European Union Law

 

European Union Law is a system of rules operating within the member states of the European Union (EU). Since the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community following World War II, the EU has developed the aim to "promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples". The EU has political institutions, social and economic policies, which transcend nation states for the purpose of cooperation and human development. According to its Court of Justice (COJ) the EU represent "a new legal order of international law". 

The EU's legal foundations are the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, unanimously agreed by the governments of 27 member states. New members may join, if they agree to follow the rules of the union, and existing states may leave according to their "own constitutional requirements". Citizens are entitle to participate through the Parliament, and their respective state governments through the Council in shaping the legislation the EU makes. 

The Commission has the initiative for legislation, the Council of the European Union represents the elected member-state governments, the Parliament is elected by European citizens, and the Court of Justice is meant to uphold the rule of law and human rights. As the Court of Justice has said, the EU is "not merely an economic union" but is intended to "ensure social progress and seek the constant improvement of the living and working conditions of their peoples". 

Democratic ideals of integration for international and European nations are as old as the modern nation state. Ancient concepts of European unity were generally undemocratic, and founded on domination, like the Empire of Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, or the Catholic Church controlled by the Pope in Rome. In the Renaissance, medieval trade flourished in organisations like the Hanseatic League, stretching from English towns like Boston and London, to Frankfurt, Stockholm and Riga. 

These traders developed the lex mercatoria, spreading basic norms of good faith and fair dealing through their business. In 1517, the Protestant Reformation triggered a hundred years of crisis and instability. Martin Luther nailed a list of demands to the church door of Wittenberg, King Henry VIII declared a unilateral split from Rome with the Act of Supremacy 1534, and conflicts flared across the Holy Roman Empire until the Peace of Augsburg 1555 guaranteed each principality the right to its chosen religion (cuius regio, eius religio). 

This unstable settlement unravelled in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), killing around a quarter of the population in central Europe. The Treaty of Westphalia 1648, which brought peace according to a system of international law inspired by Hugo Grotius, is generally acknowledged as the beginning of the nation-state system. Even then, the English Civil War broke out and only ended with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, by Parliament inviting William and Mary from Hannover to the throne, and passing the Bill of Rights 1689. 

In 1693 William Penn, a Quaker from London who founded Pennsylvania in North America, argued that to prevent ongoing wars in Europe a "European dyet, or parliament" was needed. The French diplomat, Charles-Irénée Castel de Saint-Pierre, who worked negotiating the Treaty of Utrecht at the end of the War of Spanish Succession proposed, through "Perpetual Union", "an everlasting peace in Europe", a project taken up by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant after him.

After the Napoleonic Wars and the Revolutions of 1848 in the 19th century, Victor Hugo at the International Peace Congress in 1849 envisioned a day when there would be a "United States of America and the United States of Europe face to face, reaching out for each other across the seas". World War I devastated Europe's society and economy and the Versailles Treaty failed to establish a workable international system in the League of Nations, any European integration, and imposed punishing terms of reparations payments for the losing countries.

After another economic collapse and the rise of fascism led to a Second World War, European civil society was determined to create a lasting union to guarantee world peace through economic, social and political integration. To "save succeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice...brought untold sorrow to mankind", the United Nations Charter was passed in 1945, and the Bretton Woods Conference set up a new system of integrated World Banking, finance and trade. 

Also, the Council of Europe, formed by the Treaty of London 1949, adopted a European Convention on Human Rights, overseen by a new transnational court iin Strasbourg in 1950. Already in 1946 Winston Churchill, who had been recently defeated as UK Prime Minister in 1945 had called for a "United States of Europe", through this did not mean the UK would sever its ties to the Commonwealth. 

In 1950, the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman proposed that, beginning with integration of French and German coal and steel production, there should be "an organisation open to the participation of the other countries of Europe", where "solidarity in production" would make war "not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible". The Treaty of Paris 1951 created the first European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), signed by France, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Italy, with Jean Monnet as its president.

The Kelsen's pyramid

Hans Kelsen (1881-1973) was an Austrian jurist, legal philosopher and political philosopher. He was the author of the 1920 Austrian Constitution, which to a very large degree is still valid today. Due to the rise of totalitarism in Austria (and a 1929 constitutional change), Kelsen left to Germany in 1930 but was forced to leave this university pot after Hitler's seizure of power in 1933 because of his Jewish ancestry.

That year he left for Geneva and later moved to the United States in 1940. In 1934, Roscoe Pound lauded Kelsen as "undoubtedly the leading jurist of the time". While in Vienna, Kelsen met Sigmund Freud and his circle, and wrote on the subject o social psychology and sociology. By the 1940, Kelsen's reputation was already weel stablished in the United States for his defense of democracy and for his "Pure Theory of Law".

Kelsen's academic stature exceeded legal theory alone and extended to political philosophy and social theory as well. His influence encompassed the fields of philosophy, legal science, sociology, the theory of democracy, and international relations. Late in his career while at the University of California, Berkeley, although officially retired in 1952, Kelsen rewrote his short book of 1934, "Reine Rechtslehre" (Pure Theory of Law), into a much enlarged "second edition" published in 1960 (it appeared in an English translation in 1967). 

Kelsen throughout his active career was algo a significant contributor to the theory of judicial review, the hierarchical and dynamic theory of positive law, and the science of law. In political philosophy he was a defender of the state-law identity theory and an advocate of explicit contrast of the themes of centralization and decentralization in the theory of government. Kelsen was also and advocate of the position of separation of the concepts of state and society in their relation to the study of the science of law.

The reception and criticism of Kelsen's work and contributions has been extensive with both ardent supporters and detractors. Kelsen's contributions to legal theory of the Nuremberg trials was supported and contested by various authors including Dinstein at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law is widely acknowledged as his magnum opus. It aims to describe law as a hierarchy of norms which are also binding norms while at the same time refusing, itself, to evaluate those norms. That is, 'legal science' is to be separated from 'legal politics'. Central to the Pure Theory of Law is the notion of a 'basic norm (Grundnorm), a hypothetical norm, presupposed by the theory, from which in a hierarchy all 'lower' norms in a legal system, beginning with constitutional law, are understood to derive their authority or 'bindingness'. 

The Civil Code

The idea of codification re-emerged during the Age of Enlightenment, when it was believed that all spheres of life could be dealt with in a conclusive system based on human rationality, following from the experience of the early codifications of Roman Law during the Roman Empire.

The first attempts at modern codification were made in the second half of the 18th century in Germany, when the states of Austria, Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony began to codify their laws. The first statue that used this denomination was the Codex Maximilianeus bavaricus civilis of 1.756 in Bavaria, still using the Latin language.

Brexit or not?

Withdrawal from the European Union is a right of European Union (EU) member states under the Treaty on European Union (Article 50): "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements."

Greenland, part of the Danish Realm, voted to leave the EU's predecessor, the European Economic Community (EEC), in 1985. Algeria left upon independence in 1962, having been a part of France until then.

The United Kingdom held a referendum on 23 June 2016 to decide whether it should remain a member of the European Union or leave it, which was won by the "Leave" vote. The voting results showed 51,9% voted to leave (a margin of 3,8% above those voting to remain) and a voting turnout of 72,2%. 

Prior to this referendum, the United Kingdom had held a referendum in 1975 on withdrawal from its predecessor, the EEC; 67,2% of voters chose to remain in the Community with a turnout of 64,62%.

The Treaty of Lisbon introduced an exit clause for members who wish to withdraw from the Union. Under TEU Article 50, a Member State would notify the European Council of its intention to exit the Union and a withdrawal agreement would be negotiated between the Union and that State. 

The treaties of the European Union would cease to be applicable to that State from the date of the agreement or, failing that, within two years of the notification unless the Council, in agreement with the State, unanimously decides to extend this period. The two year period of time in which the terms of the withdrawal agreement are negotiated is known as the sunset period.

The agreement is concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council and must set out the arrangements for withdrawal, including a framework for the State's future relationship with the Union. 

Election law

Election law is a discipline falling at the juncture of constitutional law and political science. It researches "the politics of law and the law of politics". Some of the questions that are addressed by election law are:

- Which persons are entitle to vote in an election (e.g. age, residency or literacy requirements, or poll taxes), and the procedures by which such persons must register to vote or present identification in order to vote.

- Which people are entitle to hold office (for example; age residency, birth or citizenship requirements), and the procedures candidates must follow to appear on the ballot (such as the formatting and filing of nominating petitions) and rules governing write-in candidates.

- The rules about what subjects may be submitted to a direct popular vote through a referendum or plebiscite, and the rules that governmental agencies or citizen groups must follow to place questions on the ballot for public consideration.

- The sources of election law (e.g. constitutions, national statues, state statutes, or judicial decisions) and the interplay between these sources of law.

Public Administration

This word means the implementation of gobernment policy and also an academic discipline that studies this implementation and prepares civil servants for working in the public service.

As a "field of inquiry with a diverse scope" its "fundamental goal...is to advance management and policies so that government can function." Some of the various definitions which have been offered for the term are: "the management of public programs"; the "translation of politics into the reality that citizens see every day"; and "the study of government decision making, the analysis of the policies them, and the inputs necessary to produce alternative policies."

Public administration is "centrally concerned with the organization of government policies and programmes as well as the behavior of officials (usually non-elected) formally responsible for their conduct.

Many unelected public servants can be considered to be public administrators, including heads of city, county, regional, state and federal departaments such as municipal budget directors, human resources (HR) administrators, city managers, census managers, state mental hearth directors, and cabinet secretaries.

Public administrators are public servants working in public departments and agencies, at all levels of government. During back to Antiguity, Pharaohs, kings and emperors have required pages, treasures, and tax collectors to administer the practical business of government.

Prior to the 19th century, staffing of most public administrations was rife with nepotism, favoritism, and political patronage, which was often referred to as a "spoils system".