In recent years, the European Union (“EU”) has faced unprecedented challenges in the rule of law. Besides apparent dangers, it has also offered the Union, its institutions and member states important space for new openings, self-rediscovery, and revisiting certain integration paradigms. This analysis argues that the “rule of law/value crisis” in the EU has created the same space for the Court of Justice to take on the paradigmatic jurisprudential shift from the market to the union of law and values. It posits that the European discourse must revisit the theory of supranational adjudication and offer a new reading of the Court’s mandate and function within the evolving supranational governance and design. In this process, reference to Art. 19 TEU and its connection to Art. 2 TEU have a special explicatory and axiological significance.