There is a basic tension between the principle of democracy and the rule of law. This becomes obvious whenever the Swiss citizens accept an initiative that is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. First, we discuss the traditions behind these two principles before we survey...

Administrative procedures (APs) are tools to protect fundamental human rights in statecitizen relations. As the modernization of public administration regulation is undergoing a transformation in the direction of reducing detailed rules on APs and, by the same token, emphasizing fundamental or...

In comparing Switzerland and Germany, this paper discusses basic but potentially conflicting constitutional principles and the problems which can arise from such conflicts and which have to be handled by a constitution. We concentrate on three central areas: (i) the tension between democracy and...