On Thursday morning February 2nd, 1653, New York came into being as a city. From a dependent trading outpost run by the Dutch West Indies Company, it turned itself into a self-governing political community. Seven local magistrates went into the fort, swore an oath of service to the Dutch States General and said a prayer. Then they signed a municipal charter and conducted their first piece of business, putting their signatures to a statement ‘herewith [to] inform everybody that they shall hold their regular meetings in the house hitherto called the City Tavern, henceforth the City Hall, on Monday mornings from 9 o'clock, to hear all questions of difference between litigants and decide them as best they can.’

Ten years ago, as the European Constitutional Treaty was made ready for signature, this journal was made ready for launching. Both events would take place at the end of October 2004. Our first issue was, of course, devoted to the Treaty. It broke down the document's substance into twenty-four key topics, each dealt with in turn by the members of the editorial and the advisory boards. From that first issue, the course of this journal would become inspired less by the document, however, than by the events concerning the constitutional settlement as it evolved for the Union.

The European Court of Justice and the United Nations blacklisting regime - Background, case-law and conflict in relation to that regime - The Kadi II case - wider constitutional dimensions of the ruling - theoretical aspects of the dispute from rule of law perspective - the future

United Kingdom – UK Supreme Court – European Union – The orthodox view of the British constitution: lack of hierarchy of laws – Britain's ‘unwritten’ constitution and the role of ‘constitutional statues’ in Factortame – HS2 judgment makes up for House of Lords' omission in Factortame – Relationship between parliamentary sovereignty and EU law more clearly articulated – A normative-hierarchical constitutional order

European Court of Justice – The nature of European law – European Law Academia – Costa v. E.N.E.L. and Van Gend & Loos – Legal Service of the European Commission – How the constitutional discourse became dominant

European Union's ‘social constitution’ and bailout measures – Are the bailout measures EU law? – Do the bailout measures create legal obligations? – Legal nature of Memoranda of Understanding – Avenues for challenge – Call for recognition of the EU law nature of bailouts and the costs of such non-recognition

Human rights – European Convention on Human Rights – European Union – United Nations – Smart sanctions – Constitutional law – French law – German law – Conflicts between legal systems – Equivalent protection – Solange

United Kingdom perspective on the Fiscal Compact - December 2011 Brussels summit veto - European Union Act 2011 - Legal obstacles to accession to Fiscal Compact - Legal obstacles to incorporation into EU Treaties - Relevance of legal conditions and political motivations - Legal obstacles to implementation of balanced budget rule - Interpretation of Article 3(2) - Parliamentary Sovereignty - Challenges to United Kingdom's political constitution

The ultra vires judgment of the Czech Constitutional Court in Holubec and its significance - Evolution and unfolding of Czechoslovak pension saga - Landtová judgment of the Court - Later developments and approaches of the various actors - Holubec as a revolt that did not take place - Broader structural implications for the preliminary ruling procedure and its reform - The functions of the preliminary rulings procedure - Atomisation of national judicial hierarchies and its consequences - Voice and representation before the Court - The role of governmental agent in proceedings before the Court - Law-making without representation - The position of constitutional courts in the European judicial system - When judicial cooperation turns uncooperative - Conceptualizing judicial non-cooperation and disobedience.

European Citizens' Initiative – Direct democracy: power to the people? – Legal framework of the Citizen's Initiative – Review and critical analysis of Commission Registration decisions for European Citizens' Initiative proposals – Admissibility criteria – Inconsistency in registration decisions – Increased legal burden on European citizens' initiative organisers – Institutional mediation or direct democracy?

First preliminary reference of the German Federal Constitutional Court – ECB Outright Monetary Transaction Programme (OMT) – Financial crisis – Ultra vires review – Principle of democracy – Judicial dialogue – Separation of powers – National constitutional identity – Mandate of the ECB – Article 123 TFEU – Article 18.1 ESCB-Statute – Economic and monetary policy – Honeywell test partially abandoned – Pringle judgment inverted – No margin of discretion for the ECB – Necessity, and prohibition of functional misuse, under Article 267 TFEU – Comparative reasoning

Summary of relevant Estonian Supreme Court jurisprudence – The equality principle as an enforceable subjective right which is binding on the legislature – Legal, not factual, equality – No requirement of unequal treatment of non-equals – Simple statutory reservation – Incomparability as a non-suitable criterion for determining the scope of the right to equality – Formation of comparison groups according to the most apparent violation – Special equality rights? – Original and ancillary equality application – Three different intensities of judicial review – Coherence.

On 13 February 2014, the Spanish Constitutional Court came to a final decision regarding the fate of Mr Stefano Melloni. The story of the case is worthy of attention not only from the perspective of the interaction between the Spanish Constitutional Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), but also from the standpoint of the conflicting levels of rights' protection in Europe. The story of Melloni can be described in three acts: setup, confrontation, and resolution.

First, the setup: in 2011, the Spanish Constitutional Court made its first and (so far) only preliminary reference to the CJEU. The Constitutional Court was faced with a collision between the constitutional right to fair trial of persons convicted in absentia and the obligation under EU law to execute a European arrest warrant (heretofore EAW). This setup generated great anticipation, both because of the protagonists and the type of conflict, since in this case what obstructed one member state from complying with EU law was its higher level of constitutional protection for the right in question.

Human rights protection - Proportionality - Deference - Procedural rationality - Process-review - Interplay national courts and Strasbourg court

On 15 January 2014, the Court of Justice (hereafter ‘the Court’) delivered its judgment in Association de Médiation Sociale (hereafter ‘AMS’). AMS brought for the first time before the Court the issue of horizontal applicability in relation to a provision of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (hereafter ‘Charter’), namely Article 27 thereof, which enshrines the right of workers to information and consultation within the undertaking. The case therefore raised questions of ‘undeniable constitutional significance’, as Advocate-General Cruz Villalón had put it in his Opinion, regarding the post-Lisbon enforcement and interpretation of the Charter and, in particular, its application to disputes between private parties.

EU member state status - Member statehood - The idea of an “Integrated State” - Impact of EU membership on the concepts and substance of national constitutional law - Europeanization of member state's constitutional law - European constitutional law understood as Europeanized national constitutional law - European functions of constitutional organs - How to protect fundamental rights in a European area characterized by the overlaying of legal sources - The concept of “higher law” within the national legal order - A Union of Constitutionally Integrated States

On 16 October 2013 the United Kingdom Supreme Court delivered judgment in two conjoined cases that considered the legality of prisoner disenfranchisement. The Court considered both the compatibility of the disenfranchising provisions with the European Convention on Human Rights (‘the Convention’), and whether those provisions breached a right to vote acquired by the appellants under European Union law. In a unanimous judgment the Supreme Court dismissed the appeals, acknowledging the incompatibility of the relevant legislation with Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 of the Convention but declining to issue a declaration of incompatibility. The Supreme Court further held that EU law does not confer upon EU Citizens a substantive right to vote in European Parliamentary elections.

The cases are significant on a number of levels. First, the nuanced arguments advanced before the Court tested the jurisdictional scope of EU law and its capacity to confer rights upon EU Citizens in the absence of cross-border movement. The claims thus held the potential to widen the jurisdiction of EU law along the trajectory outlined by such ECJ case-law as Ruiz Zambrano and Fransson. Secondly, those arguments probed the extent to which the European Charter of Fundamental Rights (‘the Charter’) imports Strasbourg jurisprudence into EU law and thus creates an alternative mechanism through which to enforce Convention rights. Finally, the decision evidences the constitutional tensions that emanate from discordant interpretations of fundamental rights by national and supranational courts from discordant interpretations of fundamental rights by national and supranational courts.