Rule of Law Backsliding in Europe

In this talk, Sabrina Ragone, the Chair Holder of the ROLLBACK Jean Monnet Chair, will explain the essential features of the project and its connections as well to another active project, namely, the 2022 PRIN “Swinging Peripheries and Centers in Europe: Comparative Legal Dimensions of Territory” (SPACE). The discussant will be Manuela Moschella.

Talk Abstract

The ROLLBACK Jean Monnet Chair addresses the scope of the rule of law from a comparative viewpoint, analysing the challenges to such principle and the role played by EU institutions and Member States. It applies an interdisciplinary methodology covering political science, sociology, constitutional law, philosophy, and legal theory. It investigates a) the scope of the rule of law as a transnational European concept with respect to the separation of powers, elaborating a novel understanding of its implications; b) the impact on courts, media, and political equilibria; b1) the independence of the judiciary as a focus to be developed in a dedicated piece; c) the social understanding and political preferences depending on the political discourse on the rule of law. The transnational dimension of the project is twofold: 1) it delves into the interaction between supranational integration and domestic actors in the definition of core values, with reference to the rule of law; 2) it combines the top-down and the bottom-up approaches within the evolution of EU integration, to challenge mainstream constructions such as “ius commune” or constitutional pluralism.

Speaker's Short Bio

Sabrina Ragone teaches comparative law at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, where she is the head of the Stakeholder and Placement Committee, after being the head of international relations. She is a member of the Council of the Centro de Altos Estudios of the Representación en la República Argentina of the University, of the Scientific Committee of the Collegio Superiore and of the Council of the Istituto di Studi Superiori. In 2023 she was awarded the Jean Monnet Chair "ROLLBACK" and, previously, the Jean Monnet Modules "EU_SOCIAL" 2022-2025 and "CRISES" 2018-2022; she is also the PI of the 2022 PRIN “SPACE” (2023-2025). She is a Senior Research Affiliate at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Heidelberg), where she pursued her research from 2015 to 2017. She was Investigadora García Pelayo at the Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales – Madrid (2012-2015), as well as visiting professor and scholar in the USA (e.g. Boston College, Michigan, Texas A&M) and in prestigious Spanish, German, French and Latin American universities.