Disasters shape both history and the present, raising fundamental questions about the state's responsibility to protect its citizens. Sebastian Bretthauer examines disaster management law from a constitutional and administrative-organizational perspective, focusing on the cooperative and coordinative structures of European and national disaster management. His analysis shows that the current legal framework governing the organization, cooperation, and coordination of disaster management is insufficiently differentiated, contains significant gaps, and is marked by legal uncertainty. Vague delineations of responsibility hinder the effective fulfillment of the state's duty to protect and lead to a dispersal of accountability. As a result, successful disaster response efforts often depend more on favorable circumstances and individual commitment than on a reliable and coherent legal framework.
The author develops criteria for an independent legal regime governing disaster management organization and outlines legal options for a framework of disaster management cooperation and coordination: constitutional reforms such as centralization or establishing a new joint task "disaster management," interstate treaties between the federal and state levels, and harmonization of state disaster management laws, for instance through a model act. The goal is to ensure an effective, legally sound, and cooperatively organized system of disaster management.