation of security cooperation efforts, and the emergence of further regulatory gaps and tensions, resonates chiefly with the second axis of the Department’s tripartite research agenda.

This project addresses the growing convergence between modern police work and security intelligence directives. Besides softening the ‘iron limits’ of concrete danger and initial suspicion as vital law enforcement intervention thresholds, state responses to terrorism and international organised crime have expanded police powers and their technical surveillance capabilities to record and evaluate complex threat scenarios. At the same time, Germany’s intelligence services have exploited this changing security landscape to react more strongly to individual efforts aimed at endangering the state, and to enhance their vital role as an effective ‘early warning system’ within the nation’s overall security framework. As a result, both law enforcement authorities increasingly converge and overlap in the field of intelligence activity, leading to growing confusion about their constitutionally separated functions, powers, and competencies.

In response, this doctoral project examines the nature and implications of the constitutionally provided order of competence and (above all) Germany’s so-called ‘separation principle’, which since enactment of the Grundgesetz in 1949, has aimed to rigidly partition the nation’s police forces and secret services. This enquiry therefore seeks answers to the following inter-related questions: What limits to changes in law enforcement functions and aptitudes can be found in the constitution? How are these boundaries to be determined and where can a dividing line be drawn in the reconnaissance activities of the police and security intelligence services? Are these boundaries respected in current legal doctrine and where and how do they become blurred? And lastly, are scholarly theses describing an ‘intelligence serviceization of the police’ and a ‘policeization of the intelligence services’ ultimately correct?

Besides engaging in a rigorous doctrinal study of German constitutional and public security law, answers will be facilitated by employing comparative law methods to improve our understanding of the roles and inter-relationships between criminal, preventive-police, and intelligence law. While touching on issues of digitalisation and contributing to a more doctrinally coherent understanding of German law enforcement realities, the project’s principal aim is to assess how the threat of convergence of modern police work and intelligence activities affects pu­blic se­cu­ri­ty law’s ability to pro­tect the fun­da­men­tal rights of in­di­vi­du­als and the func­tio­ning of our le­gal in­sti­tu­ti­ons and de­mo­cra­tic pro­ces­ses.

May a state legitimately outsource its security responsibilities to private contractors, and what would make doing so wrongful? In this project, Simon Palmer develops a republican account of legitimate state privatisation, arguing that while many public responsibilities may be permissibly outsourced, privatising security betrays the law’s subjects by fragmenting its authority to coerce in their name.

Outsourcing public security and the question of legitimacy

Palmer evaluates the legitimacy of the growing trend in contemporary legal practice of outsourcing public security responsibilities to private contractors. Since neither state privatisation (in general) nor security privatisation (in particular) show any sign of abating, what is urgently needed is an account of their legitimacy rather than their efficacy (although the former may bear on the latter). 

A republican account of legitimate privatisation

With his research, Palmer seeks to answer the following two research questions: first, whether privatising public responsibilities is wrongful as such; and second, whether privatising security responsibilities is wrongful in a distinctive or singular way—that is, wrongful for reasons that do not extend to the privatisation of non-security responsibilities. In a series of scholarly articles, he aims to develop a novel account of the fundamental conditions of legitimate state privatisation, drawing broadly on a republican theory of law’s nature and normativity. In contrast to recent scholarship, Palmer explores whether a republican approach can explain both why the privatisation of non-security responsibilities may in principle be permissible, and why, nonetheless, the privatisation of security responsibilities may be wrongful—indeed betray—the law’s subjects. The preliminary working hypothesis is that security privatisation fragments and undercuts the basis of law’s authority to exclusively coerce in the name of its subjects. 

Coercion, normativity, and contemporary practice

Situated at the intersection of the “Fundamentals” and “Trends: Fragmentation” axes of the Public Law Department’s research agenda, this theoretical and interdisciplinary project straddles contemporary analytic political and legal philosophy, drawing also on social-scientific research into state privatisation practices—particularly jurisdictions that have so far declined to extend privatisation to security functions. Expected knowledge outcomes include expanding our knowledge of the following matters: (1) the connection between coercion and law’s nature and normativity; (2) the legitimacy of state privatisation in general; and (3) how a republican theory of legitimate state privatisation applies to contemporary affairs, such as the United Kingdom’s reliance on private contractors to operate its prisons and immigration removal centres.

 

Although the details remain controversial, it is generally accepted in German constitutional law that the state (under Art 1(3) GG) is bound by fundamental rights in the administration of public services. Scholarly treatment of this issue has focused principally on the equal protection clause—much to the exclusion of civil liberties. For instance, it has been argued that it is better to receive state funding with restrictions than not to receive it at all, thereby rejecting rights limitations due to such restrictions. This perspective has many blind spots. Among others, it cannot integrate restrictions on benefits that affect everyone into the doctrine of fundamental rights, and it deprives rights holders of the protection afforded by special limitation clauses (eg Art 5(2) GG). Moreover, while recent discussions about the legal admissibility of ‘anti-Semitism clauses’ in state funding have brought this issue into sharper focus, recent Federal Administrative Court cases have effectively raised more questions than answers.

In response, this doctoral project investigates the circumstances under which public benefits limitations can be classified as ‘rights infringements’—an important but unresolved question of German fundamental rights doctrine made all the more difficult by its increasingly sensitive social context. Engaging in a doctrinal analysis of German fundamental rights law, and drawing inspiration from legal theory, this project aligns closely with the Department’s first research axis, aiming to further refine our understanding of fundamental rights and doctrinal structures. Its working hypothesis is that participatory rights (Teilhaberechte) always arise whenever the state grants benefits, which have to be understood as substantive rights that are protected by fundamental rights. Limitations of public benefits consequently infringe on participatory rights and, by extension, civil liberties as well. In a bid for greater coherence, this hypothesis will be tested against general fundamental rights doctrine and relevant fields of reference, such as the law of state grants, the law of public objects, and social security law.

Article 15 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) authorizes Mem­ber States to suspend human rights in time of war or other public emer­gen­cies. This derogation provision has been used several times, its invo­ca­tion and use differing widely over time. Since 2015, for example, derogations have been invoked in response to terrorism, military aggression, an attempted coup d’état, a global pandemic, an energy shortage, and a natural dis­aster. There are two interesting features shared by some of these crises: First, many can be reasonably described as long-term or permanent. As shown by the example of terrorism, this feature has existed since the ECHR came into force. A future crisis exhibiting this feature might be climate change. Second, as illustrated by migration and global pandemics, modern crises are increasingly interconnected, a globalization-driven phenomenon involving multiple states and a developmental path that is often difficult to foresee. Due to their often long-term character and increasing interconnections, modern-day crises risk ever longer suspensions of human rights protections.

In response, this doctoral project examines whether Article 15 ECHR is consistent with and can be adapted to long-lasting and interconnected crises. To this end, it not only examines how long-term crises have traditionally been dealt with in domestic contexts, but engages in a comprehensive review of how the jurisprudence of the Eu­ro­pean Court of Human Rights and pertinent scholarly literature have framed and understood these issues. By em­ploying the hermeneutics standards for the interpretation of the ECHR, the project seeks to develop a doctrine for Article 15 ECHR and to broaden our understanding of the complex intersections of human rights jurisprudence and public security law. Resonating primarily with the first and third axes of the Department’s research matrix con­cern­ing doctrinal foundations and challenges to democracy and human rights, the project will not only consider the suit­ability of Article 15 ECHR for long-term and interconnected crises, but will also examine the feasibility of com­pet­ing doctrinal interpretations, and the utility of adopting various control mechanisms to regulate future Conven­tion derogations.

Entering East Jerusalem classrooms, new Palestinian teachers navigate a contested educational and political landscape. Against this background, Safaa Debs traces how induction shapes identity, belonging, agency, and decisions to remain in the profession.

Early careers in a contested space

The first years of teaching shape professional identity, a sense belonging and agency, as well as career decisions. For Palestinian teachers in East Jerusalem, these formative processes unfold inside the Israeli education system amid political tension, uneven educational infrastructure, and complex national and professional identifications. Schools in conflict-affected settings are not only pedagogical environments; they are everyday institutions where state authority, social trust, security concerns, and rights are negotiated. Bringing together research on teacher induction, minority teachers, and teaching in conflict-affected contexts, the project situates early-career integration within organizational routines as well as broader dynamics of power, inequality, language politics, recognition, and contested belonging.

Following novice teachers across cases

Safaa Debs asks how new Palestinian teachers navigate entry into the profession in East Jerusalem, which challenges they face, what meanings they attach to their work, and which professional strategies they develop. She adopts an in-depth qualitative multiple-case design with approximately fifteen teachers in their first to fifth years of teaching. Data is collected through semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and analysis of pedagogical texts and artifacts, such as lesson plans and student assignments. Thematic analysis, informed by grounded theory principles and guided by postcolonial and intersectional perspectives, will be used to identify patterns across cases and clarify how induction is shaped by both professional processes and institutional constraints.

Guidance for preparation and mentoring

By providing an empirically grounded account of minority teacher induction in a conflict-affected setting, the study advances theory on early-career socialization, identity, and retention under conditions of contested belonging. Findings are expected to inform more context-sensitive models of teacher preparation, mentoring, and professional support that acknowledge organizational realities and wider power relations. Beyond the education field, the insights speak to debates on democracy, human rights, public institutions, and minority inclusion in fragile contexts. Policymakers, school leaders, and teacher educators can use the results to strengthen supportive environments for novice teachers and, ultimately, foster more equitable conditions for students.

TBD

Can Israeli citizens talk politics at work, and what does democracy require? In this project, Moran Svorai maps the boundaries of political expression in Israel’s public and private workplaces and proposes a practical legal framework – grounded in constitutional analysis and normative theory – to calibrate protections while balancing the rights of employees, employers, and the public.

Fragmented law and risks to democratic integrity

Political expression is central to democratic life. Yet despite the importance of this right worldwide, no coherent doctrinal or comparative legal framework for protecting it in workplaces exists in Israel. Domestic legal regulations remain fragmented and inconsistent, while international and comparative frameworks provide only limited guidance. Given the centrality of the workplace’s role in daily life, this gap has significant implications for individual self-realization and democratic integrity. 
A coherent legal framework for multicultural and multilingual settings
Svorai addresses these deficiencies by developing a coherent normative and practical framework to strengthen protection for political expression in the workplace, with particular emphasis on multicultural and multilingual settings. She argues that employees’ expressive rights should be secured through legal regulation rather than left to market forces – an approach essential to safeguarding human rights and preserving democracy. While this may impose certain burdens on employers – requiring, at minimum, the tolerance of unwelcome or contentious views – these obligations are comparable to existing legal duties. In the absence of a clear doctrinal framework, Israeli law risks fostering ambiguity, chilling effects, and undemocratic practices – or, conversely, permitting unrestrained expression that harms the rights and interests of others.

Balancing expression and workplace obligation

Operating at the intersection of the rights and interests of employees, employers, third parties, and the broader public, the study employs three primary methodological tools: (1) a constitutional analysis that adapts constitutional models to the workplace; (2) an integrative, interdisciplinary framework grounded in legal and philosophical theory, drawing on Habermas’s conceptions of communicative action and autonomy; and (3) a new balancing test that adapts the traditional “near certainty” threshold for government restrictions on civil liberties to workplace-specific contexts. In addition to assessing applicability in times of war and broader political and social crises, the proposed law reform model will be calibrated to different workplaces, professions, roles, and forms of expression.

How did October 7 reshape hope, trust, and political behavior across Israeli communities? This mixed-methods study maps pathways from trauma, perceived abandonment, and displacement to civic engagement—and informs trust-building and community recovery.

Living with mass trauma in a protracted conflict

War, terror, and community-wide massacres can upend how people see their social and political world. After October 7, many survivors confront shattered assumptions about institutional trustworthiness, the possibility of peace, and goodwill toward others. Yet communities do not move in a single direction. Some lean toward disengagement or radicalization, while others sustain engagement and hope. Focusing on communities victimized during the October 7 massacre, Shay Yoos explores how perceived betrayal and the fragmentation of political worldviews shape civic engagement and political attitudes. A central concern is how different levels of exposure to extreme violence influence hope for reconciliation and community recovery, trust in government and army, and downstream patterns of political behavior.

Mixed methods to track change in communities

The project employs a mixed-methods design to data collection. Semi-structured interviews with 51 participants, conducted in summer 2024, elicited personal narratives of trauma and sources of hope. Initial findings suggest that collective trauma arises not only from the violence of October 7 itself but also from a profound sense of abandonment by governmental and military institutions, exacerbated by prolonged displacement and uncertainty. Complementing this, an online and phone survey (N = 495), conducted in spring 2025 across kibbutzim, moshavim, and development towns with varying levels of exposure to violence, assessed levels of hope and trust, political attitudes and behaviors, social cohesion, PTSD symptoms, and post-traumatic growth. Integrating these strands will clarify how exposure, perceived betrayal, and local context shape political reorientation over time.

Contributions for recovery, trust, and civic life

The collective findings will shed much needed light on how communities coping with mass trauma in ongoing conflicts renegotiate trust, political attitudes, and the social contract with the state. Specifically, the study will deliver an empirical map of trajectories of hope, trust, and civic engagement across exposure levels; an explanatory model linking perceived abandonment, displacement, and shattered worldviews to political attitudes and behaviors in prolonged conflict; and evidence-based guidance for rebuilding institutional trust and supporting community recovery, including trauma-informed civic engagement and reconciliation-supportive initiatives.