55 Voices for Democracy: Susanne Baer

“Don't turn our differences into discrimination, and don’t forget the law," urges legal scholar and former Justice on the German Constitutional Court Susanne Baer. As a 2024 Thomas Mann Fellow, Baer explores the role of law in strengthening, or, where necessary, in defending democracy. In her speech, she shifts our focus to Erika Mann, the daughter, who played a key role in Thomas Mann’s political evolvement into a fierce democrat and follows Erika Mann’s journey to the Nuremberg trials in post-war Germany. Baer explains that Erika Mann may stand in for the claim that differences must not be divisive, but can be accounted for, last not least based on law: "Democracy needs fundamental human rights and rules for truly democratic procedures, and it needs the venues of law, including independent courts.”
Susanne Baer is Professor of Public Law and Gender Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Lea Bates Global Law Professor at the University of Michigan Law School, and Centennial Professor at LSE London. From 2011 to 2023, she served as Justice on the German Constitutional Court. Her work focuses on comparative constitutionalism, interdisciplinary legal research, and equality law. She is the author and co-author of many publications in German and English, including a textbook on Rechtssoziologie and the casebook Comparative Constitutionalism: Cases and Materials.
The series is presented by the Thomas Mann House in cooperation with Deutschlandfunk, the Los Angeles Review of Books and Süddeutsche Zeitung.
For more information visit vatmh.org/55voices