Of all the academic journal articles that I have read in 2016 none has pushed me to think harder about EU law than one which does not mention EU law at all. It is ‘Distinctive Identity Claims in Federal Systems: Judicial Policing of Subnational Variance’ by Antoni Abat i Ninet and James A. Gardner.1 The title, focusing on ‘distinctive identity claims, captures vividly what the article’s main concern is (which is not always the case). Subnational units possess a range of techniques and strategies for asserting their claim to distinctive treatment within the wider federal arrangement. There must, however, be limits to their latitude to go their own way – without such limits, the foundations of the federal system will crumble. The article examines a group of rulings by national constitutional courts which involve refusal to grant distinctive treatment on the terms claimed by a subnational unit. These rulings, the authors claim, reveal judicial anxiety to protect the state against attempts to subvert its (national) authority, even if, as they show, the legislature and/or the executive of the State concerned might be noticeably more accommodating to the claims advanced.

中文翻译：

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特殊身份声明，TEU第4条第2款（以及对英国退欧的悲哀点头）

在我2016年阅读的所有学术期刊文章中，没有一篇比没有完全提及欧盟法律的文章更促使我对欧盟法律进行更深入的思考。Antoni Abat i Ninet和James A. Gardner撰写的“联邦系统中的独特身份声明：地方差异的司法警务”。1该标题侧重于“独特身份声明，生动地捕捉了本文的主要关注点（不是总是这样）。地方政府拥有一系列技术和策略，可以在更广泛的联邦安排中主张其独特待遇。但是，他们的自由选择权必须受到限制-没有这些限制，联邦系统的基础就会崩溃。本文研究了国家宪法法院的一系列裁决，这些裁决涉及拒绝根据地方政府部门要求的条款给予特殊待遇。作者声称，这些裁决显示出司法上的忧虑，以保护国家免遭企图颠覆国家（国家）权力的企图，即使正如它们所表明的那样，有关国家的立法机关和/或行政机关可能明显更愿意接受这些主张。高级。