Law Commons^™

Europe's Digital Constitution, Anu Bradford

Faculty Scholarship

This Article uncovers the fundamental values underlying the European Union’s expansive set of digital regulations, which in aggregate can be viewed as Europe’s “digital constitution.” This constitution engrains Europe’s human-centric, rights-preserving, democracy-enhancing, and redistributive vision for the digital economy into binding law. This vision stands in stark contrast to the United States, which has traditionally placed its faith in markets and tech companies’ self-regulation. As a result, American tech companies today are regulated primarily by Brussels and not by Washington. By highlighting the distinctiveness and the global reach of the European digital constitution, this Article challenges the common narrative that …

Reconciling European Union Law Demands With The Demands Of International Arbitration, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

European Union ("EU" or "Union") law and the law of international arbitration have traditionally occupied largely separate worlds, as if arbitral tribunals would rarely be the fora for the resolution of EU law claims and as if EU law, in turn, had little concern with arbitration. For several reasons, this pattern has recently been altered, although the relationship between EU law and international arbitration law is at present anything but settled. From the present perspective, the past looks like an age of innocence, for as these two worlds have begun to intersect, they have not done so entirely harmoniously.

Part …

New Frontiers In The Relationship Between National And European Courts, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

Considering that a full fifty years have passed since the Treaty Establishing the European Community came into force, it seems appropriate to take a "long" view of the subject of this panel, namely, national courts and the courts of the European Union. I mean here to sketch the evolution, as I see it, of the challenge that consists of managing the "interface" between these two series of courts.

The central question pervading this discussion is simply stated: whether and to what extent the European Court of Justice ("Court of Justice" or "Court") (and the European institutions more generally) can count …

Constitutional Lessons From Europe, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

Given his range of interests, a tribute to Francis Jacobs could appropriately address just about any area of contemporary legal concern. But Francis Jacobs is one whose writings on and off the bench have, for an American, been especially illuminating, due to his unique capacity to translate fundamental issues of European constitutional law into terms that we can grasp. And so, notwithstanding the quantity of writing on the recent constitutional adventure of the European Union ("EU") that has already accumulated, I add yet one more set of reflections on this theme in Francis Jacobs' honor, this time on the possible …

Introduction To The Special Issue, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

The subject of this year's topical issue of the Columbia Journal of European Law promises to be topical for some time to come. Every model of European integration that has been competing for consideration-whether within the Union institutions or within the corridors of national power, or virtually anywhere for that matter presupposes a European identity of sorts. But just at the time that a "European" identity might hope to be developing in the midst of the "national" identities with which it was commonly contrasted, the identity "landscape" has itself been growing more complex. Forces of globalization, and more particularly the …

The European Intergovernmental Conference: An American Perspective, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

Peter Herzog's career-long interest in the European Communities makes it especially appropriate to include in this festschrift a contribution on what has become the principal mechanism for reforming the treaties that constitute those Communities. I refer of course to the "intergovernmental conferences," or "IGCs" for short. As this festschrift goes to press, the fifteen Member States are submitting the results of the latest IGC – the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam – to their respective national ratification processes.

As its name suggests, the intergovernmental conference is a gathering of representatives of the Member States to discuss and eventually agree upon amendments …