Altneuland: The European Constitutional Terrain It is in many respects a New Land - for the first time the Union is openly, officially using the word Constitution in its formal self-understanding. But this, in turn, places it, at least lexically, in the age old terrain of constitutionalism which...

Abstract: On June 30, 2009, the German Constitutional Court declared the Lisbon Treaty to be compatible with the German constitution. The Lisbon decision marked the end of an intense constitutional battle. The following text illustrates how different views on and different understandings of...

The place and legal value of social rights in the EU Charter is only one episode (albeit a long drawn out episode, lasting since 2000)in the ongoing struggle about the ‘fundamentalisation’ of social rights, which is the subject of the contributions to this collective Working Paper. In the...

Abstract: As the distinction between interpretation and politics diminishes, the need for pluralism in interpretation increases. The Article argues, first, that the rule of law requires that no one tribunal possess the power to subordinate a whole legal system to its politicized rule. The...

The use of one and the same word, i.e. Justice in the English or French language to render the two concepts of Gerechtigkeit when the issue is about equitability or fairness in social relations, and of Justiz when the issue is about the administration of justice often leads lawyers to overlook...