Seminars

Information for students

Our chair usually offers a seminar in both the fall and spring semesters. Information on this can be found here on the website at the latest by the time the faculty publishes the list of seminars offered.

After booking our seminar, you will be contacted by the chair after the cancellation period to discuss how to proceed. The obligatory preliminary meetings for the seminars usually take place one to two months after the end of the cancellation period.

Please note that a reasonable contribution towards expenses may be charged for the seminars.

Seminar Announcement Fall Semester 2025 (PDF, 93 KB)

What seemed unimaginable just a short time ago is now at the center of public debate: democracies worldwide are under such great pressure that their transformation into authoritarian forms of rule, with or without a democratic façade, no longer seems impossible to many. A variety of factors – economic, social, and cultural developments, new forms of communication, and global issues such as migration, war, and climate change  – are combining to create an explosive mixture that is challenging democracies as never before since the end of World War II. In this situation, it is important to clarify the legal architecture of democracy and its philosophical and cultural foundations in order to be able to keep this vulnerable, indispensable and hard-won form of realizing political autonomy alive.

The seminar will deal with the legal foundations of democracies, starting with Swiss constitutional law and then moving on to include other democratic systems in a comparative constitutional analysis. The philosophical foundations of democracy will be discussed, as will its cultural roots. In doing so, particular attention will be paid to literary interpretations of the idea of democracy.

The seminar will be held together with Prof. Dr. Mordechai Kremnitzer, Israeli Democracy Institute and Lukas Bärfuss:

Prof. Dr. Kremnitzer is an important voice among those who work to preserve a democracy that respects human rights, not only in Israel.

Lukas Bärfuss is one of the most prominent contemporary Germanlanguage authors and the winner of the 2019 Büchner Prize.

Topics include, with several presentations possible on subtopics (in particular, the topic of democracy in literature should be covered by several presentations):

1. History of democratic forms of government
2. Philosophical foundations of democracy
3. Philosophical criticism of democracy since Plato
4. Swiss constitutional law
5. Direct democracy – theory and practice
6. Human rights and democracy
7. Comparative democracy (e.g. USA, England, France, Germany, EU, South Africa, India)
8. Democracy in Public International and European Law
9. Contemporary illiberal democracies
10. Contemporary anti-democratic ideologies
11. Protection of democracy by constitutional law
12. What are the cultural foundations of a democracy?
13. Traces of democracy in literature (e.g. Sophocles, Schiller, Keller etc.)

The seminar papers can be written in German or English. The topics will be determined in a preliminary discussion after the seminar places have been allocated, based on the students' preferences. Please direct questions to: lst.mahlmann@ius.uzh.ch.