An independent judiciary is one of the key institutions increasingly targeted by authoritarian political actors. The project team investigates the mechanisms underlying these attacks and develops innovative strategies to enhance institutional resilience. The aim is to strengthen the judiciary’s role in the democratic transformation of societies, thereby increasing their capacity to withstand global challenges.
The research focus extends beyond the preservation of existing liberal democratic structures toward developing a forward-looking vision of democracy in the 21st century. Drawing on document analysis, court observations, interviews, and simulations conducted in Germany, Turkey, and other countries, the project examines the judiciary’s role as a democracy-mediating actor in a comparative perspective.
A central component of the project is the establishment of a Living Research Lab, where legal scholars and social scientists collaborate with practitioners from various branches of the judiciary to develop new ideas and actionable recommendations. This experimental format is enriched by the participation of partners from countries with diverse experiences of (re-)autocratization and the implementation of countermeasures.
The research findings will be disseminated through legal organizations in participating countries as well as via social media channels to reach a broader audience.
The project team is led by Prof. Dr. Silvia von Steinsdorff (HU) and includes Prof. Dr. Ece Göztepe Celebi (Bilkent University, Ankara), human rights lawyer Ipek Bozkurt from the NGO We Will Stop Femicides Platform (Istanbul), as well as judges from the Higher Administrative Court of Berlin and the Higher Regional Court of Celle.
