Seminar: Transformation, Anticipation, Imagination and the Law
2025-10-22
In this seminar, Dr Michael Kalis (IKEM – Institut für Klimaschutz, Energie und Mobilität e.V.) discussed how to manage and conceptualise transformations beyond the present. While legal studies usually focus on current developments and applicable law, Dr Kalis looked ahead to one of the defining features of transformative processes: their incomplete and constantly changing nature. Such processes are usually in a constant state of flux. The law must therefore keep pace with them, managing and steering them in a democratic direction despite their constant change.
'Anticipation' involves having foresight of possible developments, while 'imagination' involves defining objectives and the steps necessary to achieve them. In both cases, the aim is to design or assess future scenarios while ensuring that basic democratic principles and the fundamental legal pillars of our value system, and social cohesion are preserved. Without legal control, transformation becomes difficult to achieve and may not only lead to fundamental processes of change, but also to the erosion of the rule of law.
This seminar is part of a series of legal-theoretical events on legal transformation research. It offers insight into the challenges faced by the law in the context of changing realities and circumstances.
