The Power of the European Court of Justice

The Power of the European Court of Justice
Author: Susanne K. Schmidt
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2014-06-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317981294

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has played a vital role in promoting the process of European integration. In recent years, however, the expansion of EU law has led it to impact ever more politically sensitive issues, and controversial ECJ judgments have elicited unprecedented levels of criticism. Can we expect the Court to sustain its role as a motor of deeper integration without Member States or other countervailing forces intervening? To answer this question, we need to revisit established explanations of the Court’s power to see if they remain viable in the Court’s contemporary environment. We also need to better understand the ultimate limits of the Court’s power – the means through which and extent to which national governments, national courts, litigants and the Court’s other interlocutors attempt to influence the Court and to limit the impact of its rulings. In this book, leading scholars of European law and politics investigate how the ECJ has continued to support deeper integration and whether the EU is experiencing an increase in countervailing forces that may diminish the Court’s ability or willingness to act as a motor of integration. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

The European Court's Political Power

The European Court's Political Power
Author: Karen Alter
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 591
Release: 2010-06-17
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0191615692

Karen Alter's work on the European Court of Justice heralded a new level of sophistication in the political analysis of the controversial institution, through its combination of legal understanding and active engagement with theoretical questions. The European Court's Political Power assembles the most important of Alter's articles written over a fourteen year span, adding an original new introduction and a conclusion that takes an overview of the Court's development and current concerns. Together the articles provide insight into the historical and political contours of the ECJ's influence on European politics, explaining how and why the impact of an institution can vary so greatly over time and access different issues. The book starts with the European Coal and Steel Community, where the ECJ was largely unable to facilitate greater member state respect for ECSC rules. Alter then shows how legal actors orchestrated an activist transformation of the European legal system, with the critical aid of jurist advocacy movements, and via the co-optation of national courts. The transformation of the European legal system wrested control from member states over the meaning of European law, but the ECJ continues to have varying influence across different issues. Alter explains that the differing influence of the ECJ comes from the varied extent to which sub- and supra-national actors turn to it to achieve political objectives. Looking beyond the European experience, the book includes four chapters that put the ECJ into a comparative perspective, examining the extent to which the ECJ experience is a unique harbinger of the future role international courts may play in international and comparative politics.

We the Court

We the Court
Author: Luis Miguel Poiares Pessoa Maduro
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 206
Release: 1998-02-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1847310869

The need to balance power between the Member States and the Union and between public power and the market has created powerful constitutional dilemmas for the European Union. Adopting an inter-disciplinary approach and drawing upon the jurisprudence developed around Article 30, this new book offers both a descriptive and a normative analysis of the European Economic Constitution and discusses the role of the European Court of Justice in its development and in the review of State and Community legislation. The book is particularly relevant in view of the present debates on the European Constitution and the reform of the regulatory State.

Justice Contained

Justice Contained
Author: Lisa J. Conant
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780801439100

In this probing analysis of the European Union's transnational legal system, Lisa Conant explores the interaction between law and politics. In particular, she challenges the widely held view that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has, through bold judicial activism, brought about profound policy and institutional changes within the EU's member states. She argues convincingly that this court, like its domestic counterparts, depends on the support of powerful organized interests to gain compliance with its rulings. What, Conant asks, are the policy implications of the ECJ's decisions? How are its rulings applied in practice? Drawing on the rich scholarship on the U.S. Supreme Court, Conant depicts the limits that the ECJ and other tribunals have to face. To illuminate these constraints, she traces the impact of ECJ decisions in four instances concerning market competition and national discrimination. She also proposes ways of anticipating which of this court's legal interpretations are likely to inspire major reforms.Justice Contained closes with a comparative analysis of judicial power, identifying the ECJ as an institution with greater similarities to domestic courts than to international organizations. The book advances a deeper understanding both of the court's contributions to European integration and of the political economy of litigation and reform.

The European Court of Justice

The European Court of Justice
Author: Gráinne De Búrca
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2001
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780199246014

This collection of essays originated in a series of seminars given at the summer courses of the Academy of European Law at the European University Institute, Florence in 1999.

The Ghostwriters

The Ghostwriters
Author: Tommaso Pavone
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2022-04-07
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1009084445

The European Union is often depicted as a cradle of judicial activism and a polity built by courts. Tommaso Pavone shows how this judge-centric narrative conceals a crucial arena for political action. Beneath the radar, Europe's political development unfolded as a struggle between judges who resisted European law and lawyers who pushed them to embrace change. Under the sheepskin of rights-conscious litigants and activist courts, these “Euro-lawyers” sought clients willing to break state laws conflicting with European law, lobbied national judges to uphold European rules, and propelled them to submit noncompliance cases to the European Union's supreme court – the European Court of Justice – by ghostwriting their referrals. By shadowing lawyers who encourage deliberate law-breaking and mobilize courts against their own governments, The Ghostwriters overturns the conventional wisdom regarding the judicial construction of Europe and illuminates how the politics of lawyers can profoundly impact institutional change and transnational governance.

Retained EU Law

Retained EU Law
Author: ELEONOR. RAO DUHS (INDIRA.)
Publisher:
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2021-02
Genre:
ISBN: 9781784461645

Legitimacy and International Courts

Legitimacy and International Courts
Author: Nienke Grossman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2018-02-22
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1108540228

One of the most noted developments in international law over the past twenty years is the proliferation of international courts and tribunals. They decide who has the right to exploit natural resources, define the scope of human rights, delimit international boundaries and determine when the use of force is prohibited. As the number and influence of international courts grow, so too do challenges to their legitimacy. This volume provides new interdisciplinary insights into international courts' legitimacy: what drives and undermines the legitimacy of these bodies? How do drivers change depending on the court concerned? What is the link between legitimacy, democracy, effectiveness and justice? Top international experts analyse legitimacy for specific international courts, as well as the links between legitimacy and cross-cutting themes. Failure to understand and respond to legitimacy concerns can endanger both the courts and the law they interpret and apply.