Justice Susanne Baer to Give Newman Lecture on March 28

Justice Susanne Baer of the Federal Constitutional Court in Germany will deliver the Judge Jon O. Newman Lecture on March 28, 2016, at 4:30 p.m. Her lecture is titled “Rights Under Pressure: Practicing Constitutional Law in Turbulent Times.” Baer will speak from her perspective as a sitting Justice on the German Constitutional Court to discuss how the dynamics of globalization put pressure on national legal systems.

“How should national courts react? Can law still guarantee security and organize solidarity?” Baer asks. “Or has it become naïve to hope for the civilizing forces of constitutionalism, with its promise of democracy, the rule of law and fundamental human rights, when capitalism, colonialism and brutal warfare seem unlimited and unstoppable?”

Baer holds the Chair of Public Law and Gender Studies at Humboldt-University Berlin and is a William W. Cook Global Law Professor at Michigan Law School. Her work and publications focus on law against discrimination, critical and feminist legal studies, comparative constitutionalism, and interdisciplinary studies of law.  She was the director of the GenderCompetenceCentre to advise the German federal government on gender mainstreaming. At Humboldt University, she has served as Vice-President and founded the Law and Society Institute Berlin and the Humboldt Law Clinic in Human Rights.

The Judge Jon O. Newman Lecture is an annual lecture in global justice, or public international, human rights, or comparative law, by a distinguished individual who is not a citizen of, and does not reside in, the United States.