Fundamental Rights lost in complexity: The protection of fundamental rights against violations by the rulemaker in converging national and European legal systems

Several courts at the national and European level examine whether the legislator violated the protection of fundamental rights. This is remarkable as most national judicial orders considered judicial review of legislation incompatible with the concept of legislation as the expression of the will of the people. The current situation where several courts in different overlapping legal orders examine legislation on fundamental rights compatibility is the result of several simultaneous but distinct evolutions. Therefore, there is no commonly agreed rule which court will have the last say if the supreme courts of the different legal orders uphold a conflicting interpretation of the same fundamental right.;This Phd analyses how the different supreme courts interact and whether the multiplicity of courts protecting fundamental rights results in a better protection of fundamental rights. The relations between the different courts are categorized in terms of resistance, convergence and engagement. This Phd finds that the supreme courts of the overlapping legal orders act as interconnected actors in a social network. They try at the same time to avoid open conflicts while maintaining their autonomous position. In general, therefore, these courts all prefer a position of engagement balancing restraint towards the jurisprudence of other supreme courts with loyal cooperation in practice.;The multiplicity of supreme courts scrutinizing the compatibility of legislation with fundamental rights holds several challenges, namely the loss of legal certainty, the risk of defenselessness of an individual due to restraint of courts towards each other and the constant possibility of open conflicts. This Phd concludes, however, that complexity of fundamental rights protection is an inevitable outcome of the globalization of human rights protection. This Phd recommends courts to provide for a more transparent and clear justification of the reasons why they comply with the case law of other courts and the limits they place to such convergence. The author finds that the real victim of the complexity of fundamental rights protection in the European legal space is the procedural protection. The author advises to dedicate more efforts and attention to the effectiveness of the procedural side.