This book examines the European system for the protection of fundamental rights. The aim is to identify the constitutional dynamics that occur as a result of the interaction between state and transnational human rights standards. Fabbrini compares the European system with the US federal system based on four case studies.
This book analyses the new architecture for the protection of fundamental rights in Europe after the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. As a starting point, it identifies how the EU has gained a prominent role in promoting and protecting fundamental rights at European level despite the absence of an unlimited mandate to address fundamental rights violations. This new setting affects the traditional relationship between the EU, the ECHR system and the Member States and, in the absence of EU accession to the ECHR, enhances the risk of tensions and conflicts between the case law of the two European Courts. Examples of these tensions and conflicts are explored in the Area of Freedom Security and Justice, which is one of the most fundamental rights-sensitive areas of EU law and one of the busiest areas of activity for the CJEU. The book offers new insights into existing rules on the resolution of conflicts between EU and ECHR law before mapping out techniques actually used by domestic courts to avoid or address such conflicts.
This book analyses the new architecture for the protection of fundamental rights in Europe after the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. As a starting point, it identifies how the EU has gained a prominent role in promoting and protecting fundamental rights at European level despite the absence of an unlimited mandate to address fundamental rights violations. This new setting affects the traditional relationship between the EU, the ECHR system and the Member States and, in the absence of EU accession to the ECHR, enhances the risk of tensions and conflicts between the case law of the two European Courts. Examples of these tensions and conflicts are explored in the Area of Freedom Security and Justice, which is one of the most fundamental rights-sensitive areas of EU law and one of the busiest areas of activity for the CJEU. The book offers new insights into existing rules on the resolution of conflicts between EU and ECHR law before mapping out techniques actually used by domestic courts to avoid or address such conflicts.
This book brings together a distinguished interdisciplinary group of European and American scholars to analyze the core theoretical features of the EU's new experimentalist governance architecture and explore its empirical development across a series of key policy domains.
This book analyses the horizontal effect of fundamental rights in the European Union, from a constitutional perspective. It advances two main arguments: First, it argues that the horizontal effect of fundamental rights (i.e. their application to disputes between private parties) cannot be usefully discussed based on the existing EU horizontality doctrine, which associates horizontality with the exercise of horizontal direct effect only. That doctrine is characterised by a series of overly technical rules as to how the latter may be produced and has a case-specific nature that lacks overall constitutional coherence. Secondly, the book argues that a substantive theory of horizontality is required in EU law and sketches its main parameters. In the fundamental rights context, horizontal effect has organisational implications for society, which go beyond specific intersubjective disputes. It is argued that its determination requires an explicit recognition of the public character of certain private platforms of will formation (e.g. the workplace) and a discussion of the role of fundamental rights therein. At the same time, a constitutionally adequate model of horizontality involves an acknowledgment of the supranational character of EU adjudication: the determination of horizontal applicability of a fundamental right within a type of private authority relationship falls upon the Court of Justice, but the precise manifestation of horizontal effect (e.g. direct, indirect or state-mediated effect) rests with national courts.
Underlying the protection of human rights in Europe is a complex network of overlapping legal systems - domestic, EU, and ECHR. This book focuses on the potential for conflict to emerge between the systems where rights overlap and interpretations in different courts begin to diverge. From the perspective of EU law, where the interpretation of rights differs national courts are asked to renounce the constitutional scope of protection in favour of the scope defined by the European Court of Justice. This work presents a theory of supranational judicial authority to confront this problem, grounded in an ideal of judicial dialogue. It represents the first attempt to provide a thorough theoretical account of the value of judicial dialogue, and its potential for legitimating judicial decision-making at a supranational level. Combining theoretical rigour with attention to the practicalities of European human rights law, the book will be accessible to a broad readership of legal theorists, EU lawyers and judges involved in building inter-judicial dialogue.
The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union is the most developed and comprehensive legally binding human rights instrument in the social field of the European Union. It is becoming increasingly important and is the first instrument that includes both civil and political rights on one hand and social rights on the other. Despite this, the Court of Justice of the European Union has only rarely dealt with fundamental social rights. In this context, employment rights need to be examined in this new rights framework. Following on from previous volumes setting out links between European labour law and fundamental social rights (as enshrined in relevant UN, ILO and Council of Europe instruments), in this book the ETUI Transnational Trade Union Rights (TTUR) Expert Network examines the justiciability of social rights and critically analyses the effectiveness of those rights embodied in the EU Charter. Thus, this book completes the trilogy of ETUI TTUR books on fundamental social rights at European level following the publication, also by Hart Publishing, of The European Convention of Human Rights and the Employment Relation (2013) and The European Social Charter and the Employment Relation (2017).
This book is the first full-length study of the growth and current role of fundamental rights in EU law and policy. It traces the emergence of fundamental rights through the case-law of the European Court of Justice, their consolidation through the Charter and Agency of Fundamental Rights, and their impact on the external policies of the Union.
The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union enshrines the key political, social and economic rights of EU citizens and residents in EU law. In its present form it was approved in 2000 by the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers and the European Commission. However its legal status remained uncertain until the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon in December 2009. The Charter obliges the EU to act and legislate consistently with the Charter, and enables the EU's courts to strike down EU legislation which contravenes it. The Charter applies to EU Member States when they are implementing EU law but does not extend the competences of the EU beyond the competences given to it in the treaties. This Commentary on the Charter, the first in English, written by experts from several EU Member States, provides an authoritative but succinct statement of how the Charter impacts upon EU, domestic and international law. Following the conventional article-by-article approach, each commentator offers an expert view of how each article is either already being interpreted in the courts, or is likely to be interpreted. Each commentary is referenced to the case law and is augmented with extensive references to further reading. Six cross-cutting introductory chapters explain the Charter's institutional anchorage, its relationship to the Fundamental Rights Agency, its interaction with other parts of international human rights law, the enforcement mechanisms, extraterritorial scope, and the all-important 'Explanations'.