Time appears in the development of law in several capacities. One of its powers is to provide relief for courts gridlocked in contradictory claims of hierarchy. That is the topic of this editorial. A showcase is provided by the Melki saga, as it recently unfolded in a rich and rushed contention between the French courts and the Court of Justice of the European Union.

The 2014 referendum: Towards a consensual process – The Edinburgh Agreement: framing the referendum process – Process rules and key issues – After the referendum: Scotland's status under international law – Secession under international law – Membership of international organisations, especially the European Union

Concept of solidarity – Factual vs. normative solidarity – Development of solidarity in the euro area – Transition from negative to positive solidarity – Solidarity as a legal concept – European Stability Mechanism – European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism – European Financial Stability Facility – Pringle judgement of the Court of Justice of the European Union – ECB bond-buying programmes

The enduring joint decision trap in the absence of European government – Postnational constitutionalism – The dismissal of politics – Accountability of government before parliament at the core of representative democracy – Internalising the benefits and of externalising the disadvantages of staying together in the Union possible as long as political accountability is not ensured in the EU system – Breathing political life into the EU through constitutional practice without formal Treaty amendment – A time-frame for approval of treaty amendments – EP and the election of Commission president

Constitutional reform in Spain – Budgetary stability – Debt and deficit limits – Fiscal Compact – Six Pack – Two Pack – Fiscal federalism – ‘State of autonomies’ – Financing of the autonomous communities – Adoption of an ‘internal stability pact’

German Federal Constitutional Court's dialogue with the European Court of Justice – Background, trigger, contents and context of the FCC's reaction to the Åkerberg Fransson judgment – The FCC's Counter-Terrorism Database judgment – Constitutional control standards – theoretical repercussions of the judicial dispute – Underlying conceptual differences – The ‘fusion thesis’ versus the ‘separation thesis’ – Pragmatic approximation of divergent positions

Economic governance – Financial assistance – Economic and monetary union – Patent litigation – Treaties between member states – Jurisdiction of the Court of Justice – powers of the EU institutions – Enhanced cooperation

Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU – Multiple sources of fundamental rights in the EU legal system – Non-hierarchical, pluralistic understanding of their interrelationship – Case study: the right to good administration – Difficulties in defining the scope of the right to good administration under the Charter and that of the right to good administration as a general principle of EU law – Adoption of a pluralistic understanding of the EU fundamental rights’ sources allows for a clarification and improved understanding of the individual's rights in the EU legal system

Reasoning of the Court of Justice of the European Union – Constr uction of arguments in the case-law of the Court – Citation technique – The use of formulas to transform case-law into ‘law’ – ‘Formulaic style’ – European citizenship as a fundamental status – Ruiz Zambrano – Reasoning from consequences – The use of social propositions

Going beyond ‘judicial dialogues’ and ‘conflict-and-power’ approaches to the analysis of national constitutional courts' role in the EU – The idea of European constitutional democracy – National constitutional courts constrain individual autonomy expanded by European integration – National constitutional courts defend the scope for political autonomy – Against national constitutional courts' displacement – Simmenthal II – After the ‘Rights Revolution’ in Europe – National constitutional courts' references to the ECJ – Ordinary courts challenging national constitutional courts through the preliminar y reference procedure – Parallel references – National constitutional courts enforcing EU law – National constitutional courts challenging EU law

Economic crisis, constitutional crisis – Finnish constitutional requirements and solutions – National parliaments' European constitutional function – Finnish parliament's rights – Development of economic and monetary union – Economic and monetary union and development of it as the ‘Union matter’ in Finland – Stabilisation – European Financial Stability Facility – European Stability Mechanism – Economic governance – National, European, political, constitutional

Human rights protection – Proportionality – Deference – Procedural rationality – Process-review – Interplay national courts and Strasbourg court

Hungarian constitutional law – New Basic Law – Continuity with the previous democratic Constitution – Vision of the political community embedded in the new Basic Law – The level of protection of fundamental rights – Continuity and lack of foreseeability in the organisation of the state – European legal procedures against or about Hungary – The life prospects of the new Basic Law – Danger of constitutional crisis whenever the government does not hold a constitution-amending majority

Fiscal Compact: duty to implement balanced budget rule, automatic correction mechanism and independent budget supervisor in national law – The Netherlands: Act on sustainable government finances – Act does not bind the (budget) legislature – Conformity with the implementation duty in Article 3(2) Fiscal Compact? – The first reading of Article 3(2) – The second reading of Article 3(2) – The genesis of Article 3(2) – Recourse to (Dutch and French) monism?

Response of national highest courts to the ECJ's integrationist agenda – Logic behind qualified acceptance of EU law supremacy and direct effect – Several possible explanations for the observed inter-court variation: the courts’ type and organisation; their power to review legislative acts under domestic law; the rules governing access to the judicial forum; the monistic tradition of the legal system and the level of public support for European integration – Assessment of empirical validity of these hypotheses using a new dataset coding the doctrinal positions and institutional constraints of 34 domestic highest courts – Most correlations small – Only one variable – the power to review statutory legislation under national law – appears to have a significant influence on the courts’ doctrinal response to legal integration – Some support for the argument that the varying institutional constraints and incentives under which highest court judges operate shape the way they accommodate and reconcile two conflicting goals

Pringle judgment of the Court – Constitutional implications of using EU institutions outside the EU legal framework – Contestable foundations of the principle affirmed in Pringle – Procedural problems concerning use of EU institutions in this manner – Substantive problems with EU institutions acting in this manner – Relationship between compatibility and choice – Limits of analogical reasoning and dangers of false positives

The Charte and the octroi: the origins of the ‘model’ – Theory of the octroi: the tale of the king-patriarch – Absorbing the Revolution into the Monarchy – Different words to say ‘constitution’: Charte constitutionnelle, Landständische Verfassung, Statuto – The granted constitution as context of legitimacy: the monarchy comes before and is within the constitution – Interpreting the granted constitution – The fate of the monarchic constitution