sabato 31 ottobre 2015

Call for papers: The Age of Austerity: A New Challenge for State Powers

Call for papers:

The Age of Austerity: A New Challenge for State Powers

The Europa Institute and the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law are pleased to announce the call for papers for a workshop on state powers in the age of austerity, to be held at the University of Edinburgh on March 30th 2016.

The workshop seeks to examine how the powers of the state are affected, A) in cases where austerity measures are prescribed to national governments by supranational organisations and B) in cases where austerity measures are imposed by central governments to devolved or federal administrations in composite systems.

Further into at: http://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2015/10/30/weekly-round-up-of-events-6/

giovedì 29 ottobre 2015

M Alvarez Caro y M Recio Gayo, Hacia un acuerdo Safe Harbour renovado para la transferencia internacional de datos entre EE.UU y la UE.

Hacia un acuerdo Safe Harbour renovado para la transferencia internacional de datos entre EE.UU y la UE
M Alvarez Caro y M Recio Gayo, full text available at:https://www.ucm.es/data/cont/docs/595-2015-06-15-Binder218.pdf

Ricardo Alonso García, Análisis crítico del veto judicial de la UE al CEDH en el Dictamen 2/13, de 18 de diciembre de 2014.

Análisis crítico del veto judicial de la UE al CEDH en el Dictamen 2/13, de 18 de diciembre de 2014. Ricardo Alonso García

Full text available at: https://www.ucm.es/data/cont/docs/595-2015-10-28-portada-ES.pdf

New Articles published in Perspectives on Federalism (just published in issue 2/2015)




Werner Vandenbruwaene, Patricia Popelier and Christine Janssens, "Article 260 TFEU Sanctions in Multi-Tiered Member States", http://www.on-federalism.eu/index.php/component/content/article/218-article-260-tfeu-sanctions-in-multi-tiered-member-states

Márk Némedi, "Ne bis in idem: a separation of acts in transnational cases?", available at: http://www.on-federalism.eu/index.php/component/content/article/216-ne-bis-in-idem-a-separation-of-acts-in-transnational-cases

Tommaso Visone, "International Dictatorship or International Democracy. A Discussion of Albert Camus’ 1946 Considerations", available at: http://www.on-federalism.eu/index.php/component/content/article/217-international-dictatorship-or-international-democracy-a-discussion-of-albert-camus-1946-considerations

Edward Grodin ,"An Internationally Intelligible Principle: Comparing the Nondelegation Doctrine in the United States and European Union", available at: http://www.on-federalism.eu/index.php/component/content/article/215-an-internationally-intelligible-principle-comparing-the-nondelegation-doctrine-in-the-united-states-and-european-union

sabato 17 ottobre 2015

The Faceless Court


Angela Huyue Zhang 


King's College London – The Dickson Poon School of Law

September 19, 2015

Abstract:      
This Article is the first to study EU competition law by examining the behavior of judges and their law clerks (officially entitled référendaires) at the Court of Justice of the European Union, against the unique institutional settings in Europe. The study is both quantitative and qualitative. It provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the background of judges and advocates general appointed to the Court since 1952. It is also the first to provide a statistical analysis on the background of référendaires. As the background of référendaires is not publicly disclosed, I hand-collected data from LinkedIn and created a dataset of 103 former référendaires and 74 current référendaires working for the Court. The study also benefits from a field trip I conducted in May 2014 and extensive interviews with former and current members and staff at the Court.

The Article has several major findings. First, the quality of EU judges varies significantly, due to a lack of procedural safeguards for appointment and a high salary that attracts political appointees. As a consequence, some judges are dominated by their référendaires. Second, both judges and référendaires, especially those at the General Court, face increasingly heavy caseloads owing to a number of inherent institutional defects. This increases the pressure on judges and their référendaires to compromise quality for quantity. It also means that more work must be delegated to référendaires. Third, référendaires are drawn from a relatively closed social network due to the lack of an open platform for recruitment. The inefficiency of the référendaire labor market results in less competition, leading many référendaires to stay longer at the Court. Meanwhile, the French style of judicial formalism increases the value of career référendaires, who become powerful conservative forces that resist changes and reform. Fourth, the revolving door between the Court and the Commission helps the latter exert influence on the Court from the inside and gain a comparative advantage in litigation. Fifth, the French legal tradition, with its emphasis on empowering the State rather than protecting individual liberty, has a dominant influence on EU judges. Meanwhile, référendaires come from a relatively homogeneous background and most of them are Francophones trained in the French legal system. Sixth, the division of labor between the lower court and the higher court creates divergent incentive structures for judges and référendaires working at different levels. While a small group of judges and référendaires at the lower court have an incentive to modernize the formalistic case law by introducing more economic analysis, they are unable to do so as the ruling could be struck down by the higher court. At the same time, while the higher court is in a position to innovate, many judges and référendaires there lack the incentive to do so as competition policy is peripheral to the constitutional law debate.

This Article further sheds light on understanding why the differences between US antitrust law and EU competition law have persisted, despite powerful forces of globalization and convergence. As institutional change is path-dependent, evolution within each of these systems is only gradual. The Article thus suggests that such a divergence is likely to persist in the future. Achieving a sound understanding of the Court is the key to legal reform. The Article concludes by contributing to the ongoing debate about how to reform the Court.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 56

Keywords: judicial behaviour, EU law, competition, antitrust, judges, legal tradition, path dependence, institution

lunedì 12 ottobre 2015

 How Much Better is Better Regulation?
Assessing the Impact of the Better Regulation Package on the European Union – A Research Agenda


Alberto Alemanno 
HEC Paris; NYU School of Law

October 11, 2015

European Journal of Risk Regulation, Issue 3, 2015 (forthcoming) 

Abstract:      
Emboldened by the Spitzenkandidaten process, the new European Commission emerges as the most political yet. The Commission asks EU citizens to judge its operation by its ability ‘to deliver solutions to the big issues that cannot be addressed by the Member States alone’. The Better Regulation Package translates this political commitment into an actionable approach assuring EU citizens that the Commission will remain ‘big on big things, small on small things’. To deliver on this promise, the Commission extends the Impact Assessment system, renews its consultation procedures and adds a few institutional mechanisms so as to enhance its ‘ability to deliver’ throughout the policy cycle. But in order to do so the Commission needs to bind – and somehow control – the European Parliament and the Council, on the one hand, and the Member States, on the other, in relation to their commitment to openness, participation and evidence-based policymaking. While legitimate, this attempt raises serious doubts about the compatibility of this reform with the principle of separation of powers and, in particular, that of institutional balance. 

A closer look at the Better Regulation Package reveals an entirely new understanding of the Commission’s own prerogatives and the way it intends to exercise its legislative and regulatory powers. And this in spite of the apparent continuity between the new and old Better Regulation initiatives and the instruments it had chosen to attain the declared objectives. 

With a view to lay out a future research agenda on EU Better Regulation, this article identifies the most immediate questions raised by the publication of the Package and makes a first timid attempt at addressing some of them. It aims at determining how much better, if any, is the new Better Regulation Package. It does so by discussing, first, the major novelties enacted by the Commission within its own Better Regulation system and, second, those proposed in the framework of the Interinstitutional Agreement on Better Regulation.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 24

Keywords: Regulatory reform, Better Regulation, Regulatory Scrutiny Board, Impact Assessment, REFIT, CBA, comparative institutional analysis, trilogues, trialogues, TTIP,

Full text available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2672559

venerdì 9 ottobre 2015

Call for papers "Bicameralism under Pressure: Constitutional Reform of National Legislatures"

2-3 May 2016, Global Symposium in Memory of Gabriella Angiulli on the topic "Bicameralism under Pressure: Constitutional Reform of National Legislatures". Deadline for submitting an abstract: 30 November 2015.

A Global Symposium in Memory of Gabriella Angiulli

Bicameralism under Pressure:
Constitutional Reform of National Legislatures
LUISS Guido Carli University
Viale Romania 32
Rome, Italy
Monday and Tuesday, May 2 and 3, 2016
Presented by

The Center for Parliamentary Studies, LUISS Guido Carli University of Rome
in cooperation with
The University of Milan, Department of National and Supranational Public Law
The International Society of Public Law (ICON-S)
The Younger Comparativists Committee (YCC), American Society of Comparative Law

Convened by
Cristina Fasone
Antonia Baraggia
Richard Albert 

venerdì 2 ottobre 2015

Trust, Social Capital and Networks: A different perspective on Intertional Courts - Call for papers

Taken from http://jura.ku.dk/icourts/calendar/trust-social-capital-and-networks

iCourts Call for Papers: 4-5 February 2016, Copenhagen, Denmark Trust, Social Capital and Networks: A Different Perspective on International Courts (pdf)

Organised by iCourts, Centre of Excellence for International Courts.

The workshop, which will take place in February 2016 at iCourts, University of Copenhagen, aims to provide participants with the opportunity to think through and develop a new research agenda on social capital, networks and trust to be applied to understand International Courts and legal regimes.

While concepts of social capital, networks and trust are increasingly used in the study of International Courts and Law, the discipline still lacks a systematic analysis of the role, limits and uses of these concepts for the study of International Courts (ICs). The current discussions of trust, social capital and networks have evolved in separate spheres, circumscribed to a specific court or legal institution. This situation shows a fragmented conceptualization, preventing the creation of common conceptual frameworks, which could promote mutual understanding and exchanges among scholars in the field.

iCourts, committed to the promotion of the interdisciplinary perspective in the area of International Courts and Law, is inviting participants from several disciplines with an interest in International Courts to a high-level interdisciplinary discussion of the topic. This would allow for cross-fertilization, exchange of opinions and knowledge between the academics but also for the critical assessment of the new tools which the scholars use to scrutinize these concepts in the context of ICs. By doing this, the workshop will hopefully contribute to a wide-ranging discussion. This includes not only general theoretical approaches and concepts but also comparative and specific case studies based on original and innovative empirical evidence of how these concepts are or can be applied to several international courts and legal regimes (e.g. International Criminal Court, European Court of Justice, European Court of Human Rights, WTO dispute settlement system, arbitration bodies, and national courts, among others).

In order to frame the debate and papers, we ask paper-givers to reflect about: To what extent are these concepts applicable for the study of ICs? Can we agree on a common definition of these terms? How can these concepts help to explore the dynamics behind the creation, empowerment and legitimization of ICs in the global and domestic context and its success? Which empirical indicators are useful to investigate trust, social capital and networks in ICs? And, finally, how these new theories and concepts might contribute or challenge our current understanding of international courts and/or scholarship?

The conference will include papers presented by invited participants, as well as papers selected in the course of the present call for papers. We will seek to publish a selection of the papers in a special journal issue or book.

Paper submission
The workshop will be open to new participants PhD researchers, junior and senior scholars from international institutions working on this topic with an empirical approach. The papers should deal with specific topics related to the overall theme “Trust, social capital and networks in International Courts”. The selection will seek to ensure a balanced representation of the various ICs across the glove, disciplines (sociology, law, political science, etc.) and methods. – The proposal (approx. 300 words) should be submitted by the 15th of October 2015 and include:

Title of the paper
Research question
Methodology and data
Expected findings
The proposals should be submitted with curriculum vitae of the author/s to Juan A. Mayoral – juan.mayoral@jur.ku.dk

Financing
Authors of selected papers will be offered accommodation in a hotel in Copenhagen; lunches and coffee breaks will be covered for all the participants by iCourts.

giovedì 1 ottobre 2015

STALS Newsletter September 2015

Dear friends and colleagues,

we are pleased to announce the contents of this new STALS newsletter.

STALS Research Paper
G. Martinico, “Constitutionalism, Resistance and Openness: Comparative Law Reflections on Constitutionalism in Global Governance”, STALS Research Paper 5/2015,
http://www.stals.sssup.it/files/martinicoSTALS.pdf

Book Symposium
G. Delledonne- J. Pinheiro Faro Homem de Siqueira (eds.), “The Tangled Complexity of the EU Constitutional Process': A Symposium”,
http://stals.sssup.it/files/Special%20Symposium.pdf

STALS events
5 October 2015
Francisco Pereira Coutinho
“Austerity under scrutiny: the case law of the Portuguese Constitutional Court in times of crisis”
http://stals.sssup.it/files/coutinho.pdf

13 October 2015
Filippo Fontanelli
“The mythology of proportionality in the constitutional case-law of the Court of Justice of the EU”
http://stals.sssup.it/files/fontanelli.pdf 

27 November 2015
Aida Torres Pérez
“Levels of rights' protection: the Charter as a floor and a ceiling?”
 http://stals.sssup.it/files/Aida%20Torres.pdf

All the best from Pisa,

the Editors