The EU referendum has become is a form of displacement activity, a chance for the English voters to affirm their Englishness. If England votes for Brexit and Scotland to stay in the EU, the question will be whether the other EU Member States would accept Scotland – perhaps in a confederation with Northern Ireland – as a new or continuing EU Member State or even as the continuing UK.
The broad assumption in Europe is that member states of the European Union inherently have the capacity to implement EU legislation. This proceeds from the general understanding of Weber’s definition of the modern state as having a monopoly of legal violence within its territory. To this can be added the capacity of the state to “read” the population, to know through censuses, registers data bases who the inhabitants of the state are and, for that matter, where they are; the ability to impose taxes; and the capacity to sustain the uniform distribution of authority.
The frequent legal challenges to the European Union’s economic sanctions regimes have resulted in several judgments chiseling out key issues of EU law. Case C-72/15 Rosneft, which will be decided in the coming months, provides the European Court of Justice (ECJ) yet another opportunity to do so. In particular, the Rosneft case invites the ECJ to clarify its jurisdiction and power of judicial review over decisions taken by the Council under the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) – in the context of a reference for preliminary ruling.
The Polish Supreme Court and the Polish Supreme Administrative Court both have published resolutions to back the Constitutional Court in its conflict with the ruling PiS majority in Parliament. The statements from Poland's highest courts and the societal mobilization are first symptoms of a constitutional fidelity in the making.
The entire Brexit debate has been sadly misdirected as each side seeks to assert its own ‘statistical truth’. By contrast, no attention is paid to visions of how the global world, the EU and the UK within it, might be ordered for the good.
How independent is the Court of Arbitration for Sport, or the international sport governing bodies (SGB) in general? This question was at the heart of the Pechstein case before the German Federal Court (BGH). The BGH considers that the CAS is a true arbitral tribunal in the sense of German civil procedural law and that it is not structurally imbalanced in favour of the SGBs. In this blog post, I will aim at critically unpacking and deconstructing the four arguments the decision is based on, one by one.
In a little-noticed decision in April, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) significantly revised its approach to the doctrine of mutual trust among the member states. Even though the decision was issued only as an interpretation of the European Arrest Warrant, it will have profound consequences for the Area of Freedom Security and Justice more generally, including ongoing controversies concerning refugees.
Can “de-” be a modifier to describe the constitutionalism in a country? "De-constitutionalism" is what Prof. Kemal Gözler, a constitutional law scholar, has termed the current state of constitutionalism in Turkey. His argument is that constitutional bad faith practices employed by the constitutional institutions (mainly the executive, but also the judiciary) lead one to hold the view that there is no more a (valid) constitution in Turkey. Whatever it is termed, one thing is certain: that Turkey is undergoing a constitutional deadlock or crisis, and its indicators can be observed on many occasions.
As far as individuals are concerned, international problems can be tackled through increased tax cooperation and transparency. As to corporations, on the other hand, taxing multinational groups at arm’s length together with an increase of tax cooperation would not solve the problems of global tax law. In this case, the problem lies in the structural principles behind international taxation of multinational groups and, therefore, a reaction based only on tax transparency is clearly insufficient.
The ability of organisational insiders to speak up and disclose information in the public interest is at the core democratic values. It seems paradoxical then to punish and prosecute those who actively practice them. The time is ripe to establish a legal framework with clear requirements for protected disclosure that affords a wide protection to individuals who expose wrongdoing in the public interest.
13. September 2025
Giovanni Capoccia
12. September 2025
Anne Peters
12. September 2025
Anne Peters