Introduction – Explaining party bans, political and legal contexts – Banned parties and banning states in Europe, the political context – Nature of banned parties – Nature of banning states – Tolerant and intolerant democracies, the legal context – Evolving rationales for party bans and procedures for proscription – Contemporary rationales for banning parties – Anti-democratic ideology – Non-democratic internal organisation – Party names – Party orientation to violence – Protecting the present order – Evolving rationales for party bans – Weimar and legitimacy paradigms – Conclusions, directions for future research

EU Law–Vertical competence review of EU secondary law–Court of Justice control of the exercise of EU legislative powers–Strict procedural review of EU legislation–Standard of judicial review and intensity of judicial review–Judicial review as a safeguard of federalism–Constitutional review of EU legislation–Proportionality, subsidiarity and principle of conferral–Balance between the EU legislator’s prerogatives and the need to ensure that EU legislation conforms to the precepts of EU law–Distribution of competences between Member States and the EU

Horizontal effect of fundamental rights – Legal principles – Dichotomy between private and public law – Systemic or anti-systemic elements in legal orders – Conflict between contractual autonomy and fundamental rights – Coherence in law – Balancing – Cases of permissibility of bank charges in the Czech and German legal systems – General clauses on good morals and good faith in private law

Belgian Constitutional Court – Conflicts between regions, communities and the central government – Allocation of competences – Decisions with high political content – Degree of political alignment between the parties in litigation and judicial behaviour at the Court – Empirical testing – All decisions of the Belgian Constitutional Court, 1985-2012 – Alignment between the alleged political preferences of the judges and the political affiliation of the Petitioner increases the rate of success of the latter