29 April 2024
Rebuilding the Rule of Law
The victory of the opposition in the parliamentary elections in Poland in 2023 followed by the formation of a coalition government paved the way for the rebuilding of the rule of law after a period of its systematic violation during the 8-year rule of PiS. The first four months of the new government have already shown that this process will not be easy. However, certain actions aimed at rebuilding the violated standards have already been taken. Three goals and values should be among the guiding principles in the process of rebuilding the rule of law in Poland: legalism, legal certainty, and building citizens' trust in public institutions. Continue reading >>
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20 December 2023
Militant Rule of Law
To protect the rule of law based legal system against abusive use of the loopholes, imperfections, contradictions of the law, to avoid legal inertia legal positivist arguments are needed to convince and mobilize the legal mind. The same applies when the blind fortune of democracy provides the opportunity to erase the legally enthroned injustice and domination of illiberal regimes. When it comes to legal enactments that serve legal cheating the rule of law must respond to systemic abuse of the law, and that requires and justifies a rule of law based exceptionalism and a systemic remedy. Continue reading >>10 July 2023
Restoring the Rule of Law By Breaching It
The judicial reform recently passed by the Hungarian Parliament ostensibly seeks to restore the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law in Hungary. Crucially, it is also a vital step for the government to gain access to the 27 billion in frozen EU funds. While some might think that the EU’s strategy has been successful, a closer look shows that while the reform has the potential of improving judicial independence, the procedure leading to its adoption shows that there is no real commitment to restore the rule of law. In particular, throughout the law-making process the government consistently flouted the principle of legality, including the requirement of transparent, accountable, democratic and pluralistic law-making. Continue reading >>
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31 January 2017
The Italian Constitutional Court in re Taricco: “Gauweiler in the Roman Campagna”
The Italian Constitutional Court’s Tarrico judgement is worded in apparently much milder terms than the BVerfG’s preliminary reference in Gauweiler. The content of the ICC’s decision, though, seems loaded with much more dynamite. In Gauweiler, the CJEU was called to interpret an act of another EU institution. In Taricco, the CJEU is called to reinterpret its own decision, after the ICC essentially asked “please, say it again?” Continue reading >>
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