ICON S Conference 17 – 19 June 2016 Humboldt University Berlin

ench. By so doing, the article attempts to provide an
insight into the dynamics of judicial decision-making
and constitutional interpretation, without renouncing
to express a normative claim against manipulation and
absolutism in adjudication.
Alex Schwartz: Hybrid Constitutional Courts:
International Judges in Divided Societies’
One of the challenges that arises in divided societies
is the danger that one group may capture an
institution to use its powers to the detriment of other
groups. Constitutional courts are not immune to this
danger. One remedy is to reserve a fixed number of
places on the court for members of certain groups.
Some courts go a step further and also include a fixed
proportion of non-domestic “international” judges to
serve, at least ostensibly, as neutral swing voters. With
a particular focus on the Constitutional Court of Bosnia,
this papers takes an empirical look at the role that international
judges have played on constitutional courts
in divided societies. In light of the evidence, the paper
argues that the case for these “hybrid constitutional
courts” needs to be radically reassessed.
42 RECONFIGURING LEGAL
SUBJECTIVITY
This panel analyses legal subjectivity. The panel is organized
by a multidisciplinary research group aiming
to bring together public lawyers, civil lawyers, legal philosophers
and social theorists for in-depth analysis on
current problems of legal subjectivity and personhood.
Participants Susanna Lindroos-Hovinheimo
Merima Bruncevic
Jannice Käll
Ukri Soirila
Name of Chair Susanna Lindroos-Hovinheimo
Room BE2 326
Susanna Lindroos-Hovinheimo: Private selves:
An analysis of legal personhood in the European
Union
The paper analyses the legal subject in European
law. The overall rationale of the project is an awareness
of the often invisible workings of law in relation to human
beings. The law builds on some understanding
of what it means to be a person, but it also influences
definitions of personhood. As the human being is taking
centre stage in EU law, there is an increasing need
for an inquiry into the foundations of our shared being
in law. The legal subject can be conceptualized in individualistic
terms or intrinsically tied to community. Both
alternatives will be studied in the context of selected
examples of case law from the ECJ. Drawing on the
work of contemporary political philosophers Jacques
Rancière and Roberto Esposito, this research tries to
rethink the legal subject without a necessary connection
to individuality. By accepting the singular plural
nature of the legal subject, the concept can be opened
up and put to use in egalitarian ways.
Concurring panels 75
Merima Bruncevic: The artistic inforgs and the
nomadic legal subject
The paper analyses a portrait series based on Instagram
images. Issues concerning the notion of the author,
legal subjectivity and rights to information that emerge
within the infosphere are discussed. The argument that
the individual notion of the “author” as legal subject
must be challenged and understood as a process of
continuous oscillations between civil and public law is
advanced. Reading the concept of the author through
Barthes’ “Death of the author” and Foucault’s “What is
an author?”, I argue that the private and individual author-genius
as the legal subject has been dissolved. It is
argued that the many strata of authorship in the case at
hand all form part of the creator-user, an information-carrying
organism (inforg). The legal subject is approached
critically and the paper discusses the constructions
and reconstructions of subjectivity, claiming that what
seems to be escaping law is the nomadic legal subject
a borderland between shared information and privacy.