Constitutional degradation – Gender populism – Democratic decay – Rule of law – Right-wing populism – Anti-gender rhetoric – ‘Gender ideology’ – Women’s rights – LGBTQI+ rights

Shared administration – EU migration agencies – The European Border and Coast Guard Agency Frontex – European Integrated Border Management and responsibility gaps – Unclear division of obligations in Frontex’s mandate – EU composite legal order and limits of EU judicial remedies – National courts and the right to effective judicial protection under Article 19(1) TEU and Article 47 Charter – Domestic judges as European judges – Advantages and potential of domestic remedies in multi-actor situations – Importance of preliminary references in shared administration– Domestic adjudication of human rights violations in European Integrated Border Management – Adjudication on member state responsibility – Adjudication on individual responsibility – Strengthening domestic judicial systems.

Generative AI systems’ output as speech – Constitutional coverage for AI speech in the absence of a (human) speaker – Right of individuals to receive information as a perspective for framing constitutional coverage of generative AI output – Implications of constitutional coverage for content policing and content moderation by private platforms – Trends in the interpretation of existing content moderation regimes and their applicability to generative AI systems.

The growing trend of depoliticisation of constitutional court appointments across Europe – Shortcomings of depoliticised appointment models in constituting an optimal constitutional court – Strategic politicisation of appointment procedures as a solution for a more optimal constitutional court – Proposal of a baseline template drawing from different European practices – Implications for constitutional court reform in Europe

The various meanings of ‘legitimacy’ – Constitution-making procedure as a tool to achieve the right content of a new constitutional document – The effect of the procedure on the actual social and political context – Trade-offs between the various conceptions of legitimacy – Inherent tensions between transparency and political compromise, and between inclusivity and elite support – Direct democratic involvement aggravating polarisation – When the time is not ripe for constitution-making, recommended substitute strategies – Various procedural options: popular drafting, constituent assemblies, ordinary parliaments, expert bodies, roundtables, referenda – The dangers of (Kelsenian) constitutional revolutions

Constitutional degradation – Gender populism – Democratic decay – Gender equality – Right-wing populism – Constitutional nationalism – Legal exclusion – Majoritarianism – Rule of law corrosion – Anti-Europeanism – Women’s rights – LGBTQI+ rights – Reproductive rights – Surrogacy – Face-veil ban – Female genital cutting – EU Gender Equality Strategy 2020-25

A growing interest in informal institutions in the judiciary – Scarce empirical studies focusing on informal institutions in judicial decision-making – An in-depth case study of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal (2012-2016) through an interview methodology – Constitutional Courts develop informal institutions often determinative of case outcomes – Polarisation negatively impacting compliance with preexisting informal institutions

Increased concerns about misuse of citizens’ initiatives and referendums to undermine liberal democracy – Efforts to balance popular sovereignty with the rule of law – Inadmissibility of certain types of direct-democratic requests in virtually all European states – Compliance of restrictions on what citizens may propose with the right to participate in public affairs guaranteed by Article 25(a) ICCPR – First systematic analysis of admissibility requirements and procedures for citizens’ initiatives in Europe

EU’s political mediation in internal constitutional matters as part of its evolving vision of the rule of law – Dimensions of the EU’s dialogic rule of law: ontological, organic, and legitimising – The idea of the rule of law as embedded in intrincate political and social processes – The rule of law as the core driving force in creating spaces and boundaries for dialogue, interaction, and definition of the EU’s multilevel constitutional system – Balancing inherent dialogue with decisive and strong action against member states breaching the rule of law – Multiple forms of the ideal of the rule of law within the EU’s composite constitutional framework – No one-size-fits-all response: context-sensitive approaches to rule of law deviations – Institutionalising and legally integrating mediation as an instrument in the EU’s Rule of Law Framework.

Treaties of the European Union – Comprehensive framework for macro-economic governance, devoid of democratic influence – Divergence from this seemingly stringent framework during the Euro Crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic – Pattern of deviation from the macro-constitution – Euro Crisis and Next Generation EU illustrate that deviations can safeguard the macro-constitution, preserving rather than transforming the Union’s macro-constitution.

Regressive constitutional erosion: the gradual rescue of the traditional gender order through constitutional interpretation – Regressive constitutional reform: rendering explicit the traditional gender order – Preemption: constitutional supremacy and the traditional gender order as a matter of sovereignty and national identity – Constitutional backsliding or problematic constitutional origins to start with

The intellectual legacy of Cappelletti and Calamandrei – envisioning judicial review as an instrument of social justice – the post-war project of substantive legality – groundwork for the Integration through Law project – the EU’s neoliberal turn – the European Court of Justice’s entrenched market constitutionalism – the elusive goal of a Social Europe

The democratic justification of academic freedom – Academic freedom and Article 2 TEU values (democracy, the rule of law) – Potential implications for the application of the EU rule of law toolbox – Complementary protection of academic freedom – Preliminary remarks on future proposals

The rule of law crisis in Europe seen as a gendered phenomenon – The rule of law as a concept is itself gendered – The gendered dimension of democratic backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe is a central, not peripheral feature – Responses to authoritarian populist attacks on the rule of law should also address its gendered elements – Opposition to the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence – The rise of a war against so-called ‘gender ideology’ – Increasingly restrictive reproductive rights regimes – The retrenchment of the ‘traditional’ family and traditional gender roles – EU response weak and ambivalent – European Court of Human Rights’ gender equality case law a work in progress

Vertical division of competences as a limit for the Court’s interpretation of EU law – Distinction between Union competences and institutional powers – Distinction between ‘Verbandskompetenz’ and ‘Organkompetenz’ – Principles of conferral, subsidiarity, and proportionality – Article 5 TEU – Retained powers – ‘Compétences encadrées’ – Jurisdiction – Judicial function – Difference between legislating and adjudicating – Judicial development of the law – ‘Rechtsfortbildung’ – Deference – Margin of appreciation

Populism, gender-related rights and science – The use of medical and scientific concepts and data vis-à-vis populist agendas – Science-related and science-based populism – Science as constitutional bulwark – The role of constitutional review and constitutional interpretation – Science as tool or object of constitutional review – The idea of scientific reasonableness of laws and policies