Projects
This page provides more information about larger research and editorial projects I have conducted or am still involved with.
Influencing Lawmakers: A Comparative Constitutional Analysis of Legislative Lobbying (monograph)
Habilitation thesis, University of Zurich, Switzerland.
Manuscript currently under review.
Abstract: Legislative lobbying – i.e., lobbying that targets the legislative branch – is an ambivalent practice: it can strengthen, but also weaken, democratic law-making. Despite its implications for democratic processes (be they positive or negative), legislative lobbying is neglected and undertheorized in legal and constitutional scholarship. Against this backdrop, this book sheds light on the main constitutional provisions that lobbying laws must take into account. It focuses on four jurisdictions that are particularly relevant to the topic at hand: the United States, which pioneered legislative lobbying regulation in the 1940s, but whose regulatory framework is often criticized for being ineffective; Switzerland, a semi-direct democracy where legislative lobbying is hardly regulated; France, where the law long ignored lobbying as a practice due to the French jacobinist and legicentrist tradition and emphasis on the volonté générale, and which enacted relevant legislation fairly recently, starting in 2016; and, finally, the European Union, one of the biggest lobbying hubs worldwide, which started regulating this practice at the turn of the century, especially after the cash-for-amendments scandal of 2011.
Abstract: Legislative lobbying – i.e., lobbying that targets the legislative branch – is an ambivalent practice: it can strengthen, but also weaken, democratic law-making. Despite its implications for democratic processes (be they positive or negative), legislative lobbying is neglected and undertheorized in legal and constitutional scholarship. Against this backdrop, this book sheds light on the main constitutional provisions that lobbying laws must take into account. It focuses on four jurisdictions that are particularly relevant to the topic at hand: the United States, which pioneered legislative lobbying regulation in the 1940s, but whose regulatory framework is often criticized for being ineffective; Switzerland, a semi-direct democracy where legislative lobbying is hardly regulated; France, where the law long ignored lobbying as a practice due to the French jacobinist and legicentrist tradition and emphasis on the volonté générale, and which enacted relevant legislation fairly recently, starting in 2016; and, finally, the European Union, one of the biggest lobbying hubs worldwide, which started regulating this practice at the turn of the century, especially after the cash-for-amendments scandal of 2011.
Domestic Courts and the Interpretation of International Law: Methods and Reasoning Based on the Swiss Example (monograph)
PhD thesis, University of Fribourg, Switzerland, under the supervision of Prof. Samantha Besson.
Published as a monograph in 2019 (Brill/Nijhoff), available as an open access publication here.
Winner of the Walther Hug Prize 2021.
Abstract: In Domestic Courts and the Interpretation of International Law, Odile Ammann examines how domestic judges do and must interpret international law. She analyzes their interpretative methodology and the predictability, clarity, and consistency of their reasoning. Highlighting the main gaps in contemporary international legal scholarship regarding international law in domestic courts, Ammann offers a fresh and thorough theoretical reflection on this topic. Based on a detailed study of the judicial practice, she shows how courts' interpretative method and reasoning can be further improved. She also argues that interpretative methods must be taken more seriously in international law. While she primarily uses the Swiss example to illustrate her claims, the basic tenets of her analysis apply to any domestic legal context.
Abstract: In Domestic Courts and the Interpretation of International Law, Odile Ammann examines how domestic judges do and must interpret international law. She analyzes their interpretative methodology and the predictability, clarity, and consistency of their reasoning. Highlighting the main gaps in contemporary international legal scholarship regarding international law in domestic courts, Ammann offers a fresh and thorough theoretical reflection on this topic. Based on a detailed study of the judicial practice, she shows how courts' interpretative method and reasoning can be further improved. She also argues that interpretative methods must be taken more seriously in international law. While she primarily uses the Swiss example to illustrate her claims, the basic tenets of her analysis apply to any domestic legal context.
Cover illustration (below): © Rae Pozdro (for more work by Rae Pozdro, see here).
Online Commentary of the Swiss Constitution (open access commentary), co-edited with Dr Stefan Schlegel
The Onlinekommentar (Online Commentary), founded by Daniel Brugger, law clerk at the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland, is the first non-profit and open access commentary platform in Switzerland. My colleague Dr Stefan Schegel and I are the co-editors of the Online Commentary of the Swiss Constitution. Contributions are published on a rolling basis, following several rounds of editorial review and a double-blind, external peer review process. For more information about this project and to access the commentary, click here. In 2023, Stefan Schlegel and I wrote a blog post published by the Verfassungsblog that presents our project, and that reflects upon the implications of this open access project for legal and especially constitutional commentaries as a genre of legal scholarship.
