It is also a widely shared view that the court not only acted legally, but also wisely in filling an embarrassing lacuna in the treaty and in giving the individual an additional judicial guarantee. The notorious democracy deficit of the Community rendered the usual counter majoritarian critique of judicial review less convincing, and, in a 1977 joint declaration, the EC s principal political institutions expressed not only their commitment to upholding fundamental human rights but also endorsed the new judicial architecture. One area of controversy has concerned the practice of the court in specific cases as distinct from the principle of protection. The court has been charged that its human rights jurisprudence is a rhetoric that masks a strategy of self-aggrandizement and political legitimation of the Community. This tantalizing critique suffers from its own self-aggrandizement and has not been satisfactorily demonstrated.
Reality is far more banal.
The record of the court displays a patchiness which is characteristic of all supreme courts operating in this treacherously politicized field. A second area of controversy, far more real, has been that of standards. In asserting its right to subject Community legislation to human-rights based judicial review the ECJ denied member state courts the right to apply member state constitutional standards to Community legislation. Exploring this on-going debate will shed light both on the dynamics of human rights protection and its deeper significance in the process of integration and disintegration. Indeed, few areas of European legal integration better illustrate the themes of uniformity and diversity and of European multiculturalism.