This week, while researching a forthcoming publication on one of my favoured hobby-horses, the UN/EU sanctions regime, I noted an engaging piece on the Kadi judgment in the European Law Journal (September 2010 issue) by N. Türküler Isiksel of Columbia University. The author claims that the article “takes stock of the emerging scholarship on the European Court of Justice’s 2008 Kadi decision and seeks to make sense of the court’s apparent evasiveness towards international law”. The article goes on to “that Kadi is best understood as an act of civil disobedience prompted by the UN Security Council’s misapplication of foundational principles of the international order.” The author proceeds to take on some of the heavy-weights that have contributed to the debate, including, most notably, Gráinne de Búrca. For anyone following the saga it’s an enjoyable read. The author concludes:

Having allowed me my fair share of sweeping claims in this article, I ask the reader to indulge a final, normative claim, which I make in the hope of contributing to the debate about the values and principles on which the EU rests. In the immediate post-war period, European federalists conceived of supranationalism not merely as a way of generating wealth, but as a new way of organising political power so as to safeguard human dignity and individual rights against the arbitrary exercise of power by sovereign states. For much of the EC’s history, however, that aspiration has largely and intentionally been eclipsed by the technocratic project of market building. This is precisely why the prioritisation of the status of fundamental rights within the supranational architectonic is something to be welcomed. Spurred by the Security Council’s unaccountable, wanton use of sanctions directed towards individuals, the ECJ appears at long last to be groping towards the capacious constitutional ambition of the original integration project. (References ommitted).

Those with Athens access can click here for the full article.