Cluster 2 | Institutional Approaches to Rule of Law Resilience

How can institutions uphold the rule of law under pressure?

Scope. Sessions focus on the courts and other institutions that defend, sustain – and sometimes contest – the rule of law, and on the ideological, security and geopolitical pressures that test them. How do, and how should, courts, legislatures, executives, prosecution services, anti-corruption bodies and other public institutions respond to a rule-of-law crisis? What enables or constrains their capacity to act? Where does strategic litigation end and lawfare begin? We also welcome sessions on non-judicial forms of mobilisation and on access to justice in a broader sense.

Rationale. Courts are central to both democratic regression and resilience: they are where rule-of-law commitments become binding and enforceable. But rule-of-law systems rarely fail because of one institution alone. The authority of courts depends on whether their judgments are respected and implemented, and on the wider institutional environment. This cluster asks what a resilient rule-of-law order requires across institutions, which strategies different actors can realistically use in a crisis, how case law and legal mobilisation can drive change without sliding into lawfare or politicising judges, and what role European and supranational institutions and courts should play.