Law

The state is responsible for securing an energy supply that sustains society, the economy, and public institutions, yet legal and practical limits constrain its role. Despite extensive regulation, its influence remains restricted, as responsibilities are shared among many actors and multiple objectives must be balanced.

Climate change, floods, and fires present major challenges for the state and society. Sebastian Bretthauer exposes existing shortcomings and uncertainties in the law and develops guiding principles for an independent legal framework governing disaster management organization - one that ensures effective, legally sound, and cooperative protection.

Viktoria Kraetzig develops a paradigm for the interface of doctrinal concepts in the European multi-level system. According to it, national law and EU law are linked in such a way that EU law establishes requirements for national private law in terms of its substance and, in some cases, its form, but never in terms of its doctrinal principles.

How does Europe protect standards once achieved from backsliding? Lena Sophie Kaiser traces how the Court of Justice of the European Union has developed a novel protective instrument from the EU's catalogue of values, while also highlighting the limits of its legitimacy.