Stone Sweet on constitutional pluralism

A Cosmopolitan Legal Order: Constitutional Pluralism and Rights Adjudication in Europe

 

Abstract

The European Convention on Human Rights is rapidly evolving into a cosmopolitan legal order: a transnational legal system in which all public officials bear the obligation to fulfill the fundamental rights of every person within their jurisdiction. The emergence of the system depended on certain deep, structural transformations of law and politics in Europe, including the consolidation of a zone of peace and economic interdependence, of constitutional pluralism at the national level, and of rights cosmopolitanism at the transnational level. Framed by Kantian ideas, the paper develops a theoretical account of a cosmopolitan legal system, provides an overview of how the ECHR system operates, and establishes criteria for its normative assessment. 

Full text available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1913657

Rights Adjudication and Constitutional Pluralism in Germany and Europe

 

Abstract

The development of a corpus of fundamental rights at the EU level has accentuated the constitutional pluralism that existed within many national legal systems. Illustrating the dynamic, the adjudication of the age discrimination provisions of the 2000 Framework Directive on Employment Equality in Germany produced two major outcomes. First, interactions between the ECJ and the German labour courts served to upgrade rights protections afforded workers, relative to national constitutional standards. Second, the structural position of the German Federal Constitutional Court, as a privileged locus of rights protection, was weakened, while the authority of the labour courts and the ECJ was enhanced. Looking ahead, we are entering a new era of rights-based legal integration that will further serve to Europeanize national law, while undermining the unity and coherence of national legal orders. Co-authored with Kathleen Stranz (Hannover). 

 

Full text available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1913655