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Comment les connaissances scientifiques parviennent-elles au Parlement? Les chercheuses et chercheurs travaillant en Suisse n’ont pas de réponse claire à cette question. Une nouvelle publication de la Jeune Académie Suisse donne des conseils pratiques, des aperçus et des informations de fond sur la procédure législative. Ce document a pour but d’aider les (jeunes) scientifiques à transmettre efficacement leurs connaissances lors des délibérations parlementaires.

Wie kommen wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse ins Parlament? Forschende in der Schweiz haben darauf oft keine klare Antwort. Eine neue Publikation der Jungen Akademie Schweiz liefert praktische Tipps, Einblicke und Hintergrundinformationen zum Gesetzgebungsverfahren. Diese Orientierungshilfe soll es (jungen) Wissenschafter:innen ermöglichen, ihr Wissen erfolgreich in die parlamentarische Beratung einbringen zu können.

European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2021 6(1), 239-268, I. Introduction. - II. The European Parliament: a lobbying target sui generis? - II.1. Specificities of lobbying in the EU. - II.2. Specificities of lobbying in the European Parliament. - III. The place of EP lobbying in EU primary law and EU parliamentary law. - III.1. The TEU and the TFEU. - III.2. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. - III.3. The EP's Rules of procedure. - III.4. The Joint Transparency Register. - III.5. The Agreement on a Mandatory Transparency Register. - IV. Evaluating lobby regulation in the EP from the perspective of EU primary law. - IV.1. Transparency as the main driver of lobby regulation. - IV.2. A troubling neglect of equality. - IV.3. Transparency as a proof of integrity? - V. Conclusion., Citizens' perception that lawmaking is dominated by special interests undermines their trust in democratic institutions and lawmaking processes. This also applies to the EU, where lobby regulation remains weak despite past lobbying scandals. While the European Commission and the European Parliament established a Joint Transparency Register in 2011, registration remains voluntary for lobbyists. Given that domestic lobbies have increasingly been oriented towards the European supranational realm, adopting effective lobby regulation at EU level has become more essential than ever to protect the democratic legitimacy of EU lawmaking. This especially applies to the European Parliament, which has important decision-making powers in the context of the ordinary legislative procedure, and which represents the citizens of the EU, thereby constituting a key lobbying target. My goal, in this Article, is to show why and how lobbying should be further regulated in the European Parliament. I first examine the specificities of lobbying in the EU and in its Parliament, before looking at the EU's constitutional framework, as well as EU parliamentary law, the Joint Transparency Register established in 2011, and the provisional version of the Agreement on a Mandatory Transparency Register published in December 2020. I then evaluate the European Parliament's current regulation of lobbying from the perspective of EU primary law. I argue that its narrow focus on transparency is misguided and neglects other fundamental democratic values, such as equality. Moreover, the existing framework does not sufficiently focus on MEPs' duties of integrity.

Im Frühjahr 2021 verabschiedete die Universität Bern sog. «Leitlinien zu Informationen und Meinungsäusserungen». Deren Ausführungen zum Umgang von Universitätsangehörigen mit Social Media sorgten für mediale Aufmerksamkeit und wurden insbesondere unter dem Blickwinkel der Wissenschaftsfreiheit teilweise heftig kritisiert. Der vorliegende Aufsatz betrachtet die Berner Leitlinien aus verfassungsrechtlicher Sicht und untersucht die in diesem Zusammenhang geäusserte Kritik. In einem ersten Schritt wird der Inhalt der Leitlinien in den Blick genommen, bevor auf den breiteren Kontext der allgemeinen (Rechts-)Unsicherheit eingegangen wird, die derzeit bezüglich der Social-Media-Tätigkeit von Forschenden herrscht. Unter Bezugnahme auf das US-amerikanische Konzept des extramural speech wird schliesslich auf die Schwierigkeit hingewiesen, die Wissenschafts- und die Meinungsäusserungsfreiheit klar voneinander abzugrenzen. Sowohl die besagten Leitlinien als auch die schweizerische Verfassungslehre tendieren dazu, die Überschneidungen dieser beiden Grundrechte zu vernachlässigen: Wer die Meinungsäusserung von Forschenden reguliert, riskiert, gleichzeitig deren Wissenschaftsfreiheit einzuschränken.

En Suisse, le souverain – le peuple et les cantons – est directement impliqué dans l’élaboration de la Constitution et des lois. Mais qui fait véritablement la loi ?, Cite as: Ammann, Odile (2022) : Qui dirige la Suisse ? Une perspective de droit constitutionnel, in : Alternatives : imaginer et remodeler les mondes de demain (Bulletin de l'Académie suisse des sciences humaines et sociales 28,2), pp. 15-17. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7072300

As populism is on the rise (and, so it seems, here to stay), judges are especially vulnerable to public criticism and political pressure. Their constitutional mandate is harder than ever to fulfill, as they must carry out their interpretative task regardless of these potentially overwhelming external influences. In other words, judges must keep exercising their legal authority in a thoughtful way. What does thoughtfulness require from judges? In this short note, I start from Hannah Arendt’s and Stuart Hampshire’s accounts of thoughtfulness (I.), accounts which can be found in excerpts of their respective works Responsibility and Judgment (for Arendt) and Innocence and Experience (for Hampshire), and which remain highly relevant in our populist time. I analyze what these two pieces – which I consider to be convergent and complementary – entail for judicial decision-making. Based on these authors’ insights, I claim that judges, in order to be thoughtful, must adopt an approach to judicial interpretation that fosters case-by-case assessment, independence, impartiality, and an ongoing questioning of the legitimacy of existing legal norms (II.). They must also overcome the obstacles to thoughtfulness created by the legal system (III.).

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