In a ruling delivered on 1 August 2025, the Court of Justice upheld a General Court judgment annulling the classification as a suspected carcinogen of titanium dioxide in powder form containing at least 1% of particles of a diameter equal to or below 10 μm. Both EU Courts criticise the scientific assessment underlying that classification, but the Court of Justice relies on conceptual distinctions that reveal its reluctance to perform a genuine “manifest error of assessment” review. While these issues are not addressed by the Court of Justice, the case also raises thorny questions regarding the meaning of “intrinsic properties” of a substance.

The relationship between the European Court of Human Rights and the ideal of democracy is a complex one: Convention states tend to understand it in terms of the supremacy of national democratic arrangements, whereas the Court has conceived of the relationship in more substantive procedural terms involving Convention rights as interpreted and promoted by the Court. In recent political debates the ideal of democracy has been instrumentalized to attack the authority of the Court based on the former understanding, such that its contribution to democratic ideals has become muted. Against this background, this article seeks to rebalance political debates about the relationship between democracy and the ECtHR by clarifying ways in which we can understand the Court as playing a democratic role based on the republican democracy of Phillip Pettit. It highlights elements of Pettit’s republican democracy relevant to the Court and analyses features of the Court and its practice which can be understood as expressing those elements. In doing so it contributes to ongoing debates about the relationship between democracy and the Court with a view to protecting and promoting the ideal of democracy in an era in which it is increasingly under threat.

Canada is widely regarded as a pro-arbitration jurisdiction. Yet the role of domestic judges in investor-state dispute settlement remains significant, particularly in arbitrations that do not take place at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). Unlike ICSID, which provides a self-contained system for enforcement and annulment, investment treaty arbitration conducted under other arbitration rules are subject to judicial oversight. This article examines how Canadian judges have approached set-aside proceedings in non-ICSID cases, with a particular focus on the standard of review applied under Article 34 of the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration. The article contends that Canadian judges play a pivotal role in shaping the interface between international investment law and domestic legal principles. In this context, this article argues that the degree of deference shown by Canadian judges to investment arbitral awards should be understood not as judicial restraint per se but, rather, as respect for the distinct legal order constituted by investment treaty arbitration and the UNCITRAL Model Law — a legal order that is international in nature and grounded in a shared global understanding of review standards. Through an analysis of key judicial decisions reviewing investment awards — specifically, the North American Free Trade Agreement Chapter 11 awards, this study explores the extent to which Canadian judges have embraced an internationalist perspective. The article concludes that, while Canadian judges claim to be pro-arbitration, this does not necessarily equate to deference towards investment arbitral awards.

In a rising number of countries, populist parties participate in coalition governments. While there exists a consensus that populism is incompatible with core tenets of liberal democracy on a conceptual level, we know much less about whether or not the participation of populist parties in government constitutes a threat to liberal democracy in practice. We study the impact of populist parties in coalition governments using a novel dataset of more than 2000 laws that were under review at the Austrian Constitutional Court between 1980 and 2021. We provide evidence that the court did not find laws passed by governments that included a populist party unconstitutional more often than those passed by non‐populist governments. Our findings indicate that the Austrian Freedom Party did moderate its policy while in office. The results imply that it is necessary to distinguish policy positions in party manifestos and party rhetoric from policies actually implemented by governments.

Understanding of the relationship between constitutionalism and democracy among legal and political philosophers reflects an idealised account of the US constitution and the nature of judicial review. This view is normatively and empirically flawed. The US constitution is built on pre-democratic assumptions and its counter-majoritarian checks and balances are largely regressive, benefitting privileged minorities over the underprivileged. By contrast, ‘actually existing democracy’, involving competing parties and majority rule, is constitutional in its process and effects, treating all with equal concern and respect, upholding rights and maintaining the rule of law. Judicial review undermines these beneficial qualities.

Constitutional courts (CCs) in federal and quasi-federal systems are often expected to act as neutral arbiters in conflicts between levels of government. This article challenges that assumption by analysing the behavior of Spain’s Constitutional Court over four decades of constitutional litigation. Drawing on an original dataset of 1,888 rulings on all challenges to national and regional legislation (1981–2023), we examine how judicial outcomes are shaped by political alignment, institutional design, and court ideology. Our analysis reveals a consistent pattern of deference to the central government, especially when the Court is ideologically conservative or aligned with the federal executive. These results support a strategic model of judicial behavior and raise broader questions about the role of CCs in multilevel systems. Rather than acting as counter-majoritarian forces, courts may reinforce central dominance in center–periphery conflicts, limiting their capacity to protect territorial pluralism in practice.

Countermajoritarianism is the view that judicial review is antidemocratic because it allows an unelected and unaccountable minority (judges) to overrule laws that represent the will of the majority. The core claim of this view stresses the conflict between agents with a democratic and a non-democratic pedigree. I call this conflict the ‘pedigree problem’ of judicial review. Against countermajoritarianism, I argue that the pedigree problem does not affect some forms of judicial review: specifically, the judicial review that declares a norm inapplicable in a specific case due to the unconstitutional effects that this application brings about. Countermajoritarianism fails when objecting to the inapplicability model because the agents involved in judicial review—the constitutional court and the judge—have the same pedigree, i.e., non-democratic. In order to justify this claim, I draw insights from legal interpretation literature, specifically, the distinction between ‘norm formulation’ and ‘norm’.

Judicial transformation may result either from shifts in institutional context (prompting behavioral adjustment among incumbent judges) or changes in the composition of the bench (particularly through court-packing strategies that introduce new appointees). This article examines the case of the Polish Constitutional Court to evaluate which of these mechanisms better accounts for the controversial transformation of the court since late 2015. Drawing on data from constitutional abstract review decisions spanning 2003 to 2023, we analyze the behavior of distinct cohorts of judges. Our findings reveal a marked alignment with government positions following the October 2015 parliamentary elections, especially among judges appointed by the newly elected ruling party. The evidence suggests that the transformation is driven primarily by changes in judicial composition rather than by behavioral adaptation among pre-existing judges.

The article examines how the Czech courts addressed restrictions on the right to conduct business during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although grounded in the Czech authorities’ response to the health crisis, the analysis extends to broader conclusions about the necessity of upholding rule-of-law principles. The article therefore highlights how constitutional imperatives of proportionality, equality and the justification of government actions must be preserved in judicial review, even in times of crises.

The touchstone of judicial review in Lesotho for a long time has preeminently been the ultra vires principle. The modern conception of the doctrine of legality as a constitutional device to control the exercise of public power has not been a prominent feature of Lesotho’s public law. It has only gained traction recently. The superior courts in Lesotho – the High Court and the Court of Appeal – have ruled that the expansive doctrine of legality is now the cornerstone of constitutionalism in the country. In this new trajectory, they rely mainly on the well-developed South African legality jurisprudence. This development of constitutional law in Lesotho is laudable. However, the extent to which South African jurisprudence can inform Lesotho on this subject remains a matter of controversy. This article examines the “importation” of South African jurisprudence on legality into Lesotho, the lessons that Lesotho can derive and the future development pathways for legality in the country.

It is difficult to disentangle, in EU merger control, between issues of law (subject to full review by the EU courts) and complex economic assessments (controlled for manifest errors). This article discusses, and puts in context, the judgement of the Court of Justice in CK Telecoms. It explains why some of the interpretative choices made by the ECJ open the door to the transformation of the nature and intensity of judicial review in EU merger control. Where the meaning of an interpretation of a legal concept can only be figured out ex post (that is, after performing complex assessments), the control of administrative action may become, de facto, deferential and process-oriented (as opposed to substance-oriented). Leaving constitutional considerations aside, this shift would have the advantage of giving the European Commission the necessary policy space to test new doctrines and act nimbly in a changing economic and technological landscape. On the other hand, it may come at the expense of legal certainty and may not necessarily increase the quality of decision-making.

The EU has been represented as a singular ‘Digital Empire’ speaking with one voice on matters of EU digital regulation. Closer examination of discrete areas of EU digital regulation reveals a more nuanced picture suggesting clear institutional divergence between the EU institutions regarding the substantive protection afforded by EU law. A detailed analysis of EU data protection adequacy decisions brings to the surface intra-EU tensions concerning the substance of core EU fundamental rights. This analysis reveals that the EU Commission has taken on a more prominent role in adequacy decision-making since the entry into force of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation at the expense of other relevant stakeholders. Furthermore, the Commission’s decisional practice does not align fully with the stance of the Court of Justice on the right to data protection. New sites of intra-EU human rights tensions are therefore uncovered with consequences for the legitimacy of the EU as a digital regulator and the role of the Commission as a guardian of the treaties.