We are delighted to announce the second issue of the 杏吧论坛 Law School’s Legal Studies Working Paper Series for 2022.
In this issue, Michael Wilkinson () traces the disconnect in the constitutional study of the European Union from the Maastricht era to the euro crisis phase, arguing that a systemic discourse of post-sovereignty, driven prominently by Jürgen Habermas, came to dominate theoretical enquiry at the very moment when anti-systemic challenges started to return, as exemplified in the German Constitutional Court and the French political scene; Michelle A. Hughes () merges comparative constitutional analysis with Colombia’s constitutional reform of 1991 to illustrate how constitution-making can be used as a platform for compromise in deeply divided societies and set future conditions for peace; Estelle Derclaye and Martin Husovec () examine criticisms of the Database Directive’s sui generis database protection, analyse how it has been addressed recently by the CJEU in the seminal judgment CV Online Latvia v Melons, and offer proposals for what can be done by the European Commission in its upcoming reform efforts within the context of its Data Act; and Aurora Plomer () shows that the context for the adoption of international IP law in the nineteenth century was the proliferation of international fairs and the global acceleration of free trade, as European States sought to protect national industries from international competition through ill-defined ‘intellectual’ property rights thereby facilitating cross-border protection of private interests and capital.