The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is essential for nuclear disarmament and world peace. This chapter compares three dispute-settling mechanisms in the NPT legal complex using the Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA) as an example: political measures, non-compliance mechanisms (NCMs), and international courts and tribunals (ICTs). It evaluates the value of each mechanism to ensure Iran’s compliance with its commitments. The discussion includes NCMs like the JCPOA and the UN Security Council regimes and ICT proceedings like ICJ (International Court of Justice) and CJEU (Court of Justice of the European Union). Fact-finding processes at the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) are also emphasized. Finally, the relevance of these models for climate change, environmental protection, and creating a Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone is discussed.

EU law has a complex relationship with the concept of peremptory norms. On the one hand, the case law of the ECJ shows a pattern of ‘avoidance’ of peremptory norms of general international law, namely a reluctance by this Court to consider the legal effects of such norms in cases where they may be relevant. This is clear in the Kadi and Front Polisario/Western Sahara sagas. On the other hand, EU law has ‘assimilated’ the concept of peremptory norms more than it may seem at first sight. Indeed, it may be affirmed that EU law has its own system of peremptory norms. Such as system is based on norms and principles that have some of the defining features of the peremptory norms of general international law (including a system of enhanced responsibility for serious breaches of such peremptory norms). While, in analytical terms, this characterization does not matter much for EU law, it is certainly critical to the proposition that general international law does not exclude the existence of a regional jus cogens.

In this chapter the authors discuss their empirical research strategies through which innovative questions relating to the impact of language and multilingualism on the production of jurisprudence by the ECJ can be examined. Focusing specifically on the significance of language for Advocates General (AGs) at the ECJ, the authors examine how semi-structured interviews and corpus linguistics analysis can shine a light on processes within the ECJ that are otherwise invisible: semi-structured interviews are uniquely suited to uncovering otherwise invisible factors that impact the institutional culture of the ECJ; and corpus linguistics analysis can help to investigate whether those invisible factors can in fact be ‘seen’ in the output of that institution – its jurisprudence. The chapter demonstrates step by step how this unique research design can help to develop original objects of inquiry that speak to broader research questions relating to the impact of language on EU law more generally. By focusing specifically on the ‘added value’ of this type of empirical research to the body of work on the ECJ, the authors show how such methods can be used in an interdisciplinary way to gain a nuanced and rich understanding of the many layers that come together to produce EU jurisprudence.

The chapter offers alternatives to the current individualist understanding of privacy rights.

The chapter introduces the question of how EU privacy law understands personhood today. It gives an overview of data protection regulation and introduces the reader to the ECJ’s reasoning.

The change in the Founding Contract that political leaders initiated on 11 February 2010 put great pressure on the legal set-up of the euro that remained largely unaffected. When the European Court of Justice had to rule on the actions to which the change had given rise it consequently found itself between a rock and a hard place. It was not in a position to strike down actions that had been crucial to the single currency’s survival. Yet, in order to approve of them it had to engage in a Herculean struggle with the law that still largely reflected a stability conception from the past. This chapter examines this approval. Two cases are central: Pringle and Gauweiler. Both cases ultimately turned around the question whether and to what extent the law can accommodate the currency union’s new stability conception, characterized by the need to protect financial stability. Most of the Court’s reasoning in these cases is sound or, where it is strained, could have been justified through the use of different arguments. At one crucial point, however, the Court encounters the limits of what can be justified through legal reasoning alone.

The conclusion synthesizes the findings and, on that basis, discusses how the European Court of Justice should have positioned itself in relation to the change in the Founding Contract. It first reflects on the constitution of the Union and shows that this fits the tradition of the ‘constitutional contract’. It then discusses what consequences this has for constitutional actors, including the Court, when faced with a crisis like the one in the currency union. The initiation of the change in the Founding Contract by the heads of state or government on 11 February 2010 was a political act, an exercise of constitutional power outside the law. However, this exercise of political power does receive recognition in the law, in particular, through the principle of loyal cooperation. When the Court has to rule on a measure that has proven essential to preserve the Founding Contract in an emergency, it is under a duty of loyalty to abstain from disapproving it. Yet, instead of assessing and approving such measures on the merits, as the Court did in Pringle and Gauweiler, it should have acted on its duty by silence.

This prologue sets the scene by introducing the book’s main thesis that during the debt crisis, in particular, the years 2010-2012, the European Union has gone through a constitutional transformation. The transformation is characterised by a broadening of the currency union’s conception of stability. Its key manifestations are financial assistance for distressed member states and government bond purchases by the European Central Bank. The transformation can be understood through the lens of solidarity as this makes it possible to conceptualise the unity between the member states and to analyse how political leaders managed to uphold this unity during the crisis. And ultimately, it allows for an understanding of why instead of approving the transformation in Pringle and Gauweiler on the merits, the ECJ should have done so through silence.

The Directive on Damages Actions 104/2014 (the Damages Directive) has laid down a common European framework for the regulation of competition damages actions. It establishes fundamental principles, such as the right to compensation and the joint liability of antitrust infringers for such compensation. However, it explicitly avoids defining causation, thus leaving it to the domestic laws of member states. The only limit set by the EU law is the observance of the principles of equivalence and effectiveness, in line with what was already disposed by the CJEU in Manfredi. However, there are some principles addressing causation that can be found in European law and case law.

The exploitation of works or other subject matter of protection as provided for under Union law has, first and foremost, been set out in the all-embracing provision of article 3 of the InfoSoc Directive. In its first paragraph, article 3 applies to works of whatever kind and, in its second paragraph, to the related rights as enumerated therein.1