Legislation & Justice

Laws are central control instruments in a democratic constitutional state. Legislation as the process of creating laws is therefore of central importance. Good legislation should lead to good legislation. Good legislation is an essential prerequisite for effective enforcement and can help to avoid legal disputes.

Research at the KPM in these areas is particularly concerned with the factors of good legislation. The project is led by Prof. Dr. Andreas Lienhard from the KPM, among others. At the KPM, Metkel Yosief is also involved in research into legislation and legislative procedures. His legal dissertation focuses on the pre-parliamentary phase. The project “People in digital administration”, in which Prof. Dr. Andreas Lienhard, Prof. Dr. Adrian Ritz, Céline Hunziker, Daniel Kettiger and Maja Hegemann are involved, offers an interdisciplinary approach.

Further research projects exist in the area of regulation in individual policy areas such as health policy (Prof. Dr. Rudolf Blankart).

Finally, law and program evaluations are used to check whether laws are having the desired effects, for example with regard to tobacco prevention (Prof. Dr. Fritz Sager).

The judiciary as the third power is exposed to numerous challenges in the area of conflict between efficiency and independence. The organization and management of the judiciary play a central role in this context.

The foundations of good judicial management have been examined in detail in an interdisciplinary National Fund/Sinergia research project. Prof. Dr. Andreas Lienhard from the KPM was involved in the project.

As a result of the additional research needs identified, further research areas in the justice sector are now being addressed. These include, in particular, aspects of e-Justice, such as questions of the automated anonymization of court judgments in the controversy between judicial publicity and privacy protection, which are being investigated in the research project “Court judgments in the area of conflict between transparency and privacy (Open Justice versus Privacy)” by Prof. Dr. Andreas Lienhard. Magda Chodup's legal dissertation deals with the legal basis for the anonymization of court judgments.

Numerous open questions also arise in connection with judicial councils, as they are known from abroad and are now also becoming widespread in Switzerland, particularly in the cantons of French-speaking Switzerland. As part of a dissertation project with Prof. Dr. Andreas Lienhard, Michelle Grosjean is addressing these questions in the research project “Judicial councils in Switzerland”.

A fundamental question of the judiciary concerns the qualitative requirements for a good court judgment. Martin Schmied's dissertation deals with this in detail.

The research is also carried out in collaboration with the Swiss Institute of Judiciary and within the framework of the Permanent Study Group “Justice and Court Administration” of the European Group of Public Administration XVIII (EGPA) and the International Association for Court Administration (IACA).

The results of the research are published in the Schriftenreihe zur Justizforschung and in the International Journal for Court Administration (IJCA).