Markus Jachtenfuchs is a member of the research group International rule of law – rise or decline? examining the role of international law in a changing global order. The group, which is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), brings together international lawyers and political scientists from five institutions in the Berlin-Brandenburg region: Freie Universität Berlin, Hertie School, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Universität Potsdam and the Berlin Social Science Center (Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin). The fellow programme for international researchers who visit the group for periods of up to two years is an important pillar of the research group. Individual research projects benefit from dense interdisciplinary exchanges between senior scholars, practitioners, postdoctoral fellows and doctoral students from diverse academic backgrounds.
Key questions
The research group aims to explore a range of questions related to the international rule of law can we, under our current conditions, still observe a juridification of international relations based on a universal understanding of values? Or are we seeing a tendency towards an informalisation or a re-formalisation of international law, or even an erosion of international legal norms? Would it be appropriate to revisit classical elements of international law in order to react to structural changes which may give rise to a more polycentric or non-polar world order? Or are we simply observing a slump in the development of an international rule of law based on a universal understanding of values?
