European Integration Through Law: Judicial Review of the Eurozone Crisis in European National, Regional and Supranational Courts (Symposium, Michigan Journal of International Law)

New network member Elaine Fahey (Amsterdam) passed on the news that the Michigan Journal of International Law has published a new symposium issue entitled "European Integration Through Law: Judicial Review of the Eurozone Crisis in European National, Regional and Supranational Courts".  The symposium is the inaugural entry in the MJIL's "Emerging Scholarship Project".  Although the papers are drawn primarily from younger scholars, the organizers were honored to have the participation of Advocate-General Julianne Kokott (see here), discussing the CJEU's disposition of the reference in Pringle v. Ireland.  The full list of articles can be found here and the opening paragraphs of the symposium's Forward are below.

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Recent measures designed to tackle the European financial crisis are multi-faceted, but most of all, they have a strong legal dimension. This accentuated and multifarious legal feature reverses the “law-lite” component of the European Union’s euro currency. It is significant that these “anti-crisis” legal measures have survived broad judicial review. The arguments and procedures involved in this judicial review challenged our previous understanding of the role of law in European integration and the capacity of judicial review to provide checks and balances.

Because of the financial crisis, the EU Member States have had to assume significant responsibilities, both for their own troubles and for each other. As a result of these changes, the EU has had to quickly evolve into more than what it was in terms of its legal purview. Attempts to resolve the Eurozone crisis through law have generated a flurry of postnational rule-making. However, its character is extraordinarily complex and manipulates the state of integration within the Eurozone. Moreover, it has already generated significant challenges for a wide variety of judicial bodies, parliaments and tribunals. [Continue reading the Forward here]

Guest Post: Pringle Has His Chips (Kenneth Armstrong)

This guest post, by Kenneth Armstrong, Professor of European Union Law at Queen Mary, University of London, originally appeared on EUtopialaw and is cross-posted here with permission.  Of interest to network members, Prof. Armstrong will serve as the Senior Emile Noël Fellow at NYU Law School in the spring 2013 term.  Not reproduced here but also perhaps of interest is an exchange of comments between Prof. Armstrong and network member Peter Lindseth in response to his original post on EUtopialaw.

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The Court of Justice has delivered its much anticipated ruling in the challenge brought by Thomas Pringle to the legal provisions establishing the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). In dismissing the challenge, the European Court of Justice – convened as a Full Court of all twenty-seven judges – became the latest court to deal with the legal fall-out from the Eurozone crisis. Constitutional challenges in national courts, including Germany and Estonia, have, this far failed to create significant legal obstacles to the structures put in place by EU states in their attempt to manage the crisis and to provide financial support to Eurozone states.

Although the challenge before the CJEU failed, the Court reiterated that while Member States are free to establish mechanisms like the ESM outside of the structures of the EU treaties, the exercise of their powers through such structures must be consistent with and not incompatible with their continuing obligations under EU law.