Verfassungsblog is a German-based, non-profit open-access platform for scholarly debate on public and constitutional law. Founded in 2009 by Maximilian Steinbeis as a blog, it has grown into a globally recognised forum publishing approximately 800 editorially reviewed articles annually from a community of over 3,500 contributing authors worldwide. Operating as a gemeinnützige GmbH (non-profit limited company), the platform is fully independent and reinvests all revenue into maintaining and developing its operations. It receives over 3.5 million visits per year and its weekly editorial newsletter reaches approximately 20,000 subscribers.

Verfassungsblog’s mission is to serve as a global forum of scholarly debate at the interface of academy and society, opening up debates in public law internationally, interdisciplinarily, and under open access principles. Coverage spans German constitutional law, EU law, international law, human rights, and democracy. The platform aims to make academic legal expertise accessible to both scholarly peers and the broader public, bridging the gap between legal scholarship and democratic society. All content is published under a CC BY-SA licence as Diamond Open Access — free for both readers and authors — with metadata, DOIs, and long-term archiving provided as standard.

Verfassungsblog is led by founder and executive director Maximilian Steinbeis and co-executive director Verena Vortisch. An in-house editorial team of qualified legal scholars manages submissions, review, and editing, supported by 26 associate editors with specialised expertise in specific areas of public and constitutional law. The platform’s funding rests on six pillars: academic library contributions, institutional cooperations, donations, project funding, publication fees for symposia and books, and advertising. Key institutional partners include the Center for Global Constitutionalism at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (MPIL) in Heidelberg. Over 52 libraries and institutions globally contribute to its Diamond Open Access mission.

Verfassungsblog publishes through several distinct formats: a daily blog timeline featuring expert analyses of topical constitutional law developments; online symposia (Verfassungsdebatten) gathering multiple scholarly perspectives on a single legal issue; Verfassungsbooks — edited volumes derived from symposia, available in print and as open-access digital editions; and a weekly editorial newsletter. Active special projects include VB Security and Crime (in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law), the Justiz-Projekt on judicial resilience, the Thüringen-Projekt on state-level constitutional developments, and the EU-funded FOCUS project on fundamental rights under the EU Charter. Project funding is also provided by the German Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space Travel (BMFTR) for open-access initiatives.