IMAGINE/iCourts seminar with Teresa Violante
Employing weak judicial review to manage conflicts of authority between constitutional courts and the Court of Justice
Abstract
Despite the Court of Justice’s unconditional and absolute version of primacy, several national courts that exercise constitutional jurisdiction have expressed their view that primacy is a relative yardstick, based not on the autonomy of EU law but on their national constitutions. Some of these courts have also expressly clarified being prepared to deflect the primacy of EU law over national constitutional law in particular circumstances, thereby enforcing the principle of the primacy of the constitution.
In some situations, typical of contexts of constitutional pluralism, conflicting claims of final authority have occurred between national courts with constitutional jurisdiction and the Court of Justice. Although these cases carry the disintegrative potential of EU law, courts usually develop methods to reduce friction and assure mutual accommodation. I wish to explore how, through weak judicial review, courts performing constitutional review can, in these situations, control the extent of the conflict.
Speaker bio
Teresa Violante is a Research Fellow and a Phd Candidate at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. She holds a graduate degree in law (University of Coimbra) and a European Master’s Degree in Human Rights and Democratization (University of Padova), and lectures on fundamental rights and constitutional law. In her Phd project, she investigates on weak judicial review by European constitutional courts, understood as the mechanisms that these courts have developed to soften the authority of their rulings near the political branches. She publishes widely on matters of comparative constitutional law and European law. She is also the Director of the Institute for the Global Rule of Law of the European Public Law Organization.
Meeting ID: 689 7564 5107
Passcode: 431749