In Il giudice e l'economia, LUISS Professor of Economic Law and Advisor to the President, Giancarlo Montedoro, explores recent evolutions in administrative justice. Published by LUISS University Press, the book focuses on the effects of globalization on liberal constitutionalism in European countries and on the role of administrative justice in modern trials.
“The administrative judge, is sometimes also referred to as the economic judge,” explains Professor Montedoro, “because in the majority of European countries where the economy is run by public institutions, judges are the first to notice transformations in the economic sphere.” According to Professor Montedoro, law and economics are two areas regulated by a close, historic relationship. “Both social sciences derive from moral philosophy. Time, however, has favored economics, with the rising importance of finance. Judges today must absolutely understand economics and its underlying mechanisms and interests. On the other hand, economists must understand law in order to produce more than just abstract analyses and models.”
Globalization and processes involved in constructing the European Union are currently transforming public administration and the legal world, imposing a review of costs, shorter trials and higher levels of responsibility. “These changes are particularly intense due to balanced budget requirements, and must be approached with the correct balance between judges and legislators. The parliament and government determine the correct balance between rights and their cost, but judges must defend constitutional guidelines and put constituent powers into law.
The state of emergency caused by the current economic crisis highlights deep contradictions in the current economic system that require structural reforms, and not simply cultural changes. “In his last book, Jacques Attali asserts that we must change our attitude, stop acting like protesters resigned to their fates, and take our lives back into our own hands. His line of thinking is correct; politics, as we have known it in the nineteen and twentieth centuries, is disappearing while future constitutions are still in construction. Yet, I believe that there are no existential solutions to systematic contradictions that require political measures more than they require the courage to give up on old ideas of sovereignty.”
Europe’s constituent process is still developing and has seen as much participation from the Court of Justice as from European Union institutions. “For a long time, the driving force of European construction was the Court of Justice in Luxembourg where EU judges have made a tremendous endeavor to bring together different legal traditions. The monetary crisis has shown that the new force driving Europe is the Central European Bank and policies established from the letter written by Jean Claude Tichet and Mario Draghi in 2011 to speed up structural reforms in the weakest European countries in terms of productivity. However, even ECB decisions have been evaluated by judges in Luxembourg with the June 16, 2014 ruling that they conformed to the Treaty.”
The fact that Europe has begun to put constituent power into law is a sign of hope for Professor Montedoro. “Poet Gottfried Benn said that ‘to live is to build bridges over disappearing rivers.’ The European Union will face difficulties in governing upcoming dynamics but it must not stop building bridges over rivers that are slipping away, and running towards the rest of the world.”