Time appears in the development of law in several capacities. One of its powers is to provide relief for courts gridlocked in contradictory claims of hierarchy. That is the topic of this editorial. A showcase is provided by the Melki saga, as it recently unfolded in a rich and rushed contention between the French courts and the Court of Justice of the European Union.

Concept of solidarity – Factual vs. normative solidarity – Development of solidarity in the euro area – Transition from negative to positive solidarity – Solidarity as a legal concept – European Stability Mechanism – European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism – European Financial Stability Facility – Pringle judgement of the Court of Justice of the European Union – ECB bond-buying programmes

Economic governance – Financial assistance – Economic and monetary union – Patent litigation – Treaties between member states – Jurisdiction of the Court of Justice – powers of the EU institutions – Enhanced cooperation

Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU – Multiple sources of fundamental rights in the EU legal system – Non-hierarchical, pluralistic understanding of their interrelationship – Case study: the right to good administration – Difficulties in defining the scope of the right to good administration under the Charter and that of the right to good administration as a general principle of EU law – Adoption of a pluralistic understanding of the EU fundamental rights’ sources allows for a clarification and improved understanding of the individual's rights in the EU legal system

Hungarian constitutional law – New Basic Law – Continuity with the previous democratic Constitution – Vision of the political community embedded in the new Basic Law – The level of protection of fundamental rights – Continuity and lack of foreseeability in the organisation of the state – European legal procedures against or about Hungary – The life prospects of the new Basic Law – Danger of constitutional crisis whenever the government does not hold a constitution-amending majority

Response of national highest courts to the ECJ's integrationist agenda – Logic behind qualified acceptance of EU law supremacy and direct effect – Several possible explanations for the observed inter-court variation: the courts’ type and organisation; their power to review legislative acts under domestic law; the rules governing access to the judicial forum; the monistic tradition of the legal system and the level of public support for European integration – Assessment of empirical validity of these hypotheses using a new dataset coding the doctrinal positions and institutional constraints of 34 domestic highest courts – Most correlations small – Only one variable – the power to review statutory legislation under national law – appears to have a significant influence on the courts’ doctrinal response to legal integration – Some support for the argument that the varying institutional constraints and incentives under which highest court judges operate shape the way they accommodate and reconcile two conflicting goals