Search Results

This concluding chapter returns to the working hypotheses formulated in the introduction and assesses how far the individual chapters have confirmed or disproved them. The contributions have confirmed the need of judicial review given the increasing attempts of international organizations to directly regulate individual behaviour. Irrespective of the form of incorporation of international law in the domestic order, courts have started to exercise various forms of indirect review although they are bound to review only the domestic implementing act. Reliance on the Solange reasoning showed that there is need for an implicit decentralized review particularly when fundamental values are at stake. The case law also confirms that the policy rationale underlying both judicial review and jurisdictional immunity tend to converge. This indicates a trend towards an increased accountability of international organizations due to the activity of national courts.

This chapter focuses on the field of civil aviation where the Brussels-based European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol) operates. The repeated challenge of Eurocontrol-imposed ‘route charges’ on airlines using its air safety services before European courts highlights immunity aspects and addresses the inter-relationship of national/European anti-trust/competition law rules and the activities of an international organization. The reference to the German case law reveals that Solange arguments referring to a minimum level of fundamental rights protection as a requirement to allow Belgian courts to exercise jurisdiction have played an important role in the assessment of the dispute settlement system provided for in the Eurocontrol constituent documents.

In the assessment of challenges against decisions of the European Schools before national courts, this chapter presents evidence that national courts have reacted in different ways when asked to set aside decisions of international organizations that may have immediate legal effect on private parties. Because of the peculiar nature of school decisions, a particularly rich case-law developed in countries where European Schools are located. Subject matters in dispute were the levying of school fees, the denial of a pupil to be admitted to a higher class, and working conditions in the European Schools. Methods of review are both direct and indirect. An illustrative example of indirect review is the 2008 UK Fletcher case in which an unfair dismissal action was reviewed on the basis of domestic legislation alone, but acknowledged the difficulties that might arise within the international legal framework the European Schools operate in.

This chapter looks at the way the Federal Constitutional Court has interpreted the provisions of the Basic Law that deal with European integration. Three questions need to be clarified. First, what is the constitutional foundation for European Union membership? Second, what are the constitutional limits to European integration? Do elements of the Basic Law’s structure prevent national and European institutions from carrying through further legal integration at European Union level? Third, by what mechanism Germany could give itself a new constitution to overcome the limits? What is the relevance and scope of Articles 79 and 146 GG in the process of European integration? And what is the role of the Court in policing that mechanism? Answers to the above questions necessitate an inquiry not just into the case law of the Federal Constitutional Court but also into the genesis and gist of Germany’s Basic Law.

This chapter seeks to clarify the relationship between international law and the EU legal order — a question that is often reduced to whether World Trade Organization law has or should have direct effect within the EU legal order. Accordingly, there is a wealth of academic literature on that topic which often, however, neglects to put the question into the wider context of how general international law interacts with EU law. This question was brought to the forefront again in the so-called ‘terrorist cases’. There, the relationship between United Nations (UN) law and EU law was examined in great detail since it was the pivotal point of the judgments. It is argued Kadi does not represent the ultimate step by which EU law emancipates itself from public international law (PIL) in order to become a fully self-contained regime. Kadi is not völkerrechtsunfreundlich. In that respect, it is worth bearing in mind that, unlike the US Supreme Court in Medellin, the ECJ has not denied the conferral of rights granted by PIL but remedied the latter's deficiencies. Therefore, in the long run, the Court's judgment in Kadi might even strengthen international law in the way the Solange I judgment of the German Constitutional Court led to the evolution of human rights law in the ECJ's own jurisprudence.

This chapter discusses Sand's ambivalence toward her daughter, which began even before Solange was born. The pregnancy was difficult; by April, Aurore had gained too much weight and was suffering from minor complications. By the time she wrote her autobiography, Sand had concocted a full-blown cover-up to distract from Solange's illicit birth: “I was afraid my daughter might not live since she was born prematurely as the result of a fright,” says Sand. In fact, Solange was born large and well-formed and, by all indications, at full term. The day after Solange's birth, Sand reports that she overheard her husband making love to the Spanish maid Pepita in the room next door. However, in the absence of any acknowledgment by Sand that she had also cheated on her husband, the chronological juxtaposition of these two events—Solange's birth and Casimir's conspicuous betrayal—seems contrived.

This chapter discusses the instruments currently on the table regarding the enforcement of EU values, exposing their strengths and weaknesses in legal and practical terms. It also offers an evaluation of the first use of the Rule of Law Framework. So far, most of the proposed instruments have been presented in isolation. This is particularly true of the proposed ‘Copenhagen Commission’ and the ‘Reverse Solange’ mechanism. This chapter presents and normatively assesses the ideas proposed and discusses a possible way to combine instruments that so far have been considered separately. It argues that the most apt European response to systemic deficiencies is to combine judicial mechanisms, including the Reverse Solange mechanism, as well as a complementary political approach.

This book is about George Sand, a prolific writer who not only dreamed of a liberated life but lived it. Born Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin in Paris in 1804, she grew up to become a successful, if controversial, author who left her husband, took lovers, adopted a male pseudonym, fought for and regained custody of her children and possession of her home, founded journals, and participated in the political life of her nation. She died shortly before her seventy-second birthday surrounded by her adoring son, Maurice, his wife and two daughters, and her estranged daughter, Solange. During the course of Sand's career, she produced more than ninety novels, dozens of novellas, scores of plays, thousands of pages of autobiography, tomes of commentary and criticism, hundreds of articles, numerous travel journals, and a correspondence comprising some twenty thousand extant letters.

This chapter recounts Solange's engagement to Fernand de Preaulx and her presentation to the thirty-three-year-old sculptor Jean-Baptiste Auguste Clesinger by her mother Sophie. Over the course of several sittings, Clesinger not only sculpted Solange's bust, he also captured her heart and won her hand. By the end of the month, Solange had called off her engagement to Preaulx, and on 19 May 1847 she and Clesinger were married. Despite the broken engagement and precipitous replacement, Sand was decidedly in favor of her daughter's marriage to Clesinger. Sand recounts their romance as a fairy tale, in which Clesinger plays the role of Prince Charming and her daughter, Sleeping Beauty—whose passion is awakened with a kiss.

The chapter takes two exercises given by Gurdjieff to various people as their last exercise from him. The first, from Solange Claustres, is a discipline for being more conscious as one goes through one’s daily activities by relating them to one’s conscious aim and efforts to remember oneself. The second, given to Helen Adie, harks back to Gurdjieff’s First Assisting Exercise in Life Is Real, Only Then, When “I Am.” The chapter also concludes, as to the form and purpose of Gurdjieff’s contemplative exercises, why he is much misunderstood. Finally, it summarizes what has been said about his sources for his Transformed-contemplation, and the importance of these exercises, and Gurdjieff’s contribution to mysticism. It concludes that what was specific to Gurdjieff’s Transformed-contemplation was the need to consciously sense one’s body in a relaxed state; while having some awareness of one’s feeling; with all this being directed by an undistracted intellect. This aims to maintain a unified calm in one’s common presence; so that higher hydrogens can be received and digested; and the higher being bodies coated, which allow the higher and the lower centers to work together in unison; leading to the exercitants’ achieving their own real “I,” with powers of consciousness, will, expressive of their own individuality, and able to hear and support their conscience.