Prof. Arianna Vedaschi
UBocconi University, Milan (Italy)
Date: 25.6.2025, 6:00 p.m.
Venue: Room L623, 6th floor | Faculty of Law | Sigmund Freud University | Lassallestraße 3, 1020 Vienna
The COVID-19 pandemic was an unprecedented public health emergency that shocked the world. In response to this dangerous and initially unknown threat, governments inevitably adopted measures seriously limiting human rights and personal freedoms, which remained in place for an extended period of time.
When these limitations of rights and freedoms took place, the role of courts proved pivotal in assessing the necessity and proportionality of the restrictions. This seminar explores whether courts really stepped in proactively during COVID-19 or whether their activity was hindered by a number of factors. The study takes a comparative perspective, focusing on the supreme and constitutional courts of the main “advanced” democracies and grouping courts into “clusters” based on their stance during the crisis.
The analysis is crucial for understanding whether judicial review, a core principle of contemporary constitutionalism, functions effectively in times of crisis, and for drawing lessons for the future.
Please register until 24.6.2025: konrad.lachmayer@jus.sfu.ac.at
Biography
Arianna Vedaschi is Full Professor of Comparative Public Law at Bocconi University, Milan, Italy and member of the Baffi Research Centre at the same University.
Her research focuses on legal responses to political and technical emergencies, as well as their impact on human rights and personal freedoms. On these topics, she has published several books, chapters in edited volumes and articles in leading law journals. Among her most recent publications, she has edited (under the auspices of the International Academy of Comparative Law) the volume Governmental Policies to Fight Pandemic. The Boundaries of Legitimate Limitations on Fundamental Freedoms (Brill, 2024) and authored the articles Post-Pandemic Constitutionalism: COVID-19 as a Game-Changer for “Common Principles”? (University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law, 2023) and New Dynamics of the “Post-COVID-19 Era”: A Legal Conundrum (German Law Journal, 2023).
She is the Principal Investigator of the PRIN Project “Decision-Making in the Age of Emergencies. New Paradigms in Recognition and Protection of Rights [DeMa]” and a member of several international research projects.
Along with Kim Lane Scheppele, she chairs the Research Group on “Constitutional Responses to Terrorism” within the International Association of Constitutional Law.
She has been Visiting Professor in prominent universities and research centers in Europe, the US and Latin America. Among them, Istituto Svizzero di Diritto Comparato (Switzerland), Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Heidelberg, Germany), and Fordham Law School (New York, United States).
She is a member of the Executive Board of the Italian Association of Comparative Law and of the Board of Auditors of the Association of Comparative and European Public Law, where she has also been Secretary General. She is the Vice-Director of the Law Review Diritto Pubblico Comparato ed Europeo.