To be subject to law, Hobbes argued, is to be deprived of liberty, as we understand it. In this respect, democratic governments are no different from others. Hobbes’s insight has not caused us to abandon our commitments to democracy, but it still challenges us to think hard about the nature of representative government, the nature of citizenship in a democratic society, and the conditions necessary for fulfilling the promise of democratic citizenship. Two recent trends are evident. Some citizens have embraced a more active sense of citizenship, which necessarily entails a more insistent need for information, while governments have insisted on the need for greater concentration of governmental power and a higher degree of secrecy. Much is to be learned from the approaches that various national and transnational regimes have taken with respect to this problem. This essay will consider the problem of access to government information from a comparative perspective and as a problem for constitutional theory and socio-legal studies.

The article is focused on European constitutionalism as resulting from the transformations following the experiences of totalitarian states. The notion of democracy was then significantly re-shaped, to the extent that democratic devices (federalism and sometimes referendum) were introduced with a view to balance the excesses of a purely representative democracy. The recognition of social rights and of human dignity reacted against totalitarism and, on other hand, against the individualistic notion of rights affecting the XIX century’s constitutionalism. Constitutional review of legislation was introduced, thus overriding the myth of parliamentary sovereignty, particularly the idea of parliament as the sole authority capable of granting fundamental rights.

Why do we need, in a society that we assume to be democratic, someone that reminds us of the archaic organisation of humanity, someone like a head of state? We know that the ‘powerful’ heads have now been transformed, most of the time, in ‘powerless’ ones, with solely a symbolic role, often not recognised. So why do we need them and how important are they? Because they are part of our archaic memory, images of the father of the primitive hordes, and because they ‘sit’ above us, the symbolic role of the head of state can be read with the glasses of a psychoanalyst and the magnifier of a socio-legal scholar. This paper is a journey in time and space, looking at the move from the sovereign-monarch to the president-monarch, unfolding the question of authority and its link to ‘distance’ but also the connection to ‘the Father’ and the notion of the two bodies.

Many hopes of the adherents of constitutional reform in the EU remained in vain after the enactment of the Lisbon Treaty. Meanwhile the creeping constitutionalisation of the EU law leads to the empowerment of the UE quasi constitutional court – the Court of Justice of the European Union. This kind of constitutionalism is albeit firmly grounded on judicial cross-border cooperation. The main purpose of this paper is to address the question of whether and how the concept of judicial control based on transactional framework developed in law and economics could effectively supplement if not substitute the notion of constitutional democratic legitimacy. In order to demonstrate that it is logically possible and institutionally feasible to build a system based on circularity, self-referentiality and privatization of legal remedies, the paper contains the economic analysis of the recent development of the EU law which at least partially takes this direction.

The Central European constitutional democracies were created by the political and constitutional transition of 1989. However, twenty years later, in the light of antidemocratic, authoritarian and intolerant tendencies, it is far from clear whether the negotiated revolution is a story of success or failure. This paper first outlines the constitutional background of revolutionary transition. It shows that the achieved structures and rules do not prevent political communities from realizing the full promise of democracy. Second, this analysis attempts to explore how the century-old historical circumstances, the social environment, and the commonly failed practice of constitutional institutions interact. This section focuses on the constitutional features of presidential aspirations, the privileges of churches and certain ethnic tensions. Finally, the paper argues that the chances of success of liberal democracies depend significantly on extraconstitutional factors. It seems that Hungary is in a more depressing and dangerous period of its history than for example Poland.

The purpose of this paper is to offer support to the idea that the contemporary international legal framework offers opportunities to investors to challenge and control government action via what has been described as a ‘regulatory freeze’. This regulatory freeze is the consequence of government reluctance to legislate/regulate in areas where claims of expropriation may be brought. The paper presents evidence from investment-treaty dispute resolution mechanisms, national and supranational judicial processes from both sides of the Atlantic. The paper concludes by suggesting that the potential for expanded definitions of expropriation is having a greater impact than actual case outcomes, as states seek to preempt any adverse developments by shying away from regulations that may provide fertile grounds for challenge. This effect is significant, as it is contrary to expectations of greater state involvement in economic management bred by the financial crisis.

This paper will investigate for the influence of international legal developments on the drafting and implementation of constitutions, especially the impact of the European Union on the texts of the national constitutions of the EU Member States and its acceding countries.
We will look also at:

1. the influence of history (EU Enlargement) and tradition in the drafting and implementation of constitutions;

2. assessment (especially in the case of the Netherlands) of whether constitutional texts actually serve to achieve the practical implementation of expressed purposes.

Structure is no less important than substance in the long run. When dealing with disaster management, what is truly national and what is truly local? Disasters are the “perfect” time, if only because of the confusion they sow and/or witness, for the central government to usurp some sovereign powers of its constituent states (and sometimes vice versa). This article examines where, in the American model with its strong federalism tradition, the constitutional tipping point lies. The article conveys the practical imperatives of federalism and why ordinary citizens should care: a federalist structure to promote democratic participation and the carrying out of democratic will by splitting up authority and stopping any one layer of government from becoming too powerful or making it a dysfunctional appendage. That has special significance in the disaster context, of course, and there is no better kaleidoscope than the recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

This paper explores the issues of judicial dialogue and constitutional migrations between the European Court of Justice (‘ECJ’) and Latin American regional courts. It considers the impact of the ECJ’s ‘constitutional’ case-law regarding supremacy and direct effect on the decisions of the Central American Court of Justice (‘CCJ’) and the Court of Justice of the Andean Community (‘ACCJ’). The study proceeds from a brief exposition of the legal aspects of the EU model of integration, before moving to identify the main factors which led to the selection of Latin American courts and to outline the background to integration in the two sub-regions. In addressing the CCJ and ACCJ, a short history and sketch of their jurisdiction is given before examining the impact of the migration of the integrationist activism of the ECJ on these regional judicial institutions.

Nowadays, in the West, especially on the European Continent, the legitimacy of the modern state is once again subject to multifarious challenges. Against this background, the article revives one of the most important, though often overlooked themes of the constitutional theory, the relevance of the concept of progressive history for the legitimacy of the constitutional state. It is suggested, that the reappearance of the progressive history brings the supposedly forgotten themes of the objectivist metaphysics, back into the constitutional theory. The conclusion points that, only the accounts of a legal constitution, which reject the connection with progressive history, have the potential to deal with the problematic consequences that the reemergence of the metaphysically charged concept of progressive history may entail, given the contemporary socio-political conditions, characterized by the value and ideological pluralism.