Interlocking Constitutions: Towards an Interordinal Theory of National, European and UN Law ,

Interlocking Constitutions delivers a highly articulate analysis of the dynamic interaction between European final appellate jurisdictions at the international and national level. Through a series of case studies, Gordillo examines how various international and national jurisdictions have interacted with one another over the past fifty years. The historical inheritance of these dialogues is a European-wide interlocked legal system that includes national and international jurisdictions as well as international institutions such as the UN Security Council. The interactions between these institutions take a functional approach that seeks to prevent conflicts ex ante or to minimise their consequences ex post. An important corollary of this is that the book provides an argument against the cognitive persuasiveness of epistemic models such as constitutional cosmopolitanism and constitutional pluralism. Constitutional cosmopolitanism, Gordillo argues, is unsuitable for explaining horizontal interactions between final appellate jurisdictions because it assumes, implicitly or explicitly, the existence of a global order based on shared values. However, from the analysis of the very large sample of cases considered in Interlocking Constitutions, it appears that constitutional and international courts either resist the idea of global values or, in the few instances in which they might qualify as shared, judgments are nonetheless grounded in courts' pre-existing lines of authority.