People, Rule of Law, and Supreme Courts Now
No one is above the law: this commitment is a valuable tool for harmony among citizens, justice among equals, and social well-being overall.
In this roundtable, four constitutional court judges will reflect on the present and future of the complex relationship between people and the rule of law, which has a direct effect on every person.
This international initiative is organized by the Italian Academy and is co-sponsored by the European Public Law Organization (EPLO, which has a mission at the United Nations in New York)—two institutions that have long been interested in the Rule of Law. EPLO launched a program on this topic at the United Nations in 2019, and the Italian Academy produced an edited volume of thirty-two essays on this subject in 2021.
Organizer:
Barbara Faedda
Executive Director, Italian Academy; Ambassador/Permanent Observer, EPLO Permanent Mission to the United Nations
Co-Sponsor:
European Public Law Organization (EPLO)
Welcoming Remarks:
Barbara Faedda, Executive Director, Italian Academy; Ambassador/Permanent Observer, EPLO Permanent Mission to the United Nations
Spyridon Flogaitis, Director, EPLO; Professor of Public Law, University of Athens.
Roundtable Speakers:
Giuliano Amato, former President of the Italian Constitutional Court
Susanne Baer, Judge of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
Stephen G. Breyer, retired Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Ana Maria Guerra Martins, Judge of the European Court of Human Rights; former Judge of the Constitutional Court of Portugal
Moderator:
Jessica Bulman-Pozen, Betts Professor of Law; Faculty Co-Director, Center for Constitutional Governance, Columbia Law School
Photography and videography will not be permitted at this event.
Credit for Justice Breyer’s photograph: The Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Giuliano Amato, born in 1938, studied law at the University of Pisa, where he graduated in 1960. Master’s degree in Comparative Law at the School of Law of Columbia University (N.Y.) in 1962. Full Professor of Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Rome, School of Political Science, from 1975 to 1997, he is Professor Emeritus of the European University Institute in Florence and of the University La Sapienza in Rome. Member of the Italian Parliament for 18 years, he was Under Secretary to the Prime Minister’s Office, Minister for the Treasury, Minister for Constitutional Reforms, Minister of Interior, Deputy Prime Minister and twice Prime Minister (in 1992/1993 and 2000/2001). He also headed the Italian Antitrust Authority from 1994 to 1997 and was Vice-President of the Convention on the Future of Europe (2002/2003) and Chairman of the International Commission on the Balkans, sponsored in 2005 by the Bosch Stiftung, the German Marshall Fund, the King Baudouin Foundation and the C.S. Foundation. He also chaired the Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana (2009/2013), the S. Anna Superior School in Pisa and the Center for American Studies in Rome. Justice of the Italian Constitutional Court since September 2013, he was elected President of it in January 2022. He is now President Emeritus.
Elected Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002, he has written books and articles on the economy and public institutions, European antitrust, personal liberties, comparative government, European Integration and Humanities.
Susanne Baer is the Professor of Public Law and Gender Studies at Humboldt University Berlin and a Lea Bates Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan Law School. From 2011 until 2023, she served as Justice of the Federal Constitutional Court in Germany. She received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Michigan (2014), Hasselt (2017) and Lucerne (2018), and is a Corresponding Fellow at the British Academy of Arts and Sciences, where she gave the Maccabean Lecture in 2019, and has taught at CEU Budapest, in Austria, Switzerland and Canada.
Prof. Baer studied law and political science and was active in movements against discrimination, including pornography, sexual harassment and domestic violence, and directed the GenderCompetenceCentre to advise the German government on gender mainstreaming 2003-2010. At Humboldt University, she served as Vice-President for International and Student Affairs, as Director of Gender Studies and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Law. She initiated the Law and Society Institute Berlin and the Humboldt Law Clinic of Fundamental and Human Rights, an chairs the advisory board to the federal Foundation Forum Recht.
Publications (à https://www.rewi.hu-berlin.de/de/lf/ls/bae/profdrbaer) in English include: Comparative Constitutionalism, Thomson/West 2022 (Dorsen, Rosenfeld, Sajó, Mancini); The Rule of—and not by any—Law. On Constitutionalism, Current Legal Problems 71 (2018) 335; The Difference a Justice May Make: Remarks at the Symposium for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Columbia J of Gender & Law 25 (2013), Equality, in: Rosenfeld/ Sajo, The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law, OUP 2012, 982; Dignity, Liberty, Equality: A Fundamental Rights Triangle of Constitutionalism, Toronto LJ 4 (2009) 417. Lectures online include Adjudicating Inequalities: Bernstein Lecture 2013-2014; and "The Future of the University Community", A Dialogue with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Susanne Baer, University of Michigan 2017.
Stephen G. Breyer (Retired), Associate Justice, was born in San Francisco, California, August 15, 1938. He married Joanna Hare in 1967, and has three children - Chloe, Nell, and Michael. He received an A.B. from Stanford University, a B.A. from Magdalen College, Oxford, and an LL.B. from Harvard Law School. He served as a law clerk to Justice Arthur Goldberg of the Supreme Court of the United States during the 1964 Term, as a Special Assistant to the Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Antitrust, 1965–1967, as an Assistant Special Prosecutor of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, 1973, as Special Counsel of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, 1974–1975, and as Chief Counsel of the committee, 1979–1980.He was an Assistant Professor, Professor of Law, and Lecturer at Harvard Law School, 1967–1994, a Professor at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, 1977–1980, and a Visiting Professor at the College of Law, Sydney, Australia and at the University of Rome. From 1980–1990, he served as a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and as its Chief Judge, 1990–1994. He also served as a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States, 1990–1994, and of the United States Sentencing Commission, 1985–1989. President Clinton nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat August 3, 1994. Justice Breyer retired from the Supreme Court on June 30, 2022.
Ana Maria Guerra Martins, Judge of the European Court of Human Rights since 1 April 2020 and Full Professor at the Law School of Lisbon University, she previously served as Judge at the Constitutional Court of Portugal (2007-2016). She has been a member of the European Public Law Group since 2001. She was also a member of the European Commission's European Network of Legal Experts in Gender Equality and Non-Discrimination (2016-2020). Between 1997 and 1999, she was a guest researcher at the Max-Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law of Heidelberg, Germany.
She has participated as a speaker in several conferences and has published several books and articles in the fields of European Union Law, European and International Human Rights Law and Constitutional Law.
Jessica Bulman-Pozen is the Betts Professor of Law and a director of the Center for Constitutional Governance at Columbia Law School. She is an expert on state and federal constitutional law, federalism, and administrative law. In 2015, the graduating class of Columbia Law School honored her with the Willis L.M. Reese Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Before joining the Columbia faculty, Bulman-Pozen served as an attorney-adviser in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel and as a law clerk to Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Merrick B. Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Spyridon Flogaitis, Docteur en Droit, Docteur en Histoire, Diplômé de l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes-IVème Section, Doctor Honoris Causa in several Universities, Director, European Public Law Organization (EPLO), Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Athens, Honorary Fellow, Wolfson College, Cambridge, Academic Bencher, Inner Temple, London, Attorney at Law at the High Court and the Council of State, Greece, Member, International Civil Service Commission, United Nations, Former Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs (August-September 2015), Former Minister of Interior, (August-September 2009 and August-September 2007), Hellenic Republic, Chevallier de la Legion d’Honneur of the French Republic, Cavaliere Ordine al Merito of the Italian Republic, La Croix d’Officier de l’Ordre du Merite de Hongrie, Grande-Oficial da Ordem do Infante D. Henrique, Portuguese Republic.