Steuer, M. 2026. Rule of Law Minimalism and the Fear of ‘Politics’: The Slovak Constitutional Court Amidst the Illiberal Surge. In: International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique, 39, no. 1, pp. 103-26. ISSN 1572-8722.

Steuer, M. – Organ, J. 2025. Reductionism and Holism in European Union ‘Value Talk’: The Case of the Conference on the Future of Europe. In: International Journal of Constitutional Law, 23, no. 2, pp. 435-62. ISSN 1474-2659.

Steuer, M. 2025. (Dis)empowerment and Constitutional Court Resilience: A Conceptual Framework and Explorative Evidence from the Slovak Constitutional Court. In: Global Jurist, 25(2), pp. 213-235. ISSN 1934-2640. (Also published open access as re:constitution Working Paper.)

Steuer, M. – Kneip, S. – Clayton, C.W. 2025. Courting Constitutional Crises: Crisis Mitigation by Constitutional Courts as Democratic Institutions. In: European Journal of Futures Research, 13, no. 7. ISSN 2195-2248.

Steuer, M. 2024. Judicial self-perceptions and the separation of powers in varied political regime contexts: The constitutional courts in Hungary and Slovakia. In: European Politics and Society, 25(3), pp. 537-555. ISSN 2374-5126.

Steuer, M. 2024. States of Emergency, Simultaneous Overreach and Underreach, and the COVID-19 Pan(dem)ic. In: European Journal of Risk Regulation, 15(1), pp. 87-101. ISSN 2190-8249.

Steuer, M. 2022. The Role of Judicial Craft in Improving Democracy's Resilience: The Case of Party Bans in Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia. In: European Constitutional Law Review, 18(3), pp. 440-465. ISSN 1574-0196.

Steuer, M. 2022. Authoritarian Populism, Conceptions of Democracy, and the Hungarian Constitutional Court: The Case of Political Participation. In: International Journal of Human Rights, 26(7), pp. 1207-1229. ISSN 1744-053X.

Steuer, M. 2019. Militant Democracy on the Rise: The Consequences of Legal Restrictions on Extreme Speech in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. In: Review of Central and East European Law, 44(2), pp. 162-201. ISSN 1573-0352. 

Steuer, M. 2017. The (Non)political Taboo: Why Democracies Ban Holocaust Denial. In: Sociológia – Slovak Sociological Review, 49(6), pp. 673-693. ISSN 0049 – 1225. 

Steuer, M. 2026. Rule of Law Minimalism and the Fear of ‘Politics’: The Slovak Constitutional Court Amidst the Illiberal Surge. In: International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique, 39, no. 1, pp. 103-26. ISSN 1572-8722.

Steuer, M. – Organ, J. 2025. Reductionism and Holism in European Union ‘Value Talk’: The Case of the Conference on the Future of Europe. In: International Journal of Constitutional Law, 23, no. 2, pp. 435-62. ISSN 1474-2659.

Steuer, M. 2025. (Dis)empowerment and Constitutional Court Resilience: A Conceptual Framework and Explorative Evidence from the Slovak Constitutional Court. In: Global Jurist, 25(2), pp. 213-235. ISSN 1934-2640. (Also published open access as re:constitution Working Paper.)

Steuer, M. 2025. Hijacking “Democracy”: Proposals for the Future of the European Union in Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia (2015–2022). In: Politics and Governance, 13, no. 9775, pp. 1-23. ISSN 2183-2463.

Steuer, M. – Kneip, S. – Clayton, C.W. 2025. Courting Constitutional Crises: Crisis Mitigation by Constitutional Courts as Democratic Institutions. In: European Journal of Futures Research, 13, no. 7. ISSN 2195-2248.

Florczak-Wątor, M., Gárdos-Orosz, F., Malíř, J. and Steuer, M. (eds.). 2024. States of Emergency and Fundamental Rights in Books and in Action: The Visegrad Countries and the COVID-19 Pandemic. Steuer, M. 2024. Models of States of Emergency in Slovakia and Their Political Context: We’ll Manage... Somehow? Steuer, M. and Vicenová, R. 2024. A Widening Gap: Fundamental Rights and States of Emergency in Slovakia. In: Florczak-Wątor, M., Gárdos-Orosz, F., Malíř, J. and Steuer, M. (eds.). States of Emergency and Human Rights Protection: The Theory and Practice of the Visegrad Countries. London: Routledge, pp. 1-14, 78-99, 164-183. ISBN 9781032637815.

Steuer, M. 2024. Judicial self-perceptions and the separation of powers in varied political regime contexts: The constitutional courts in Hungary and Slovakia. In: European Politics and Society, 25(3), pp. 537-555. ISSN 2374-5126.

Steuer, M. 2024. States of Emergency, Simultaneous Overreach and Underreach, and the COVID-19 Pan(dem)ic. In: European Journal of Risk Regulation, 15(1), pp. 87-101. ISSN 2190-8249.

Steuer, M. 2022. The Role of Judicial Craft in Improving Democracy's Resilience: The Case of Party Bans in Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia. In: European Constitutional Law Review, 18(3), pp. 440-465. ISSN 1574-0196.

Steuer, M. 2022. Authoritarian Populism, Conceptions of Democracy, and the Hungarian Constitutional Court: The Case of Political Participation. In: International Journal of Human Rights, 26(7), pp. 1207-1229. ISSN 1744-053X.

2021 zz ~ Martinico, G.. - In: Filtering Populist Claims to Fight Populism . - Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2021 ; S. 37, 186-211 ; WOS ; BKCI-SSH

Citing: Steuer, M. 2019. Militant Democracy on the Rise: The Consequences of Legal Restrictions on Extreme Speech in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. In: Review of Central and East European Law, 44(2), pp. 162-201. ISSN 1573-0352. 

2021 - Rak, J. - The Global Authoritarian Turn, Democratic Vulnerability, and Geo-digital Competition. - In: Geopolitics, online first, s. 1 DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2021.1947694.

Citing Steuer, M. 2020. Militant Democracy and COVID-19: Protecting the Regime, Protecting Rights? In: Hong Kong Journal of Law and Public Affairs, 2, pp. 131-145.

2022 - Smith, B.C. - Judges and Democratization: Judicial Indepependence in New Democracies. London: Routledge, s. 225.

Citing: Láštic, E. and Steuer, M. 2018. The Slovak Constitutional Court: The Third Legislator? In: Pócza, K. (ed.). Constitutional Politics and the Judiciary. Decision Making in Central and Eastern Europe. London: Routledge, pp. 184-213.

2024 - Poyet C. et al. - What makes democratic institutions resilient to crises? Applying a novel analytical framework to the case of Finland - In: Journal of Contemporary European Studies, s. 258. DOI: 10.1080/14782804.2023.2230456.

Citing: Steuer, M. 2021. Slovakia’s Democracy and the COVID-19 Pandemic: When Executive Communication Fails. Verfassungsblog,

2024 - Dressel, B. - Bonoan, C.R. - Courts and authoritarian populism in Asia: Reflections from Indonesia and the Philippines. In: Law & Policy, s. 278. DOI: 10.1111/lapo.12240.

Citing: Steuer, M. 2022. Authoritarian Populism, Conceptions of Democracy, and the Hungarian Constitutional Court: The Case of Political Participation. In: International Journal of Human Rights, 26(7), pp. 1207-1229. ISSN 1744-053X. (Also published in Grover, S. (ed.). 2023. Judicial Activism in an Age of Populism. London: Routledge, Chapter 4.)

2025 - Thomas, M. - From manifestos to Twitter: radical right parties and hate speech in Germany’s militant democratic context. In: Political Research Exchange, 7(1). p. 6 https://doi.org/10.1080/2474736X.2025.2569407.

Citing: Steuer, M. 2019. Militant Democracy on the Rise: The Consequences of Legal Restrictions on Extreme Speech in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. In: Review of Central and East European Law, 44(2), pp. 162-201. ISSN 1573-0352. 

2026 - Yi, J., Clark, T.N. - Asymmetric information and open discourse: US and South Korea. In: Theory and Society, 55(13), p. 2. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-025-09666-8

Citing: Steuer, M. 2023. Democracy, Procedural and Social Rights, and Constitutional Courts in Hungary and Slovakia. In: Constitutional Review, 9(1), pp. 28-76. ISSN 2548-3870.

2026 - Zeller, M. C. - Pragmatic rather than principled – organisational bans in democracies. European Journal of Political Research, 65(2), 652. doi:10.1017/S1475676525100121

Citing: Steuer, M. 2022. The Role of Judicial Craft in Improving Democracy's Resilience: The Case of Party Bans in Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia. In: European Constitutional Law Review, 18(3), pp. 440-465. ISSN 1574-0196.

2023 - Wójcik, A., & Rhein-Fischer, P. Introduction to the Special Section ‘Memory Laws and the Rule of Law.’ European Constitutional Law Review, 19(4), 593. doi:10.1017/S1574019624000014

Citing: Steuer, M. 2019. Militant Democracy on the Rise: The Consequences of Legal Restrictions on Extreme Speech in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. In: Review of Central and East European Law, 44(2), pp. 162-201. ISSN 1573-0352. 

2025 - Brack, N., & Coman, R. Dissensus over liberal democracy in Europe: how does it shape policies and polity? European Political Science, 24(3), 409. doi:10.1057/s41304-025-00546-4

Citing: Kovanič, M. – Steuer, M. 2023. Fighting against COVID-19: With or without politics? In: Social Science & Medicine, 337, no. 116297. ISSN 1873-5347.

CONSTAD, 2025-2029, Political Concepts in Constitutional Adjudication: A Paired Comparison of Hungary and Slovakia, funded by the Slovak Research and Development Agency (project No. APVV-24-0238).

https://fphil.uniba.sk/en/constad

Principal Investigator

CONSTAD studies whether and how pre-conceptions of ‘politics’ shape constitutional court reasoning concerning key constitutional values in light of the impact of these institutions on political regimes. At a conceptual level, CONSTAD recognizes the multiple conceptions of ‘politics’ in discourses on constitutional adjudication beyond the state of art on the ‘essentially contested’ character of constitutional values. Empirically, CONSTAD offers a paired comparison of two formally powerful Central European constitutional courts which have operated under changing regime conditions: Hungary and Slovakia. Building on existing socio-legal research, it offers a novel multi-method approach and collects original empirical data to trace the conceptions of constitutional values in key outputs of constitutional courts and the key elite constitutional actors surrounding and engaging with them. Thus, it sheds light on the globally understudied case of Slovakia and offers novel insights on the globally followed Hungarian case, while advocating the use of socio-legal methods and bringing them in dialogue with doctrinal research and behavioral models of judicial decision making, the former predominant in traditional legal and the latter in traditional political science research of post-communist courts. The findings of CONSTAD anticipate to raise global awareness on the importance of the implications of diverging conceptualizations of politics on the optimal ‘political’ role of constitutional courts and their democratic performance, thus prompting further research beyond centralized European constitutional courts. This is facilitated by a range of training and networking initiatives intended to support internationally competitive socio-legal research in and on Slovakia. 

COST Action, 2022-2027, Cultural Expertise Junior Network, K-PERITIA

Research Team and Management Committee member for Slovakia

https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA22101/

K-Peritia proposes an unprecedented network of junior experts who have preliminary experience as experts in court, members of the legal professions who are interested in cultural expertise, senior scholars with experience of expert witnessing and representatives of key international organisations, NGOs and capacity building institutions. The challenges of K-Peritia are 1) developing an international network for bridging the gap between the supply and the demand for professional cultural expertise which overcomes elitist and expensive features; 2) enabling the professional engagement of junior experts; and 3) digitalisation of the knowledge on cultural expertise. These three challenges will articulate on a newly designed transdisciplinary platform: a multilingual, open access, and cross-jurisdictional socio-legal database. The Action will foster transdisciplinary collaboration among the various disciplines of the social sciences; will establish cultural expertise more firmly as a research category in all the countries of this network, foster a better collaboration among experts and the legal professions and encourage the professional engagement of junior experts, and create the instruments for the adoption of cultural expertise which are respectful of the ethics and the deontologies of the involved professions. The deliverables of K-Peritia will be the launch of Cultural Expertise Digital Network including a training manual of use-cases for an extended use of the socio-legal database; a system of experts’ accreditation; training and capacity building module; a volume on cultural expertise and conflict resolution; and country specific policy-making guidelines on the adoption of cultural expertise also including a guide for non-discriminatory language in litigation. Acted as guest co-editor (together with L. Holden, M. Seth and A. Mishra) of the thematic section of the Jindal Global Law Review (2023, vol. 14, no. 2).

Relatedly, collaborator in the project 'Cultural Expertise in Europe: What is it useful for?' (EURO-EXPERT), funded by the European Research Council (Consolidator Grant project n. 681814).

Link: https://culturalexpertise.net, https://k-peritia.com/

The project aims at a systematic interdisciplinary study of the phenomenon of "cultural expertise", pertaining to the involvement of experts on societies and cultures to in-court and out-of-court processes in a wide range of areas of public and private law.

Responsible for an analysis of the reasons, contexts and impacts of the involvement of expert witnesses in 'crimes of extremism' in Slovakia (published article and chapter in edited volume).

RECONCOURT, 2024, Resistance and resilience of constitutional courts against autocratisation (European University Institute, Widening Programme).

https://www.eui.eu/research-hub?id=resistance-and-resilience-of-constitutional-courts-against-autocratisation

Co-Investigator (PI: Professor Gábor Halmai, DSc.)

Special Issue Co-Editor of Global Jurist: Resilience and Resistance of Constitutional Courts against Autocratization, https://www.degruyterbrill.com/journal/key/gj/25/2/html.

HARVEST, 2024-2026, Harvesting Judicial Reservoirs of Resilience to Autocratization for Rebuilding Democracy in the Visegrad Four, funded by the Recovery and Resilience Plan as part of Next Generation EU (excellent researcher support scheme, project No. 09I03-03-V04-00240).

https://fphil.uniba.sk/en/harvest

Principal Investigator

HARVEST (Harvesting Judicial Reservoirs of Resilience to Autocratization for Rebuilding Democracy in the Visegrad Four) is devoted to employ a multi-method approach towards locating reservoirs of judicial resilience to autocratization in the Visegrad Four. Focusing on constitutional courts (CCs), HARVEST supplements the prevalent focus on non-judicial sources of resilience or mechanisms operating at the level of the EU institutions. HARVEST pays considerable attention to the internal environment at the CCs and the ideas emerging in interaction between the actors within the CC as an entry point to understand their potential to challenge authoritarian leanings. Combining political science theories of democracy and courts with doctrinal and contextual studies of judicial decisions, HARVEST offers, for the first time in the 2000s, a close comparative study of the CCs in the Visegrad Four across divergent regime contexts and in interaction with EU law. HARVEST takes into consideration the political change surrounding the operation of the CCs in the region, among which some themselves have undergone autocratization, but their ambivalent role in further de-democratization of the political regime remains understudied. The project employs insights from global scholarship with particular attention on non-European contexts of democratic jurisdictions whose CCs face similar challenges.

VEGA, 2023-2025, Illiberalism and the Constitution of the Slovak Republic: Political Discourse Analysis

Principal Investigator

https://fphil.uniba.sk/en/illiberalismsk/

The Slovak Constitution embraces democracy and the rule of law. Globally and historically, however, commitment to these ideas has sometimes correlated with the erosion of democracy. The risk of erosion also in Slovakia prompts asking whether the Slovak Constitution contains ideas, which constrain democracy and the rule of law, considered as illiberal. If so, which political actors defend and which actors contest them? Addressing these questions advances the understanding of democracy’s resilience, and maps the use of the terminology of illiberalism in Slovakia. Furthermore, it advances political science research on constitutions and constitutionalism. At the theoretical level we systematize the state of art on the use and approaches to the concept of illiberalism. Empirically, we analyze original data from the Slovak Constitution and its amendments, parliamentary discourse, decisions of the Constitutional Court on interpretation of the Constitution, and academic writings.

Coordinator for Slovakia in the project 'Protection of human rights in states of emergency: Theory and practice of the Visegrad Group countries' supported by the Polish National Science Centre (about - Centrum Interdyscyplinarnych Studiów Konstytucyjnych - Wydział Prawa i Administracji (uj.edu.pl))

The project aims at a systematic mapping of the impact of legal regulation and political practice of the states of emergency in the V4 countries on the standards and practices of human rights protection.

Event reports (2021): https://cisk.wpia.uj.edu.pl/states-of-emergency/events.

Published co-edited volume by Routledge with one single-authored and two co-authored chapters:

https://www.routledge.com/States-of-Emergency-and-Human-Rights-Protection-The-Theory-and-Practice/Florczak-Wator-Gardos-Orosz-Malir-Steuer/p/book/9781032637457

Collaborator in the projects led by Prof. Jozef Bátora, PhD.

EU3D (Differentiation, Dominance, Democracy) (Horizon 2020, Grant Agreement no. 822419), member of Working Groups 4 and 5 focused on the analysis of parliamentary discourses and reform proposals on the future of the EU (Frontpage - EU3D (uio.no)) in the context of the theoretical framework of the project focused on the conditions of democratic functioning in the EU in the context of differentiation.

Link: https://www.eu3d.uio.no/research/

Contribution to research reports: https://www.eu3d.uio.no/publications/eu3d-research-brief-1-2021-gora.html.

https://www.eu3d.uio.no/publications/eu3d-reports/eu3d-report-14-gora-zgaga.html

https://www.eu3d.uio.no/publications/eu3d-data/database-reform-proposals.html

Edited volume contribution in preparation (2024).

Collaborator in the project funded by the Slovak Research and Development Agency (APVV) 'The European Union's Recognition Order and the Small Member States'

Link: https://fphil.uniba.sk/en/research-at-the-faculty-of-arts-comenius-university-in-bratislava/research-projects/national-projects/

Responsible for the analysis of the media representations of the EU in crises in selected state-wide newspapers in Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia.

Results published in: Steuer, M. 2019. Newspaper Portrayal of the EU in Crises in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary: The Union’s Imagined Linearity? In: Bátora, J., Fossum, J. E. (eds.). Towards a Segmented European Political Order. The European Union’s Post-Crises Conundrum. London: Routledge, pp. 199-224.

Why the EU Needs ‘De-crisising’. Crossroads Europe, October 2017: https://crossroads.ideasoneurope.eu/2017/10/02/article-18/