Judge-made law has played a crucial role in the process of European integration. In the vertical dimension, it has greatly reduced the range of autonomous policy choices in the member states, and it has helped to expand the reach of European competences. At the same time, however, "Integration...

In order to be simultaneously effective and liberal, governments must normally be able to count on voluntary compliance - which, in turn, depends on the support of socially shared legitimacy beliefs. In Western constitutional democracies, such beliefs are derived from the distinct but coexistent...

The function of legitimacy is to ensure voluntary compliance with unwelcome exercises of governing authority. Since practically all European law needs to be implemented and enforced by the governments and courts of the member states, the EU does not have to face its citizens directly. It follows...

European integration has created a constitutional asymmetry between policies promoting market efficiencies and policies promoting social protection and equality. National welfare states are legally and economically constrained by European rules of economic integration, liberalization, and...

The European Monetary Union (EMU) has removed crucial instruments of macroeconomic management from the control of democratically accountable governments. Worse still, the EMU has systemically caused destabilizing macroeconomic imbalances that member states found difficult or impossible to...