Volume 5, Issue 4

In two recent, revolutionary decisions, - Janko Rottmann C-135/08 and Ruiz Zambrano C-34/09 - the European Court of Justice has firmly emancipated the status of citizenship of the Union from the “cross-border” requirement and has inaugurated a new area for the protection of rights closely linked to the core of sovereignty of States, - nationality and residence. This Article examines these two judgments and argues that they take the construction of citizenship towards a federal status. The “genuine enjoyment of the substance of citizenship rights” has emerged as a new legal category that is capable of providing a uniform and general protection and entails the affirmation of a core of rights of a supranational nature. This new development raises questions as to whether the ECJ's expansionist reading of citizenship constitutes a legitimate exercise of judicial power and as to what will be the relationship between citizenship and EU fundamental rights. We conclude by exploring the potential of the judgments analyzed in terms of placing Union citizenship at the center of the emergence of a constitutional patriotism in Europe.

The constitutions of European states often contain too many categories of officials covered by too broadly defined immunities. At the same time, there is consensus among international organizations that immunities have to be limited to allow effective prosecution of corruption offences. This article examines how public law in European states could limit criminal immunities for officials.

After the People's Republic of China resumed her sovereign control over Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was established pursuant to the Basic Law of Hong Kong, which is the constitutional document for Hong Kong. The Basic Law of Hong Kong defines the scope of autonomy enjoyed by Hong Kong as a region within a unitary state under the policy of 'one country, two systems.' However, the policy has never been clear, and it leads to controversy surrounding the application of the ‘dual system’ of constitutional interpretation in Hong Kong, as the highest appellate court in Hong Kong, the Court of Final Appeal, may be required to refer to the Chinese Government for interpretation of the Basic Law. In this article, the referral mechanism in the Basic Law and the scope of constitutional jurisdiction enjoyed by the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal after the two landmark cases, Ng Ka Ling v Director of Immigration and Democratic Republic of the Congo v FG Hemisphere Associates LLC, will be discussed with reference to the similar mechanism under Article 177 of the Treaty Establishing the European Economic Community (now Article 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union), to ascertain who will interpret the ‘mini-constitution’ of Hong Kong.