AALS Annual Meeting Today: European Law Section Panel on "Current Developments in Rights Protection in the European Union"

Just a reminder for all network members attending the AALS Annual Meeting in San Francisco: The European Law Section's panel on Current Developments in Rights Protection in the European Union: Anti-Discrimination Measures, The Charter of Fundamental Rights, and the Refugee Crisis, will be held today at 8:30 am PST in Continental Parlor 7 at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square. Below is the panel description and the list of speakers.

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Novel legislation adopted by the E.U. Council of Ministers in 2000 prohibits discrimination based on race or ethnic origin in all fields regulated by E.U. law, and prohibits discrimination in employment based on religion, age, disability, or sexual orientation. Panelists will discuss efforts to curb discrimination of the Roma people under E.U. rules and the European Convention on Human Rights, and Court judgments concerning compulsory retirement of university professors, judges, and prosecutors. Another panelist will discuss the efforts to maintain human rights protection while coping with the on-going refugee crisis. A guest European professor will discuss the impact of the U.K. referendum on withdrawal from the E.U. on the U.K. rules on residence of migrant nationals of other E.U. nations.  Papers from the program will be published in Fordham International Law Journal.  

Speakers:

Frank Emmert, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law
Roger J. Goebel, Fordham University School of Law
Dr. Laurence Gormley, University of Groningen Faculty of Law
Katerina Linos, University of California, Berkeley School of Law
Julie C. Suk, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

The Network on SSRN: Gráinne de Búrca, "After the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights: The Court of Justice as a Human Rights Adjudicator?"

We're a bit behind in alerting readers to new postings of the network on SSRN, and we'll be trying to make up for that over the next couple of weeks.  With apologies for the delay, we wanted to let readers know about this new piece by network member Gráinne de Búrca (NYU), entitled "After the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights: The Court of Justice as a Human Rights Adjudicator?," which is forthcoming in the Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law, Vol. 20 (2013). An abstract is reproduced below and the full article can be downloaded from SSRN here.

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This article examines the engagement by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights over the period since the Charter was made formally binding by the Lisbon Treaty in 2009. A survey of the output of the Court during that time reveals a sharp rise in the number of cases in which a provision of the Charter was cited or argued before the Court. Further, the Court has engaged substantively with and given prominence to the Charter argument in a growing number of these cases. In other words, the incidence of human rights adjudication before the CJEU has been significantly augmented by the adoption of the Charter as a binding legal instrument. The article considers the implications for the Court of Justice of the growing demand for it to function in certain cases as a human rights adjudicator. More particularly, it questions whether the long-standing judicial style and approach of the Court – its self-referential, formulaic and often minimalist style of reasoning – is appropriate to this expanded role. The article argues that the nature and context of the increasing number of human rights claims being made before the Court call for greater openness on the part of the CJEU to the use of international and comparative law and to the possibility of third party interventions. Further, and particularly given the evident unwillingness of the CJEU to countenance the practice of separate concurring or dissenting opinions, the Court should, particularly in cases involving human rights claims, rethink its increasingly frequent practice of dispensing with the opinion of an Advocate General.