Welcome to the IIR!

The Institute for the Internationalization of Law focuses on the increasing internationalization of law on both horizontal and vertical levels.

Thus, it is dedicated to European and International law (the horizontal level) and the mutual influence of constitutional orders (the vertical level).

International law research focuses on the law of international treaties, the role of international courts, the law of international organizations, and potential autocratic developments in international law.

Research in European law is centered around the relationship between European Union law and constitutional law, questions of constitutional identity, and the interpretive methods of the European Court of Justice.

The area of vertical internationalization concerns the vertical connections between various legal systems, which are examined through constitutional comparison and/or the adoption of foreign regulatory ideas. The aim is to highlight how constitutional orders communicate with each other through imitation, creativity, and comparison, and how constitutional ideas migrate across space and time.

On 15.August 2024 Prof. Dr. Monika Polzin, LL.M.(NYU) published a guest article on the topic of the Autocratization of International Law in the NZZ.

The article can be found here: https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/people-law-as-autocratic-states-the-human-rights-abolish-ld.1843593