Transplanting the Law of Policing? – Comparative Legal Reflections on a Symposium with Barry Friedman

Can the law of policing (Polizeirecht) be transplanted? Comparative views on this particular field of law are rare. Nevertheless, I will argue that are good reasons to approach this field with a comparative, if not transnational lens. Analyzing law from a comparative perspective almost always means digging for principles. This entails questions such as these: What is “policing”? Does “policing” require legislation? What follows for the law of policing from general constitutional principles? Barry Friedman, a renowned U.S. constitutional law scholar of NYU Law School, raised these (and other) fundamental questions at a recent symposium. The symposium was convened at the Max-Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg by Armin von Bogdandy (Director at the Institute), bringing together legal scholars in the law of policing from, among others, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, and the UK.
This blog entry presents Friedman’s questions to a wider audience and expands on some of the ideas that were voiced in the discussion. (In the following, I will limit myself to the U.S., German and Swiss law of policing – painfully aware that this does not reflect the full spectrum presented at the symposium.)