Florian F. Hoffmann

Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro · Department of Law (JUR)

The intertwined relationship between ‘development’, ‘law’, and the ‘international’ is rooted deeply in the formation of the contemporary world. Since the end of the Second World War, ‘international law’ and ‘international development’ have become two of the most prominent secular languages through which competing aspirations about a better world ar...

Coined originally by the great constitutional law scholar José Gomes Canotilho in the aftermath the post-revolutionary Portuguese constitution of 1974, the concept of a constituição dirigente (‘directive constitution’) has found some expression in the Brazilian (re-democratization) constitution of 1988 (CF88), which contains a number of injunctions...

The scale and speed of forced displacement following the Russian invasion on 24 February 2022 has been staggering. At the time of writing, an estimated 7 million have been internally and displaced and more than 5 million have fled Ukraine for another country –making it the largest refugee crisis in European history since the Second World War.1 The...

Corruption, often described as all that is rotten in the modern society, has become an increasingly dominant theme in contemporary political discourse, one that is related to specific practices, concepts and evaluations that vary across regions, cultures, spheres of action and disciplines. This volume, through case studies, investigates corruption...

Cover The Struggle for Human Rights Essays in honour of Philip Alston Edited by Nehal Bhuta, Florian Hoffmann, Sarah Knuckey, Frédéric Mégret, and Margaret Satterthwaite Description The Struggle for Human Rights evaluates the themes of law, politics, and practice which together define international human rights practice and scholarship. Taking as i...

This contribution engages with the current wave of fundamental critiques of human rights by both the populist political right and different quarters of the academy, a predicament Philip Alston has dealt with extensively in his recent interventions and which to him represents an unprecedented danger as much to human rights work as to the causes that...

Bringing together leading scholars, practitioners, and critics of human rights from a variety of disciplines, this book of essays takes as its inspiration and provocation, the forty-year career of Professor Philip Alston as an international human rights advocate, scholar, teacher, and influential participant in the making of the contemporary human...

This blog symposium introduces a new collaborative format between Verfassungsblog and the journal Verfassung und Recht in Übersee (VRÜ) / World Comparative Law (WCL). Today, we inaugurate these joint symposia with the theme of the recently published VRÜ/WCL Special Issue on „Corrupting Democracy? Interrogating the Role of Law in the Fight against C...

Lateinamerika steht in mehrfacher Hinsicht sowohl am Anfangs- wie auch am Endpunkt des Kolonialismus: am Anfang zum einen, da zumindest aus der Perspektive lateinamerikanischer Autoren die Entdeckung Amerikas nicht nur den eigentlichen Ausgangspunkt des modernen Kolonialismus darstellt. Zum anderen steht Lateinamerika aber auch am Anfang der Dekolo...

The paper contrasts two complementary ways of conceptualising death in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, notably death-in-the-plural, which involves death as an objective and collective phenomenon that occurs on the level of whole populations, and death-in-the-singular, which involves the ways in which individuals and communities deal ‘...

COVID-19 has had a profound impact on migrants and refugees the world over. Their pre-existing vulnerabilities were immediately exacerbated as national health systems were often overwhelmed and many disease control measures were either inaccessible to them or had disproportionate socio-economic effects. But migrants and refugees have also been fram...

The idea and the reality of the Global South represent different types of epistemological challenges to the disciplinary identity of comparative (constitutional) law. Taking the Global South seriously in and for comparative constitutional law must mean transcending its use as either a mere marker of supressed difference or a critical wedge against...

Although the Global South represents ‘most of the world’ in terms of constitutions and population, it is still underrepresented in comparative constitutional discourse. Against this background, this volume posits that it is high time for a ‘Southern turn’ in comparative constitutional scholarship. It aims to take stock of existing scholarship on th...

The human rights story during the decolonization era covers a range of (critical) legal perspectives. This chapter examines the role the incipient discourse and (international) institutional framework of human rights supposedly played in decolonization. It begins with the acceptance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the still-colonize...

Abstract This article charts the trajectory of the interdisciplinary study of International Law (IL) and International Relations (IR), (re-)assessing how this interdisciplinarity has been framed within each discipline. It reflects on the different ways ahead that rise from these positions, suggesting an as yet little explored path which begins with...

Twin Siblings: Fresh Perspectives on Law in Development (and Vice Versa) - FLORIAN F. HOFFMANN

Back in 2007, the year during which, alongside others, Romania and Bulgaria joined the European Union (in January) and the world financial crisis began with the French global investment bank BNP Paribas terminating withdrawals from several sub-prime loaded hedge funds (in August), Perry Anderson concluded a London Review of Books essay entitled, “D...

This book provides a guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The book explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, an...

This book provides a guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The book explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, an...

This book provides a guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The book explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, an...

This book provides a guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The book explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, an...

This book provides a guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The book explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, an...

This book provides a guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The book explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, an...

This book provides a guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The book explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, an...

This book provides a guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The book explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, an...

This book provides a guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The book explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, an...

This book provides a guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The book explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, an...

This book provides a guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The book explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, an...

This book provides a guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The book explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, an...

This book provides a guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The book explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, an...

This book provides a guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The book explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, an...

This book provides a guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The book explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, an...

This book provides a guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The book explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, an...

This book provides a guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The book explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, an...

This book provides a guide to the major thinkers, concepts, approaches, and debates that have shaped contemporary international legal theory. The book explores key questions and debates in international legal theory, offers new intellectual histories for the discipline, and provides fresh interpretations of significant historical figures, texts, an...

O artigo analisa a literatura sobre os transplantes jurídicos a fim de conceituar a transplantabilidade dos direitos humanos. Discute os desafios que normas públicas como direitos humanos, enraizadas nos sistemas jurídicos e sociais de cada pais, enfrentam em relação à transplantação, e aponta para uma possível solução no conceito de ‘irritantes le...

International Legal Positivism in a Post-Modern World provides fresh perspectives on one of the most important and most controversial families of theoretical approaches to the study and practice of international law. The contributors include leading experts on international legal theory who analyse and criticise positivism as a conceptual framework...

Human rights are considered one of the big ideas of the early twenty-first century. This book presents in an authoritative and readable form the variety of platforms on which human rights law is practiced today, reflecting also on the dynamic inter-relationships that exist between these various levels. The collection has a critical edge. The chapte...

This article attempts to explore how changes in the UN's mission may force it to rethink its responsibilities in terms of human rights. Until recently, the UN had never thought of itself as actually capable of violating human rights. But a number of evolutions have made this a possibility. Starting with peace operations and culminating with the int...

There is now some evidence of a potential drift towards 'punitive' approaches to regulation in which greater emphasis is placed on criminal sanctions. This new enthusiasm for punishment can be seen in government policy, legislation and some regulators' public stances. There is evidence, however, that companies (even top ones) deal with punitive reg...

As the last straw, a question: where does it ( From Apology to Utopia ) lead us to, what are we to make of and with it (international law)? The author himself hints at an answer in the very last sentence of the Epilogue , which marks the difference between the original and this new edition of From Apology to Utopia (FATU), by pointing to his second...

An introductory question: why (still) ‘do’ human rights? This question, rare and insolent only a decade ago, has now become one of the refrains accompanying the arduous road from late- to post-modernity. For as long as criticisms of human rights seemed to be safely confined to a few die-hard neo-Marxists, securely departmentalized cultural anthropo...

After the seeming triumph of human rights discourse in the 1990s, when the unprecedented expansion of international human rights instruments and national Bills of Rights, and the apparent emergence of a global cosmopolitan superculture seemed to augur in a new world order of universally shared values, the vogue of human rights has come, off late, u...

In recent years, the UN has assumed a widening scope of responsibilities and has gradually been transformed from an intergovernmental organization to a global governance mechanism with an even greater direct impact on individuals. This entails that the UN is also, in principle, capable of violating human rights and occasionally does so in different...

Introductory Editorial - Jacques Derrida: Before, Through, Beyond (the) Law - Volume 6 Issue 1 - Florian Hoffmann, Cornelia Vismann

How could one conclude the preceding collection of texts and create the closure necessary for the recognizability, citability, and, indeed, untouchability of this “Special Section on Derrida” within the German Law Journal ? And how could one determine the multiple significations of each and all these texts, and connect them through a single thread?...

Reflections - Volume 5 Issue 7 - Helmut Kohl, Florian Hoffmann, Rajan Subberwal, Russell Miller

Book Review – Häberle and the World of the Constitutional State - Review of Die Welt des Verfassungsstaates - Erträge des wissenschaftlichen Kolloquiums zu Ehrem von Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Peter Häberle aus Anlass seines 65. Geburtstages (Martin Morlok ed.) [The World of the Constitutional State - essays in honour of Peter Häberle presented at a...

“ ROBBEN ISLAND IS A VERY SPECIAL PLACE in the new South Africa. No one in South Africa [and few elsewhere] refuses an invitation to come here “; with these words Justice Pius Langa, Vice-President of the South African Constitutional Court, aptly alluded to the symbolic significance of the place chosen as the venue for this first International Huma...

This book fills a major gap in the ever-increasing secondary literature on Hannah Arendt’s political thought by providing a dedicated and coherent treatment of the many, various and interesting things which Arendt had to say about law. Often obscured by more pressing or more controversial aspects of her work, Arendt nonetheless had interesting insi...

In the first place, I should like to stress that the emphasis of my rather ambitious-sounding subtitle is on ‘speculation’, and not on ‘the future of international law’; for one, it is, at least at the time of writing, entirely speculative to think about the mid- and long-term consequences of the September 11 attacks, since, so far, the announced r...