Bulletin n. 3/2006
December 2006
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Vesterdorf B.
    A constitutional court for the EU?
    in International Journal of Constitutional Law , Vol. 4 n. 4 ,  2006 ,  607-617
    The question forming the title of this paper may be taken two different ways. Do we have a court in the EU in charge of constitutional adjudication? Or, alternatively, ought we to have a court in the EU that would specialize in constitutional adjudication? Such a court might resemble, say, France's Conseil Constitutionnel or the Bundesverfassungsgericht in Germany. I take the liberty of opting for the second reading—Should we have a specialized constitutional court?—since, in my view, the answer to the first question is quite straightforward. As I will explain briefly in section 1, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) already performs the duties of a constitutional court. However, because the ECJ has broader duties than pure constitutional adjudication, I think it resembles more a supreme court than a specialized constitutional court. I will, therefore, examine in section 2 whether the "specialized constitutional court" model has inherent advantages over the "supreme court" model. I conclude that neither is inherently superior to the other; nonetheless, I argue in section 3 that the ECJ—as a supreme court—should be allowed to concentrate on its constitutional duties as well as on its role as a guardian of the unity and consistency of EU law. Finally, I summarize in section 4 my thoughts on the means that we can use to redirect the ECJ's functions.
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