There is no uniform approach to assessing scholarly publications in legal research. Peer review is still the most accepted form, but the popularity of bibliometrics, such as the impact scores of journals and the citation scores of individual articles is increasing. However, there is no ranking of European law journals and none is likely to materialise any time soon. Comparing the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands, we will demonstrate why both peer review and the use of metrics have serious shortcomings. We believe it is necessary to think about such alternatives as more attention for methodological justification in legal research, more clarity from editorial boards about the quality criteria being used to approve or reject submissions, and more emphasis on standards for different forms of legal scholarship. Last but not least, we call for a Europe-wide debate on the pros and cons of different systems of research assessment, rather than let every country reinvent the wheel.

Framing largescale migrant drownings as violations of international law has so far not been a straightforward task. The failures of doing so, both in scholarship and in activism, have often revealed important limitations of international law, and a form of rightlessness that is hard-wired in it. Through an assessment of arguments about drowning, framed in the vocabularies of the right to life, refugee law, the law of the sea, and international criminal law, difficulties surrounding the notion of jurisdiction persist: The maritime space has often functioned as a kind of “legal black hole.” Considering such difficulties, this Article suggests that shifting the focus from migrant rights to the civil and political rights of volunteers coming to the rescue, may help in closing the accountability gap. It thus seeks to articulate and conceptualize a form of maritime civil disobedience among rescue volunteers, which may provide the link for eliminating migrant rightlessness at sea.

The present Article aims to shed light on the question whether crowdinvesting regulation should favor a specific legal form or contract type for crowdinvesting. To this end, it analyzes the conditions which legal forms and contract types must fulfill to be used in crowdinvesting. As crowdinvesting in Germany benefits from a high degree of contractual freedom, the Article gives an overview not only of the types but also of the contents of crowdinvesting contracts that are in use in Germany and traces how they have evolved. Based on a sample of 81% of all crowd financing in the German market, it evaluates 255 crowdinvesting campaigns held on 18 different platforms in the period from August 1, 2011 to December 31, 2015.

This article examines the relationship between reproductive rights, democracy, and the rule of law in transitional societies. As a case study, it examines the development of abortion law in Poland. The article makes three primary claims. First, it argues that the relationship between reproductive rights and the rule of law in Poland came clearly into view through the abortion judgment K 1/20, handed down by the Constitutional Tribunal in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. The judgment and the context in which it was issued and published are interpreted as reflections of deep-lying processes and problems in Polish society. Consequently, second, the article argues that analysis of the history of reproductive rights in recent decades in Poland reveals weak institutionalization of the rule of law. This is manifest in the ways in which different professional groups, especially doctors and lawyers, have addressed questions regarding abortion law. Therefore, third, the article argues that any assessment of the rule of law should take into account how powerful professional actors and organizations interact with the law. The Polish case study shows that reproductive rights should be seen as important parts of a “litmus test,” which we can use to examine the efficacy of democratic transitions and the quality of the democracies in which such transitions result.

The aim of this paper is to provide a new comprehensive understanding of roles of court presidents in judicial governance in Europe. It argues that in order to better understand the role of court presidents in comparative perspective it is necessary to unpack their power into smaller components that can be analyzed separately. We define seven such components: judicial career, jurisprudential, administrative, financial, ambassadorial, and media power, and ancillary powers as a residual category. Subsequently, we zero in on 13 European jurisdictions and rate them according to the strength of their court presidents' powers. By doing so we are developing a Court President Power Index. Based on this Index we question the claim that Western court presidents are always weaker than their Eastern European counterparts and argue that powers of court presidents diverge both within Western Europe and within Eastern Europe, and hence it is difficult to draw the easy line along the West/East axis on this ground. Finally, we problematize our Court President Power Index and show that powers in the meaning of faculty do not necessarily translate into influence since various contingent circumstances (such as the length of court presidents' terms of office, information asymmetry, the structure of the judiciary, the existence of competing judicial self-governance bodies, the role of individuals, the proximity of court presidents to political leaders, the legal profession, legal culture, and the political environment) affect to what extent court presidents may exploit their powers in practice.

The article discusses the development in the administration of the Slovak judiciary since the separation of Czechoslovakia and the impact of the empowerment of the judicial self-governance on the functioning of the judicial system. After independence, the administration of the judiciary initially rested in the hands of the executive. In 2002, Slovakia created its Judicial Council and transferred a considerable amount of powers on it, especially related to judicial careers. It was expected that this would de-politicize the judicial system. However, a high level of autonomy of the judiciary chiefly led to the empowerment of judicial elites. This reduced the democratic accountability of the judiciary, encapsulating it from society and enabling it to promote its own interests. Selection processes have often been used to fill judicial ranks with judges with close ties to the system. Accountability mechanisms such as promotions, disciplinary procedures or remuneration schemes were used to reward allies of those on the top of the hierarchy and to punish their critics. Still, adherence to EU-backed standards on the administration of the judiciary may have increased the legitimacy of the judiciary, while concentrating decision-making in one body enhanced transparency, which was furthered due to low public confidence resulting in unprecedented levels of information available about the Slovak judicial system. All in all, the Slovak example displays the dangers of establishing judicial self-governance in countries where an internal ethical culture and a strong sense of judicial duty are still lacking.

The principle of proportionality is on the rise. A growing number of constitutional and international courts refer to some form of proportionality in their jurisprudence. At the same time, the principle is receiving more and more attention in international legal scholarship. Yet proportionality has not remained uncontested. In particular, some scholars have severely criticized the core of the proportionality test, which involves a balancing of competing values. This balancing is accused of being irrational because it requires placing incommensurable values on the same scale. In a famous dictum, Judge Scalia once claimed that balancing competing constitutional values is like determining “whether a particular line is longer than a particular rock is heavy.”

Contemporary democracies may confront several instances of exceptions that co-exist with constitutional institutions; they are never free from any risks. This Article relies on recent Brazilian judicial experiences in order to present and highlight how courts and judges, from within the institutional structure, can act as elite actors that endanger the constitutional system, giving it the characteristics of unstable constitutionalism. By presenting the recent political and juridical facts that drove Brazil to constitutional crisis, the work brings not only judicial rulings but also the institutional and corporative structure that served as the main methods of avoiding the judicial reforms that could have led to a true transition from dictatorship to democracy. The conclusion is that the Brazilian courts blocked effective transitional constitutionalism in Brazil, making room for the current unstable constitutionalism.

Legal education is changing. What is changing is our understanding of “education”, of how we learn and how we should teach. Also changing is our understanding of how to define what is “legal” about “legal education”. Most will nowadays agree that legal education should be more than a vocational training for the practice of the profession in a particular jurisdiction. In analyzing the development of legal education in recent years, we can distinguish two trajectories. Firstly, there is the ongoing attempt of specifically the North American legal academy to make legal studies a transdisciplinary endeavour, a development closely connected to the major “paradigm shifts” in legal theory in the 20th century. Secondly, it seems that jurisdictional boundaries have lost significance in an internationalized, globalized and post-regulatory environment. This calls into question the very notion of “law” itself, at least as traditionally understood as a system of posited norms within a given jurisdiction. How should both developments be reconciled?

Just one year after Polish accession to the European Union, the Polish Constitutional Tribunal was provided the opportunity to clarify its position regarding the supremacy of EC and EU law. In its two recent judgments, it joined the long tradition of a rather uneasy relationship between national Constitutional Courts and European Court of Justice (ECJ). The uneasiness of this relationship results from an ever-unsolved dilemma – which of the two judicial fora should have the last word in case of conflict between European norms and national constitution norms? The solution given by European Court of Justice in a series of early judgments seems obvious. It opted for an absolute supremacy of EC norms over national norms. On the other hand, the national Constitutional Courts usually accept the supremacy of EC law - but only as a consequence of transfer of some competences under strict conditions set by national constitutions. They thus accept the concept named by Neil Walker “constitutional pluralism”, meaning that the states are no longer the sole source of constitutional authority. However, national constitutions are still the “primary” source of any such authority.

The process which is commonly called “globalization” in social sciences seems to shatter the very foundations of law and legal thinking. Yet while legal scholarship, for the most part, is still grappling with identifying the problem, Karl-Heinz Ladeur is already offering a solution. He may therefore count among the avant-garde in the debate on law and globalization.

From its first line, Günter Frankenberg's article Critical Comparisons, published twenty years ago, leaves no doubt as to its radical claim and aspiration. Nothing short of attempting to “re-think” comparative law, the article sets out to attack many of the dearly held beliefs in the scholarship and practice of comparative law. The beliefs, the history, the believers, their work and struggles – they are all there. Frankenberg plows through them in order to lay bare what he conceives of as being an incorrectly defended myth of scholarly objectivity among many of the field's pioneers and contemporary protagonists. Not being alone in his struggle of fiercely assailing the citadels of a nearly century-old comparativist scholarly venture, his crucial contribution to the field cannot now be denied. Whether we consider its open, frank, almost casual style, or its wide reaching theoretical reach, Critical Comparisons remains one of the most eminent articulations of the crisis of comparative law in its first century. At the time of the article's 20th birthday, it is time to recollect, reassess and reconsider its main arguments and to play them back to the author and his readers. After a brief reconstruction of the article's main contentions (Part B), this brief homage will contextualize the article within a larger attempt among comparativists and legal theorists to work towards a transnational legal science (Part C).

On October 14, 2004 the Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG – German Federal Constitutional Court) delivered a judgment which gave rise to vivid reactions in the mass media and to a dispute between the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the German Federal Constitutional Court. In interviews, members of the Strasbourg court spoke about their disappointment in the German Court's unwillingness to implement decisions of the ECtHR while members of the German court referred to the necessity to respect national particularities. Whereas, normally, the ECtHR and the constitutional courts of the Member States of the Council of Europe are fighting side by side for human rights and, therefore, consider themselves as natural allies, this time their decisions, which seem to be incompatible, led to a dispute which attracted as much public interest as a film or theatre premiere.

This paper analyzes the compatibility of intra-EU bilateral investment treaties—intra-EU BITs—with EU law. The status and validity of intra-EU BITs gave rise to a heated debate in Europe, which culminated in the CJEU's recent controversial judgment in Achmea. This Article demonstrates that although the CJEU approached intra-EU BITs from the angle of federalism—where they are both redundant and illegitimate—the reality is that EU law does not provide for the kind of protection afforded by BITs. The paper gives both a positivist and a critical assessment of the Achmea ruling. It argues that the judgment should be construed in the context of the underlying facts and, hence, notwithstanding the CJEU's apparently anti-arbitration attitude, its holding is rather narrow. It gives an alternative theory on intra-EU BITs' fit in the EU internal market—based on European reality—showing that the complete invalidation of intra-EU BITs is flawed because the overlap between BITs and EU law is merely partial: BITs address a subject EU law does not. This Article's central argument is that intra-EU BITs accelerate the internal market and, hence, their suppression does not lead the European integration further, but holds it back. Finally, this Article argues that the prevailing pattern of investment protection is a global scheme that cannot be arrested through regional unilateralism as essayed by the CJEU.

This paper argues that we should move on from what has become a rather outdated contrast between the political constitution and the legal constitution. Taking as its focus the constitution of the United Kingdom, the paper analyzes the contemporary constitutional order as a mixed system of politics and law combined. It argues that such a mix may be a more compelling and attractive system than either the model of the political constitution or that of the legal constitution.

Legal personhood continues to serve an important role in the legal system. The millennial distinction of persons and things, while often unarticulated, is an essential building block of all legal relations. This introduction to persons and things outlines the past tradition, draws on present myths, and construes a utopia of which the articles in this special issue will comment, clarify, and criticize.

Is the Covid-19 pandemic changing the constitutional-power structures of our democracies? Is this centennial public health emergency irreversibly constraining our liberties? The paper examines recent state-measures of containment during the initial phase of spread of the Covid-19 crisis. It compares primarily the Italian scenario with the Chinese and the American one. It asks whether the measures adopted particularly in the Italian case (known as DPCMs) amount to a state of exception or to a use of emergency powers. Cognizant of the authoritarian risks in severed enjoyments of constitutional rights, the authors conclude that this is not what occurred in the case of solid democracies. At the level of governmental analysis, the “decree” strategy of the Italian DPCMs allude to paternalistic forms of power-exercise that empty the self-determining prerogative of the parliament.

The traditional justification of consumer protection is founded on the notion of restraining the monopoly power of huge companies and the potential that they posses to influence consumers via advertising that limits consumers’ ability to verify what is in their own best interest. This theory refers not to the individual consumer in a concrete situation, but stresses a general economically weaker position of the consumer vis-à-vis the suppliers. Consumers are seen as less knowledgeable and as economically inferior to producers and traders. So a large deviation between the ideal of consumer sovereignty and reality is presumed. The power imbalance on the market (“countervailing power”) leads to demand for market reconciliation, compensation or balancing. According to this conception the state must support the consumers as weaker market participants during the counterweight

A number of recent voices in contemporary political and legal philosophy have suggested that something is wrong with international humanitarian relief and human rights advocacy. Such a critique no longer seems to be motivated by ideologies of Social Darwinism or by beliefs in the unconditional primacy of a raison d'État over the needs and rights of individuals. Rather, it derives from a perspective that sees humanitarian activism as an ill-conceived, often merely compensatory gesture.