We want to share legal expertise with the wider public to facilitate an informed public discourse, which in turn is a necessary prerequisite for democratic practice. Accordingly, Verfassungsblog’s understanding of accessibility includes accessibility in content, form, and language: content that is of societal relevance; a form that adheres to academic standards of referencing, methodology and reasoning while the structure puts the content and relevance in the centre of the writing; simple language that does not reduce the complexity of the legal questions being analysed.
Mission and Values
Verfassungsblog is a global forum of scholarly debate at the interface of science and society. We open up discourses in public law – internationally, interdisciplinary and open access. We are independent and community-led. We offer innovative, academic publication formats for reviewed content. Our goal is to ensure maximum speed in our publication process, meeting public demand for academic expertise at its peak – without compromising on quality. As a non-profit organisation, we are committed to transparency and fairness.
Governance
The legal entity in charge of publication is the Max Steinbeis Verfassungsblog gGmbH, a non-profit limited liability company under German law (gemeinnützige Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung). We are transparent in terms of our costs; all revenue is used to maintaining Verfas- sungsblog’s operations and high quality publication content. The executive directors are Maximilian Steinbeis and Verena Vortisch.
Additionally, an Advisory Board consisting of 23 law academics, ranging from early-career schol- ars to senior professors fulfill a general supervisory function regarding the overall development of Verfassungsblog as an academic forum of debate. All members are selected for their distin- guished work in their respective fields, innovative research, and their professional expertise.
Future Plans
Verfassungsblog is committed to making knowledge publicly available. All our publications are therefore Open Access. While the daily commentary and analyses in the blog timeline is Diamond Open Access, we still depend on securing funding for each book. Scholars should – regardless of their financial means or institutional affiliation – be able to organise and publish edited volumes with us. The only relevant criteria should be academic quality and relevance. Therefore, we are currently working on different pathways to extend our Diamond Open Access approach to our books – we believe that the Open Book Collective can be an important source for funding Diamond Open Access and removing financial hurdles for researchers.
