Lessons the EU should learn from the formative years of the US: Challenges to EU authority in the areas of legitimacy and interpretive competence and the implications for the conceptualization of the EU

Abstract:
There is an important comparison to be made between the formative years of the European Union and the United States. In both cases, there were challenges to the consolidation and expansion of power by a central authority, especially in the area of interpretive competence. Questions were also raised about the legitimacy of the federal or supranational organization. These assertions of the German Federal Constitutional Court call into question how the EU should be conceptualized now and in the future. An alternative vision of federalism from the formative years of the US shows that there is more than one path the EU can follow. This alternative path puts the ideas of democratic legitimacy and the true consent of the people ahead of notions of supremacy and uniformity, which have been made popular by the ECJ