This book offers insights into the legal mechanisms that are adopted in multilevel constitutional orders to accommodate the tension between contrasting interests of diversity and unity and the converging or diverging effects they may have on the functioning of a multilevel constitutional order. It does so by targeting mainly the European experience but also drawing insights from other jurisdictions. The volume draws on a well-rounded theoretical framework that allows a comprehensive discussion of the dialectics in multi-level systems.) It focuses on two of the most relevant areas of constitutional law, namely the setup of supranational institutions and the protection of fundamental human rights. Finally, the work presents a fresh legal take on the unity-diversity dichotomy. This collection is ideal for academics working in the fields of constitutional law, international law, federal theory, institutional design, management and accommodation of diversity, and protection of fundamental rights. Political scientists will also find the discussions very relevant as a foundation for further research in their field. Policymakers involved in constitutional engineering will be interested, as mechanisms of accommodation, convergence, and divergence are increasingly looked at as devices for managing multilevel polities.

This book offers insights into the legal mechanisms that are adopted in multilevel constitutional orders to accommodate the tension between contrasting interests of diversity and unity and the converging or diverging effects they may have on the functioning of a multilevel constitutional order.

The European Yearbook of Constitutional Law (EYCL) is an annual publication devoted to the study of constitutional law. It aims to provide a forum for in-depth analysis and discussion of new developments in the field, both in Europe and beyond. This fourth volume of the EYCL addresses the underexplored and contentious topic of whether the EU possesses a constitutional identity of its own. To date, the main focus of scholarship and case law concerns the constitutional identities of the Member States of the EU. This is because the EU has to respect such identities according to article 4(2) TEU. The attention for Member States’ constitutional identities stands in stark contrast to the notion of an EU constitutional identity. Such an identity features very little in the literature and debate on constitutional identity and the legal architecture of the EU. Consequently, this edition of the EYCL addresses the gap in legal research by studying constitutional identity with a focus on the EU itself. The book explores various views on whether the EU possesses such an identity and what any possible identity might entail. In this way, a fuller and more inclusive picture can be formed of constitutional identity as it relates to the multilevel constitutional order inhabited by the EU and its Member States. This volume will be of special interest to constitutional and legal scholars who are interested in EU and national constitutional law, as well as to political scientists. In addition, the book is relevant for judges, government officials, judges and policy-makers who work with EU (constitutional) law and its relationship with national (constitutional) law. Jurgen de Poorter is State Councillor at the Dutch Council of State and professor at Tilburg Law School, Department of Public Law and Governance. Gerhard van der Schyff is associate professor at Tilburg Law School, Department of Public Law and Governance. Maarten Stremler is assistant professor at Maastricht University, Faculty of Law, Department of Public Law. Maartje De Visser is associate professor at SMU School of Law, Singapore. Ingrid Leijten is professor at Tilburg Law School, Department of Public Law and Governance. Charlotte van Oirsouw is PhD researcher at Utrecht University, Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law.

This book offers the first thorough legal analysis of the practice of mixity since the Lisbon Treaty, providing the perspectives of international, EU, and national law. It sets out a detailed theoretical understanding of mixity, the common commercial policy, and the recent case law of the EU Court of Justice. It assesses recent practice and current challenges, such as the non-ratification of mixed agreements, ensuring parliamentary participation in EU treaty-making, the new architecture for concluding EU trade and investment agreements, as well as the new trade agreement between the EU and the UK post-Brexit. In so doing, the author argues that in the field of trade and investment, mixity is no longer a procedural technique to overcome legal uncertainties about competence allocations between the EU and the Member States. Instead, mixity has become a deliberate substantive design choice. This brings a fresh and innovative perspective to a key tenet of EU external relations law.

This collection presents an analysis of the concept of secession and its constitutional accommodation alongside an assessment of the effects of secession in constitutional and international law. The work proposes a new approach and insights into the existing literature that fill a gap from multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives. The book approaches the topics of secession, constitutionalism, and their relationship from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, including the analysis of particular secessionist examples, such as Catalonia, the Basque Country, Tigray, the Palestinian minority in Israel, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Mapuche Nation, from a comparative constitutional perspective. Elucidating these issues from different methodological and conceptual perspectives produces novelties in the scientific and constitutional debate. The interplay between constitutions, constitutional law, and secession is indeed explored from philosophical, socio-legal, but also from strict constitutional law outlooks. Written by constitutional and public international law experts, the book will be of interest to students, academics, and researchers working in the areas of constitutional law, legal theory, theory of the state, philosophy of law, and political science.

Marking the 50th anniversary of Bangladesh's Constitution, this book gauges its development from 1972 to 2022, focusing on its foundational goals, performances, and current challenges. The collection, presenting diverse but issue-specific chapters, shows how the people, political parties and leaders, and constitutional and legal institutions interact with each other in advancing, breaking, and remaking their Constitution. It examines the local context, parliamentary history, and interpretive tools adopted by the Supreme Court in understanding the Constitution as well as the future prospect of constitutional politics and practices. The work brings together legal professionals and constitutional law scholars to encapsulate the panorama of the country’s constitutional evolution. The authors look back to the history of constitution-making, to reflect critically on the present in light of the founding goals, spirits, and aspirations and with a view to offering a forward-looking and resilient vision of constitutionalism in Bangladesh. The book will be of interest to researchers, academics, and policy-makers working in the areas of comparative constitutional law and politics and South Asian Studies.

Addressing the tensions between the political and the legal dimension of European integration as well as intra-institutional dynamics, this insightful book navigates the complex topic of judicial politics. Providing an overview of key topics in the current debate and including an introductory chapter on different conceptions of judicial politics, experts in law and politics interrogate the broader political role of the European Court of Justice.

Presenting cutting-edge insights into the current state of EU legislation, this book addresses the profound changes that the EU’s legislature has undergone in recent years and how these shape the development of EU law. At the heart of this inquiry is how the strive for uniform EU legislation is balanced with the necessity to leave a certain degree of autonomy to Member States.

This book emerged from an extended seminar series held in Edinburgh Law School which sought to explore the complex constitutional arrangements of the European legal space as an inter-connected mosaic. There has been much recent debate concerning the constitutional future of Europe, focusing almost exclusively upon the EU in the context of the (failed) Constitutional Treaty of 2003-5 and the subsequent Treatyof Lisbon. The premise of the book is that this focus, while indispensable, offers only a partial vision of the complex constitutional terrain of contemporary Europe. In addition, it is essential to explore other threads of normative authority within and across states, embracing internal challenges to state-level constitutional regimes; the growing jurisprudential assertiveness of the Council of Europe regime through the ECHR and various democracy-building measures; as well as Europe's ever thicker relations, both with its border regions and with broader international institutions, especially those of the United Nations. Together these developments create increasingly dense networks of constitutional authority within the European space. This fluid and multi-dimensional dynamic is difficult to classify, and indeed may seem in many ways impenetrable, but that makes the explanatory challenge all the more important and pressing. Without this fuller picture it becomes impossible to understand the legal context of Europe today or the prospects of ongoing changes. The book brings together a range of experts in law, legal theory and political science from across Europe in order to address these complex issues and to supply illustrative case-studies in the topical areas of the constitutionalisation of European labour law and European criminal law.