Prague Constitutional Seminar Series: Matthias Klatt

The Department of Constitutional Law invites you to the next seminar in the Prague Constitutional Seminar Series.

The seminar will feature Univ.-Prof. Dr. iur. Matthias Klatt from the University of Graz, Director of the Graz Jurisprudence Centre and editor of Hart Studies in Constitutional Theory. His talk will be entitled Authorities’ Concordant Order. The abstract is available below.

The seminar will take place on Thursday, 11 June, from 16:30 in Room 412. It will be followed, from 18:00, by a short introduction to Hart Studies in Constitutional Theory and a Q&A on publishing in the field of constitutional theory.

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The event will be held in English.

Everyone is warmly welcome!

Bio

Matthias Klatt holds the Chair of Jurisprudence at the University of Graz, where he is also the founder and director of the Graz Jurisprudence Research Centre for Legal Philosophy and Global Constitutionalism. His research spans constitutional rights, proportionality, the theory of legal argumentation, and the concept of law.

He studied law at the Universities of Göttingen, Munich, and Kiel, completing his doctorate under Robert Alexy. He subsequently served as a law clerk at the German Federal Constitutional Court and held a Junior Research Fellowship at New College, Oxford. Before his appointment to Graz in 2015, he held positions at the Universities of Hamburg, Osnabrück, and Humboldt University Berlin, and completed his habilitation in Hamburg.

His publications include The Constitutional Structure of Proportionality (Oxford University Press, 2012), Institutionalized Reason: The Jurisprudence of Robert Alexy (Oxford University Press, 2012), and the two-volume Constitutionally Conforming Interpretation – Comparative Perspectives (Hart Publishing, 2023 and 2025). He is Series Co-Editor of Hart Studies in Constitutional Theory, and his work has appeared in seven languages.

Anotace

Jurisdictional conflicts between constitutional courts and international tribunals are among the most pressing challenges in contemporary constitutional law. This talk advances a systematic theory for their resolution, arguing that competing legal authorities are integrated neither by hierarchy nor by political comity, but through the rational balancing of competences understood as formal principles. Drawing on my forthcoming book Authorities' Concordant Order, the talk introduces an institutionally sensitive principles theory that fills a significant gap in Robert Alexy's influential account: the underdetermined role of formal principles in adjudication. The theory is applied to paradigmatic conflicts between the German Federal Constitutional Court, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Court of Justice of the European Union, demonstrating that most conflicts admit of determinate legal resolution.