A matter of coherence in the multilevel legal system: are the “lions” still “under the throne”?

The judicial dialogue represents a privileged perspective for studying the relations between interacting legal orders, especially looking at the multilevel and pluralistic structure of the European constitutional legal order.

The aim of this paper is to focus on that particular form of judicial conversation represented by what I have endeavoured to call the techniques of “hidden dialogue” between the ECJ and the national Constitutional Courts.

By the formula “hidden dialogue” I mean that unexplored side of the relationship between the Constitutional Courts and the ECJ which feeds itself with the somehow non- orthodox ways of judicial communication (that is ways of judicial communication which are different from the preliminary ruling and which are not formalized according to the letter of the Treaties, i.e. art 234 ECT).

The final remarks of the paper will be devoted to the possible “destiny” of these techniques in the light of the latest judicial trend.