Federalism as a consequence of local/cultural self-determination – Degree of autonomous human rights protection on a subnational level – Analysis in terms of two dimensions: subnational constitutionalism and contestatory federalism – Contrast between US and European models – Opposition between contestatory federalism and subsidiarity – Rise of international human rights protection diminishes importance of subnational human rights protection

What is a ‘European’ Parliament and who should vote for it? Should it be the ‘citizens’ of the European Union alone? If so, should it be all EU citizens, or only those who are resident in the member states? Or should the electorate include potentially all residents in the member states which comprise the EU and who are thus affected by decisions taken in the Parliament? Does anyone have a ‘right’ to vote for the European Parliament? And who should decide who votes for the European Parliament – the member states, or the EU itself? In other words, is there a single European concept of the European Parliamentary demos, or twenty-seven separate, but overlapping, national concepts?

Read carefully: A Community national leaves his or her home state (the ‘first country’) to work in a host member state (the ‘second country’). While in the second country, he or she exercises the right to family reunification with a spouse, partner or dependent who is not a national of any EU or EEA member state (a ‘third-country’ national). When the Community national returns to the first country together with the family member, what determines the family member's right of residence in the first country? Community law – in which case the Community national would continue to enjoy the right of family reunification as before? Or the national immigration law of the first country, which could potentially dictate more restrictive conditions for family reunification?

History of the Turkish Presidency – Powers and status of presidents under the Constitutions of 1961 and 1982 – Parlementarisme attenué – A veto players system – Performance of individual presidents: guardian and partisan presidencies – Introduction of the principle of direct election of the president in 2007: not part of a well-thought out constitutional engineering scheme – Seeds of instability

On 19 December 2006 the Polish Constitutional Tribunal delivered an interesting ruling on the division of powers between national courts and the Court of Justice in the interpretation of EU law. The Tribunal declined jurisdiction to answer a question on the conformity of the Polish law on excise duty with Article 90 EC and ruled that the issue at stake was the interpretation of EC law, thus falling within the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice. At the same time, however, the Constitutional Tribunal reserved its jurisdiction to handle EU-related matters with constitutional implications. This development fits nicely into the growing list of the Tribunal's decisions touching upon important legal issues linked to Poland's membership in the European Union.

It is never too late. In two decisions handed down at the end of October 2007, the Italian Constitutional Court seems finally to have begun to take seriously one of the Italian Constitution's fundamental principles: the openness to international law which is embodied in Articles 10, 11 and – the provision chosen by the Constitutional Court in the judgments being examined – 117, paragraph 1 of the Constitution, which was added by the constitutional revision of 2001. In particular, the two decisions focus on the relationship between the Italian constitutional legal order and the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

What is constitutional pluralism? What does it stand for? What does it expect to achieve, or change in European integration, or otherwise contribute to it? Is it a viable, desirable or perhaps even an indispensable theoretical take on European integration? These were the leading questions discussed in the Symposium ‘Four Visions of Constitutional Pluralism’ at the European University Institute in January of this year. Within the framework of the Legal Theory working group and under the auspices of the Academy of European Law the organisers, Matej Avbelj and Jan Komarek, hosted four key scholars from the field of EU legal and constitutional theory. Julio Baquero Cruz, Mattias Kumm, Miguel Poiares Maduro, and Neil Walker engaged in a groundbreaking three-hour discussion of their respective theoretical visions of European integration. This short note can provide just a taste of an extremely rich debate; however, its full transcript should soon be published by the EUI Department of Law as its working paper.

UN human rights binding on states; binding on UN organs? – Sanctions mechanism as implemented in EU – Kadi and others – Ruling Court of First Instance – Relation between UN law and EC law – Human rights obligations – Exception, political question, etc. – Solange – Monism and dualism – Questions remain