Health Law, Policy & Ethics Seminar Series: Dr. Mag. jur. Alexandra Juster, University of Innsbruck

Juli Zeh’s The Method: The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Question of Proportionality between Fundamental Rights in Democratic Systems

Abstract: In her 2009 novel The Method, German author Juli Zeh depicts a dictatorship that prioritizes absolute health as the supreme reason of state. Anyone who becomes ill or is prone to illness is transformed into a persecuted victim of the regime. Eleven years later, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the novel seems to offer a bleak prediction of individual, anti-democratic restrictions on freedom in the name of combating a health-threatening virus. The Method anticipates the question of proportionality between fundamental rights, which, as will be demonstrated with examples from France and Germany, were resolved in favor of safeguarding health at the expense of other equally important fundamental freedoms. In both countries, the political response to the pandemic led to the adoption of highly questionable measures from a democratic standpoint. The Method prompts a critical reflection on the problem of uneven prioritization of equally important fundamental rights within democratic state systems.

Lawyer, Dr. Mag. jur. Alexandra Juster, is currently postdoc researcher in Law and Literature at the University of Innsbruck. Born in Austria they completed a PhD in German modern literature from the University of Salamanca (Spain, 2022) and hold a Doctor in Law from the University of Ferrara (Italy, 1993); a Master in Education from the University of Navarra (Spain); and a Master in School Leadership from the University José Camilo Cela Madrid (2022). Their fields of investigation include, modern literature, interdisciplinary fields at the crossing of literature, law, philosophy, politics and society.

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