—Olga Ceran, Postdoctoral Research in Law & Philosophy (AFITE), Europa Institute, Leiden University / Mellon/SAR Academic Freedom Fellow 2025/2026[1]
In December 2025, the 145th Plenary Session of the Venice Commission adopted the Updated Rule of Law Checklist. Building on its previous versions, the Checklist is meant to be a practical assessment tool: it turns the concept of the Rule of Law into a structured set of benchmarking questions that can be used to evaluate how well a country’s legal system complies with Rule of Law standards. Used by the Venice Commission in its country-specific advisory opinions and widely referenced by other actors in Europe and beyond, earlier versions of the Checklist have become an influential framework for articulating and assessing the Rule of Law. The 2025 update is therefore likely to play a similar role. While the framework of the Checklist has stayed fundamentally the same, the update introduces more detail to the existing benchmarks as well as some innovations (see a general overview here). Among others, the Checklist engages – for the first time explicitly – with the role of academic and education actors within the Rule of Law framework. This blog post briefly considers the implications of this development, which may strengthen scrutiny of certain threats to academia in the European legal space.
Academia in the Rule of Law Checklists
The 2025 Checklist updates the previous version from 2016, which itself further developed the checklist embedded in the Venice Commission’s 2011 Report on the Rule of Law. Academia was not explicitly discussed in either of those previous versions. In the section surveying the Rule of Law in international law, the 2011 Report referred to the standard-setting work of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), noting its recognition of ‘awareness-raising and education on the rule of law for the legal professions and the public’ as an area where the rule of law can be strengthened (para. 26). However, the referenced OSCE documents did not draw attention to the conditions under which such education is provided (including the significance of academic freedom). The 2011 Report did not pursue this issue further in its analytical discussion and the annexed 2011 Checklist did not reflect it either. No references to academia or education, or any of rights and freedoms relevant to these sectors, are to be found in the 2016 Checklist. Notwithstanding this silence, both the 2011 Report and the 2016 Checklist recognized that the Rule of Law and human rights are intertwined, with some rights having ‘rule of law connotations, such as the right to expression, which permits criticism of the government of the day (Article 10 ECHR)’ (the 2011 RoL Report, para. 61; see also the 2016 RoL Checklist, para. 31). Such criticism can surely be expressed also by academics – and by 2016 had already led the European Court of Human Rights to recognize scholars’ academic freedom as a manifestation of freedom of speech covered by Article 10 ECHR (e.g. Mustafa Erdoğan and Others v. Turkey).
Having said this, the checklists were ‘neither exhaustive nor final’ (the 2016 RoL Checklist, para 30). As briefly outlined elsewhere, subsequent challenges to the Rule of Law – some of them new in nature – prompted another revision. The 2025 Checklist similarly addresses human rights ‘only when’ and ‘as’ linked to the rule of law (the 2025 RoL Checklist, paras 21-23). It is therefore important that safeguards for academia appear – for the first time, even if with varying degrees of explicitness – in two sections of the 2025 Checklist: ‘Checks and balances’ (Section D) and ‘Legal and civic education’ as part of ‘Particular challenges to the Rule of Law’ (Section H.2).
Checks and Balances: Academic Institutions as Part of the Civic Space
‘Checks and balances’ is one of the new benchmarks included in the 2025 Checklist. This benchmark elaborates on ‘not only institutional arrangements and relationships but also non-institutional mechanisms, in the form of a robust and adequately protected civic space (including but not limited to a free media, independent academic institutions and non-governmental organisations) capable of monitoring institutions and contributing to deliberative decision-making’ (the 2025 RoL Checklist, para. 78; emphasis added). ‘Independent academic institutions’ are therefore explicitly conceived as part of the civic space, capable of holding public powers accountable. This is in line with one of the core tenets of the democratic justification of academic freedom and the ‘rule of law connotations’ of human rights noted above. Guarantees for the civic space are now a focus of a separate sub-section (s. D.2), emphasising first and foremost the need to ‘recognize and protect fundamental rights related to civic space (in particular the freedoms of expression, assembly and association)’ (s. D.2.i). However, interestingly, other benchmarks continue to refer explicitly only to ‘civil society organisations’ or the media – and not to academia. The concept of ‘civil society’ is neither synonymous with ‘civic space’, nor has a universal definition – while for certain purposes it has been taken to encompass also universities and research institutions, academia is often seen as a separate actor (e.g. the 2025 RoL Checklist in describing consulted stakeholders, para. 4). Insofar ‘civic space’ denotes ‘the environment that enables people and groups … to participate meaningfully in the political, economic, social and cultural life of their societies’, recognition and protection of fundamental rights related to civic space surely extends to academics’ participation in this space as well, closely related to the democratic justification for academic freedom. However, this is not synonymous to recognizing the importance of academic freedom itself – if only because not all aspects thereof directly link to checks and balances relevant for the rule of law.
Academic Freedom as a Prerequisite of High-Quality Legal (and Civic?) Education
Academic freedom features in a more prominent way in the section on ‘Legal and civic education’, as part of ‘Particular challenges to the Rule of Law’ (Section H.2). The section frames education as a site of production of Rule of Law culture – which is crucial both for the legal profession and for the broader civic space (see also the 2025 RoL Checklist, paras 20 and 84). For education to fulfil this mission, it must meet certain standards. In the context of legal education, the Checklist draws attention to the following issues (among others):
…
ii. Is undergraduate teaching of law adequately designed to foster the students’ abilities to engage in critical thinking?
iii. Is the establishment of new universities and colleges offering law degrees regulated by law? Are there well-functioning internal and external mechanisms of quality control of university legal education?
iv. Do universities and other bodies providing professional education enjoy sufficient safeguards protecting their independence in respect of curricula, academic appointments, student admissions, management and funding?
…
As seen here, academic freedom does not feature in the questions directly – clearly not in a way that other fundamental rights (e.g. freedom of expression) do in other parts of the Checklist. Nevertheless, the questions hint both at a particular mission of legal education (fostering of critical thinking, another one of the core aspects of the democratic justification of academic freedom), and particular guarantees that the fulfilment of their mission may require. The latter are linked to academic freedom – as ‘legally grounded in various recognised rights such as the right to education and the freedom of expression’ – in a footnote (fn. 194). The footnotes also draw attention to specific issues framed in academic freedom terms, e.g. quality control mechanisms that should not become ‘a threat to academic freedom’ (fn. 191). The explanatory text further notes that relevant courses in legal education
… must be taught in accordance with academic freedom, including freedom of research. Academic freedom is explicitly protected in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (Article 13), with additionally Article 15, para. 3 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights requiring state parties to “respect the freedom indispensable for scientific research and creative activity”.’
From this perspective, one may wonder why the questions have not been more clearly framed in fundamental rights terms, as done in other sections of the report. This may be due to the fact that the scope of academic freedom is contested, and so is its status as a self-standing human right (despite its increasing recognition). The recognition of academic freedom in national constitutional law is also less universal than it is the case with, e.g., freedom of expression (for EU Members States, see Kosta & Ceran (2025)). Nevertheless, as the explanatory text provides guidance on the interpretation and application of the benchmarks, academic freedom guarantees should be seen as inherently part thereof.
One may further wonder whether focusing on legal education in this context is somewhat reductive – academic freedom clearly matters for more than just lawyers. Having said that, this focus connects academic institutions most directly to the functioning of the legal system and, ultimately, to the Rule of Law. As I have argued elsewhere (in the EU legal context), the conceptual relationship between the Rule of Law and academic freedom is not straightforward – even if they are interdependent in some contexts. Here, high-quality legal education contributes to sustaining Rule of Law institutions by shaping the legal profession and its culture, while academic freedom and institutional autonomy condition the extent to which legal education can perform this role credibly, free from undue interference. In any case, guarantees required in this context – at least to some extent, and especially where they touch on systemic issues (e.g., the establishment of new universities) – will surely spill over into other domains.
The sub-section on legal education is followed by one on civic education, in recognition of the latter’s role in cultivating ‘a robust and common shared culture’ of respect for constitutional values (the 2025 RoL Checklist, para. 163). This section refers explicitly to schools and education of the public broadly. However, given that civic education concerns ‘all citizens’, and in light of Council of Europe soft law, there is no reason to consider higher education to fall outside of this framework. If this is the case, the quality of this education should also not be detached from academic freedom guarantees, where applicable (see the Council of Europe Charter on Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education, para. 7).
Implications
The status of academic freedom and its relationship to core values of the Council of Europe have not been widely discussed. In this regard, the explicit inclusion of academia as an actor within the rule-of-law-based framework is significant. It may simply be a consequence of the increasing level of detail of the Checklist, which was always meant to evolve over time (e.g., the RoL Checklist 2025, para. 18), as it continues to build on previous opinions of the Venice Commission and judgments of the European Court of Human Rights – both of which have previously discussed academic freedom. This development may also be understood as elevating academic freedom in the European legal space to a human right with ‘Rule of Law connotations’. This would reflect the reality in which systemic weakening of the Rule of Law has often intertwined with attacks on academic freedom, revealing their ‘mutually reinforcing’ nature. Therefore, it also provides an example of how the thinking about the Rule of Law challenges in Europe – and the role of epistemic institutions in this context – has evolved over the years. What that means exactly for the interpretation of academic freedom as a legal right remains to be explored – and perhaps also seen in practice, as the 2025 Checklist could encourage a greater focus on the academic and educational sector in future requests for country-specific opinions directed to the Venice Commission. It may also have implications for the European Union’s action in the field. While the Checklist is not binding for the EU, it has functioned as a highly influential soft law instrument regarding both the definition of the rule of law and its assessment (see, e.g., CJEU, C-156/21 Hungary v European Parliament and the Council of the European Union or the methodology of the EU Rule of Law Reports). It could therefore support the mobilisation of the EU rule of law toolbox for academic freedom protection.
Suggested citation: Olga Ceran, How the 2025 Update of the Venice Commission’s Rule of Law Checklist Matters for Academic Freedom, Int’l J. Const. L. Blog, Feb. 27, 2026, at: http://www.iconnectblog.com/how-the-2025-update-of-the-venice-commissions-rule-of-law-checklist-matters-for-academic-freedom/
[1] I would like to thank my colleague Emma de Vries for her comments on the draft of this post.