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 – 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

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.

Invention and promotion of the concept of ‘Community of law’ in the EEC – The role and thought of Walter Hallstein – Moving beyond the traditional opposition between ‘constitutionalists’ and ‘internationalists’ – The diversity and struggles among the ‘constitutionalists’ – Constitutional imaginaries as different conceptions of the relation of law, market, and democracy – Social processes at work in the elaboration of a transnational constitutional imaginary – Political and academic making of the imaginary of the ‘Community of law’

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

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

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

A functional universalistic approach to human dignity in legal argumentation – a theory which applies three variables to define the functions of dignity: content width, argumentative power, and applicability before courts – relative individual right, objective value and source of human rights as legitimate basic functions – the problematic nature of hybrid functions created by blending the basic functions – a set of principles to avoid hybrid functions and minimise the problems caused by them – qualitative analysis of several examples of judgments by supreme, constitutional and international courts to support the theory

Infringement actions and EU values – constitutional backsliding in Hungary and Poland – the role of the Court of Justice – judicial independence and Article 19 TEU – the Charter of Fundamental Rights – the toolkit to protect EU values – political and judicial mechanisms – a bottom-up approach

Democratic defence – Germany’s militant democracy – militant measures against radical-right parties – targeted organisations in militant democracies not passive recipients of militant measures – actions taken by targeted organisations – parties engaging in frontstage moderation to shield the party from militant measures – alternative for Germany shielding the party from militant measures by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution

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’

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

The unsuccessful petition to ban Slovakia’s extreme right parliamentary party – the value of focusing on judicial craft for studies of militant democracy and courts – statutory frameworks as intervening variables and their overview in Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia – key components of judicial craft endogenous to courts: consistency, legal reasoning skills, problem-solving abilities, creativity – the cases of Workers’ Party (Czechia), Slovak Togetherness–National Party (Slovakia), People’s Party Our Slovakia (Slovakia) and Hungarian Guard (Hungary) – the decisions of the Czech Supreme Administrative Court (2009) and the Slovak Supreme Court (2019) – re-evaluating what counts as ‘success’ with party bans: judicial craft affects the effectiveness of the statutory framework for party bans – a court-centric perspective on militant democracy when courts face illiberal assaults

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.

Political parties are important for the functioning and consolidation of democracy – citizens should defend their rights against parties with agendas that conflict with the principles of liberal democracy – the types of actions that are permissible for citizens depends on the conditions of political legitimacy and the closeness to power of non-liberal-democratic parties – theories of both (un-)civil disobedience and violent self-defence are relevant here