Keywords
Constitutional courts
Judicial dialogue.
Constitutional justice
Competitive selection.
How to Cite
Abstract
Given the transformations that have taken place in recent years, the processes of enlargement and the need to respond to the accelerating process of globalisation, it is doubtful that states can continue to think, as they have done in the past, of maintaining a supranational structure that strengthens their power in the domestic sphere and allows them to remain important agents in the integration process. The tension between constitutionalism and Europeanism may disappear in the medium term if Europe is to continue to maintain its level of development and prosperity in the global context.
The main function of constitutional courts is to ensure the constitutional order. This guarantee of the Constitution, of which they are the main interpreter, is in principle neutral with regard to the European integration process. The link between constitutional justice and the Constitution means that the process of European integration can only be judged under the conditions laid down by the Constitution itself and in accordance with the general characteristics of the national constitutional order. It is not the same, for example, that the Constitution does not contain specific provisions on the process (as is the case in Spain), other than a general authorisation for accession, and that, on the contrary, the Constitution sets conditions and limits (as is the case in Germany). It is also not the same that, for example, the Constitution sets limits to its reform through immateriality provisions (as is the case in Italy or Germany), nor that it does not explicitly provide for such limits.
Constitutional courts play an important role in the realisation of the necessary minimum of rights, i.e. in creating an existential core that ensures security, legitimacy and constitutional protection outside the state. This is not an attempt to standardise rights, let alone to promote standardised judicial decisions, but to unify and condense their constitutional protection. Faced with the vulnerability of fundamental rights in global constitutionalism, constitutional courts are increasingly engaged in a kind of communicative integration process in which legal rationalities are exchanged through the exchange of decisions, which is called international judicial dialogue in the strict sense. This book not only demonstrates that the conversation between constitutional courts has a specific structure, methodology and assumptions, but also proposes a reasonable procedure for systematising and operationalising the incorporation of international jurisprudence into domestic constitutional responses to the legal paradoxes of our time: the process of judicial dialogism.
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