With his “highly suggestive,” “thought-provoking” paper, The Juridical Coup d'État and the Problem of Authority, Stone Sweet initiated an ongoing debate. The paper was the object of immediate comments by three eminent legal scholars and of a response to them by Stone Sweet. Most recently, Corrias has developed on its basis a theory of constituent power now. The present article will mostly deal with those aspects of Stone Sweet's paper on which Corrias has relied.

The international arena is increasingly important in EU legal discourse. Using the word “global” is highly fashionable at present, but what does it mean to refer to this concept? It is not an exaggeration to claim that if “constitutionalism” is added to the picture you have a new catchphrase for understanding the EU legal architecture beyond the nation state and its interrelationship with the external sphere: “Global constitutionalism.” Much of the discussion on the normative dimension of EU powers is centered on the function of the EU as a promoter of values abroad. This is also what the Lisbon Treaty promises as set out in Article 3(5) and Article 21 in the Treaty of the European Union (TEU) by guaranteeing, inter alia, that the EU shall uphold its values in the relationship with the wider world and contribute to the protection of its citizens. As witnessed in the recent judgment on the validity of the EU's Emissions Trading System (ETS), the EU's values may sometimes spill over to the global level. In the ETS case, the Court of Justice set out to make a powerful statement on the importance of environmental protection, even when such concerns extend beyond the borders of Europe. Therefore, the question of global constitutionalism in the EU seems inextricably linked to the normative question of what values the EU should promote or conversely “borrow” from the outside world.

The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) provides with respect to the free movement of goods that “[q]uantitative restrictions on imports and all measures having equivalent effect shall be prohibited.” In contrast, the TFEU provides that, with respect to the free movement of persons, services, and capital, restrictions at the national level on such rights are similarly unlawful.

The concept of rupture straddles the space between revolution and reform, anarchy and order—a paradoxical term to demarcate, on the one hand, the possibility of a complete falling away of one systematization, without necessarily initiating some new regime, and on the other hand, the conditions of improvement and renewal, an opportunity of reassessment, and quite often re-entrenchment. Thus, rupture is not necessarily the same as speaking about revolution, or even emancipation for that matter, because it does not necessitate any giving up of a certain system of ideas or authority, at least not in any longstanding sense. To put it bluntly, it is neither progressive nor reactionary, but in some sense, perhaps best understood, and I will expand on this shortly, as simply the very conditions of establishing and/or maintaining any symbolic order (by which I mean the albeit uneasy synthesis of political, social, economic, religious relationships that constitute what ends up getting called a ‘system’ or ‘order'). Rupture is a strategy, in other words, of both understanding and political action, but which itself carries no necessary affiliation with any ideological disposition. We might say, therefore, to speak of rupture is to enlist a set of concerns, disagreements, traditions, ideas, and so on, that are useful when attempting not just to describe a situation, but to move towards some political decision as a group, though what exactly that would be is open to contestation.

The emergence of an independent judiciary and the associated consistent implementation of the separation of powers principle are major achievements of modern times and important characteristics of the transition to the rule of law. Against this background, any attempt at reforming the independence, control structure or liability of the judiciary must be viewed critically, because reform efforts in this area often constitute modifications to the deep layers of a legal and political system. These changes are ultimately not easy to survey and the results are difficult to control. Consequently, those who seek to touch upon the liability of judges enter a rough and sometimes even downright hostile terrain. Does such liability not inevitably lead to an impairment of judicial independence, therefore damaging the “last bulwark against the erosion of law?” Does it even perforate the traditional system of the separation of powers? Will not a circulus vitiosus in the sense of a never-ending flood of cases be created if after any legal proceedings the question of judicial liability remains to be asked (or even, from the lawyer's perspective, has to be asked to avoid recourse)? These questions can take on an even more dramatic tone and show that the area is to be treaded on lightly. Therefore, important clarifications have to be made in advance in order to put the following observations into perspective: The German judicial system is not at all a bad judicial system-the opposite is true. In a global comparison, the German system is easily able to compete with any other system in terms of speed of proceedings, judicial facilities and reputation of the courts. So then why even be concerned at all with state liability for judicial wrongs?

The European Union (EU) Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is a cornerstone of the European Union's policy to combat climate change and its key tool for the cost-effective reduction of industrial greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, according to the European Commission, it is the first and biggest international scheme for the trading of greenhouse gas emission allowances, including sophisticated and far-reaching penalties. Notably, however, the scheme arose out of a failure at the international level to agree on global standards. When an amended directive included aviation under this scheme beginning in 2012, it ignited a global controversy that came before the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice in December 2011. In its decision, the Court and Advocate General explicitly explain that the EU ETS regime arose because of the failure of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) to evolve a global regulatory scheme. To some, the decision of the Court of Justice on the EU ETS represents a definitive view on the legality of the EU's ambitions to uphold high environmental standards and to compel others to uphold these standards also.

Home state mechanisms designed to address harms arising from overseas resource extraction have recently been considered in Canada. This paper will examine whether such mechanisms could be viewed as an example of transnational private regulatory governance, and the implications of doing so for our understanding of both public international law and transnational private regulatory governance. After first briefly unpacking the idea of transnational private regulatory governance, the paper will compare common understandings of the scope of home state jurisdiction to regulate transnational corporations under international human rights and international environmental law. Recent developments in Canadian law and policy culminating in the creation of a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Counsellor for the international operations of the Canadian extractive industry will then be described. This Canadian experience will serve an example of home state-based transnational private regulatory governance.

The right to resistance against state power is very often characterized by actions against an existing legal order that is perceived as being unjust and therefore both – illegitimate and illegal. Terrorism, on the other hand, is often defined as politically motivated violence that is prosecuted by state power according to the law and although the terrorist views his actions as being justified by the perceived illegitimacy of state power, the state by itself is not willing to accept such a point of view – henceforth the prosecution. Therefore we can often find situations where both sides claim legitimacy and legality, mutually excluding each other's positions. This situation is only one of many that epitomize and exemplifies the more common problem of paradox in law: any society that aims at harmonizing conflicts through law will find itself in the not so comfortable position that the basic principle of justice – the quest for treating similar things alike – inevitably leads to cases where we have to face a direct conflict of laws. Either one law is just and therefore ought to apply, or the other, but we will not be able to apply both at the same time, since they may turn out conflicting results.

Within the Council of Europe, the relationship between the ECtHR and the member states is crucial for the survival and effective functioning of the Court. The ECtHR is currently overwhelmed by applications, the bulk of which emanate from a relatively small number of states, notably Russia, Rumania, Turkey, and the Ukraine. The backlog of cases will soon be toppling the vertiginous mark of 160,000, the adjudication of which alone would take the Court more than six years. The sheer number of cases exemplifies the system's urgent need for reform. Lately, discussions have been heavily influenced by considerations of subsidiarity, which the earlier Interlaken Declaration-as well as the recent Brighton Conference-emphasized as the key for the future relationship between the ECtHR and member states. Discussions about the principle's proper role in the relationship between member states and the ECHR, however, are far from over. This is due to questions regarding the principle itself, as well as to the factual realities dominating in the ECtHR-national court relationship. The principle often focuses on a strict separation of competences at two different levels, the national and the international, and many understandings of that principle require that the two levels stand in a more or less hierarchical relationship. This is difficult to assume in the Council of Europe context, where, compared to the EU, neither the doctrine of direct effect nor the principle of primacy in application reigns. Moreover, Strasbourg's emphasis on subsidiarity appears to focus on the responsibility of the member states to remedy human rights violations. In line with that argument, scholars have opined that the ECHR system should focus on an approach in which the ECtHR would be involved only if there are good reasons to depart from interpretation at the national level. Nonetheless, others recently doubted the overall usefulness of such an understanding of subsidiarity, since those member states responsible for the lion's share of new applications to the ECHR often neither possess a functioning judiciary nor functioning judicial or executive institutions, in general.

The reality of ideological phenomena is the objective reality of social signs. The laws of this reality are the laws of semiotic communication and are directly determined by the total aggregate of social and economic laws. Ideological reality is the immediate superstructure above the economic basis. Individual consciousness is not the architect of their ideological superstructure, but only a tenant lodging in the social edifice of ideological signs.

The recent judgment of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Case Concerning Jurisdictional Immunities of the State (Germany v. Italy; Greece Intervening) marks the climax of a series of legal proceedings before Greek, Italian, and German courts, as well as the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) stretching over a period of more than fifteen years. The international community had eagerly awaited the ICJ's findings on the issue at the heart of the dispute, namely the scope of state immunity before foreign courts in cases concerning claims arising from serious violations of international humanitarian law. While most expected the Court to rule in favor of Germany and to uphold state immunity in principle, it was unclear whether the Court would acknowledge the increasing erosion of immunity with respect to serious violations of human rights or international humanitarian law. To the disappointment of many, the Court took a conservative approach and rejected the idea of an emerging exception from state immunity.

Despite the increasing urgency of global environmental issues, international environmental law continues to struggle for relevancy and effectiveness. Even as legal efforts have intensified, the global environment has continued to deteriorate. In particular, state-centric, multilateral “hard law” instruments have proven an increasingly ineffectual means of regulating the global environment.

The determination of the tax residence of companies – as a fundamental issue of (international) tax law – emerged between the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century. This emerged as an issue in cases where companies which were found to have their place of management, in the sense of a decision-making centre, in the United Kingdom (UK), carried out all their business activity, in terms of production and commercialization, in another country. At a time when the UK was establishing its tax system earlier than other countries, the tax courts of this country began to develop the “central management and control test” as a test for establishing companies' tax residence in these situations and to consider the companies at stake as tax residents in the UK on the ground that their decision-making centre was located there. Such decisions appeared to have been driven by an interest to prevent companies carrying out their business abroad from escaping UK taxation on their worldwide income, and thus to have been motivated by a specific anti-avoidance purpose. Nonetheless, the “central management and control” test formed the basis of the “place of effective management” test which, under the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Model for bilateral conventions against double taxation, is currently adopted as a tiebreaker rule, i.e. as a criteria for allocating the tax residence of companies in cases where both contracting

The goal of the European Union is not only to harmonize the different national legislations but also to create new company models. These new company models are not intended to replace the national models, but instead to offer a new and free choice to business operators in addition to the national models. It is predictable that among these models will be the European Private Company (Societas Privata Europaea or SPE) regulated by the Proposal for a Council Regulation (presented by the Commission) of 25 June 2008. The other preceding European legal forms have been the European Economic Interest Grouping (EEIG) of 1985, the European Company (SE) of 2001 and the European Cooperative Society (SCE) of 2003.

“A harmonious society needs a stronger legal system that wields greater authority.”

“He,” the Chinese character for harmony, is now in everyone's mind when thinking about contemporary China. Harmony and other ‘Confucian values’ seem to have penetrated all spheres of Chinese society, from the Communist Party's elite to business leaders and academics. But Confucius is both used and abused: quoting the philosopher at the start of the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony in a kitsch historical extravaganza featuring 3,000 men dressed up as his disciples does not clarify the true political meaning of an increasingly ideologically eclectic regime. On the contrary, it leads, to borrow Claude Lefort's term, to further “complications.” Thus, the interest in the idea of a ‘socialist harmonious society’ stems less from what it holds aloft than from what it hides.

The right to private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the Convention, or ECHR) is one of the widest rights in European human rights law. Applicants often rely on the norm when they seek to justify all kinds of behavior, which may be limited or even outlawed through domestic law. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that in the case of A, B and C v. Ireland, which was decided by the European Court of Human Rights in December 2010, the applicants relied on Article 8 to complain about the restrictive anti-abortion law in the Republic of Ireland. Contrary to predictions that A, B and C v. Ireland could become “Europe's Roe v. Wade,” referring to the U.S. case which led to the permissibility of abortion under U.S. law, the European Court of Human Rights (the Court) held that Article 8 did not include a right to have an abortion.