The project aims to shed further light onto the practice of regional supranational courts adjudicating on highly politically sensitive issues of democratic decay at national level. It combines an outside and an inside look of the role of judges in protecting the rule of law in Europe. The comparative approach of studying the varied understandings of regional human rights courts to the concept of the rule of law aims at placing the European experience in a broader context. The inside look presents a socio-legal perspective on the reception of European Court of Justice rulings in Poland. Regional organizations and, in particular, regional courts might appear as the key institutions guaranteeing counter-majoritarian checks and balances in times of rising populist tendencies. We expect that delegation of powers to supranational institutions can strengthen non-majoritarian policy dynamics and shield policy-makers from populist pressures. With the rise of populist and nationalist tendencies, international courts face the danger of backlash, understood as an extraordinary critique undermining the legitimacy and authority of the institution as such. This project maps various institutional strategies deployed by regional courts to address democratic backsliding at national level.
Pola Cebulak is a tenured Assistant Professor in European Law at the European Studies Department of the University of Amsterdam.
This Fellow Talk is a closed event.
