Scope of application of Charter – What does ‘implementing Union law’ mean? – Application of v. derogation from EU law – Asylum cases, N.S. – Familiapress, Schmidberger, Viking – Implementing to include derogation – Annibaldi and Dereci – Interpretation of the Charter – ‘Provided for by law’ – The ‘essence’ of a right or freedom – Legitimate objectives and proportionality – Rights both in EU Treaties and in Charter: citizenship – Charter and ECHR – Constitutional Traditions, level of protection and deference – Article 53 not according to Solange, but like Omega and Sayn-Wittgenstein – Principles and Rights

Populism – Constitutional Theory – Paradox of Constituent Power – Popular Sovereignty – Representation – Constitutional Identity – Democracy

Introduction – Explaining party bans, political and legal contexts – Banned parties and banning states in Europe, the political context – Nature of banned parties – Nature of banning states – Tolerant and intolerant democracies, the legal context – Evolving rationales for party bans and procedures for proscription – Contemporary rationales for banning parties – Anti-democratic ideology – Non-democratic internal organisation – Party names – Party orientation to violence – Protecting the present order – Evolving rationales for party bans – Weimar and legitimacy paradigms – Conclusions, directions for future research

Institutional shortcomings of the Third Pillar: efficiency, effectiveness, complexity, legitimacy – Genesis of the provisions of the Treaty of Lisbon – Communitarisation of the Third Pillar – Some special institutional arrangements – Quid pro quos: stricter delimitation of the Union competencies and extension of the ‘opt out/opt in’ regimes – (New) foundations for Europol, Eurojust and the European Union Prosecutor's Office

Rule of law – Constitutional principle – Meaning – Scope of Application – Justiciability – Audit of the European Union's Constitutional Framework – Lisbon Treaty

An assessment of the balance between ‘the market’ and ‘the social’ by reference to the areas of social policy, the internal market and economic governance – Imbalance resulting from a consitutional displacement of the legislative process (EU and national) and instead decision-making by the judiciary and the executive – Proposals to address the imbalance by reinforcing the role of the EU legislative process and limiting other forms of European integration.

Counter-revolution by law in Hungary and Poland – Populism as a distinctive political project that mobilises anti-liberal conservative forces in society – Populist attempt to dismantle liberal-constitutional institutions in the name of a conservative, illiberal project – Populist critique of legal fundamentalism, understood as an excess of liberal legal norms, as a key dimension in the conservative, populist project

The 2014 referendum: Towards a consensual process – The Edinburgh Agreement: framing the referendum process – Process rules and key issues – After the referendum: Scotland's status under international law – Secession under international law – Membership of international organisations, especially the European Union

Hungary – Democratic state structure – Two-thirds parliamentary majority – First flurry of constitutional amendments of 2010 – Checks and balances – Media – Ex post facto legislation – Hungarian Constitutional Court – Judicial review – Wholesale constitutional review and Basic Law of 2011

Has the European Semester led to a displacement of Social Europe, or to the development of social policy through fiscal processes and actors? – Potential for Semester to increase soft law’s binding effects or ‘socialise’ EU policy-making – Positive effects severely limited by the Semester’s overall goals: fiscal stabilisation and the creation of increasingly uniform economic policies – Dilemma for Social Europe: how can an autonomous EU social policy be (re) established without risking marginalisation?

Legal constitutionalism – Political constitutionalism – Emergence of illiberal constitutionalism as a tertium genus – Examination of constitutional courts under three illiberal governments: Poland, Hungary, and Turkey – Illiberal governments’ strategies to seize control of constitutional courts – Illiberal governments’ aim to secure leverage over constitutional judges and restrict the powers of review of the court – Constitutional courts under illiberal rule invert the traditional functions that were assigned to them under the original Kelsenian approach – Instead of a check on power, illiberal constitutional courts become a device to circumvent constitutional constraints and concentrate power in the hands of the ruling actors.

Euro crisis reforms as major example of interstitial institutional change in the EU - Forms of institutional change : unusual sources of law, new tasks for the EU institutions, new organs, competence creep, institutional hybrids, and more differentiated integration - Question whether some or all of this amounts to a ‘constitutional mutation’ of the EU legal order - Reasons to doubt whether the constitutional fundamentals have changed - Alternative thesis: increased institutional variation, deepening the differences between EMU law and the rest of EU law.

ECtHR in Lautsi v. Italy: Mandatory display of crucifix in public schools violates Convention – Secularism and semi-secularism in the Italian Constitution – Italian High Administrative Court: Display of crucifix affirms principle of secularism – Exclusionary effect of display – ECtHR, religious freedom and margin of appreciation: dark side of consensus – ECtHR finally veritably counter-majoritarian.

Concept of solidarity – Factual vs. normative solidarity – Development of solidarity in the euro area – Transition from negative to positive solidarity – Solidarity as a legal concept – European Stability Mechanism – European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism – European Financial Stability Facility – Pringle judgement of the Court of Justice of the European Union – ECB bond-buying programmes

Populism and time – Democracy and representation – The open mandate and party democracy – Democracy and non-majoritarian institutions – Populist challenge as symptom of constitutional democracy's malaise

Broad concept of constitutional jurisdiction – Triangle between Karlsruhe, Strasbourg and Luxembourg – European vocation of the German Constitutional Court and Basic Law – European Convention on Human Rights – Karlsruhe decisions can be reviewed in Strasbourg – Human rights-related constitutional court – European Court of Justice developed into constitutional court of the Union – Verbund between three courts – No simplistic hierarchy – Verbund techniques – Dialogue in Human Rights; Interplay in Integration – Federal Constitutional Court and European Court of Human Rights functionally comparable – Both Courts seek substantive coherence as Verbund technique – Federal Constitutional Court commits all German authorities to the Convention – Federal Constitutional Court and ECJ – Principle of openness to European Law – Sharing and assigning responsibilities in complex system – Solange, ultra vires and identity review – Responsibility for integration, due by Court and other German bodies – Federal Court contributes to common European Constitutional order – Europe-wide discursive struggle and ‘Lernverbund’