As readers of [Eutopia blog] know well, the FCC has played, and will continue to play, a critical role in defining the constitutional parameters of Germany’s role in the ongoing struggle to resolve the Eurozone crisis. The Court’s jurisprudence will necessarily loom large as long as Germany serves as the Eurozone’s paymaster, and as long as the Court insists, as a matter of domestic constitutional law, on two conditions related to that function: first, that Germany’s financial participation in any bailouts must be determinate and not open-ended (i.e., no Eurobonds or other instruments amounting to joint and several liability); and second, that the national legislature must, consistent with historically grounded yet evolving conceptions of parliamentary democracy, be given an effective voice in approving the extent of Germany’s financial participation. The FCC views these two conditions as essential to preserving Germany’s democratic sovereignty in the face of the evident functional demands of the crisis, even as the Court otherwise permits, indeed even encourages, further European integration. In the current environment, these parameters will be critical because the resolution of the crisis will almost certainly demand some very costly sacrifices by the German taxpayer.A second post from Lindseth, following the French credit downgrade, asks two key questions about German governance institutions:
I had the good fortune yesterday to spend the afternoon at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. To my great surprise, I experienced my first encounter with treaties as art. A special exhibit on display through March 26, 2012 of the work of Sanja Iveković entitled Sweet Violence focuses on the plight of women in post-Communist...
(Professor Kenneth A. Armstrong is professor of European Law at Queen Mary University, London; this comment was posted in response to KA's framing questions on European governance, and we are delighted to bring it up to the main page. We welcome short or long comments on this topic; I'll choose to bring some to general attention in a separate post;...
Last fall, I posted about possible governance effects of eurozone crisis on the EZ and, more broadly, the EU. I raised questions not as an expert on European institutions, law, or governance, but as someone with a long interest in governance and legitimacy questions for the international system. They elicited some very interesting responses, particularly from University of Connecticut’s Peter...
Don't worry, I will not be linking to any and all reviews of my book. (Only the good ones.) I mention this review -- a review essay written by the distinguished scholar David Fraser at Nottingham (sub. req.) -- because it uses my book as a springboard to discuss a number of important historiographic issues concerning World War II scholarship...
That's the question that a Ninth Circuit en banc panel heard yesterday in Movesian v. Versicherung AG. There is no statute, treaty or executive order refusing to recognize the Armenian Genocide, but there have been equivocal statements by various Presidents on the subject and failed attempts to adopt congressional resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide. Is that enough to...
Well, not really today, but it was about twenty years ago that what we now call (incorrectly, at times) the "frozen conflicts"-- the separatist conflicts in Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Moldova-- weren't frozen but were actually brushfire wars before settling into stalemates. Long-time readers of this blog may remember my interest in these conflicts, starting with the ongoing conflict in Moldova...
The imminent collapse of the eurozone (and maybe the global financial markets as well) makes for terrifying reading. It also is one reminder of how the success of regional and international legal institutions has depended on the general health of the global economy (and of wealthy states in Europe, North America, and East Asia). Three stories from today, both big...
Over the last year, we've hosted a number of discussions centered on immunity issues and how US courts deal with them. For the most part, however, these discussions focused on individuals claiming immunity from becoming the subject of criminal or civil proceedings. Last week, however, the 11th Circuit gave us a very different type of immunity case -- the sovereign...
How could I have missed this? According the Guardian: The principality of Liechtenstein has decided to make itself available to private clients, from $70,000 (£43,000) a night, complete with customised street signs and temporary currency...
Professor Cecilia Marcela Bailliet of the University of Oslo has a very useful post over at IntLawGrrls on possible criminal punishment for right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik. Contrary to what has been reported elsewhere, according to Bailliet it is possible that Breivik could get life in prison for the death of 76 persons in last week's shooting. Here's...