B6176 - WORKSHOP 1 - SKILLS: COMPARATIVE LEGAL SKILLS

Learning outcomes

This workshop provides students with transversal and multidisciplinary skills for their future employments in both the private and the public sector, intersecting legal comparison, public law, constitutional law, and administrative law. At the end of the activities, students will have acquired comparative knowledge concerning legal tools to infringe upon the rule of law and will have read, analysed and tried judicial reasoning techniques on the issue.

Course contents

The workshop (20 hours) provides students with relevant constitutional, comparative and jurisprudencial tools to understand the crisis of the rule of law within the EU. It is one of the didactic activities of the Jean Monnet Chair ROLLBACK "Rule of Law Backsliding in Europe" 2023-2026.

The different sessions examine the normative techniques adopted in the EU member states, starting from Poland and Hungary, to undermine the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary.

Official documents of EU institutions, national constitutional and legislative texts, rulings of the relevant European and national courts are analysed in class.

Readings/Bibliography

David Kosař and Samuel Spáč, Judicial Independence in: Richard Bellamy and Jeff King, The Cambridge Handbook of Constitutional Theory (2025) 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 867-883.

Gábor Halmai, From Liberal Democracy to Illiberal Populist Autocracy: Possible Reasons for Hungary’s Autocratization (2024) Hague Journal of the Rule of Law, pp. 439-463

Bogdan Iancu, Militant Democracy and Rule of Law in Three Paradoxes: The Annulment of the Romanian Presidential Elections (2025) Hague Journal of the Rule of Law [online, 28 pp.]

Wojciech Piątek, Restoring the Rule of Law in Poland: Towards the Most Appropriate Way to Put an End to the Systemic Violation of Judicial Independence (2025) European Constitutional Law Review, pp. 139-163

EU Commission 2025 Rule of Law Report - Country Chapter Italy

Case C-769/22 (Hungarian “Propaganda Law”), EU Court of Justice (expected 2025)

Case C-521/21 (Polish Judicial Appointments), EU Court of Justice (expected 2025)

Case of Lorenzo Bragado v. Spain, European Court of Human Rights, 2023

Cases C-156/21 and C-157/21 (Conditionality Regulation) , EU Court of Justice, 2022

Case C-216/18, LM Case (European Arrest Warrant), EU Court of Justice, 2018

Teaching methods

The workshop adopts different methods: a) practical analysis of legislative texts and sentences; b) search for materials on the websites of relevant parliaments and courts; c) use of databases and textual analysis.

Assessment methods

This workshop does not provide a specific grade, rather just a pass.

In order to pass the course, students are required to complete an assignment based on the sessions and to actively participate in class.

Teaching tools

Slides, institutional websites.

Links to further information

https://site.unibo.it/jm-chair-rollback/en

Office hours

See the website of Sabrina Ragone