lunedì 23 luglio 2012

Gentili on Supreme and Constitutional Courts in a comparative perspective


A Comparative Perspective on Direct Access to Constitutional and Supreme Courts in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America: Assessing Advantages for the Italian Constitutional Court



Gianluca Gentili 


University of Siena, Economic Law Department

March 1, 2011

Penn State International Law Review, Vol. 29, 2011 

Abstract:      
Part I of this article provides a comparative overview of the origins, structure and functioning of the systems of direct access to constitutional and supreme courts adopted worldwide, addressing Latin American, European, Asian and African jurisdictions, focusing on the structure of the individual constitutional complaint and on admissibility requirements.

Part II will then address possible benefits (if any) of the introduction of such such a system in Italy. After presenting the main features of the Italian system of judicial review, the article will describe proposals that, since 1947, have been presented to introduce a system of direct access to the Italian Constitutional Court in order to supplement the already existing avenues of access to the Court.

Part III will then offer some reflections on the actual advantages (if any) that adoption of such a system would bring to the Italian legal system, compared to the already existing incidenter control of constitutionality ("controllo di costituzionalita in via incidentale").
Number of Pages in PDF File: 55

sabato 14 luglio 2012

Turkey and the EU: Rethinking a Multifaceted Relationship


Turkey and the EU:
Rethinking a Multifaceted Relationship
Interdisciplinary Workshop
Hosted by Tilburg University, Netherlands
21-22 September 2012 

Registration is free but required, please contact
turkey-eu@uvt.nl




About the Workshop
It has been almost 50 years since the European Economic Community and Turkey signed the Ankara
 Association Agreement that was supposed to pave the way to full Turkish membership to today’s EU.
Yet, Turkey’s candidate status for membership was approved finally in 1999 and accession negotiations started only in 2005. Moreover, soon after the negotiations faced a stalemate due to Turkey’s refusal to extend the Turkish-EU customs union to the Republic of Cyprus and the EU’s resulting refusal to negotiate accession chapters with regard to internal market. Recent policy developments imply that if Turkish accession is taken seriously, the EU needs to find new strategies to re-energise the accession talks. 

Turkey’s role as a Muslim ‘leader of democracy’ renders her a natural partner to western forces to speak to the increasingly western-sceptic peoples of the Middle East, particularly in the wake of the Arab Spring. Likewise, due to its geopolitical position Turkey is seen an indispensable partner for European energy security. The EU Commissioner for Enlargement, Štefan Fühle, speaking on Turkish-EU relations, pointed out that ‘the EU has…repeatedly underlined the importance of progress in the normalisation of relations between Turkey and all European Union Member States, including Cyprus’.
 
Nevertheless, there are significant reasons to doubt whether it is realistic to expect a revitalisation in Turkish-EU relations
in the near future. The AKP government in Turkey is going through a confidence boost due to Turkey’s impressive economic performance as the world 17th economy and the party’s recent third consecutive election victory. Consequently,
the Turkish government perceives its relationship with the EU more and more as one between equals. This perception does not sit comfortably with the regular dynamics of accession. Likewise, although the EU has been ‘a vocal and often successful advocate for democratization’ in candidate countries (Kubicek 2011), it seems to have lost its leverage over the Turkish political system as illustrated in the 2010 constitutional reform experience. Finally, a number of EU Member States, most notably Austria, France and Germany, remain sceptical of Turkish EU membership due to sociopolitical reasons and campaign for an alternative privileged association framework. 

In the midst of these centripetal and centrifugal forces in Turkish-EU relations, we aim to take stock of the enlargement process and shine much-needed light on different aspects of Turkey’s EU accession. In previous accession negotiations the EU has been both ‘the main catalyst and constraining factor’ in regional integration (Bechev 2006). On this basis we aim to disentangle the Turkish-EU relations to detect what both sides can gain from accession and what reform steps have to be taken – both in Ankara and Brussels – to revitalise the Turkish accession talks.

Fabbrini on the Fiscal Compact


The Fiscal Compact, the 'Golden Rule' and the Paradox of European Federalism


Federico Fabbrini 


European University Institute - Department of Law (LAW) 

May 1, 2012

Abstract:      
The paper analyzes the central provision of the recently enacted Fiscal Compact, which directs member states of the European Union (EU) to incorporate into their constitutions a “golden rule”, i.e. a requirement that yearly budgets be balanced. The purpose of the paper is to examine – by surveying the introduction of these pervasive budgetary constraints in four selected states (Germany, France, Italy and Spain) – the institutional implications that the “golden rule” has on the role of the political and judicial branches, both in the states and in the EU. The paper argues that, while the domestic effects of the “golden rule” are likely to vary from one state to another, the Fiscal Compact systematically enhances the powers of the EU institutions to direct and police the budgetary policies of the states, thus increasing centralization in the EU architecture of economic governance. The paper contrasts this development with the federal experience of the United States (US). In a comparative perspective, in fact, it appears that while most US states are also endowed with “golden rules” in their constitutions, the federal government never played a role in the adoption of these balanced budget rules and still today is barred from interfering with the budgetary processes of the states. In conclusion, the paper suggests that an unexpected paradox emerges in the new constitutional architecture of the EU: although in crafting the institutional response to the Eurozone crisis state governments have repeatedly discarded a US-like federal model as being too centralized and centripetal for the EU, they have ended up establishing a regime that is much less respectful of state sovereignty than the US federal system.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 28
Keywords: EU, US, economic crisis, balanced budget, constitutions, federalism

giovedì 12 luglio 2012

Papeles de Derecho Europeo e Integración Regional

IDEIR


Papeles de Derecho Europeo e Integración Regional















Robert Schütze, European Constitutional Law, Paperback, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012 (ISBN-13: 9780521732758)


Il libro di Robert Schütze, intitolato European Constitutional Law (http://www.cambridge.org/aus/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521732758&ss=cop), si presenta come qualcosa di più di un semplice manuale di diritto dell'Unione europea; al contrario, si tratta di un vero e proprio affresco sullo stato del diritto costituzionale dell'Unione, frutto di anni di ricerca ed ennesimo prodotto di uno delle voci più interessanti nel panorama del diritto europeo.
Per quanto riguarda la struttura dell'opera, essa si compone di dodici capitoli divisi in tre parti: “history and structure”, “powers and procedures” e “rights and remedies”.

La riprova del fatto che Schütze non si sia limitato ad un volume per la didattica ma sia andato “oltre” viene fornita dall'utilizzo del suo imprescindibile approccio comparativo. Come in altre sedi (si veda la pregevole monografia sul federalismo europeo: From Dual to Cooperative Federalism. The Changing Structure of European Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009), l'Autore presenta il processo di integrazione europeo come un processo federativo e lo compara al caso statunitense, secondo una prospettiva che non rinnega la peculiarità europea ma che non cede nemmeno a quella non-teoria che è la c.d. sui “generis theory” (p. 66).
Come già scritto altrove Schütze si ricollega in questo modo alla “Integration through law scholarship”e agli studi europei praticati soprattutto oltreoceano da Stein.
L'approccio prescelto influenza anche la struttura del testo: infatti, come già da noi avvenuto nel libro, ad esempio, di Marta Cartabia e Joseph Weiler (L'Italia in Europa, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2000,http://www.mulino.it/edizioni/universita/scheda_volume.php?vista=scheda&ISBNART=07730), un intero capitolo è dedicato al principio di supremazia (si usa volontariamente, nel volume recensito, la formulasupremacy e non primacy, come a volere ribadire l'analogia con il federalismo americano) e, soprattutto, al concetto di  preemption.
Su questa scelta Schütze è molto chiaro e anche “polemico” nei confronti della manualistica tradizionale (si veda la nota 72 a pag. 364: “For an illustration of this point see: P:Craig and G. de Búrca, EU Law: Text, Cases and Materials...which dedicates one (!) out of over 1,100 pages to the doctrine of preemption: yet spends 45 pages on the supremacy doctrine. And to make matters even clearer: the previous edition of that well-known textbook contained not a single page specifically dedicated to the doctrine of preemption”).
C'è un'altra caratteristica che distingue il volume recensito dai principale manuali (quello di Craig e de Búrca, quello di Chalmers, Davies e Monti etc): la scelta precisa di non inserire pagine con estratti dalla giurisprudenza della Corte, di non fare “parlare” la Corte di giustizia ma di presentare piuttosto il tutto in un quadro discorsivo, in cui la Corte non gioca un ruolo primario nemmeno nella struttura del libro (essendo dedicata ad essa lo spazio riservato alle altre istituzioni, più un capitolo nelle pagine dedicate ai “remedies”).
Si tratta anche qui di una scelta di metodo ben precisa che si può condividere o meno ma che sicuramente conferma l'originalità dell'opera.
Si potrebbe discutere di eventuali mancanze (per esempio si nota l'assenza di un capitolo dedicato ad una branca emergente come quella del “diritto regionale europeo”, cosa strana per uno studioso che ha da sempre fatto del diritto costituzionale comparato la sua seconda “passione; un’altra mancanza é rappresentata da una scarsa attenzione data alle teorie costituzionali dell'integrazione che oggi rappresentano uno degli ambiti più vivi ed interessanti del settore) ma la verità é che questo volume colma un vuoto che nemmeno il libro di Rosas e Armati (EU Constitutional Law. An Introduction, Hart, Oxford, 2010,http://www.hartpub.co.uk/books/details.asp?isbn=9781849463201) avevano saputo colmare (limitandosi ad una raccolta di saggi su tematiche di respiro costituzionale poco collegati fra di essi).
Giuseppe Martinico

Presentazione del libro di Sabino Cassese "The global polity. Global dimensions of Democracy and the Rule of Law"



The new issue of the German Law Journal is online.
Full text available here: http://www.germanlawjournal.com/
The new issue of the Cambridge Journal of International and Comparative Law is online.
You can find the full text of the issue here: http://www.cjicl.org.uk/journal/issue/1/2

mercoledì 11 luglio 2012