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Verfassungsblog: On Matters Constitutional

When the European Union was founded, it was assumed that all Member States admitted as consolidated democracies would maintain their constitutional commitments. In recent years, Hungary and Poland have challenged this premise as elected autocratic governments in those countries have captured independent institutions and threatened long-term democracy. The judiciaries of these countries have been hard hit. In this paper, we trace what has happened to the judiciaries in Hungary and Poland, showing how first the constitutional courts and then the ordinary judiciary have been brought under the control of political forces so that there is no longer a separation of law and politics.We also explore why the European Union has so far not been able to stop this process. In the end, the European judiciary, particularly the Court of Justice, is attempting a rescue of national judiciaries, but the results are so far unclear.

How should the European Union cope with Member States that no longer respect the basic values of the Union? This article reviews the cases of Hungary and Poland, showing the responses of the major European Union institutions to those two Member States as their governments removed checks on their power, eliminated the independence of judiciaries and failed to honour their European commitments. As the chapter demonstrates, the responses of EU institutions have so far been ineffective at bringing these Member States back into line with European values. We examine the various proposals that have been made to do better, concluding that there is some promise in some legal strategies that are available now but have yet to be tried.

Verfassungsblog: On Matters Constitutional

In the wake of the global financial market collapse of 2007–2008, Werhane and her co-authors Hartman, Archer, Bevan and Clark reconsider the issue of trust. Trust is considered here as invaluable and essential metaphorical glue in the smooth running of any globalized economy. The causes and effects of such a breakdown in this dynamic are identified, and the generally institutional barriers to any remedies are discussed with positive and negative examples. The paper proposes a range of organizational and cultural transformations which include adopting: (i) a preference for collaborative, rather than authoritarian, leadership; (ii) a more dynamic approach to corporate responsibility; and (iii) a more egalitarian and democratic approach to managing and communicating with stakeholder constituencies.