On the Rule of Law and Economic Emergency: The Degradation of Basic Legal Values in Europe's Bailouts

The norms governing EU sovereign debt conditionality in ‘debtor states’ significantly trouble the Rule of Law. My analysis addresses this central, yet to date ignored, Rule of Law challenge created by the EU economic crisis. I contrast my specific approach with two other Rule of Law strands in current EU scholarship and develop it by placing it within relevant broader literatures on rule of law and emergency. Drawing particularly on Fuller and Waldron, this produces a formal and procedural Rule of Law critique embracing both attributes of the norms themselves and challenges to those norms before the Court of Justice and the European Ombudsman. The managerialism manifested in bailout governance departs from the foundational commitments inherent in both Law and New Governance.