Patricia Mindus

The Legacy of John Austin's Jurisprudence

This inaugural edited volume on John Austin’s vital contribution to analytical jurisprudence provides comparative perspectives and profound insights into the philosophy and legacy of Austin’s work, including his impact on contemporary ...

Understanding Citizenship: The Functionalist Approach

This chapter starts by explaining why a theoretically informed inquiry is needed. Such an inquiry is warranted for a number of reasons that include political volatility, lack of relevant precedents and the fact that conventional approaches do not lead to many policy suggestions for solving the hard cases at hand. It is suggested that Brexit may place us before a constitutional dilemma: Can Article 50 be taken seriously without giving up rights? The functionalist theory that this study adopts is outlined and explained. Three ways in which it applies to Brexit are distinguished. These three directions of inquiry are developed in the rest of the book.

A Sudden Loss of Rights

This chapter presents the problem of legal uncertainty afflicting second country nationals in the UK and British citizens turning from expats to post-European third country nationals. First we look at the case of European citizens living in the UK and then we look at British citizens residing in other parts of the Union. Real-world cases are presented. The narration of the cases enables the reader to appreciate the multitude of effects and the layers of issues involved. They also allow pointing out how dramatic a change like Brexit may be in the lives of those involved. The reader who feels comfortable in mastering the legal complexities affecting those who have relied on free movement in making their life choices can move on to the next chapter.

The Status of European Citizenship: An Overview

This chapter gives a swift overview of the workings and principal rights associated with European citizenship. Some insight into the historical evolution of the status is offered. The major entitlements are explained as well as important case-law. The aim is to provide an outline of the essentials of European citizenship for the purpose of understanding the arguments made in this book.

Can Rights Be Frozen

This chapter focuses on the intension of Union citizenship by asking if rights can be frozen. In particular, we look at the extra-negotiational legal resources available for freezing rights of the people involved. Can rights be frozen? Which rights? Whose rights? Under what conditions? For how long? Sources of international law and EU law, including guidelines from lesser-known sources and doctrinal instruments, are taken into account. The conclusion is that some rights of some of the people involved will be frozen, but that the legal grounds for doing so suggests that Union citizenship is not what the European Court of Justice and most scholars claim it is.

Who Gets to Withdraw the Status

This chapter determines the extension of Union citizenship by asking: Who gets to withdraw the status of Union citizenship? It is a complex and debated issue. The various options are presented and the anticipated consequences for both the UK and EU states are fleshed out. Venues for challenging the loss of status are also discussed. The chapter discusses limits to what the UK can do to protect itself against abuse of multiple citizenship and what member states are allowed to do to UK citizens resident in their territories. The key finding is that while member states are in principle free to revoke the status of Union citizen, former member states are not unbounded in stripping Union citizens of their acquired territorial rights.

Towards a Functionalist Reading of Union Citizenship

In this final chapter some conclusions as to the nature of Union citizenship are drawn. Union citizenship is found to constitute, as a reflection of the Union itself, a status sui generis: It consists of both supranational and transnational elements. Some parallels are also drawn to the way citizenship and interstate equality is framed in American constitutional case-law. Being clear about what European citizenship is helps us to resolve the constitutional dilemma formulated in Chapter 4: Do we need to choose between sacrificing EU citizens’ rights or taking Article 50 seriously? The chapter shows why this is not the case.

Citizenship and Arbitrary Law-Making : On the Quaintness of Non-national Disenfranchisement

The paper explores forms of arbitrariness in relation to citizenship and migration policies. Non-national disenfranchisement follows from certain migration policies, and these may be cast as an arbitrary form of domination, that may undermine political legitimacy. Political exclusion is the vertex of a chain of other forms of exclusion: the denizenship of the politically powerless is particularly bothersome because liberal-democratic systems lack incentives to promote their rights. We have singled out the specificity and quaintness of the argumentative strategy employed to sustain non-national disenfranchisement. It differs from other argumentations in favour of disenfranchisement because it is not framed in derogatory terms and shifts the burden of proof from the state over to the individual.

Austin and Scandinavian Realism

The imperative theory of law exemplified in the work of John Austin is the object of much criticism in the movement of Scandinavian legal realism (SLR). The very core notions of command, sovereignty and will are targeted. This paper explores the Scandinavian readings of Austin’s theory, chiefly by reconstructing the main arguments of Axel Hagerstrom’s criticism of the will–theory and Karl Olivecrona’s reading of the imperative character of law. Special attention is paid to the affinities between the various outlooks and to their core differences. On one hand, strong resemblances can be discovered in the common methodological afflatus and respect for Hume’s principle. On the other hand – apart from contrasting opinions on minor aspects (such as tacit consent grounding custom) – among the unbridgeable divergences mention should be made of the view on morals: Austin embraced a form of cognitivism, while the Scandinavians supported a strict form of non-cognitivism. In order to assess the originality of the Scandinavian attack on the imperative theory of law, the aim of the paper is to test to what extent it stimulated the seminal work on the question of law’s authoritative dimension in SLR.

Cittadinanza, identità e il sovrano potere di escludere

Modern Law frames citizenship mainly in terms of nationality, allegedly the expression of the identity of the national community. Here I suggest a criticism of this basic conception of belonging: First, because of reasons dependants on the ambiguity of the very idea of nations; Second, because of the artificial character of the models of nationality prevailingly elaborated by legal science; Third, because the model of nationality does less than bargained for. It basically creates more problems than it is said to resolve. In particular, I focus on statelessness and the debate on citizenship as «the right to have rights» and explain why this idea is fundamentally flawed.