Federal Solution to the EU Internal Sovereignty Conundrum: The European Doctrine of the Czech Constitutional Court and the U.S. Compact Theory

Abstract

In this article, I confront sovereignty based attacks of constitutive units on a central government of two entities lying on federalist foundations – the European Union and the United States. Inquiring into the development of the American Compact Theory on the one hand and into the European doctrine of the Czech Constitutional Court on the other, one may be astonished by the similarities in their reasoning. It has to be borne in mind that the Czech Constitutional Court represents a much broader group of ‘revolting’ national judiciaries. The aim of this article is to come to a normative solution to the sovereignty conundrum, which federalism might offer.

Keywords: constitutional core; Lisbon Treaty; Sugar Quotas; Althusius; Czech Constitutional Court; US Compact Theory; European doctrine; US; EU; sovereignty; federalism