Contesting EU Law: Democracy, Over-Constitutionalisation, and the Role of National Constitutional Courts

Contesting EU Law: Democracy, Over-Constitutionalisation, and the Role of National Constitutional Courts

Over the past decades, it has become commonplace to critique the role of ‘integration through law’ as a mode of constructing the European Union. This court-centric and law driven dynamic has been criticised by scholars for depoliticising the integration project, exacerbating the democratic deficit of the EU and sustaining asymmetric and neo-liberal policy outcomes. Spearheaded by the German Constitutional Court, national constitutional courts have taken an important part in the critical chorus in an attempt to limit the expansion of EU law. At a time when the Court of Justice is increasingly asserting its authority as the ultimate guardian of the foundational values of the EU, critical perspectives on the relation between law and democracy seem more relevant than ever. Nonetheless, recent voices in scholarship have sought to rehabilitate the understanding of law as a reliable motor of European integration. This revisionist literature argues that the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice has invigorated the EU legislator and created political unity. In this roundtable discussion, we will reflect on the relationship between EU law, politics and national judiciaries in the present moment. We will consider whether the theory of the EU's ‘overconstitutionalisation’ is still valid, and revisit the role of national constitutional courts as the guardians of state-based conceptions of democracy.

A Conversation With

Nik De Boer, Associate Professor in Public Law, University of Amsterdam, and Affiliate Fellow, Faculty of Law McGill University 

Dieter Grimm, Senior Emile Noël Fellow, Jean Monnet Center, NYU School of Law, Professor of Public Law at Humboldt University Berlin and a former judge at the German Constitutional Court (1987-1998)

Introduction by J.H.H. Weiler, University Professor, Director, Jean Monnet Center 

Registration required: click here to register

Organised by

Jacob van de Beeten and Maciej Krogel, Emile Noël Post-Doctoral Fellows, NYU School of Law

Kindly sponsored by the Jean Monnet Center @NYU School of Law