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European Studies used to be dominated by legal and political science approaches which hailed the progress of European integration and its reliance on law. The recent set of crises that struck the EU have highlighted fundamental problems in the ways and means by which European integration unfolds. The quasi-authoritarian emergency politics deployed in the euro crisis is a radical expression of the fading prevalence of democratic processes to accommodate economic and social diversity in the Union. As we argue in this paper, however, the mainstreams in both disciplines retain a largely affirmative and apologetic stance on the EU's post-democratic and extra-constitutional development. While political science contributions mostly content themselves with a revival of conventional integration theories and thus turn a blind eye to normatively critical aspects of European crisis governance, legal scholarship is in short supply of normatively convincing theoretical paradigms and thus aligns itself with the functionalist reasoning of the EU's Court of Justice. Yet, we also identify critical peripheries in both disciplines which intersect in their critical appraisal of the authoritarian tendencies that inhere in the crisis-ridden state of European integration. Their results curb the prevailing optimism and underline that the need for fundamental reorientations in both the theory and practice of European integration has become irrefutable.
Europe unwell, yet alive
(2016)
European Studies used to be dominated by legal and political science approaches which hailed the progress of European integration and its reliance on law. The recent set of crises that struck the EU have highlighted fundamental problems in the ways and means by which European integration unfolds. The quasi-authoritarian emergency politics deployed in the euro crisis is a radical expression of the fading prevalence of democratic processes to accommodate economic and social diversity in the Union. As we argue in this paper, however, the mainstreams in both disciplines retain a largely affirmative and apologetic stance on the EU's post-democratic and extra-constitutional development. While political science contributions mostly content themselves with a revival of conventional integration theories and thus turn a blind eye to normatively critical aspects of European crisis governance, legal scholarship is in short supply of normatively convincing theoretical paradigms and thus aligns itself with the functionalist reasoning of the EU's Court of Justice. Yet, we also identify critical peripheries in both disciplines which intersect in their critical appraisal of the authoritarian tendencies that inhere in the crisis-ridden state of European integration. Their results curb the prevailing optimism and underline that the need for fundamental reorientations in both the theory and practice of European integration has become irrefutable.
European unity in diversity?!: A conflicts-law re-construction of controversial current developments
(2014)
The EU has come a long way since its foundation as the European Economic Community in 1957. Starting out as a purely economic union, the integration process has progressively entered into areas of political, social and cultural concern for the Member States. Meanwhile, the institutionalised ‘logic of the market’ and related harmonisation increasingly lead to tensions not only with varying socio-economic and legal systems, but also with different political and cultural perceptions.
‘Conflicts-law constitutionalism’ aims at developing new awareness for Europe’s conflict constellations and their (re-)interpretation with respect to socio-economic diversity, the social embeddedness of markets and the different regulatory cultures in the Member States. Therefore, it does not only serve for critical re-construction of the integration process but also aims at a ‘third way’ between the defence of the nation state and a quasi-federalist streamlining of Europe`s diversity. This is illustrated with five prominent and topical conflicts where market interests interfere with political, social and cultural preferences: the legendary Cassis de Dijon case, the labour law cases of Viking and Laval, the fully harmonised unfair commercial practices law, the promotion of renewable energies and the regulation of genetically-modified organisms. (Verlagsangabe)
Europe’s Economic Constitution in Crisis and the Emergence of a new Constitutional Constellation
(2014)
The European Union rides through troubled waters. Its original reliance on law as the object and agent of the integration project and on the “economic constitution,” which the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU)—as accomplished by the Treaty of Maastricht—expected to complete, have proven unsustainable. Following the financial and sovereign debt crises, individuals perceive the EMU, with its commitments to price stability and monetary politics, as a failed construction precisely because of its reliance on inflexible rules. The European crisis management seeks to compensate for these failures by means of regulatory machinery which disregards the European order of competences, takes power from national institutions, and burdens—in particular—Southern Europe with austerity measures; it establishes pan-European commitments to budgetary discipline and macroeconomic balancing. This abolishes the ideal of a legal ordering of the European economy, while the economic and social prospects of these efforts appear gloomy and the Union’s political legitimacy becomes precarious. A fictitious debate between Carl Schmitt and Jürgen Habermas addresses the present critical constellation, where a number of Schmittian notions seem alarmingly realistic. This essay pleads for a more modest Europe committing itself to “unity in diversity,” the motto of the ill-fated Constitutional Treaty of 2003.
Europe’s economic constitution in crisis and the emergence of a new constitutional constellation
(2014)
This paper discusses the fundamental tensions between economic globalization and democratic politics in the field of international trade governance. The move towards mega-regional trade agreements, as heralded by the controversies over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA), has greatly accentuated grievances and is therefore of exemplary importance in the realms of transnational governance. Based on the theoretical frameworks of Karl Polanyi and Dani Rodrik, we examine the decoupling of these agreements from national and democratic control and the resulting legitimacy impasses of transnational governance. Arguing that politics is not a mistake that gets in the way of markets, we submit our own conceptualization of transnational legitimacy. In doing so we suggest a new type of conflicts law which does not seek to overcome socio-economic and political diversity by some substantive transnational regime but responds to diversity with procedural safeguards, thus ensuring space for cooperative problem-solving and the search for fair compromises.
This paper discusses the fundamental tensions between economic globalization and democratic politics in the field of international trade governance. The move towards mega-regional trade agreements, as heralded by the controversies over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA), has greatly accentuated grievances and is therefore of exemplary importance in the realms of transnational governance. Based on the theoretical frameworks of Karl Polanyi and Dani Rodrik, we examine the decoupling of these agreements from national and democratic control and the resulting legitimacy impasses of transnational governance. Arguing that politics is not a mistake that gets in the way of markets, we submit our own conceptualization of transnational legitimacy. In doing so we suggest a new type of conflicts law which does not seek to overcome socio-economic and political diversity by some substantive transnational regime but responds to diversity with procedural safeguards, thus ensuring space for cooperative problem-solving and the search for fair compromises.
Das Buch untersucht vergleichend für den europäischen Binnenmarkt und den internationalen Handel die Zusammenhänge zwischen der Liberalisierung des Handels und seiner Regulierung zum Zwecke des Arbeits-, Gesundheits- und Umweltschutzes an den Beispielen Produkt- und Lebensmittelsicherheit in der EU, Telekommunikations- und Gesundheitsdienstleistungen, Verminderung von CO2-Emissionen von Pkw, Arbeits- und Sozialstandards im internationalen Handel, private Standards zum Schutz öffentlicher Güter im Welthandel. Als normativer Maßstab für die empirische Politikwissenschaft dient das Konzept der „Sozialregulierungsfähigkeit“. Für die rechtliche Kontrolle der externen Effekte staatlichen Handelns, der transnationalen Verwaltungskooperationen und der Aufgabenverlagerungen auf private Akteure wird das Konzept eines dreidimensionalen Kollisionsrechts entwickelt.
Mit Beiträgen von:
Olga Batura, Henning Deters, Josef Falke, Carola Glinski, Thorsten Hüller, Christian Joerges und Markus Krajewski
Business as usual in European private law after the crisis? By no means, this essay argues, private law scholars should become aware that their discipline is deeply affected, albeit more indirectly than in particular in constitutional law, labour law and social law. The crisis has brought to the fore design failure of theory and practice which had remained latent for decades, the most significant substantive being the equation of legal progress with ever more uniformity of formerly national legal orders. The analytical basis of this error is the neglect of the political dimension of markets and their functioning which is reconstructed with the help of Karl Polanyi's economic sociology. In such perspectives it become apparent that the commitment of European private law to market rationality was a Utopian project, which is at odds with the social functions and normative credentials of private law in constitutional democracies. These tensions are aggravating after the quest for competitiveness has become Europe's new 'leitmotif' whic is being pursued rigorously through authoritarian austerity politics against Europe's South. To what degree the new modes of economic governance require formal legal changes in the realms of private law, is of little avail. They damage the societal infrastructures of post-formalist legal ordering. They essay also submits a Polony-inspired counter-vision of market integration and pleads for a defense of social accomplishments through law against authoritarian interventions.
Kampf ums Geld
(2017)
Was Recht ist, ergibt sich aus dem Gesetz. So lautet das Dogma kontinentaler Rechtswissenschaft. Das Recht sagt nur, was die Juristin denkt, hält die soziologische Jurisprudenz dagegen. Und was sie über das Recht denkt, richtet sich nach ihrem sozialen Kontext und theoretischen Blick auf die Gesellschaft.
Anlässlich Gunther Teubners 70. Geburtstag will dieses rechtssoziologische Fallbuch neuen Gesellschaftstheorien (vorwiegend Systemtheorie, Diskurstheorie und poststrukturalistischen Theorien) einen Weg in die Ausbildungs- und Gerichtspraxis eröffnen. Dazu werden 16 höchstrichterliche Entscheidungen verschiedenster Rechtsbereiche aus sozialwissenschaftlicher Perspektive alternativ gelöst, begründet oder kommentiert.
Die Autoren verwenden Sozialtheorien als experimentelle Modelle für Erklärung und Kritik der Rechtswirklichkeit wie auch als utopische Steinbrüche für eine veränderte Sicht auf rechtliche Institutionen und juristische Argumente. Das Buch entwirft so die pluralistische Landkarte einer neuen Praxis reflexiver soziologischer Jurisprudenz.
Law and Politics i n Europe’s Crisis: On the History of the Impact of a n Unfortunate Configuration
(2014)
Ordoliberalism is a theoretical and cultural tradition of signifi cant societal and political impact in post-war Germany. For a long time the theory was only known outside Germany by a handful of experts, but ordoliberalism has now moved centre stageafter the advent of the fi nancial crisis, and has become widely perceived as the ideational source of Germany's crisis politics.
In this collection, the contributors engage in a multi-faceted exploration of the conceptual history of ordoliberalism, the premises of its founding fathers in law and economics, its religious underpinnings, the debates over its theoretical assumptions and political commitments, and its formative vision of societal ordering based upon a synthesis of economic theories and legal concepts. The renewal of that vision through the ordoliberal conceptualisation of the European integration project, the challenges of the current European crisis, and the divergent perceptions of ordoliberalism within Germany and by its northern and southern EU neighbours, are a common concern of all these endeavours. They unfold interdisciplinary affi nities and misunderstandings, cultural predispositions and prejudices, and political preferences and cleavages. By examining European traditions through the lens of ordoliberalism,the book illustrates the diversity of European economic cultures, and the difficulty of ransnational political exchanges, in a time of European crisis.
Although international police cooperation is not a new phenomenon and despite its relevance for the monopoly of force, studies applying a political science or international relations (IR) perspective are scarce. Through a ‘competition of claims’, this article reviews and organizes current literature on cooperation in internal security to highlight crucial points of entry for IR- and political science approaches. While both claims argue along the lines of functionalist regime theory, the ‘informality claim’ stresses state’s interest to uphold autonomy and their accordant preference for informal cooperation. In contrast, the ‘institutionalization claim’ underscores the willingness of states to create formal and strong institutions as they promise efficiency gains in light of transborder problems. By focusing on central issues in police cooperation (terrorism, drugs, money laundering, organized crime)this review highlights that internal security can become a prospering field for IR- and political science theorizing.
In this article, the controversy between the European Court of Justice and the German Federal Constitutional Court over the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) Programme remains in the background. Rather than summarising and evaluating all this, the Author focuses his attention on a defence of the message in the title. Firstly, he starts with the ruling of the German Court of January 2014, which, as is well known, is the “first reference ever”. In this the Author focuses his attention on the two dissenting opinions by judges Lübbe-Wolff and Gerhardt. Then, the analysis focuses mainly on to the exercise of discretion by the ECB and the role of the judiciary. Thereafter, the Author examines the responses to these developments in various branches of European studies and concludes with an explanation of title.
The debate on law, governance and constitutionalism beyond the state is confronted with new challenges. In the EU, confidence in democratic transnational governance has been shaken by the authoritarian and unsocial practices of crisis management. The ambition of this book, which builds upon many years of close co-operation between its contributors, is to promote a viable interdisciplinary alternative to these developments. “Conflicts-law constitutionalism” is a concept of transnational governance which derives democratic legitimacy from the supranational control of the external impact of national decision-making, on the one hand, and the co-operative responses to problem interdependencies on the other.
The first section of the book contrasts Europe's new modes of economic governance crisis management with the conditionality of international investments, and reflects upon the communalities and differences between emergency Europe and global exceptionalism. Subsequent sections substantiate the problématique of executive and technocratic rule, explore conflict constellations of prime importance in the fields of environmental and labour law, and discuss the impact and limits of liberalisation strategies. Throughout the book, European and transnational developments are compared and evaluated.
Transnational Constitutionalism is a sociological given and a legal challenge. We observe the emergence of ever more legally-framed transnational arrangements with ever more power and impact. Does this kind of rule ‘deserve recognition’? Is it at all conceivable that the proprium of law can be defended against the rise of its informal competitors? This essay opts for a third way which neither listens to the siren songs on law beyond the state nor to the defences of nation-state constitutionalism as the monopolist of legitimate rule. The alternative submitted suggests that transnational legal ordering of the EU should build upon its re-conceptualisation as a ‘three-dimensional conflicts-law’ with a democracy-enhancing potential. This re-construction operationalises the ‘united in diversity’ motto of the Draft Constitutional Treaty of 2004. It preserves essential accomplishments of Europe’s constitutional democracies. It provides for co-operative problem-solving of transnational regulatory tasks, and it retains supervisory powers over national and transnational arrangements of private governance.
Unity in Diversity” was the fortunate motto of the otherwise unfortunate Draft Constitutional Treaty. The motto did not make it in to the Treaty of Lisbon. It deserves to be kept alive in a new constitutional perspective, namely the re-conceptualisation of European law as new type of conflicts law. The new type of conflicts law which the paper advocates is not concerned with selecting the proper legal system in cases with connections to various jurisdictions. It is instead meant to respond to the increasing interdependence of formerly more autonomous legal orders and to the democracy failure of constitutional states which result from the external effects of their laws and legal decisions on non-nationals. European has many means to compensate these shortcomings. It can derive its legitimacy from that compensatory potential without developing federal aspirations. The paper illustrates this approach with the help of a topical example, namely the conflict between European economic freedoms and national industrial relations (collective labour)law. The recent jurisprudence of the ECJ in Viking, Laval, and Rüffert in which the Court established the supremacy of the freedoms over national labour law is criticised as a counterproductive deepening of Europe's constitutional asymmetry and its social deficit. The introductory and the concluding sections generalise the perspectives of the conflicts-law approach. The introductory section takes issue with max Weber’s national state. The concluding section suggests a three-dimensional differentiation of the approach which seeks to respond to the need for transnational regulation and governance.
Im Zentrum des Bandes stehen Austauschprozesse, Vermischungen sowie Konflikte zwischen verschiedenen Rechtskulturen. Dabei geht es um den Transfer von Rechtsordnungen, um lokale autonome Ordnungen in Bezug auf Ordnungen mit generellem Geltungsanspruch, um neue Formen der Hybridisierung in der wechselseitigen Rezeption von Rechtsgrundsätzen oder um die Herausbildung transnationaler Rechtsordnungen und die Frage, ob diese sich als Prozesse der Konstitutionalisierung, der Durchsetzung universaler Rechtsprinzipien oder des Managements von Pluralität deuten lassen.
This discussion of the ECJ in the context of a project on political representation in the EU responds to the Court’s changing functions in the integration process and also to the critique which the exercise of this function has provoked in recent years after the Court objected to constitutional provisions and legislation of constitutional status in particular in the sphere of labour law and social protection. The ECJ has been accused of partisanship with a neoliberal-monetarist agenda. These debates are bound to extend to the new functions which were assigned to the CJEU in the supervision of the budgetary discipline of Member States in the Euro zone. The problems that might arise in such a case have been foreshadowed by the recent jurisprudence on the legality of the European practices of crisis management. The judgments of the German Bundesverfassungsgericht of 12 September 1212 on the ESM Treaty and the Fiscal Compact and the CJEU Judgment of 27 November 2012 in the Pringle case are of exemplary importance. They document the difficulties both courts have with the defense of the autonomy of law against apparent functional necessities and concurring attitudes in the readiness to accept the primacy of the political.