EUROPEAN POLITICS FUNDAMENTALS — Chapter 1, Exercise 3
Federation or Not?
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QUESTION:
Using the real Article 50/Brexit precedent against the real Texas v.
White (1869) precedent, write a short, evidence-based argument for
why the EU cannot accurately be classified as a federation, even
though it exercises real, binding legal authority in specific policy
areas.

SOLUTION (a model answer):

A defining structural feature of a genuine federation is that its own
constituent units cannot unilaterally leave. Texas v. White (1869)
made this explicit for the United States: the US Supreme Court ruled
that unilateral state secession is unconstitutional, with Chief
Justice Salmon Chase describing "an indestructible Union, composed
of indestructible states." No mechanism exists in US constitutional
law, or in German constitutional law for a Land, that would let a
constituent unit leave on its own initiative.

The European Union's own Article 50 (Treaty on European Union) is
the structural opposite: a real, formal, treaty-provided legal right
for a member state to withdraw. This isn't a hypothetical legal
possibility — the United Kingdom actually used it, from a June 2016
referendum through to full legal withdrawal on 31 January 2020.

Even though the EU exercises real, binding legal authority within its
own defined competences (per Van Gend en Loos and Costa v. ENEL,
covered earlier in this chapter), the presence of a genuine, usable
exit right is itself decisive evidence against classifying the EU as
a federation: real federations structurally deny their own
constituent units that option, and the EU's founding treaties
deliberately preserve it.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
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The strongest version of this argument doesn't just assert "the EU
let the UK leave, therefore it's not a federation" — it draws the
comparison against a real, specific, contrary legal precedent (Texas
v. White) to show exactly what a genuine federation's own structural
commitment looks like, then shows the EU's founding treaties made the
opposite structural choice on purpose. Noting that this holds true
*despite* the EU's own real, binding legal authority in specific
areas is what keeps the answer from collapsing into "the EU is just a
loose international organization" — which the earlier discussion of
Costa v. ENEL already ruled out.