This two-volume book, published open access, brings together leading scholars of constitutional law from twenty-nine European countries to revisit the role of national constitutions at a time when decision-making has increasingly shifted to the European and transnational level. It offers important insights into three areas. First, it explores how constitutions reflect the transfer of powers from domestic to European and global institutions. Secondly, it revisits substantive constitutional values, such as the protection of constitutional rights, the rule of law, democratic participation and constitutional review, along with constitutional court judgments that tackle the protection of these rights and values in the transnational context, e.g. with regard to the Data Retention Directive, the European Arrest Warrant, the ESM Treaty, and EU and IMF austerity measures. The responsiveness of the ECJ regarding the above rights and values, along with the standard of protection, is also assessed. Thirdly, challenges in the context of global governance in relation to judicial review, democratic control and accountability are examined. On a broader level, the contributors were also invited to reflect on what has increasingly been described as the erosion or ‘twilight’ of constitutionalism, or a shift to a thin version of the rule of law, democracy and judicial review in the context of Europeanisation and globalisation processes. The national reports are complemented by a separately published comparative study, which identifies a number of broader trends and challenges that are shared across several Member States and warrant wider discussion. The research for this publication and the comparative study were carried out within the framework of the ERC-funded project ‘The Role and Future of National Constitutions in European and Global Governance’. The book is aimed at scholars, researchers, judges and legal advisors working on the interface between national constitutional law and EU and transnational law. The extradition cases are also of interest to scholars and practitioners in the field of criminal law. Anneli Albi is Professor of European Law at the University of Kent, United Kingdom. Samo Bardutzky is Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

This two-volume book, published open access, brings together leading scholars of constitutional law from twenty-nine European countries to revisit the role of national constitutions at a time when decision-making has increasingly shifted to the European and transnational level. It offers important insights into three areas. First, it explores how constitutions reflect the transfer of powers from domestic to European and global institutions. Secondly, it revisits substantive constitutional values, such as the protection of constitutional rights, the rule of law, democratic participation and constitutional review, along with constitutional court judgments that tackle the protection of these rights and values in the transnational context, e.g. with regard to the Data Retention Directive, the European Arrest Warrant, the ESM Treaty, and EU and IMF austerity measures. The responsiveness of the ECJ regarding the above rights and values, along with the standard of protection, is also assessed. Thirdly, challenges in the context of global governance in relation to judicial review, democratic control and accountability are examined. On a broader level, the contributors were also invited to reflect on what has increasingly been described as the erosion or 'twilight' of constitutionalism, or a shift to a thin version of the rule of law, democracy and judicial review in the context of Europeanisation and globalisation processes. The national reports are complemented by a separately published comparative study, which identifies a number of broader trends and challenges that are shared across several Member States and warrant wider discussion. The research for this publication and the comparative study were carried out within the framework of the ERC-funded project 'The Role and Future of National Constitutions in European and Global Governance'. The book is aimed at scholars, researchers, judges and legal advisors working on the interface between national constitutional law and EU and transnational law. The extradition cases are also of interest to scholars and practitioners in the field of criminal law. Anneli Albi is Professor of European Law at the University of Kent, United Kingdom. Samo Bardutzky is Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

What authority does international law really have for the United States? When and to what extent should the United States participate in the international legal system? This forcefully argued book by legal scholar Jeremy Rabkin provides an insightful new look at this important and much-debated question. Americans have long asked whether the United States should join forces with institutions such as the International Criminal Court and sign on to agreements like the Kyoto Protocol. Rabkin argues that the value of international agreements in such circumstances must be weighed against the threat they pose to liberties protected by strong national authority and institutions. He maintains that the protection of these liberties could be fatally weakened if we go too far in ceding authority to international institutions that might not be zealous in protecting the rights Americans deem important. Similarly, any cessation of authority might leave Americans far less attached to the resulting hybrid legal system than they now are to laws they can regard as their own. Law without Nations? traces the traditional American wariness of international law to the basic principles of American thought and the broader traditions of liberal political thought on which the American Founders drew: only a sovereign state can make and enforce law in a reliable way, so only a sovereign state can reliably protect the rights of its citizens. It then contrasts the American experience with that of the European Union, showing the difficulties that can arise from efforts to merge national legal systems with supranational schemes. In practice, international human rights law generates a cloud of rhetoric that does little to secure human rights, and in fact, is at odds with American principles, Rabkin concludes. A challenging and important contribution to the current debates about the meaning of multilateralism and international law, Law without Nations? will appeal to a broad cross-section of scholars in both the legal and political science arenas.

"These papers were first presented at the annual Round Table Conference of the International Association of Constitutional Law, held at the University of Turku, Finland from 23rd-24th May 1997"--Acknowledgements.

This volume makes a contribution to the ongoing lively discussion on European constitutionalism by offering a new perspective and a new interpretation of European constitutional plurality. The book combines diverse disciplinary approaches to the constitutional debate. It brings together complementing contributions from scholars of European politics, economics, and sociology, as well as established scholars from various fields of law. Moreover, it provides analytical clarity to the discussion and combines theory with more practical and critical approaches that make use of the constitutional toolbox in analysing the tensions between the different constitutions. The collection is a valuable point of reference not only for scholars interested in European studies but also for graduate and post-graduate students.

This volume explores the various strategies, mechanisms and processes that influence rule of law dynamics across borders and the national/international divide, illuminating the diverse paths of influence. It shows to what extent, and how, rule of law dynamics have changed in recent years, especially at the transnational and international levels of government. To explore these interactive dynamics, the volume adopts an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together the normative perspective of law with the analytical perspective of social sciences. The volume contributes to several fields, including studies of rule of law, law and development, and good governance; democratization; globalization studies; neo-institutionalism and judicial studies; international law, transnational governance and the emerging literature on judicial reforms in authoritarian regimes; and comparative law (Islamic, African, Asian, Latin American legal systems).

This book provides an in-depth guide to researchers and practitioners who are interested in analyzing the evolution of EU law from a national and comparative constitutional law perspective. The volume deals with questions of how EU Member States’ constitutional systems, including the subnational tier, interact with the supranational level. It maps the evolution over time of constitutional strategies in the face of multi-level governance and individuates contextual factors on an empirical basis. The volume includes twelve national reports written by leading experts in constitutional and EU law, and in political science. The countries discussed include the six founding Member States, together with a selection of Member States in which a clear-cut evolution in the national constitutional approach towards the EU can be observed. These include the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Portugal and the United Kingdom. The latter is included as an “extreme” case in which the change in constitutional strategy over time has resulted in withdrawing from the Union altogether. Taken together, the book assembles the building blocks of an explanatory theory of constitutional strategies in the face of multi-level governance. The volume will be of interest to students and researchers in comparative constitutional law, political science and multidisciplinary EU studies. It will also be a valuable resource for policy-makers.

The existence of interactions between different but overlapping legal systems has always presented challenges to black letter law. This is particularly true of the relationship between international law and domestic law and the relationship between federal law and the laws of individual federation members. Moreover some organisations have created their own supranational constitutional systems: the United Nations Charter is the best known, and is often referred to as the 'World Constitution', but the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg views the European Treaties as a 'Constitutional Charter' for Europe, while the European Court of Human Rights has defined the European Convention on Human Rights as a constitutional instrument of 'European public order'. It is in the dynamic relationship between domestic constitutional laws, EU law, the ECHR and the UN Charter that the most persistent difficulties arise. In this context 'interordinal instability' not only provokes strong academic interest, but also affects what has been called 'governance' or 'global government' and undermines both legal certainty and individual fundamental rights. Different solutions - constitutionalist and pluralist - have been explored, but none of them has received global acceptance. In this book Luis Gordillo analyses the interordinal instabilities which arise at the European level, focusing on three main strands of case law and their implications: Solange, Bosphorus and Kadi. To solve the difficulties caused by this instability Gordillo proposes a form of soft constitutionalism, which he calls 'interordinal constitutionalism', as a means to bring order and stability to global legal governance. The original Spanish thesis on which this book is based was awarded the Nicolás Pérez Serrano Prize by the Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, for the best dissertation in constitutional law 2009-2010.

The promotion of democracy is today a familiar feature of foreign policy, and an accepted part of the activities of international organizations. Should international law join in this move to promote democratic political arrangements? If so, on what basis, and with which of the many competingconceptions of democracy? Drawing on an eclectic range of source material, the author examines current debates about the emergence of an international legal 'norm of democratic governance', and considers how proposals for such a norm might be rearticulated to meet some of the concerns to which theygive rise. She also uses these debates to illustrate some more general points about approaches to the study of international law. In doing so, she seeks to defend an approach to international legal scholarship that takes its cue from the tradition of ideology critique.

For the time being, the political project of basing the European Union on a document entitled 'Constitution' has failed. The second, revised and enlarged edition of this volume retains its title nonetheless. Building on a scholarly rather than black-letter law account, it shows European constitutional law as it looks following the Treaty of Lisbon, with the EU's foundational treaties mandating the exercise of public authority, establishing a hierarchy of norms and legitimising legal acts, providing for citizenship, and granting fundamental rights. In this way the treaties shape the relations between legal orders, between public interest regulation and market economy, and between law and politics. The contributions demonstrate in detail how a constitutional approach furthers understanding of the core issues of EU law, how it offers theoretical and doctrinal insights, and how it adds critical perspective. From Reviews of the First Edition: "...should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to get a holistic perspective of the academic debate on Europe's constitutional foundations...It is impossible to present the richness of thought contained in the 833 pages of the book in a short review." Common Market Law Review "an enduring scholarly work, which gives an English-speaking audience important, and overdue, access to the long-standing and forever-vigorous traditions of (European) constitutional law... unhesitatingly recommend[ed]." European Law Journal "...real scholarship in the profound sense of the word..." K Lenaerts, Professor of European Law, Leuven