Co-operative constitutional adjudication Sample Clauses

Co-operative constitutional adjudication. If pluralism then is to be workable, Xxxxxxxxx maintains105 that it must operate within certain limits: Its viability depends on an overarching principle of integrity that can be used as a yardstick assessing the reasonableness of the claims to validity and applicability of the different legal systems. Such overarching set of rules – guiding, ultimately, the pluralist interface – cannot be imposed top-down by the EU legal system, nor bottom-up by the Member States. The rules that guide the pluralist interface therefore have to belong to a third “space,” an overarching legal area, and “must be produced in an interactive manner through an ongoing discursive process between the different constituencies of which the pluralist polity is made.”106 Within such a process of overarching constitution construction, no one has the final word since each legal system (national or EU) has the final say only within its own jurisdiction.107 Xxxxx, having explored the objections to the idea of a complementary structure of European constitutional adjudication,108 continues by summarising the value of conceptualising what courts in the EU do or should do by means of a non-hierarchic, composite multilevel structure: Starting out from a concept that covers the national and the European levels, and thus establishing responsibilities of adjudication on European constitutional law for both of them, the non-hierarchic relationship of the courts begins to take on a clearer form, constitutional clarity is enhanced and a reciprocal strengthening of constitutional bonds and limits is achieved. The multilevel approach can serve as a starting point to develop criteria for determining the limits of responsibilities and as a conceptual basis for the constitutional dialogue between the courts, which are allotted functions according to a specific concept of constitutionalism. That means rejecting the conflict paradigm and more readily accepting the cooperation paradigm. To some extent, the non-subordination of national courts could be explained and legitimised in terms of European constitutional law. It would no longer automatically be seen as an infringement of European law. In any case, he concludes, there would be clear limits on how national courts might act, which would remove the foundations of misleading legal reasoning. 105 Xxxxxxxxx (2002), at 300-301. 106 Xxxxxxxxx (2002), at 302. Emphasis in original. 107 X. Xx Xxxxx, “Legal pluralism as evolutionary achievement of Community law” ...