JuDem is not only a project about defending the judiciary against authoritarian attacks. It is a project that asks a more fundamental and forward-looking question: what should the judiciary look like in the democracy of the future?

JuDem begins from the recognition that liberal democracies are facing a deep transformation. Beyond the immediate threats of autocratization, they are challenged by global dynamics such as climate change, inequality, digitalization, and social polarization, processes that expose the limits of our existing political and institutional frameworks. A democracy that will be able to address these global challenges has to be rethought and reimagined. Our question is how we should rethink the judiciary within this new democratic imaginary.

In this sense, JuDem moves beyond the conventional concern with institutional resilience or the defense of the rule of law. It reconsiders the judiciary not simply as a safeguard of democratic order, but as an active agent in shaping democratic futures. The project explores how judicial autonomy, legitimacy, and professional practice can be reimagined to contribute to more inclusive, adaptive, and responsive democracies.

This innovative perspective is realized through comparative research, empirical fieldwork, and transdisciplinary collaboration. By bringing together legal scholars, social scientists, judges, and human rights advocates from Germany, Turkey, and beyond, JuDem creates a shared experimental space for rethinking justice and democracy together. Through this dialogue between theory and practice, the project transforms the question of how to protect democracy into one of how to reinvent it, envisioning a judiciary that not only upholds the rule of law but also helps shape the democratic imaginaries of the 21st century.

The JuDem Project is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation as part of its program Transformational Knowledge on Democracies under Change – Transdisciplinary Perspectives.

Research Team

• Academic Partners

• Prof. Dr. Silvia von Steinsdorff (HU-Berlin)

• Prof. Dr. Ece Göztepe Celebi (Bilkent University, Ankara),

• Dr. Gülçin Balamir Coskun (HU-Berlin)

• Freiderike Augustin (HU-Berlin)

• Leonie-Teresa Bohle (HU-Berlin)

• Non-academic Partners

• Ipek Bozkurt (Human rights lawyer - We Will Stop Femicides Platform (Istanbul))

• Markus Rau (Judge at the Higher Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg)

• Stefanie Otte (President of the Higher Regional Court in Celle)

• Student Assistants

• Duygu Nural (HU-Berlin)

• Marcel Fernengel (HU-Berlin)