Continuità, discontinuità e catastrofismo. Sulle reazioni della dottrina al Lissabon-Urteil

In its long-awaited decision of 30 June 2009 on the constitutionality of the treaty of Lisbon, the German Constitutional Court expounded at great length its philosophy of the European integration process. No surprisingly, the decision prompted an overwhelming stream of comments, which can be grouped in two main cultural options: those who stress the continuity of the process of European integration, and those who assume that this process proceeds discontinuously, though sudden progress and regression. Beyond their apparently radical differences, both these options revel the persisting tendency of legal scholarship to look for the ultimate source of legitimacy in the process of European integration. In the authors’ view, this debate offers a further evidence of the necessity to revise the fundamental postulates of the modern positivistic theories of law.