German Constitutional Court decision of 30 June 2009 on the compatibility of the Lisbon Treaty with the German Constitution – Overview of earlier case-law – Analysis of the judgment – Comparison with earlier case-law – The Court's reference to sovereignty – The concept of democratic legitimacy – Participation of the German Parliament – Transformation of the EU into a state – Creeping evisceration of state legislative authority – Assessment of the judgment

The ultra vires judgment of the Czech Constitutional Court in Holubec and its significance - Evolution and unfolding of Czechoslovak pension saga - Landtová judgment of the Court - Later developments and approaches of the various actors - Holubec as a revolt that did not take place - Broader structural implications for the preliminary ruling procedure and its reform - The functions of the preliminary rulings procedure - Atomisation of national judicial hierarchies and its consequences - Voice and representation before the Court - The role of governmental agent in proceedings before the Court - Law-making without representation - The position of constitutional courts in the European judicial system - When judicial cooperation turns uncooperative - Conceptualizing judicial non-cooperation and disobedience.

The Framework Decision to establish the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) entered into force on 1 January 2004. Since the adoption of the Italian law on 22 April 2005 transposing the Decision, it has been operational throughout the European Union. In its evaluation report of January 2006, the European Commission welcomes the arrest warrant as an ‘overall success’, as it provides for an effective and swift surrender procedure whilst guaranteeing judicial control and the observation of fundamental rights. National evaluation reports, such as the 30th report of the House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union, show that the arrest warrant is widely used to secure the arrest and surrender across the Union. The European Arrest Warrant seems to have largely taken over traditional extradition procedures.

European Union's ‘social constitution’ and bailout measures – Are the bailout measures EU law? – Do the bailout measures create legal obligations? – Legal nature of Memoranda of Understanding – Avenues for challenge – Call for recognition of the EU law nature of bailouts and the costs of such non-recognition

Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU – Multiple sources of fundamental rights in the EU legal system – Non-hierarchical, pluralistic understanding of their interrelationship – Case study: the right to good administration – Difficulties in defining the scope of the right to good administration under the Charter and that of the right to good administration as a general principle of EU law – Adoption of a pluralistic understanding of the EU fundamental rights’ sources allows for a clarification and improved understanding of the individual's rights in the EU legal system

An assessment of the ‘European Pillar of Social Rights’ by reference to its constitutional significance – Potential to significantly improve the social output of the EU by addressing the displacement of the Social Policy Title of previous years – Incapacity to redress the constitutional imbalance between ‘the market’ and ‘the social’ in the EU legal order – Continuing displacement of the (national and European) legislator in the internal market and economic governance

The rule of law as one of the core constitutional values of the EU legal order – The rule of law in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union – Jurisdiction of the Court on the basis of a combined reading of Articles 2 and 19 TEU – Protecting the rule of law in the Common Foreign and Security Policy – Protecting the rule of law in the member states in order to safeguard the structure and functioning of the EU legal order – Limits to the scope of application of EU law

Relationships between international, EU, domestic law – Different legal orders – Different jurisdictions – Validity, rank, effects of international law in EU legal order – Kadi – Court of First Instance in Kadi – Advocate-General in Kadi – European Court of Justice in Kadi – Pluralism concept of AG Maduro – European legal pluralism reconsidered

Economic governance – Financial assistance – Economic and monetary union – Patent litigation – Treaties between member states – Jurisdiction of the Court of Justice – powers of the EU institutions – Enhanced cooperation

Separation of institutions, functions and personnel – Checks and balances – Hungary, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia – Short tradition of separation of powers in Central Europe – Fragile interwar systems of separation of powers – Communist principle of centralisation of power – Technocratic challenge to separation of powers during the EU accession – One-sided checks on the elected branches and empowering technocratic elitist institutions – Populist challenge to separation of powers in the 2010s – Re-politicising of the public sphere, removing most checks on the elected branches, and curtailing and packing the unelected institutions – Technocratic and populist challenges to separation of powers interrelated more than we thought

Institutionalisation – Populism – Rule of law – Poland – Hungary – Post-communist reformers more given to emulation, adoption and installation, than institutionalisation – Institutionalised traditions as resources and sources of recalcitrance – New populists as institutionalisers of anti-rule of law values, de-institutionalisers of independent institutions – ‘Abusive constitutionalists’, who erode and subvert the kinds of institutionalisation necessary to temper power

Arguments in favour of a more explicit and clearer EU stance on secession from a member state – two different cases for secession and their implications – the inadmissibility of unilateral secession within the EU – consensual secession does not create a legal entitlement for automatic membership – the need to follow the route of Article 49 TEU – no need for a specific secession provision in EU treaties

Response of national highest courts to the ECJ's integrationist agenda – Logic behind qualified acceptance of EU law supremacy and direct effect – Several possible explanations for the observed inter-court variation: the courts’ type and organisation; their power to review legislative acts under domestic law; the rules governing access to the judicial forum; the monistic tradition of the legal system and the level of public support for European integration – Assessment of empirical validity of these hypotheses using a new dataset coding the doctrinal positions and institutional constraints of 34 domestic highest courts – Most correlations small – Only one variable – the power to review statutory legislation under national law – appears to have a significant influence on the courts’ doctrinal response to legal integration – Some support for the argument that the varying institutional constraints and incentives under which highest court judges operate shape the way they accommodate and reconcile two conflicting goals

Constitutional reform in Spain – Budgetary stability – Debt and deficit limits – Fiscal Compact – Six Pack – Two Pack – Fiscal federalism – ‘State of autonomies’ – Financing of the autonomous communities – Adoption of an ‘internal stability pact’

On 26 November 2008 the Czech Constitutional Court (hereinafter Court) handed down a long-awaited opinion in which it unanimously found the Lisbon Treaty (hereinafter Treaty) to be compatible with the Czech constitutional order. The decision has drawn broad attention at all levels, be it political circles, academia or even general public. It is certainly one of the most significant decisions in the Court's history and it has EU-wide implications.

Winner: national parliaments or European Parliament? – Differences between Lisbon Treaty and Constitutional Treaty – Latent rivalry – Lisbon innovation – National parliaments now actors in the Union? – Early warning mechanism as solution of compromise – Dual system of the two protocols: yellow and orange cards – Review – Compliance – Interparliamentary co-operation – Complexity of COSAC's involvement – Link between proportionality and subsidiarity – Conception of representative democracy – Position of the Court of Justice

EU Rule of law crisis – Article 2 TEU – EU values – EU fundamental rights – Freedom of speech – Member state courts – Interpretation of national law in conformity with Article 2 TEU values – Preliminary reference – Duty of referral – Criminal liability of judges – Reverse Solange – ASJP judgment – Judicial applicability of Article 2 TEU – Value-oriented interpretation of EU law – Mutual Amplification – Essence of EU fundamental rights – L.M. judgment – Aranyosi judgment – Federal balance – Red lines – Systemic deficiencies – Solange presumption – Mutual trust

Historical background of the Italian Constitution – Main features – Golden age of constitutional enforcement – Italian political renewal – Fathers and sons – The great reform proposal – The 2006 referendum – The upshot.