A Cross-Cultural Perspective on the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union: Influences and (Possible) Contaminations from American Legal Culture

Abstract

Comparative law studies between the European Union and the United States of America generally take as their object of inquiry the overall structure of the two legal systems, starting from the common fact that both of them are characterised by federalising process and by a progressive constitutionalization of the legal order. In contrast to the views prevailing within the literature dealing with US-EU comparison, this study will leave such structural issues in the background and will rather carry out a comparative analysis of the two legal systems focusing on the issue of the bill of rights, whilst not losing sight of the consequences which the fundamental structure of a legal system has in terms of the specific protection of rights. The paper’s central claim is that political integration, through bill of rights, does not imply the systemic effect of centralising the guarantee of rights within a single judicial body at the pinnacle of the system. This is to say that it does not bring about a reduction in debate between the variety of voices and constitutional cultures within a complex legal order.