The democracies around the world are threatened by authoritarian states and their expansionist policies and anti-democratic movements that have grown in many societies around the world, often with considerable political success. Recent wars have worsened the situation. The panel will explore the perils for and prospects of democracy in these times of profound crisis.

John Mikhail
Reflection on Democracy, War, and HumanRights

John Mikhail is the Carroll Professor of Jurisprudence at Georgetown University Law Center, where he has taught since 2004. He teaches and writes on a variety of topics, including constitutional law, moral and legal theory, legal history, and human rights. He is the author of Elements of Moral Cognition: Rawls’ Linguistic Analogy and the Cognitive Science of Moral and Legal Judgment (CUP, 2011; paperback edition, 2013) and over fifty articles, essays, and chapters in peer-edited journals, law reviews, and anthologies. His scholarship is widely cited, and he has lectured throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, including giving a plenary lecture at the 29th IVR World Congress in Lucerne, Switzerland. Professor Mikhail served as the Law Center’s Associate Dean for Research and Academic Programs from 2017 to 2020 and its Associate Dean for International and Transnational Programs from 2011 to 2013. He holds secondary appointments in Georgetown’s Philosophy Department and Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Science.

Sergiy Maximov
Is Democracy Possible in War Time? Ukrainian Experience

Sergiy Maksymov is a Professor at the Department of Human Rights and Legal Methodology of the Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University (Kharkiv, Ukraine) and Chief Researcher at the Institute of State Construction and Local Self-Government of the National Academy of Legal Sciences (NALS) of Ukraine. He holds a PhD in Social Philosophy (1985) and a Doctorate in Legal Sciences in Philosophy of Law (2002). He is a Corresponding Member of the NALS of Ukraine and Deputy Academician-Secretary of the Department of Theory and History of Law of the NALS of Ukraine. He is also the Vice President of the All-Ukrainian Association of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy and serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal "Philosophy of Law andGeneral Theory of Law."
Professor Maksymov is the author of several books, including "Legal Reality: The Experience of Philosophical Understanding" (2002) and "Philosophy of Law: Contemporary Interpretations" (2010, 2012). He is also a co-author of more than 15 books, including "Immanuel Kant: Heritage and Project" (Moscow-Berlin, 2007), "The Legal System of Ukraine: Past, Present, and Future" (2008 - Ukrainian, 2011 - Russian, 2013 - English), “Ukrainian Legal Doctrine” (London, 2015). Additionally, he authored many academic articles on various topics such as the nature of law, natural law theory, phenomenology of law, foundations of law, legal consciousness, human rights from universal and cultural perspectives, the rule of law, and legal values. He co-edited the book "Eugenio Bulygin: The Selected Writings in Theory and Philosophy of Law" (2016) and served as Chairman of the Editorial Board for Vol. 2: Philosophy of Law in the Great Ukrainian Legal Encyclopedia (in 20 volumes, Kharkiv: Pravo, 2017).

Amalia Amaya, National Autonomous University Mexico; Edinburgh University

Jin-Sook Yun
Democracy in Korea at the Edge of History

Jin-Sook Yun has been teaching and researching Soongsil University College of Law as a professor since 2006. After earning a bachelor's degree, master's degree, and doctoral degree from Yonsei University College of Law, she also earned an LLM degree from American University Washington College of Law and a JSD degree from Washington University Law School. She has studied and researched feminist legal theory, philosophy of law, sociology of law, family law, legal history, human rights, and so on. Besides numerous articles, she published the following books: Feminist Legal Theory (2016), Law and Logic for Minorities (2018), Development of Feminist Legal Theory (2018, co-authored), and she translated the book, Feminism: A Very Short Introduction (2019). She was president of the Korean Association of Gender and Law from 2019 to 2020 and is now president of the Korean Association for Sociology of Law while serving as an Executive Committee member of IVR.