Marco Dani

Assembling the fractured European consumer

Recognised and shaped by regulatory strategies pulling in different directions, the European consumer may be portrayed as a fractured subject. By drawing from the Pasta and Hormones litigation, the article investigates its multiple and heterogeneous identities as resulting from the interaction between domestic, EU and WTO law. It argues that the fractured consumer could be viewed as a realistic legal projection of the human condition of actual individuals engaging in consumer activities, and sets out an adjudicative strategy for assembling its identities at an argumentative level so as to do the best by their promises and counter their biases. The article concludes by suggesting that the conceptual framework construed around the fractured consumer could improve the transparency and contestability of adjudication and policy-making.

Economic and social conflicts, integration and constitutionalism in contemporary Europe

Europe’s current constitutional landscape is marked by an underlying conflict between alternative strategies of integration related to different economic and social conflicts. Whereas constitutional structuring in the EU member states revolves around conflicts reminiscent of 19th and 20th Century class struggles, the constitutional framework of the EU may be traced back to conflicts concerning the transnational mobility of factors of production. Drawing on Smend’s theory of integration, the article compares the nature of the EU and states’ constitutional traditions investigating their respective circuits of personal, material and functional integration as well as their evolving mutual interactions. Against this backdrop, it is argued that the conflicts between Europe’s constitutional frameworks may be managed through decentralised institutional and interpretative practices inspired by the idea of convergence. Yet, on the basis of Fligstein’s empirical inquiry on the EU clash, Europe’s current constitutional setting may still be questioned as socially biased. Despite its high potential for legal integration, the system of governance resulting from the combination of the EU and states’ constitutional frameworks seems to perform poorly in terms of effective social integration and, namely, to allow for the silent prevarication of a narrow active EU transnational society over the more indifferent peoples living in Europe.

Back to Government? The Pluralistic Deficit in the Decisionmaking Processes and Before the Courts

“Yesterday, law was such an easy game to play....” In periods of transition, it is common for lawyers to be asked, in light of an allegedly overriding reality, to critically revisit the table of contents or categories of their discipline. In such periods it is also normal for the scientific debate of the law to be pervaded by a deep sense of uneasiness. The physiognomy of the law is, at least to a certain extent, to drive rather than to follow the evolution of reality. Accordingly, it is a symptom of pathology if reality systematically departs from rules or categories still in force. Nonetheless, law is everything but a stable artifact. Only in the easy cases does its evolution comply with the procedures that the law itself provides for its amendment. In the other cases, namely when the reality constantly deranges the rules or the legal categories and imposes itself as dominant, it is up to the science of the law to decide either if (and how) the traditional categories have to be reinforced or if (and how) they are required to be updated, accommodating the law to the reality. An example of this uneasiness emerges from the articles hereafter published as a result of a conference held at the Faculty of Law of Trento, Italy, in June 2004. The debate started from the broadly shared assumption that the performances of the traditional domestic circuits of representative democracy are increasingly challenged when a number of actors do not perceive they are properly involved in the regulatory (legislative and administrative) decisionmaking processes and before the courts. As organizers of the conference, we labeled this reality the pluralistic deficit, and we asked each of our guests to deal with this issue from the perspective of his or her highly differentiated academic background.

Tracking Judicial Dialogue: The Scope for Preliminary Rulings from the Italian Constitutional Court

In cases 102–103/2008 for the first time the Italian Constitutional Court has referred a question to the Court of Justice under the Article 234 EC procedure. This article analyses this decision in light of previous contrary case law and argues that, insofar as supremacy will be construed according to the Simmenthal doctrine, the scope for preliminary ruling from that Constitutional Court will be rather narrow, as mainly limited to principaliter proceedings. Such a conclusion brings about an important theoretical implication. Constitutional Courts such as the Italian one will face difficulties in interacting directly with the Court of Justice and, notably, in conveying at supranational level the authentic versions of national constitutional traditions. Conversely, ordinary courts seem in a better position to play a similar role. As a consequence, if we want the Court of Justice to modify its octroyée methodology of construing common constitutional traditions, we have to place all our stakes on a judicial dialogue based on ordinary courts as the privileged interface between the EU and national constitutional environments.

L'importante è non avere paura. Un'Unione Europea profana in un'Europa cristiana?

1. Premessa Sorpresa e curiosita: questi i termini che meglio esprimono la reazione istintiva alla pubblicazione del “saggio esplorativo” di J. H. H. Weiler suggestivamente intitolato “Un’Europa Cristiana”. Sorpresa, per il fatto che nell’attuale fase lato sensu costituente uno dei piu autorevoli narratori delle vicende evolutive dell’Unione Europea, per di piu di fede ebraica, ponga con radicalita al centro della propria riflessione una questione – quella del rapporto tra radici cristiane e processo di integrazione europea – che il dibattito politico e costituzionale ha finito sostanzialmente per archiviare. E’ assai noto, infatti, il conflitto sorto al momento dell’elaborazione del preambolo del progetto di trattato costituzionale tra quanti hanno sostenuto l’opportunita di valorizzare, anche simbolicamente, il debito di civilta che il patrimonio storico e culturale europeo avrebbe contratto con la tradizione cristiana e quanti, invece, vi si sono opposti con argomentazioni ispirate alla laicita o all’agnosticismo della cultura costituzionale europea. Altrettanto noto e pure l’esito del conflitto che ha visto l’introduzione nel preambolo di una formula che, riflettendo nel fraseggio sostanzialmente la sensibilita del pensiero laico, ha conseguito l’effetto, se non di risolvere, quantomeno di mettere in secondo piano una questione indubbiamente insidiosa. In verita, l’iniziale sorpresa svanisce molto presto e non appena si osserva che Weiler, lungi dal dedicarsi ad una tema marginale, pone l’accento su una questione di politica costituzionale che puo essere gravida di implicazioni giuridiche assai rilevanti. Non tanto e non solo perche nell’attuale fase storica un processo di integrazione che voglia essere minimamente credibile non puo eludere il tema delle identita e, percio, anche delle identita religiose e le sue ricadute nella sfera giuridica. Piuttosto, il riflettere sulle radici cristiane della cultura europea costituisce per l’Autore un’occasione per sviluppare un discorso ad elevata carica evocativa che si innesta naturalmente nel solco della sua produzione scientifica, costantemente diretta a decifrare l’identita costituzionale dell’ordinamento dell’Unione Europea o, per usare il linguaggio piu caro a Weiler, a individuarne e