During the Course we will study the judiciary in Europe, understood as the sum of the national courts, including, where they exist, the Constitutional Courts, the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights.
We will look at some history, starting at the end of the 18th century and compare some national systems of justice on the basis of the Constitutions in force in some countries of the continent. We will analyze in depth the birth and evolution of the two powerful international (i.e. not national) courts that exist in Europe: the Court of Human Rights (Strasbourg) and the Court of Justice (Luxembourg). In all cases we will pay particular attention to the selection of judges, guarantees of independence and the position of the judiciary in the democratic constitutional state of our time, including in contexts of illiberal populism.