Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law

In these two areas of research the democratic legitimacy of normative and ethical decisions in Germany is analyzed and compared to several other countries.

The objective is to comprehensively examine the problems of rule-making and rule application in the field of biotechnology and modern medicine as they occur in the different democratic systems.

One aspect of the research will be the effect of (national) ethics councils and ethics committees (Institutional Review Boards) on the democratic legitimacy of statutes and administrative decisions. This will be compared to and differentiated from other rule-making processes and administrative decisions.

Another major focus lies on rule-making and application processes and how they might democratically resolve conflicts and dissenting opinions regarding the content of bioethical provisions in pluralistic societies.

Projects in these research areas:

Project 1: The Interconnection of Law, Morals and Ethics – Questions of Democratic Legitimacy in regard to Ethics Councils in Germany put into Comparative, European and International Law Perspective
(Postdoctoral Research Project, Dr. Silja Vöneky, Head of Research Group)

Project 2: Coping with dissent legitimately – a comparison of law-making in the field of biomedicine in Japan and the United Kingdom
(Ph.D. Project, Cornelia Hagedorn, Doctoral Candidate)