The United Kingdom Human Rights Act 1998 – Constitutional migration – Impacts of legislative design and process on the internalisation of international standards – A taxonomy of migratory patterns under the Human Rights Act – Constitutional migration as a source of constitutional instability – Proposals for a British Bill of Rights

The German Federal Constitutional Court’s recent case law in context – A systematic account of the Federal Constitutional Court’s changing constitutional imagination – The constitutional footprint of the grand coalitions during Angela Merkel’s 16-year term as German Chancellor – The changing architecture of parliamentary government in the Federal Republic and the role of the Court – The supermajoritarian structure of the German political system – Majority rule and veto players – Legislation and parliamentary oversight – Executive autonomy and parliamentary control – Political representation and counter-representation by the Court – The constitutional nature of cabinet and ministerial responsibility – constitutional limits of political speech in government office – The normative model of administrative constitutionalism – The pouvoir neutre in the German constitution – The constitutionalisation of distributive justice

Private actors as non-institutional, and therefore often overlooked, participants in EU legal processes – A specific focus on their role as private regulators – Private actors such as companies, contracting parties and industry associations, play a pivotal regulatory role in the EU legal order – Classifying the existing legal research on private regulation – A legal-doctrinal approach towards private regulation also needed – Theoretical background of a novel legal-doctrinal perspective on private actors – Addressing the most pressing practical methodological challenges – Specific focus on the problem of accessibility and the difficulty of understanding and interpreting private regulation doctrinally

Putting ‘lobbyists’ and ‘lobbying’ on the EU law map – acknowledging that there is little interest in lobbying by EU legal research – explaining why EU lawyers and especially constitutional law scholars should be interested in lobbying – presenting a framework to study lobbyists as regulated actors under EU law – considering the merits of ethnographically-oriented socio-legal research and the ‘new legal realism’ as methods of studying lobbyists and lobbying.

Judicial independence in the context of rule of law backsliding – a systematisation of case law from the Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights – classic dimensions of objective and subjective independence of judges – a new third dimension: the right of judges to their own independence as final safeguard

Introduction to the special section – Actors of EU law – Activities of EU actors – Role definition in EU constitutional law – Constitutional theory – Separation of powers –Relationship between public authorities and individuals – Institutional actors – Private actors – Lobbyists – Law and practice – Legal doctrine – Research methods in EU law – Importance of theoretical frameworks in defining the parameters of legal research

Methodological choices in the legal study of the role of EU institutions – The so-called doctrinal legal method is appropriate, provided that it includes the analysis of key elements of non-legal institutional practice – Simple distinction between the study of ‘law in the books’ and that of ‘law in action’ to be qualified – Doctrinal legal scholarship is meaningful only when it acknowledges and incorporates a certain amount of ‘law in action’

2021–2027 Recovery Plan for Europe and its Recovery and Resilience Facility have altered elements of the EU institutional equilibrium – constitutional consistency of the ensuing design – implications for the constitutional evolution of the EU – analysis of the expenditure of the Recovery and Resilience Facility – new fiscal economic stabilisation function – conditionality attached to the funds – strengthened role of the Council – nuanced multi-level financial governance – the fiscal stabilisation function enshrines a potential form of constitutional mutation – the new institutional framework for the expenditure of the EU funds seems to lean towards an intergovernmental preeminence

Impact of electoral system design on democratic self-defence – ‘informal’ (content neutral) militant democracy instrument – the minority to majority effect (assigning majoritarian power to political minorities) increases risk of democratic backsliding – minority to majority goes beyond conventional systemic dichotomies as majoritarianism versus proportionalism: outcome of diverse system features – resources and incentives as explanatory mechanisms – preliminary case studies – the limitations of institutional engineering

Introduction to the Special Section – ECPR 2021 Joint Sessions ‘Militant Democracy: New Challengers and Challenges’ – metamorphoses of a Cold War concept – new challengers intensify challenges for militant democracy – evaluation of the effects and effectiveness of militant democracy – new conceptual and normative approaches broaden concept of militant democracy – risk of ‘concept stretching’ – minimal common recognisable core

EU militant democracy – an approach beyond member states’ democratic backsliding – the EU as a first case of transnational democratic self-defence – the EU’s democratic legitimacy – national and supranational threats to EU democracy – instruments and enforcement of EU militant democracy – comparison to national militant democracy – problems of effectiveness

Directive principles of social or state policy – use of constitutional provisions in parliamentary debates – economic, social and cultural rights – political constitutionalism – Article 45 of the Constitution of Ireland – constitutional culture – constitutional narrative – failure of constitutional culture to take hold – limits of constitutional text

Granting fundamental rights to companies – nature of freedom as a fundamental value in EU law – intrinsic value of protecting freedom of individuals and instrumental value of protecting freedom of companies – Dan Cohen and rationale for protecting rights of organisations – transformation of the right to conduct business in EU law in Alemo Herron and subsequent case law – from right to do that which the law allows to right to be free from constraints – whose freedom is at stake when a company’s right to conduct business is protected – theories of the firm – company as a nexus of contracts or as a subject of rights on its own behalf – company as a locus of authority and as a jurisdiction – protecting freedom of company to restrict freedom of human beings – ideological underpinnings of extensive protection of freedom of companies – dehumanisation of fundamental rights.