An attempt at academic blogging
Panu Minkkinen
Unfortunately my fast approaching retirement has made me a somewhat lazy blogger. But I pledge to do more. Today I merely wish to report on a happy professional coincident.
Continue reading “On Flávio at the Royal Academy (4 April 2025)”
This paper discusses how the the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) responds to calls for institutional transparency by issuing media artefacts that it produces itself as an independent media actor. The paper hypothesises that the CJEU’s judicial communication, i.e. the production of artefacts such as press releases, is a factual (i.e. non-legal) dimension of judicial power that can potentially strengthen the authority of the Court both within the institutional architecture of the EU and in relation to civil society more generally. The paper then proceeds to discuss the framework of transparency and openness that regulates the CJEU’s information and communication obligations and how the Court responds to those obligations. Drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted with the Court’s media officers in the spring of 2023, the paper concludes that a multi-layered and ‘incoherent’ regulatory framework provides the CJEU with a flexible toolbox with which it can legitimise a ‘managed openness’ that may be considerably more restricted than what the EU’s fundamental values and basic principles on institutional transparency require. Continue reading “Judicial media power? Transparency and communication at the CJEU (ECPR 2024)”
The deadline for the call for papers has passed, so the workshop itself is now restricted to speakers and presenters. The keynote address by Professor Markus Krajewski is, however, open to all who are interested. If you would like to attend Professor Krajewski’s keynote address but are not a workshop participant, kindly register your interest to do so by filling in this e-form by Monday, 15 January 2024.
Continue reading “The Cultural Techniques of Law (17-19 January 2024)”
This is a version of the oral presentation I prepared for a seminar in Oslo celebrating the life and work of Inger-Johanne Sand. The enlarged essay will eventually be available in a Festschrift published by Karnov.
Continue reading “Sociological constitutionalism versus constitutional ethnography (25 May 2023)”
This was my opening presentation at a meet-the-author panel discussion on Emilios Christodoulidis’s book The Redress of Law: Globalisation, Constitutionalism and Market Capture (CUP 2021), organised by Massimo Fichera.
Continue reading “Emilios Christodoulidis: The Redress of Law (2 February 2023)”
This is a transcript of how I had intended to present my lengthier paper on Helsinki’s Senate Square at the Workshop Institutional Architecture event organised on 19-20 October 2022 by VU Amsterdam’s Legal Sightseeing project. In the end, the actual oral presentation turned out to be much shorter, so this may clarify some arguments. Thanks to the organisers for having me.
Continue reading “Senate Square, Helsinki (19 October 2022)”
This was my opening presentation for the seminar in honour of Ari Hirvonen’s life and work, organised by the Finnish Association for the Philosophy of Law (SOFY), 25-26 August 2022. Continue reading “A life in critique”
Earlier this year, I was given a present that made my old clunky sports watch redundant. Luckily I didn’t throw it away. Today I started investigating ways in which I could use the old watch to record the basic data of my urban walks in the ‘Seats of Power’ project. The app can seemingly visualise only a minimal amount of data, but perhaps with some tweaking I can make it display everything I deem necessary.
My paper for the LSA 2022 conference in Lisbon is part of the larger ‘Seats of Power’ project that investigates the spatial dimensions of the political and legal institutions that are typically established in constitutions, a configuration that I have elsewhere called ‘constituted space’. The paper is aligned with the LSA 2022 general theme ‘Rage, Reckoning, & Remedy’ in the sense that it focuses on colonial constituted space. I use the notion of ‘realms of memory’, coined by French historian Pierre Nora, to show how the coloniser’s public architecture and town planning imposed on the former colonies serve as powerful symbolic transplants that perpetuate colonial rule even after decolonisation has been nominally completed with independence. By doing so, colonial realms of memory continue to support inequalities and discriminatory practices that colonialism itself introduced. The paper draws link’s between a critical reading of Nora’s notion of commemorative sites and how Latin American cultural theorists like Néstor García Canclini and Armando Silva discuss the ‘imagined’ quality of urban identities. I use Mexico City as an illustrative example. You can find a pdf version of my full paper ➜ here. I welcome all criticisms and suggestions.
Our beloved friend and colleague Ari Hirvonen passed away a year ago tomorrow. This summer includes a string of events that all celebrate his memory and honour his work.
The first takes place in Italy. Next week, the international Symposium Phaenomenologicum will celebrate its 25th anniversary meeting at the Casa del sacro cuore in Perugia, Umbria. As part of the celebrations, a special session has been dedicated to Ari, a long-time Symposium member. The commemorative session will take place on Thursday, 7 July 2022, from 5.30pm CET to 7.30pm CET. The speakers will discuss Ari’s final book The Ethics of Tragedy (Counterpress, 2020) that you can download from the publisher’s website ➜ here.
The session is chaired by Philippe van Haute, and the speakers include Sami Santanen, Lyat Friedman, Rick Lee, Marcia Cavalcante-Schuback, Cecilia Sjöholm and Simon Critchley. Here ➜ is a Zoom link for participating remotely if you can’t make it to Perugia.