We live in a mediatized world and there is really little choice we have in this regard. We can choose to limit our intake, or try to curate what it is we are consuming but ultimately, we exist in an economy wherein the currency is attention and there are a number of active parties competing for this resource.(1) The economics of attention is easily observed in a commercial context; the competing of brands in a specific industry vying for their customers attention or a business trying to attract new customers to avail of whatever professional service is being offered. The economics of attention ..read more

The proceeding in C/792-19 arose as a response to a number of concerning acts carried out by the Polish executive directed at a number of judges who sat in earlier sets of proceedings, each of which concerned the use of the preliminary reference procedure and a number of punitive steps taken against judges who had submitted preliminary requests. It was in response to the punitive steps taken by the Polish executive against sitting judges through the use of the Disciplinary Chamber that the Commission brought the present action in C/792-19.(1) The Court in its judgment adopts a similar tone as ..read more

“And the magpies on the farm Chattered loudly in alarm. They hopped about the hills and plains And shouted to the storks and cranes: “Listen, listen, everyone, The crocodile’s gobbled up the sun!” The above exert is from the 1927 children's poem “The Stolen Sun” by Korney Chukotsky which tells the tale of a crocodile who decides to eat the sun much to the dismay of his neighbors causing widespread chaos and grief. His motivation for this act is based on a whim – he eats the sun simply because he can.(1) It isn’t until the rest of the animals convince an old bear to get involved that the sun is ..read more

Every social interaction follows two informal rules; don’t talk about politics and don’t talk about religion. I have no opinions on the second rule but I do have some thoughts on the first. Often, I’ve caught myself drifting into the political almost on auto pilot and in doing so I feel like I am missing the substantive point. This has led me to think long and how about how to engage with the topic of politics in a more constructive manner while still ensuring that the conversation is compromising but still certain and objective. Out of a sense of perhaps personal shame for derailing so many p ..read more

Property restitution has been a frustrating process in Poland and the issue of restitution is analogous with the tragic injustices experienced by the Polish people in the not so distant past. As of August 2021, Poland remains the only former Communist state and the only EU state not to have implemented comprehensive legislation dealing with property nationalized under the Communist regime.(1) On 11 August 2021, a highly controversial bill was passed in the Sejm addressing the issue of property restitution and the measures proposed in the proposed bill have been met with international outcry. I ..read more

On 7 August 2021 the leader of the ruling Law and Justice Party Jarosław Kaczyński confirmed in a live interview that the Polish government will move to dissolve the Disciplinary Chamber in its current form. This decision was made against the backdrop of the recent judgment of the ECJ against Poland in C791-19 and the deadline set by the Commission of 16 August for Poland to address the continuing activity of the Chamber. This development while being a positive one is symbolic in nature and the rather than being a step towards the conclusion of the rule of law crisis in Poland, this is likely ..read more

President von der Leyen in her State of the Union 2020 address expressed the rule of law as being the “...guarantor of our most basic every days rights and freedoms...”. The existence of the rule of law in a society is essential to the creation of an environment within which democracies and markets can function and flourish. The genesis of the term “the rule of law” can be traced back to Aristotle and its status as the building block of democracies has been confirmed since the time of the ancient Greeks.2 In today’s world the rule of law is no less important than it was in the classical world ..read more

What is the democratic basis for the constitutional jurisprudence of the ECJ? Over the decades the ECJ has expanded the scope of its competencies through the use of legal tools, logic and methods of interpretation in case law. With the ECJ adopting increasingly widening constitutional competencies this raises the question as to how the supranational constitutional mandate of the ECJ is to be framed in relation to the constitutionalism of the Member States and their respective constitutional courts? Why exactly do national courts accept the constitutional jurisprudence of the ECJ given the appa ..read more

Abstract: The EU rule of law crisis has generated a large body of case law surrounding the concept of the rule of law and the value it holds as a foundational component of democracy. Through the rule of law state and post-state constitutionalism has been brought into conflict and this conflict can be observed through the analyzing of a number of recent ECJ judgements. In doing so we can witness a deeper movement of integration on a constitutional level and the growing complexity of EU law as a supranational legal system and as a distinct supranational constitutional identity. This essay will b ..read more

Larry Diamond documented the trend of global decline of democratic standards in democratic states beginning in the 1970’s. Scholars such as Ingrid van Biesen, Huq & Ginsburg and Dr Thomas Daly expanding upon this observation through research into the phenomenon of democratic decay and constitutional capture. In the US, and the EU with Poland and Hungary representing prominent casualties of modern democratic theory, the decline of democratic standards has moved into the center of present political discourse. Much attention has been given to explaining the phenomenon of democratic decay howe ..read more