The European Court of Justice (ECJ), formally just the Court of Justice, is the supreme court of the European Union in matters of European Union law. As a part of the Court of Justice of the European Union, it is tasked with interpreting EU law and ensuring its uniform application across all EU member states under Article 263 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).
A directive is a legal act of the European Union that requires member states to achieve particular goals without dictating how the member states achieve those goals. A directive's goals have to be made the goals of one or more new or changed national laws by the member states before this legislation applies to individuals residing in the member states. Directives normally leave member states with a certain amount of leeway as to the exact rules to be adopted. Directives can be adopted by means of a variety of legislative procedures depending on their subject matter.
Roman Jacek Giertych is a Polish political figure, historian, advocate, and dissident against the PiS government. Giertych served in PiS government as Deputy Prime Minister of Poland and Minister of National Education from May 2006 to August 2007. He was a member of the Sejm from 2001 to 2007 and the chairman of the League of Polish Families party.
The Metric Martyrs was a British advocacy group who campaigned for the freedom to choose what units of measurement are used by traders. The group believed that vendors should have the freedom to mark their goods with imperial weights and measurements alone. This opposes the current legal position that imperial units may be used so long as metric units are also displayed.
The European Arrest Warrant (EAW) is an arrest warrant valid throughout all member states of the European Union (EU). Once issued, it requires another member state to arrest and transfer a criminal suspect or sentenced person to the issuing state so that the person can be put on trial or complete a detention period. It is a simplified cross-border judicial surrender method, and has replaced the lengthy extradition procedures that used to exist between member states. The EAW has been in force since 1 January 2004 in all Member States.
The International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles or Safe Harbour Privacy Principles were principles developed between 1998 and 2000 in order to prevent private organizations within the European Union or United States which store customer data from accidentally disclosing or losing personal information. They were overturned on October 6, 2015, by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which enabled some US companies to comply with privacy laws protecting European Union and Swiss citizens. US companies storing customer data could self-certify that they adhered to 7 principles, to comply with the EU Data Protection Directive and with Swiss requirements. The US Department of Commerce developed privacy frameworks in conjunction with both the European Union and the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner of Switzerland.
Mariusz Kamiński is a Polish politician who served as the head of the Central Anticorruption Bureau (CBA) from August 2006 to October 2009. He served between 2019 and 2023 as the Minister of the Interior and Administration, in addition to coordinating Polish secret services, which he had done previously as a minister without portfolio.
The Equal Treatment in Goods and Services Directive 2004 of 13 December 2004 is a directive which prohibits both direct and indirect sexual discrimination in the provision of goods and services in the European Union.
The Church of Scientology Moscow v Russia [2007] ECHR 258 is a European Court of Human Rights case, concerning Article 11 of the convention. In the case the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg condemned Moscow City Government's refusal to consider the Church of Scientology of Moscow for registration as a religious organisation, and as a result found that Russia had violated the rights of the Church of Scientology under Articles 11 when "read in the light of Article 9". Specifically, the Court determined that, in denying consideration of registration to the Church of Scientology of Moscow, the Moscow authorities "did not act in good faith and neglected their duty of neutrality and impartiality vis-à-vis the applicant's religious community". The Court also awarded the Church €10,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage and €15,000 for costs and expenses.
Bączkowski and Others v. Poland was a European Court of Human Rights case which ruled unanimously that the banning of an LGBT pride parade in Warsaw, locally known as the Parada Równości, in 2005 was in violation of Articles 11, 13 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Metock v Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform (2008) C-127/08 is a European Union law case, significant in Ireland and Denmark, on the Citizens Rights Directive and family unification rules for migrant citizens. Citizenship of the European Union was established by Article 20 of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and the Citizenship Directive 2004/38 elaborates the right of Union citizens and their family members to move and reside freely in the territory of a member state, consolidating previous Directives dealing with the right to move and reside within the European Community (EC).
The judiciary of Poland are the authorities exercising the judicial power of the Polish state on the basis of Chapter 8 of the Constitution of Poland. As in almost all countries of continental Europe, the Polish judiciary operates within the framework of civil law.
Google Spain SL, Google Inc. v Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, Mario Costeja González (2014) is a decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). It held that an Internet search engine operator is responsible for the processing that it carries out of personal information which appears on web pages published by third parties.
Maximilian Schrems is an Austrian activist, lawyer, and author who became known for campaigns against Facebook for its privacy violations, including violations of European privacy laws and the alleged transfer of personal data to the US National Security Agency (NSA) as part of the NSA's PRISM program. Schrems is the founder of NOYB – European Center for Digital Rights.
The Polish Constitutional Tribunal crisis has been an ongoing political conflict in Poland starting in the second half of 2015 over the appointment of five of the 15 judges of the Constitutional Tribunal.
Coman and Others v Inspectoratul General pentru Imigrări and Ministerul Afacerilor Interne is a 2018 case of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) that affirmed residency rights in EU countries, to the spouse of an EU citizen who is exercising their right to freedom of movement and if the marriage was legally performed in an EU member state.
National Coalition for Men v. Selective Service System was a court case that was first decided in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas on February 22, 2019, declaring that requiring men but disallowing women to register for the draft for military service in the United States was unconstitutional. The ruling did not specify which actions the government needed to take to resolve the conflict with the constitution. That ruling was reversed by the Fifth Circuit.
AAA & Anor v Minister for Justice & Ors, [2017] IESC 80, was an Irish Supreme Court case which arose from the judgment delivered by Cooke J in the High Court on 17 May 2012, due to the fact that the applicant AAA and her children were deported to Nigeria in 2011. The court held that "as a rule" there is no right to an oral hearing in an application for leave to remain on humanitarian grounds and subsidiary protection where there has already been oral hearings in relation to an application for asylum. This decision clarified the grounds under which a claim for subsidiary protection could be heard.
The Polish constitutional crisis, also known as the Polish rule-of-law crisis, is a political conflict ongoing since 2015 in which the Polish government has been accused of failing to comply with European and Polish constitutional law. The 2015 elections resulted in the Law and Justice party winning control of both the presidency and the parliament. With this government trifecta, PiS used its power to appoint judges to the Constitutional Tribunal in 2015, leading to the 2015 Polish Constitutional Court crisis. The government of Poland continued to expand its hold on the judiciary resulting in the 2017 Supreme Court crisis, and the 2019 Polish judicial disciplinary panel law. These events allowed the legislature and executive of the Polish government to have de facto control over judges and their appointments.
