Federative Law: A Fettered Revolution?

Jean-Louis Halpérin (1)

1 CTAD - Centre de Théorie et Analyse du Droit

In order to determine if there has been a legal revolution in the European Union, this chapter proposes a comparison with two other “federative” processes, the ones of Switzerland and of the United States. Despite many differences between the three situations, the common aim for the development of these legal structures is the primacy of a supra-statal law associated with the action of a common jurisdiction. This kind of legal revolution has been fettered in the past as well in the United States (from the eighteenth century to the Civil War) as in Switzerland (during the nineteenth century). The obstacles are even more important for the European Union at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the European organs having to take account of the traditional force of old States. The situation of European lawyers (some of them being more and more specialized in European law and independent from States) and of the network constituted by European courts makes this revolution difficult to be overruled.

Domaines: Droit

Jean-Louis Halpérin. Federative Law: A Fettered Revolution?. Springer. Five Legal Revolutions Since the 17th Century, , pp.111-149, 2014, 978-3-319-05887-0. ⟨10.1007/978-3-319-05888-7_5⟩. ⟨halshs-03281365⟩