Ultra Vires Review and the Demise of Constitutional Pluralism

Abstract

The Czech Constitutional Court decision in the Czecho-Slovak pension saga, declaring a judgment of the Court of Justice ultra vires, represents one important step in the debate on the sustainability of the so-called constitutional pluralism in the relation of EU law and domestic legal systems. Although the Czech decision could be ridiculed as simple-minded and failing to leave any lasting footprint in the wider EU legal debate, the author of this article argues otherwise. Facing the specifics of the case, on the one hand, the author argues that the notion of constitutional pluralism remains largely an academic construct, which could be the subject of interesting scholarly debates, while for practitioners, on the other hand, it is flawed and has the potential to lead to dangerous outcomes for people in real life cases.