The title of the 31st World Congress of the International Association for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy is The Rule of Law, Justice and the Future of Democracy and this special workshop aims to discuss the contemporary challenges, perils, risks, and threats, that our constitutional democracies face nowadays. As it is well known, constitutional democracies around the world are under pressure from different directions and often at the same time, from one side and the other, from inside and outside, pulling up and pushing down... Since 2025, will mark the 50th Anniversary of the publication of The Crisis of Democracy. Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission (1975), it is a great opportunity not only to revisit the future of democracy and some everlasting questions: What is democracy? What characterizes a constitutional democracy? Which is the relation between the rule of lawand democracy? Is justice better served by autocratic or democratic means? Which are the main challenges, perils, risks, and threats? Where are they coming from? Is autocracy and demagoguery, populism and authoritarianism, compatible with democracy? How and why democratic regimes breakdown and democracies die? Is polarization (in)compatible with democracy? What makes democracy desirable, possible, and even necessary? Which are the underlying conditions?
But also, to review the classic and contemporary literature on the subject. For example, Hans Kelsen (1881-1973), in the first edition of his Reine Rechtslehre cautioned us: “Of course, one must not confuse this concept of Rechtsstaat with the concept of a legal system having a particular content, namely, a legal system comprising certain institutions, such as individual liberties, guarantees of legality in the functioning of organs, and democratic methods.” In the second edition, he warned us: “Representation also designates the attribution of a function of an organ not elected, and not only attribution to the people, but also to another organ. Thus it is also said of an absolute monarch and a dictator who usurped power that they represent the people; and of a judge, appointed by a monarch in a monarchy transformed from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy, that [s]he represents the monarch”.

All welcome! If interested, please forward an abstract to imer@unam.mx before April 30, and if possible a draft of the paper before June 30. We intend to publish the revised versions of the papers presented as contribution to the “Discussion” section of Problema.
Anuario de Filosofía y Teoría del Derecho if submitted by August 31 to imer@unam.mx.