15 November 2016
The EU and Poland: Giving up on the Rule of Law?
With an off-hand remark in a Belgian newspaper, President Juncker has called off the EU Commission's effort to pressure Poland into following the rule of law. If he went through with this, he would not only pull the rug from under his own First Vice President Timmermans and spare the national governments the necessity to live up to their responsibilities. The Commission President deciding that the slide of a member state into authoritarianism is not his business, with a Trump Presidency in the US coming, forgoes the European Union's claim to be capable of fulfilling its leadership role in the world. Continue reading >>
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11 November 2016
Religious Installations in French City Halls: A Christmas Crib Story
Christmas, in certain circumstances, has its place in the Republic. Judges have agreed in a plenary session reviewing two different Court of Appeal cases (courtyard of Melun’s town hall and hall of the departmental council of Vendée) that a Christmas crib in a public building doesn’t a priori represent a threat to secularism. In fact, the installation is legal, says the Conseil d’Etat, provided that particular circumstances give it « a cultural, artistic or festive character ». The decision is questionable for two main reasons: its foundation is doubtful, and its outcome unsatisfactory. Continue reading >>
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National Constitutional Identity in the European Constitutional Project: A Recipe for Exposing Cover Ups and Masquerades
On November 8, 2016 the Hungarian Parliament did not adopt the Seventh Amendment of the Fundamental Law seeking to protect Hungarian constitutional identity in the face of European imposition. The Seventh Amendment was meant to cover up the minor scratch on the Government’s pride caused by lack of popular support for its relentless fight against the EU. Although the Amendment did not pass, supporters of European constitutional projects cannot afford to sit back and relax. Continue reading >>10 November 2016
Thirteen Theses on Trump and Liberal Democracy
No one wants to go down in the history books like those fools who said in the 1930s, "well, Hitler isn't such a bad chap really..." Protecting our egos from the imagined judgment of prosperity, the cautious course is to predict the worst for the Trump Presidency, the very destruction of the American constitutional regime, the collapse of liberal democratic values. I however am willing to risk being proven a fool, so here goes... Continue reading >>The Paradox of Liberal Constitutionalism: a Call for Communal Constitutionalism
We should be careful when we embrace the new transnational paradigm. If dialogue can take place, this must not forget that constitutionalism's soul must be looked for at the local level, not in the fluid transnational arena - beyond the seemingly neutral vocabulary of technocracy, and reaching out to a physical space where claims can be put forward, resources allocated, boundaries defined, and decisions contested, within touching distance. Continue reading >>The Big Picture
In Europe, UK, and USA constitutional structures are proving unfit to respond to the challenges of the XXI century. Now is the time to ride on the constitutional moment for the all three of them. Continue reading >>Die Geister der Vergangenheit ‒ Eine kritische Reflexion zur Kunduz-Entscheidung des BGH
Das Urteil des Bundesgerichtshofs zu der Frage, ob zivile Opfer von militärischen Einsätzen der Bundeswehr im Ausland Deutschland auf Schadensersatz verklagen können, hat viel Aufsehen erregt. Jetzt sind die Entscheidungsgründe einsehbar und erlauben eine detailliertere Auseinandersetzung, die vor dem Hintergrund der erheblichen Implikationen der betreffenden Entscheidung mehr denn geboten erscheint. Kritik an dem Urteil des BGH ist nicht nur aus völkerrechtlicher, sondern vor allem aus verfassungsrechtlicher Perspektive angebracht. Continue reading >>On the Slippery Slope to a ,People’s Court’
Writes Matej Avbelj in High time for popular constitutionalism!, ‘The majority in our societies seems to be increasingly disconnected with the liberal values that especially the legal academia, but also the ruling political class – at least on a declaratory level – have taken for granted…’ Living as I do in the country in which one sees an increasing distaste for the European Convention of Human Rights and regular media criticism of the ‘unelected judges’ in Strasbourg – and that despite the fact that the judges of the Court are, in fact, elected from a slate of three by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe – I cannot help wondering whether the disconnect is anything very new. Continue reading >>
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A Crisis of Representation
The failure to offer a serious alternative to the current maladies of capitalism should not be construed as a constitutional crisis. Continue reading >>09 November 2016
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters
Part of the malaise surrounding our contemporary world is a tendency to view constitutional politics, to borrow Goethe’s metaphor, as architecture rather than music; as fixed and immutable rather than a dynamic phenomenon which requires the ongoing assertion and reassertion of the key values and terms of engagement of our mutual interaction with each other and with authority. Six practical suggestions how to defend our constitutional values. Continue reading >>High time for popular constitutionalism!
Not long ago the advent of illiberal democracy has been announced. It has been mocked, downplayed, but also seriously critically engaged with, including by the authors of this blog. However, since the idea has come from marginal countries in the European East, from Hungary, Poland, but also Slovenia and the likes, it has not been really perceived as an objective threat to the Western constitutional order. The election of Donald Trump, not for who he is, but what he has been standing for, must change this. Continue reading >>08 November 2016
Miller, Brexit and the (maybe not to so evil) Court of Justice
As strange as this might sound, hardcore Brexiteers have now their closest and most reliable ally not at home. But in what they have considered to be, all these years, the evil, monstrous, devilish, undemocratic, unelected, corrupt and dictatorial Court of Justice of the European Union. Continue reading >>The Article 50 Litigation and the Court of Justice: Why the Supreme Court must NOT refer
Is the UK Supreme Court in the current Brexit case obliged to refer to the Luxembourg Court? If that were the case, the conformity of any Member State’s EU exit with its own constitutional requirements would be open to review by the CJEU – and hence could no longer be qualified as an act of self-determination since a EU institution would have the final say on it. Continue reading >>07 November 2016
Geert Wilders’ “Incitement to Discriminate” Trial
Months before the parliamentary elections in the Netherlands, the leader of the far-right Freedom Party and election favorite Geert Wilders finds himself before a criminal court. He is charged with insulting and inciting discrimination against residents of Moroccan descent by promising his supporters "fewer Moroccans" in 2014. Wilders and his defence seem to invoke the theory of the ‘marketplace of ideas’, which is a common line of thinking in United States First Amendment law. The principal standard for Dutch courts however, the European Convention of Human Rights, takes a somewhat different stance. Continue reading >>
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06 November 2016
The Article 50 Litigation and the Court of Justice: Why the Supreme Court must refer
Article 50 TEU says that member states decide to withdraw from the Union "according to their own constitutional requirements". It is for the Luxembourg Court to clarify what this means. Thus, in the current case on Brexit the UK Supreme Court is obliged to refer to the European Court of Justice. One could argue that this should never have been made a Union problem. But it was, and, like it or not, that makes it the Court of Justice’s problem too. Continue reading >>Who Speaks in the Name of the People?
The practice of using a referendum to justify the power of the executive has been used and abused throughout history. Napoleon who ruled like a plebiscitarian monarch can serve as the best counter example for contemporary liberal democratic regimes. All the institutions of the government, the executive, the parliament and the judiciary speak in the name of the people in our conception of the western democratic constitutionalism. It is only thanks to the checks and balances that the separation of powers provides in a conception of collaborative constitutionalism that we can avoid practices of misusing references to a supposed democratic legitimacy in view of derailing the operations of the government in a direction that is entirely out of control of democracy itself. Continue reading >>
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Brexit, Democracy and the Rule of Law
The decision of the High Court in London this week was a ruling not on whether Brexit should happen, but on how it can happen lawfully. There is nothing at all in the court’s judgment to block the will of the people, to reverse the result of the referendum, or to get in the way of Brexit. Nor is there anything inappropriate in turning to the courts to determine how Brexit can proceed in accordance with the rule of law. That said, as a lawyer I think the court’s ruling is wrong. Continue reading >>05 November 2016
PKW-Maut: Kein Sieg der CSU über die EU-Kommission
Im Streit um die PKW-Maut hat die Lösung einer Kombination mit einer Neuordnung der KFZ-Steuererhebung, die sich im Geist der Zeit wohl nur an der Umweltfreundlichkeit der Fahrzeuge orientieren kann, von Anfang an existiert. Eine 1:1-Erstattung, wie sie der CSU vorschwebte, kann es aber auch unter diesem System nicht geben. Continue reading >>03 November 2016
The High Court’s Judgment in Miller and Others – four brief remarks
Today’s decision by the High Court of England and Wales that the UK Government did not have the power under the Royal Prerogative to initiate the process of withdrawing from the EU laid down in Article 50 TEU came as a surprise to many. Four brief remarks on what the decision might entail politically. Continue reading >>
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Sovereignty means Sovereignty: Über den Verlust von Rechten entscheidet das Parlament
Großbritannien darf erst nach einem Parlamentsbeschluss aus der EU austreten. Das hat der englische High Court auf eine Klage von Bürgern hin entschieden. Bleibt die Entscheidung bestehen, könnte sie den Zeitplan für den EU-Austritt durcheinander bringen, noch bevor dieser eigentlich begonnen hat. Verhindert wird der Brexit aber höchstwahrscheinlich nicht mehr. Continue reading >>
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The High Court’s Brexit Decision: A Lesson in Constitutional Law for the UK Government
In today's Brexit decision, the High Court has delivered a tutorial on the UK constitution, exemplary in its clarity and reasoning. Its key finding: the government cannot take away rights that citizens enjoy in the EU and would be lost on withdrawal without involving Parliament. In failing to understand the constitution of its own country, the government was taught an embarrassing lesson today. Continue reading >>Is the US Constitution to blame for the Rise of Donald Trump? An Interview with SANFORD LEVINSON
"My view is that things will get worse before they get worse. Assuming Clinton wins, there will be tremendous relief and elation on November 9th. If the Republicans keep the House, on November 10th there will be the realization that this election is the most important election in our lifetimes only because of the rejection of Donald Trump. He is a real menace, of course. But in terms of an election that really breaks the logjam, no: It will be more of the same. More of this sick feeling that the national government is really incapable of responding to challenges except if Presidents can push the envelope of executive power, which will just fuel the rage of the opposition party." Continue reading >>
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Ist die US-Verfassung schuld am Aufstieg von Donald Trump? Ein Interview mit SANFORD LEVINSON
"Meine Ansicht ist, dass die Dinge schlimmer werden, bevor sie schlimmer werden. Unterstellt, Clinton gewinnt: Es wird enorme Erleichterung und Freude am 9. November geben, aber wenn die Republikaner das Abgeordnetenhaus halten, wird schon am 10. November die Erkenntnis einkehren, dass diese Wahl die wichtigste Wahl in unserem Leben allein deswegen war, weil wir Donald Trump verhindert haben. Er ist eine echte Bedrohung, natürlich. Aber was die Erwartung betrifft, durch die Wahl den Reformstau aufzulösen, nein: es wird nur mehr vom Gleichen geben. Mehr von diesem elenden Gefühl, dass die nationale Regierung nicht wirklich in der Lage ist, auf Herausforderungen zu reagieren…" Continue reading >>02 November 2016
Why all Member States should clarify their Constitutional Requirements for Withdrawing from the EU
The UK’s ‘chaotic Brexit’ may perhaps be the inevitable result of being the first state to even contemplate withdrawal from the European Union. Regardless, the other Member States can now look to this uncertainty as something to avoid. By contrast to the United Kingdom’s current situation, they should look to the clarity of procedure for legitimate secession in Canada and seek to provide a similarly exhaustive statement of how the ‘constitutional requirements’ of Article 50 would be fulfilled in their own constitutional orders. Continue reading >>
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31 October 2016
Das CETA-Ratifikationsgesetz bedarf nicht der Zustimmung des Bundesrates!
…jedenfalls nicht deswegen, weil Interessen der Länder berührt wären, und schon gar nicht, weil einzelne Landesregierungen CETA verhindern wollen, koste es, was es wolle. Continue reading >>Systemic Threat to the Rule of Law in Poland: What should the Commission do next?
Considering the overwhelming evidence of a deliberate governmental strategy of systematically undermining all checks and balances in Poland as well the uncooperative behaviour of Polish authorities, the Commission has been left with no other choice but to trigger the Article 7 mechanism. Even if there is no realistic chance of seeing the Council adopting sanctions against Poland, this step would finally oblige national governments, meeting in the Council, to face up to their own responsibilities. Continue reading >>28 October 2016
Eine kritische Würdigung der BND-Reform
In der Gesamtschau zeigt sich, dass die am Freitag beschlossene BND-Reform zahlreiche gravierende Schwachstellen aufweist. Trotz aller Kritik dürfte sich das Fenster für weitreichende durch den Gesetzgeber initiierte Reformen des BND jedoch nun erst einmal wieder geschlossen haben. Continue reading >>
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26 October 2016