The purpose of this article is to explore the avenues for legal accountability vis-à-vis the European Council after the Treaty of Lisbon. This will be achieved through an assessment of the jurisdictional realms of, on the one hand, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), and on the other hand, the European Ombudsman, always in relation to the European Council. Legal accountability may be understood in this respect as the supervision of the observance of the European Union (EU) rule of law. The European Ombudsman is an EU body established by the Treaty of Maastricht; by virtue of Art. 228 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), he or she has the power to investigate complaints of maladministration “in the activities of the Union institutions, bodies, offices or agencies, with the exception of the Court of Justice of the European Union acting in its judicial role.”

As in its first leading Euro-Case (“Greece Bailout”) one year ago, the Second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) once again decided on the fate of Europe's bailout. The Court's ESM ruling on September 12, 2012, clears the path for the next steps in a fast-moving “rescue” situation. This time for the ratification of three international agreements: The insertion of Article 136(3) TFEU, the new Treaty establishing the European Stability Mechanism (ESM Treaty), and the new Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union (Fiscal Compact).

Before the Law stands a doorkeeper. A man from the countryside comes up to the door and requests admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he can't grant him admittance now. The man thinks it over and then asks if he'll be allowed to enter later. “It's possible” says the doorkeeper, “but not now.” Since the gate to the Law stands open as always, and the doorkeeper steps aside, the man bends down to look through the gate into the interior. When the doorkeeper sees this, he laughs and says: “If you're so drawn to it, go ahead and try to enter, even though I've forbidden it. But bear this in mind: I'm powerful. And I'm only the lowest doorkeeper. From hall to hall, however, stand doorkeepers each more powerful than the one before. The mere sight of the third is more than even I can bear.” The man from the country has not anticipated such difficulties; the Law should be accessible to anyone at any time, he thinks, but as he now examines the doorkeeper in his fur coat more closely, his large, sharply pointed nose, his long, thin, blank tartar's beard, he decides he would prefer to wait until he receives permission to enter. And the doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at the side of the door. He sits there for days and years. He asks time and again to be admitted and wearies the doorkeeper with his entreaties. The doorkeeper often conducts brief interrogations, inquiring about his home and many other matters, but he asks such questions indifferently, as great men do, and in the end he always tells him he still can't admit him. The man, who has equipped himself well for the journey, uses everything he has, no matter how valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. And the doorkeeper accepts everything, but as he does so he says: “I'm taking this just so you won't think you've neglected something.” Over the many years, the man observes the doorkeeper almost incessantly. He forgets the other doorkeepers and this first one seems to him the only obstacle to his admittance to the Law. He curses his unhappy fate, loudly during the first years, later, as he grows older, merely grumbling to himself. He turns childish, and since he has come to know even the fleas in the doorkeeper's collar over his years of study, he asks the fleas too to help him change the doorkeeper's mind. Finally his eyes grow dim and he no longer knows whether it's really getting darker around him or if his eyes are merely deceiving him. And yet in the darkness he now sees a radiance that streams forth inextinguishably from the door of the Law. He doesn't have much longer to live now. Before he dies, everything he has experienced over the years coalesces in his mind into a single question he has never asked the doorkeeper. He motions to him, since he can no longer straighten his stiffening body. The doorkeeper hat to bend down to him, for the difference in size between them has altered greatly to the man's disadvantage. “What do you want to know now,” asks the doorkeeper, “you're insatiable.” “Everyone strives to reach the Law,” says the man, “how does it happen, then, that in all these years no one but me has requested admittance.” The doorkeeper sees that the man in nearing his end, and in order to reach his failing hearing, he roars at him: “No one else could gain admittance here, because this entrance was meant solely for you. I'm going to go and shut it now.”

The distinctive domain and character of public law have become—and in certain respects always were—unclear and, to a degree, contested. As a result, any definition is likely to be to some extent stipulative. For my purposes, I want to refer to public law in two broad and related senses—as applying to a certain kind of body and its functions, and as requiring a certain kind of justification. The first sense refers to the actions of the state and its administration. Of course, it will be pointed out that these are increasingly performed by private bodies and often involve legal activities that have been associated with private parties and doctrines, such as procurement and contract. Nevertheless, government and the administrative apparatus more generally can still be considered as possessing distinctively broad, authoritative, and coercive powers which in various ways make their subjection to the law both problematic and pressing: Problematic in that they play a central role in the making and enforcement of the law, pressing in that this role renders them more powerful than other bodies. The second sense enters here. For the justification of state power has come to rest on its serving the public ends of the ruled rather than private ends of the rulers, and certain public qualities of law have been thought to oblige those who wield state power to do so in a publically justified and justifiable way. Ruling through laws has been viewed as different from rule by willful, ad hoc commands because laws have certain characteristics that render them capable of coordinating and shaping public behavior in consistent and coherent ways over time, while ruling under the law likewise forces rulers to adopt public processes and offers an additional incentive to devise laws that treat rulers and ruled equitably. Again, these matters are far from straightforward. How far laws need to, or even can, always possess the requisite qualities and the degree to which these do constrain power holders are matters of dispute. Yet, that all law has to have some public qualities—for example, that it be promulgated and capable of being followed in ways that make it publicly recognized as law—and that these features formalize power to a degree, is reasonably undisputed. Increasingly, though, and even more controversially, many jurists have wanted to suggest that legality also involves certain substantive qualities of a public kind—that laws must appeal to public reasons that all subject to them can accept as reflecting, or being compatible with certain basic interests or values that are equally shared by all. Such arguments have come to be identified with rights and in particular constitutional rights, which are deemed to set the terms of how and to what purpose political power may be legally exercised. In this way, the two senses of public law come together. Constitutional rights define and mark the limits of public power in ways that can be publicly justified, and thereby ensure it serves public ends. They thereby serve what Martin Loughlin calls the “basic tasks of public law;” namely, “the constitution, maintenance and regulation of governmental authority.”

On 11 January 2013 the German quality newspaper “Süddeutsche Zeitung” reported about the effects of introducing the new unisex insurance tariffs mandated by a decision of the European Court of Justice on 1 March 2011. The result is summarized in the headline: “Für alle teurer” (“More expensive for all”). According to a study the leveling of gender specific risks led to largely insignificant benefits for the former disadvantaged sex but to partially dramatic rises of the premium of those who were formerly considered better risks. The insurance industry which has been operating a dual structure since 21 December 2012 is considered to be the winner of the legal change.

According to Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union, the European Union is a political and economic union founded on a respect for fundamental rights and the rule of law, referred to hereafter as EU fundamental values. The central place of this commitment in the EU Treaties suggests a founding assumption: That the EU is a Union of states who themselves see human rights and the rule of law as irrevocable parts of their political and legal order. Reminiscent of the entry of Jorg Haider's far-right Freedom Party into the Austrian government in 2000, the events of 2012 have done much to shake that assumption; questioning both how interwoven the rule of law tradition is across the present-day EU, and the role the EU ought to play in policing potential violations of fundamental rights carried out via the constitutional frameworks of its Member States. Much attention in this field, much like the focus of this paper, has been placed on events in one state in particular: Hungary.

In his rich and thoughtful paper, Richard Bellamy sketches a theory of individual rights that ascribes to them an inherently democratic character that “is best captured by a republican view of liberty as non-domination, rather than the standard liberal account of liberty as non-interference.” According to this view, “rights involve an implicit appeal to democratic forms of reasoning.” That is, the only justifiable “foundation of rights must be some form of ongoing democratic decision making that allows rights to be claimed under conditions of political equality.” Bellamy uses this particular model of rights to defend a somewhat unique thesis concerning the legitimacy of judicial review under a constitutional charter or bill of rights (henceforth constitutional review). Many legal theorists question whether constitutional review can ever be rendered consistent with the theoretical and practical demands of democracy. According to these theorists, democracy embodies a form of self-rule whereby the members of a society establish and exercise legitimate authority over themselves. But self-rule seems seriously compromised once constitutional review enters the picture. Instead of having the people and their elected representatives setting the basic terms of social cooperation, we have instead a small group of elite, unelected, and unaccountable judges performing this vital task. Constitutional review empowers these individuals, in constitutional review cases, to substitute their own contestable views and preferences with respect to the basic terms of social cooperation for the duly considered views and preferences of the people and those whom they have duly elected to represent them. This is something one simply cannot tolerate in a democracy.

“We seem to be caught in an ‘impossible interregnum': After the end of classical national sovereignty, before the beginning of a postnational sovereignty.”

The relationship between EU law and German constitutional law, and the respective dialogue between the ECJ and the German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC), have considerably shaped the EU integration process by creating fields of tension and demarcating possible legal boundaries. The decisions of the German Federal Constitutional Court and the European Court of Justice concerning the European Stability Mechanism are only the most recent examples of this phenomenon. These developments have, of course, spilled over to other EU Member States. The German constitutional bases of, and limits to, EU integration—especially as articulated in the relevant decisions of the German Federal Constitutional Court—have therefore become a field of particular interest for EU and public lawyers. This article gives an up-to-date overview of relevant constitutional rules, court decisions, and the academic debate in Germany. It does so by systematically distinguishing between an analysis of the German constitutional foundations of EU integration (section B.), constitutional limits to the further transfer of powers to the EU through amendments of EU primary law (section C.I.), and the constitutional confines for the legal effects of EU secondary law in Germany (section C.II.).

Human existence and dignity, just like human unity itself, are not actually rights. The essence of humanity, as regards the law, is inaccessible. Because of this, human life and dignity are included in the catalogue of human rights and in modern constitutions as the sources of rights, as inviolable values beyond the law. The law must guarantee that these inviolable values are respected and protected.

The dominant grammar of public law is a product of abstraction that, at times, overemphasizes certainty and simplicity in a search for systematic coherence within the constitution, even where none exists. In contrast, a concern for and with political and legal practice invites a more tentative and exacting grammar, one that necessitates further questioning, resists generalities and appeals instead to a language of “more or less” and “in one sense but not in another” as part of our public law discourse. We seek a practice-oriented grammar that encourages public lawyers to think and to speak politically about the constitution. We draw on works of prominent political constitutionalists to show how they have had varying degrees of success in nurturing a more practice-oriented grammar of public law.

Although the temporal effects of judicial decisions have not completely escaped the attention of academic reviewers, the research on this topic is far from thorough. Most research focuses on the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), thereby ignoring the temporal effects of judicial decisions of national or constitutional courts. This lack of interest is remarkable given the interaction between the national and European level.

On 27 November 2012, the European Court of Justice (“the Court”) rendered its judgment in the Pringle case. Sitting as a plenum, which is extremely rare, the Court did what had been expected. Just as the Bundesverfassungsgericht (German Federal Constitutional Court or BVerfG) had done two months earlier, it gave the go-ahead for the euro area's permanent emergency instrument, the European Stability Mechanism (“ESM”). With this decision, the possibility of granting assistance to financially distressed euro area Member States has now been secured for the future.

In the current European social and political climates there is much focus on forming the European Union into a more integrated, sustainable, and globally competitive economic market. This ideology is especially reflected in the aims of the EU 2020 agenda. With regards to these economic goals, it is very important that European law protects the economic freedoms of all participants in the internal market. Considering the alternative and concurrent 2020 goals of social integration, social cohesion, and human rights protection, EU law is also bound to protect the rights of workers and the public interest.

During the past months the European Council agenda has been dominated by Europe's economic crisis, which combines elements of banking crisis in the euro area and individual Member States' debt crisis – and has turned into something of an existential crisis for the Union as a whole. Many questions concerning the Union's legitimacy have been raised in the context of the current debates pointing out how the role of democratic institutions has turned blurry while market pressure has been tackled in quickly developing institutional structures by taking fast decisions on major economic commitments involving a tightened belt both for those receiving the aid, and for those giving the necessary guarantees required by the creditors. As the crisis has evolved, these questions have become more or less fundamental in nature since they have increasingly encompassed the trust in the possibilities of the Union to manage the crisis through its own decision-making. But at the same time, crises also bring about potential for change.

This paper responds to the conceptual inflation of constitutionalism in recent years by considering the relationship between constitutions and the specific concept of constitutionalism, seeking to establish the limits to the identification of the latter outside its traditional province. It considers both constitutions and constitutionalism in general terms, but seeks in particular to elucidate the relationship between the political constitution and political constitutionalism. This task requires an explanation of the law/politics divide and the paper argues for an institutional distinction between the two concepts, as opposed to one based upon the supposedly distinctive rationalities associated with law and politics. It grafts these categories onto a concept of constitutionalism characterized by a specific functional logic, whereby the same mechanisms that constitute power also limit that power. As such, it argues that to identify constitutionalism in contexts in which constitution and limitation occur separately—as in different layers of a multi-layered constitutional order—is mistaken. Constitutionalism is defined by this distinctive dualism, which in turn grants it its legitimating potential.

In light of this definition of constitutionalism, the paper considers the relationship between law and politics within the constitutional order, offering three potential accounts of the connection between them. Amongst these, it endorses the idea that law and politics are necessarily linked: Within the democratic constitution, each frames the other such that legal requirements are the outcome of a political process which itself takes a form determined by law. The two phenomena are therefore inseparable; in a certain sense, all law is politics and all politics is law. The piece ends by suggesting that this claim is true where, and only where, the conditions laid down for constitutionalism hold true. Constitutionalism is a dualist phenomenon which, where it occurs, brings with it a highly particular melding of the legal and the political.

In contrast to other legal systems, interdisciplinarity of German jurisprudence lags behind; interdisciplinary approaches to legal theory and regulation are not as common in Germany as, for example, in the US with its various, well-established “Law and…” approaches. However, the following report draws attention to important interdisciplinary developments in one of the most challenging legal areas - biolaw.

Universal service has a pivotal role in market liberalization and competition on both sides of the Atlantic. It is central to the European thinking on markets and public service and is an inevitable element of market liberalization and sectoral competition rules. The universal service aims at preserving the public service in a competitive environment. The paper analyzes this cornerstone of the European thinking from a comparative and trans-sectoral perspective, demonstrating that the concept of universal services should be fundamentally re-conceptualized in EU electronic communications and energy regulation.

Recent proposals to fix Europe's ailing monetary union have led some to endorse a stronger fiscal union. Such a fiscal union, which would supposedly comprise stronger budgetary supervision as well as a modicum of revenue collection by the Union itself, is taken to mark the step towards “political” union. The article explores the question of what, if anything, is understood by “political” in this context. After distinguishing three possible meanings of political union, the article argues that a true union of this kind would rest its focus on the form of life that can be sustained among Europeans. Surprisingly perhaps, the article concludes that less centralization and unwinding monetary union in its current form may well be more congenial to a political union than hectic bids for fiscal centralization.