Projects

The fourth subproject examines the discontinuities in the relationship of constitutional courts and other political authorities during and through the financial and economic crisis.

• Which instruments and techniques of decision-making have courts used or developed in order to secure the implementation of their decisions?
• In relation to which type of conflict have they decreased the governmental and legislative scope of action, and where did they ensure or even enlarge the scope of action for policy-makers?

The project will analyze which modes of decision-making courts have applied to do so and if they succeeded in creating dialogue between courts and political authorities that might contribute to a productive conflict resolution. A productive conflict resolution can be assumed if constitutional rights can be protected without ruling out political reforms of existent social security systems.

• Are courts able to channel the destructive potential of TSC and enact an integrative mode of conflict resolution, which entails an inclusive consideration of the interests of various political actors?
• Or is the judicial mode of conflict resolution inappropriate, as it is not aiming at preference-based decision-making in contrast to the political mode?

Furthermore, the subproject questions to which extent the concrete techniques of decision-making initiated a transnational dialogue between national and European courts during the financial and economic crisis. In this context, we hypothesize that such a dialogue has been launched mainly with regard to those types of conflicts that touch upon the horizon of solidarity, i.e. the question on which level solidarity conflicts ought to be decided and when these decisions can claim legitimacy.