The limits of legal accountability of the European Central Bank

This article will focus on the state of legal accountability in the relation between the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) and the European Central Bank (“ECB”) as developed after the unfolding of the so-called Euro Crisis. The underlying hypothesis behind this analysis is twofold: the 2008 crisis has marked a remarkable change in the constitutional balance of the Eurozone, and as a consequence the constitutional function of the ECB has emerged and become visible. To detect these changes, three cases will be discussed in order to show that there has been a shift in the ECJ’s interpretation of the Treaty on the European Union (“TEU”) and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (“TFEU”) (“the Treaties”)1 and, accordingly, of the role of the ECB. The reaction to the Euro crisis has shown that the ECB cannot be deemed to be only an administrative independent agency, but it should be treated as an organ with constitutional functions, whose role has systemic implications for the stability of the European Union itself.2 Such recognition implies that the ECB’s decisions ought to be treated not only procedurally, but in a genuinely political and constitutional way

The normativity of code as law: towards input legitimacy

In the debate on how the new information and communication technologies impact on democratic politics the role played by the digital architecture seems to be surprisingly underrated. In particular, while a lot of attention has been paid to the possibilities that new technologies open up to democratic theory, few works have attempted to look at how democracy may help in shaping technologies. By adopting as a starting point the approach known as ‘code as law’, the paper aims at two objectives: to re-affirm the importance of discussing normative principles to guide the process of code writing in order to reinvigorate the debate; to claim the importance of input reasons when deciding which principles should be chosen. After having remarked that code is relevant for establishing democratic norms, the paper briefly tackles with the main attempts by European scholars to deal with this issue. Then, a couple of practical examples of how code impacts on democratic rights are sketched out. In the last section of the paper a shift from an output-based approach to the legitimacy of code to an input-based is openly advocated: an inquiry into the legitimacy of code should focus on its production

Introduction to the material study of global constitutional law

The article addresses the question of how to study global constitutional law by suggesting a material methodology. Drawing from previous studies of the notion of the material constitution, both from materialist and institutionalist types (Marx, Mortati, Poulantzas), the article proposes to look at the development of global constitutional law, in its many instantiations, in terms of its relation with the state. Accounts of the autonomy of global constitutional law are requalified in terms of relative autonomy. More specifically, global constitutional law is conceived as a legal construction functional to the transformation of the contemporary state. From the perspective of the material study of constitutional law, the state is still deemed to be the main unit of analysis, but, at the same time, state-centred accounts based on an exceptionalist understanding of sovereignty are rejected as reductive and, at times, inaccurate

The early warning system and the monti II regulation: the case for a political interpretation

Human rights protection - Proportionality - Deference - Procedural rationality - Process-review - Interplay national courts and Strasbourg court

A sense of self-suspicion: global legal pluralism and the claim to legal authority

Legal pluralism has become common currency in many contemporary debates on law and globalization. Its main claim is that a form of global legal pluralism represents both the most accurate description of law in times of globalization and the best normative option. On the descriptive level, global legal pluralism is considered more reliable than state-based accounts. On the normative level, global legal pluralism is understood as a possibility to open up the legal realm to previously unheard voices. This article assesses these claims against the background of classic legal-pluralist scholarship. After reconstructing the emergence of global legal pluralism and then examining its epistemic and normative versions, the last two sections identify the shortcoming of this approach by underlining the absence of what the authors call ‘a sense of self-suspicion’ in drawing the map of legalities in the global sphere. The main argument put forward is that global legal pluralism is oblivious of a few key insights offered by the founding fathers of classic legal pluralism

Staging conflicts in constitutional pluralism

No abstract available

Constitucionalismo politico y el valor de la toma de decisiones constitucionales

El debate sobre el constitucionalismo político ha descuidado por completo la dimensión de la toma de decisiones constitucionales. Esto se debe probablemente al hecho de que esta dimensión, por lo general, trae consigo consecuencias indeseadas como la consagración de derechos o estructuras constitucionales. Estos resultados no respetan el desacuerdo razonable entre los ciudadanos, ya que violan el único sistema justo para la solución de desacuerdos: regla de la mayoría y derecho de voto igualitario. El artículo sostiene que los constitucionalistas políticos debieran lamentar esta ausencia de toda consideración sobre la toma de decisiones constitucionales. O ellos están pasando por alto algunos problemas inherentes al proceso electoral que se supone debe ocuparse del desacuerdo o, peor aún, ellos están restando importancia a los efectos de la consagración constitucional de los procesos políticos ordinarios, al ignorar las propiedades redentoras de poder constituyente. En ambos casos, sus propuestas socavan la dimensión política del constitucionalismo

Politiche del codice. Architettura e diritto nella teoria di Lessig

L’analisi degli aspetti più innovativi del pensiero di Lawrence Lessig, e in particolare la messa in luce del rapporto fra diritto ed architettura nello spazio digitale, mostra la necessità per le società contemporanee di dotarsi di una “politica” del codice