The Juridical Coup d'État and the Problem of Authority

German Law Journal

Volumn 8, Issue 10, 2007, Pages 915-927

  Sweet, Alec Stone ^a  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79956131041     PISSN: None     EISSN: 20718322     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S2071832200006064     Document Type: Article

References (35)

1. HANS KELSEN, INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEMS OF LEGAL THEORY: A TRANSLATION OF THE FIRST EDITION OF THE REINE RECHTSLEHRE OR PURE THEORY OF LAW 54 (Bonnie Litschewski Paulson and Stanley L. Paulson trans., 1992).
2. H.L.A. HART, THE CONCEPT OF LAW 124-41 (1994).
3. NEIL MACCORMICK, LEGAL REASONING AND LEGAL THEORY (1978).
4. Griswold v. Connecticut. 381 U.S. 479 (1965).
5. There are important cases outside of Europe that would count, including the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions to enforce the Federal Bill of Rights against the States, in cases that would otherwise be governed entirely by state law.
6. RD ed. forthcoming.
7. Costa, ECJ 6/64, ECR (1964), 585.
8. Van Gend en Loos, ECJ 26/62, ECR (1963), 1.
9. Joseph Weiler, The Transformation of Europe, 100 YALE LAW JOURNAL 2403 (1991); ALEC STONE SWEET, THE JUDICIAL CONSTRUCTION OF EUROPE (2002).
10. Joseph Weiler, The Transformation of Europe, 100 YALE LAW JOURNAL 2403 (1991); ALEC STONE SWEET, THE JUDICIAL CONSTRUCTION OF EUROPE (2002).
11. Council Decision 71-44, Recueil des Décisions du Conseil Constitutionnel 29 (1971).
12. Stephen Gardbaum, The "Horizontal Effect" of Constitutional Rights, 102 MICH. L. REV. 388 (2003).
13. ROBERT ALEXY, A THEORY OF CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS 352-65 (2002).
14. Mattias Kumm, Who is Afraid of the Total Constitution? Constitutional Rights as Principles and the Constitutionalization of Private Law, 352 7 GERMAN L.J. 4 (2006), available at: http://www.germanlawjournal.com/article.php?id=724, last accessed 26 September 2007
15. The comments on a recent FCC ruling in this genre are revealing: Peer Zumbansen, Federal Constitutional Court Affirms Horizontal Effect of Constitutional Rights in Private Law Relations and Voids a Maritial Agreement on Constitutional Grounds, 2 GERMAN L.J. No. 6 (2001), available at: http://www.germanlawjournal.com/article.php?id=61. See also the commentary on the FCC's ruling on the "Benetton Shock Ads": Peer Zumbansen, Federal Constitutional Court Bans Shock Ads: Free Expression, Fair Competition, and the Opaque Boundaries between Political Message and Social Standards, 2 GERMAN L.J. No. 1 (2001), available at: http://www.germanlawjournal.com/article.php?id=14, last accessed 26 September 2007.
16. The comments on a recent FCC ruling in this genre are revealing: Peer Zumbansen, Federal Constitutional Court Affirms Horizontal Effect of Constitutional Rights in Private Law Relations and Voids a Maritial Agreement on Constitutional Grounds, 2 GERMAN L.J. No. 6 (2001), available at: http://www.germanlawjournal.com/article.php?id=61. See also the commentary on the FCC's ruling on the "Benetton Shock Ads": Peer Zumbansen, Federal Constitutional Court Bans Shock Ads: Free Expression, Fair Competition, and the Opaque Boundaries between Political Message and Social Standards, 2 GERMAN L.J. No. 1 (2001), available at: http://www.germanlawjournal.com/article.php?id=14, last accessed 26 September 2007.
17. Indeed, the intensity of the scholarly debate about shows no sign of relenting; see Uwe Diederichsen, Das Bundesverfassungsgericht als oberstes Zivilgericht - ein Lehrstück der juristichen Methodenlehre, in ARCHIV FÜR DIE CIVILISTISCHE PRAXIS 171 (1998); CLAUS-WILHELM, GRUNDERECHTE UND PRIVATRECHT - EINE ZWISCHENBILANZ (1999).
18. Indeed, the intensity of the scholarly debate about shows no sign of relenting; see Uwe Diederichsen, Das Bundesverfassungsgericht als oberstes Zivilgericht - ein Lehrstück der juristichen Methodenlehre, in ARCHIV FÜR DIE CIVILISTISCHE PRAXIS 171 (1998); CLAUS-WILHELM, GRUNDERECHTE UND PRIVATRECHT - EINE ZWISCHENBILANZ (1999).
19. ALEXY (note 12), postscript.
20. The gaps in constitutional control that remain can be important in certain cases; see Hans-Joachim Faller, Bundesverfassungsgericht und Bundesgerichtshof, in 115 ARCHIV DES ÖFFENTLICHEN RECHTS 189-92 (1990).
21. Travaux préparatoires de la Constitution du 4 Octobre 1958. Paris: Documentation française, 1960.
22. STONE SWEET (note 9), chapter 2.
23. For the Fourth Republic, see Débats du 7 Mars, 1946, Assemblée nationale constituante: 607 - 639. For the Fifth Republic, see Travaux préparatoires de la Constitution du 4 Octobre 1958.
24. Table Ronde 279-80 (1995).
25. Le Monde, 9 August 1993.
26. Eric Stein, Lawyers, Judges, and the Making of a Transnational Constitution, 75 AM. J. INT'L L. 1 (1981); WEILER (note 9).
27. Art. 234 connects the ECJ and the national courts through a preliminary reference procedure, that is similar to the mechanism at the heart of German concrete review.
28. STONE SWEET (note 9); Neil Fligstein and Alec Stone Sweet, Constructing Markets and Policies: An Institutionalist Account of European Integration, 107 AM. J. SOC. 1206 (2002).
29. THE EUROPEAN COURT AND NATIONAL COURTS-DOCTRINE AND JURISPRUDENCE: LEGAL CHANGE IN ITS SOCIAL CONTEXT (Anne-Marie Slaughter, Alec Stone Sweet & Joseph Weiler, eds., 1998); KAREN ALTER, ESTABLISHING THE SUPREMACY OF EUROPEAN LAW (2001); PAUL CRAIG AND GRÁINNE DE BÚRCA, EU LAW: TEXT, CASES AND MATERIALS 439-52 (2003).
30. THE EUROPEAN COURT AND NATIONAL COURTS-DOCTRINE AND JURISPRUDENCE: LEGAL CHANGE IN ITS SOCIAL CONTEXT (Anne-Marie Slaughter, Alec Stone Sweet & Joseph Weiler, eds., 1998); KAREN ALTER, ESTABLISHING THE SUPREMACY OF EUROPEAN LAW (2001); PAUL CRAIG AND GRÁINNE DE BÚRCA, EU LAW: TEXT, CASES AND MATERIALS 439-52 (2003).
31. THE EUROPEAN COURT AND NATIONAL COURTS-DOCTRINE AND JURISPRUDENCE: LEGAL CHANGE IN ITS SOCIAL CONTEXT (Anne-Marie Slaughter, Alec Stone Sweet & Joseph Weiler, eds., 1998); KAREN ALTER, ESTABLISHING THE SUPREMACY OF EUROPEAN LAW (2001); PAUL CRAIG AND GRÁINNE DE BÚRCA, EU LAW: TEXT, CASES AND MATERIALS 439-52 (2003).
32. MALCOLM JARVIS, THE APPLICATION OF EC LAW BY NATIONAL COURTS, (1998); STONE SWEET (note 9), chapter 3-4.
33. By a "functional defense," I mean a normative evaluation of a judicial ruling in view of the purported benefits it will provide to society; the good provided may be moral, economic, political, legal, and so on. In each of my three cases, it is the functional defense of the juridical coup that counts in the mainstream scholarly discourse on the matter, not the doctrinal deduction.
34. Lech Garlicki, Constitutional Courts versus Supreme Courts, 5 INT'L J. CON. L. 44 (2007).
35. STONE SWEET (note 9).