Description
It is a taken-for-granted feature of the legal systems of democratic states: constitutional provisions take precedence over other laws. This however becomes less straightforward as we move to an international scale and broaden our perspective to take into account both formal and informal norms. Indeed, in recent years, we witness an ever more acute crisis of liberal norms referred to as “fundamental”, such as the rule of law, and of liberal institutions upholding and enforcing these norms. How are the simultaneous contestation of norms and institutions interrelated? Why, how and with which consequences do actors engage in such contestation and do the motivations and effects differ with the types of norms that are being contested? Finally, does a hierarchy between international norms exist, which mirrors the domestic hierarchy of legal provisions? In this paper, I turn to the Polish resistance against the EU and its “fundamental” norms to investigate these interrelated questions. Based on Twitter data, official statements and interviews, I retrace the first years of the Polish stand-off, which started with the taking office of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) in 2015. Thereby, I show how norm hierarchies reflect and create institutionalized inequalities and power asymmetries.
