Source: https://it.b-ok.org/book/3576027/718800
Timestamp: 2019-10-22 11:45:26
Document Index: 762577079

Matched Legal Cases: ['CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU\n', 'CJEU ', 'in casu', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU\n', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU\n', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'in casu', 'in casu', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU\n', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'Art. 236', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU\n', 'CJEU\n', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU\n', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU\n']

Precedents and Judicial Politics in EU Immigration Law | Marie De Somer | download
Pagina principale Precedents and Judicial Politics in EU Immigration Law
Editore: Springer International Publishing;Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 13: 978-3-319-93982-7
ibid433
paragraph328
residence319
directive297
judicial268
provisions256
family reunification231
precedent220
nationals216
precedents201
immigration200
cjeu196
zambrano186
de somer182
treaty159
reasoning158
citizen155
carpenter153
integration152
observations143
ecr141
citation140
singh138
citizens137
proposal134
rulings134
governments126
amongst109
ruling109
reside105
family reunion99
dicta98
findings98
inward95
eind95
union citizen94
akrich93
domestic93
holdings92
council directive86
right of residence85
european parliament84
premises82
country nationals82
amongst others79
theoretical79
european integration79
luxembourg78
Precedents and
Judicial Politics in
The series maps the range of disciplines addressing the study of European
public administration. In particular, contributions to the series will engage
with the role and nature of the evolving bureaucratic processes of the
European Union, including the study of the EU’s civil service, of organization aspects of individual institutions such as the European Commission,
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European states. This may include contributions to the administrative history of Europe, which is not just about rules and regulations governing
bureaucracies, or about formal criteria for measuring the growth of
bureaucracies, but rather about the concrete workings of public administration, both in its executive functions as in its involvement in policymaking. Furthermore the series will include studies on the interaction
between the national and European level, with particular attention for the
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contact at t.christiansen@maastrichtuniversity.nl and s.vanhoonacker@
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http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14977
Judicial Politics in EU
ISBN 978-3-319-93981-0    ISBN 978-3-319-93982-7
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93982-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018947828
Cover credit: Andrew Paterson / Alamy Stock Photo
1.1	The EU Court of Justice and European Integration Processes   1
1.2	Precedents and Judicial Politics  2
1.3	Testing Strategies  4
1.4	Outline and Structure  6
References   8
2	The Court’s Role in Processes of European Integration  11
2.1	Introduction 11
2.2	The Origins: The Contextualist Legal Scholarship
of the 1980s 12
2.3	The Role of the CJEU in Processes of European Integration:
A Classic Debate 16
2.3.1	The Early 1990s: Intergovernmentalist Vs.
Neofunctionalist Readings 16
2.3.2	The Mid-1990s: Other Scholars Join In 23
2.4	An Ongoing Debate: Developments Since 2000  29
2.4.1	Qualitative Research Continued 29
2.4.2	Quantitative Methods Added 39
2.5	In Sum—A Long-Lasting Debate: Taking Stock of
Theoretical and Methodological Divides 48
3	Precedents and Judicial Politics  61
3.1	Introduction 61
3.2	Precedents and Judicial Interlocutors 67
3.3	Precedents and Non-judicial Interlocutors (Member States) 74
3.4	Conclusion 82
References  85
4	Case Selection and Data  89
4.1	Family Reunification Immigration: A Least-Likely Case 89
4.2	Data Collection: EU Family Reunification Law, Case Law
and Self-Citation Activity 92
4.2.1	EU Family Reunification Law 93
4.2.2	EU Family Reunification Case Law 98
4.2.3	Self-Citation Activity100
References 101
5	Identifying Member States’ Interests 107
5.1	Identifying Member States’ Interests: A Benchmark for
Judicial Autonomy107
5.2	Drafting Family Reunion Rights under Free Movement
Law111
5.2.1	The Early Instruments111
5.2.2	The Citizenship Directive112
5.3	Drafting Family Reunion Rights under EU Immigration
Law119
5.3.1	Preceding Legislative Efforts119
5.3.2	The Family Reunification Directive120
5.4	Conclusion: A Contested Personal Scope140
References 143
6	Quantitatively Structuring Precedents 151
6.1	Introduction151
6.2	A Self-Citation Sequencing Model153
6.2.1	Step 1: Citation Scores153
6.2.2	Step 2: Relative Citation Scores154
6.2.3	Step 3: Dominant Scores—Citation Structures160
6.3	Self-Citation Structures in CJEU Case Law on Family
Reunification Immigration161
6.3.1	Quantitative Structuring161
6.3.2	Numerical Observations165
6.4	Conclusion169
References 169
7	Qualitatively Charting Precedents 173
7.1	Introduction173
7.2	The Mid 1970s—Early 1990s: Derived Rights and the
Internal Rule175
7.3	The 1990s: The Internal Rule, ‘Effet Utile’, Fundamental
Rights and EU Citizenship180
7.4	The 2000s: Further Refinements200
7.4.1	The Akrich and Jia Cases201
7.4.2	Zhu & Chen, Eind and Metock209
7.4.3 EPvCouncil and Chakroun232
7.5	The 2010s: A New Paradigm and Its Fine-Tuning244
7.5.1	Zambrano, McCarthy and Dereci244
7.5.2	Iida, O&S, Ymeraga and Alopka261
7.6	Recent Developments: O&B and S&G274
7.7	Conclusion280
References 280
8	Precedents and Judicial Politics: Analytical Findings 287
8.1	Introduction287
8.2	Judicial Autonomy287
8.2.1	Member State Preferences287
8.2.2	Judicial Outcomes290
8.3	Precedents and Judicial Interlocutors294
8.3.1	Cue-Taking294
8.3.2	Steering Through Precedent298
8.4	Precedents and Member States302
8.4.1	Cue-Taking302
8.4.2	Camouflaging Through Precedent305
8.5	Conclusion310
References 310
9	Conclusions and Suggestions for Further Research 313
9.1	The Court of Justice and European Integration313
9.2	Precedents and Judicial Politics: Key Findings314
9.2.1	Precedents and Judicial Interlocutors315
9.2.2	Precedents and EU Member States318
9.3	Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research320
References 323
Appendix  325
References  329
1.1   The EU Court of Justice and European
This is a study into the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)
and its role in European integration processes. Enquiries of this kind hold
a long lineage within academic literature. In social science, to begin with,
since the first political scientists who famously ‘discovered’ the Court in
the early 1990s advanced opposing readings of its role as either “faithfully
implementing the preferences of national governments” (Garrett, 1992,
p. 558), or—instead—“systematically overriding member states’ true preferences” (Mattli & Slaughter, 1995, p. 184), competing conceptions of
the Court’s autonomy have stirred much contention. Arguably, few scholars would nowadays still frame their conceptions of the Court’s role in
such antagonistic terms (although see Carruba, Gabel, & Hankla, 2012
versus Stone Sweet & Brunell, 2012). Nevertheless, differing perceptions
on the interpretative leeway which the EU judiciary enjoys relative to the
preferences of the Union’s political actors continue to, at its core, divide
political science scholarship on the CJEU.
Questions of this kind also occupy debates within legal scholarship.
Beginning with Stein’s (1981) ground-breaking survey of the political
implications attaching to the Court’s jurisprudence, observations of case
law outcomes that, to greater or lesser extents, reverberate beyond the
M. De Somer, Precedents and Judicial Politics in EU Immigration
Law, European Administrative Governance,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93982-7_1
M. DE SOMER
strictly legal sphere and questions on how to appraise such outcomes have
formed the backbone to legal scientist debates on the Court’s legitimacy
(e.g., Adams, De Waele, Meeusen, & Straetmans, 2013), or whether or
not it is activist (De Witte, Dawson, & Muir, 2013, Goldner-Lang, 2018).
1.2   Precedents and Judicial Politics
The current study provides new perspectives on these questions by adopting a long-term analytical approach that looks into the workings and
effects of reasoning by precedent. As bears mentioning at the outset, precedents, in this context, are not conceptualized in terms of the formally
binding nature they are known to hold in the framework of common law
systems. Instead, they are construed more broadly as referring to the
Court’s practice of deciding new cases with reference to decisions reached
in earlier proceedings.
Practices of this kind are frequently observed within both political science and legal scholarship. In both sets of literature, scholars also generally
and repeatedly attest to the need of analysing CJEU rulings in the context
of earlier judgments, or in the light of the implications these rulings may
come to hold for follow-up litigation.
Within legal scholarship, first, commentaries on the high-profile, 2011
Zambrano ruling for instance provide ample illustrations of such observations. Pointing at the “open formulations” by means of which the Court
expounded this decision, Hailbronner and Thym (2011, p. 1257) for
example refer to the possibility that the CJEU deliberately left room “for
later refinement” which would then allow it “to take on board political
and academic criticism”. Dawson (2014, pp. 428–429) similarly linked
the judgement, and its later refinements in McCarthy and Dereci to what
he called strategic discursive “repeat games” by means of which the Court
could set down an “integrationist principle” but “limit its temporal or
material impact” so as to reserve “the ability to fine tune, rescind or even
expand” depending, amongst others, on the “attitudes and levels of ‘resistance’ emerging from governments”. Lenaerts (2015, p. 3), who sat on
the case as a judge, described the “stone-by-stone approach” taken in
Zambrano and its follow-up judgments as stemming from a perceived
need of “judicial prudence” in contexts touching on “politically sensitive
questions”. By adopting an open-ended reasoning in the first case, it could
be left to future cases to decide whether the Court would opt for an either
“strict or broad interpretation” of Zambrano.
Similar observations have featured in political science writings on the
Court’s role since the earliest beginnings. In fact, the perspective that
precedents matter and may hold a politico-strategic advantage, constitutes
one of the single consensual understandings on the Court’s role that
emerged out of the earliest, polarized debates in the 1990s referred to
above. Where Garrett (1995, p. 178) had originally posited that the
Court’s behaviour would be “conditioned by its expectations about the
likely responses of member governments”, he later conceded, with reference to the arguments of his academic opponents (Mattli & Slaughter,
1995), that “precedent greatly concerns the ECJ”. Amongst others, precedents were found to enable the Court to “embed decisions with potentially important long-term consequences for EU jurisprudence in relatively
uncontroversial cases” so as to first entrench its positions (Garrett,
Kelemen, & Schulz, 1998, pp. 157–168). At a later time, the Court could
then modify its interpretation.
Similar perspectives have also featured centrally in later political science
writings. Amongst others, in her seminal ‘Masters of the Treaty’ article,
Alter (1998, pp. 130–131) advanced that one of the key explanations for
the Court’s power related to the manner in which the Court could play off
the shorter time horizons of politicians. As she stated, the Court expanded
its power “by establishing legal principles but not applying those principles
to the case at hand”. In that manner, it could make sure that the immediate political impact was minimal. However, what were in first instance
marginal decisions, politically speaking, would later turn out to hold “revolutionary” implications. Taking examples from the more recent literature, in her “Justice Contained” monograph, Conant (2002, pp. 39–41)
advanced that “prudent judgment”, by means of which the CJEU adopts
an “incremental approach” to the interpretation of EU law has played a
critical role in the construction of the European legal order. It enabled the
Court to “project neutrality” and on that basis hide the controversial
implications attaching to its decisions. Most recently, Blauberger and
Schmidt similarly mention processes of jurisprudential “fine-tuning”
whereby the Court is observed to “curtail the demands” of its rulings
(Schmidt, 2014, p. 773) when it becomes “sensitized to domestic concerns” (Blauberger, 2012, p. 123).
In spite of these recurring and mirroring observations in both political
science and legal scholarship, neither of the two disciplines has thus far
invested much efforts to uncover the precise mechanisms that underpin
the observed dynamics and their eventual effects. In what follows, the
present study draws on these different sets of related observations, made
across the disciplinary divides that separate law and political science, and
engages in a systematic review of precedent-based patterns within the
Court’s case law and the implications of such patterns for the Court’s role
in a broader institutional setting. The study argues that, by strategically
engaging with precedent, the Court is able to, in the long run, strengthen
the interpretative leeway and autonomy that it enjoys vis-à-vis the Union’s
political actors, most notably the Member States.
1.3   Testing Strategies
The research question guiding the evaluation of the above argument is
whether and how precedent-based reasoning strengthens the Court’s
autonomy relative to the preferences of the Member States. Given that the
extent to which the Court enjoys such an autonomy vis-à-vis the Member
States remains, as indicated above, contested in the literature, examining
the first whether question is a precondition before being able to meaningfully engage with the second how question.
The analysis is conducted against the Court’s case law on family reunification immigration. The choice for this case law record is grounded in
two considerations. First, EU family reunification law is considered to be
a particularly politically sensitive area of law and, on that basis, a ‘leastlikely case’ for observing a strong or increasing judicial autonomy. More
specifically, as this area of law touches on questions of border control and
the entry and residence of foreigners, and inasmuch as family reunification
generally accounts for one of the numerically largest legal migration
inflows into the European Union (Eurostat, 2017), it is a highly sovereignty-sensitive and politicized issue area. In that light, Member States are
expected to be least likely to lower their guards in respect of case law outcomes that depart from their political preferences. Rather, any judicial
developments of this kind are expected to be closely watched by the
Union’s political actors. On that basis as well, if the Court generally stays
close to dominant political preferences it should be especially prone (or
obliged) to do so in an area of law as sensitive as family reunification
migration. In that light, and in line with the traditional rationale for adopting a least-likely case study design (George & Bennett, 2005), if findings
of autonomous Court behaviour can be substantiated in this sensitive area,
they are expected to offer a strong basis for generalizing to other areas of
EU law as well. As the second consideration, EU family reunification
immigration law was selected over other, potentially similarly politically
sensitive areas on account of the particularly long track record of CJEU
jurisprudence in this field. As questions on family reunion are partially
embedded within EU free movement legislation as gradually established
from the late 1960s onwards (a particularity sometimes overlooked in the
literature), the CJEU’s case law on such questions can be traced back as
far as the 1976 Kermaschek ruling (C-40/76). The long timespan of this
case law record, spanning four decades, is essential for gaining access to
the long-term, cumulative dynamics that are expected to underpin precedent-based reasoning processes as well as define their broader effects.
The empirical analysis is conducted in three steps. The three sets of
enquiries, taken together, combine both qualitative and quantitative orientations granting the research overall the character of a ‘mixed methods’
design. In a first step, Member States’ political preferences on EU family
reunion law are mapped by means of detailed reviews of the interest-articulation voiced by national governments during the drafting of the relevant
legal provisions. This first analysis provides for an ex ante benchmark of
dominant political preferences against which to assess, in the two subsequent stages, whether and how the Court was able to develop judicially
autonomous decisions, that is, decisions that are independent from the
identified preferences. By means of this ex ante benchmark, the analysis
also seeks to gain leverage on the problem of observational equivalence.
Observational equivalence relates to the difficulty of empirically distinguishing scenarios in which the Court acts autonomously from those in
which, conversely, it is constrained by the preferences of the Member
States but rationally adapts its behaviour beforehand so that no political
antagonism or retaliation measures will appear. As is detailed in the next
chapter, this methodological challenge has hindered judicial politics’ analyses of the Court’s role from the very outset (see Garrett & Weingast,
1993; Alter, 2008; Carruba, Gabel, & Hankla, 2008; Stone Sweet &
Brunell, 2012). By benchmarking Member States’ interests prior to the
relevant jurisprudential developments, such observational difficulties can
In a second empirical step, the study proceeds with a quantitative structuring of observations on CJEU self-citation practices, that is, observations of Court citations to its own prior rulings. More precisely, on the
basis of a numerically grounded comparison, this second part of the analysis provides an overview of the self-citation structures that appear most
prominent for the long-term development of the CJEU’s case law on
f­ amily reunification as a whole. The need for such a quantitative exercise is
connected to the study’s explicitly longitudinal outlook which calls, as
observed above, for a dataset of Court rulings that spans a sufficiently long
time period and is, by consequence, voluminous. The quantitative structuring serves to facilitate and systematize the further analytical engagement with the sizeable dataset. In addition, by structuring the data on the
basis of objective, numerical criteria, the quantitative exercise also shields
these further analyses from selective case sampling on the dependent variable (in casu, autonomous Court behaviour) which has been a subject of
academic charges and counter-charges in the context of preceding qualitative literature.
The quantitative findings provide a roadmap on the basis of which, in a
third and final empirical step, the study proceeds with qualitative and contextualized reviews of the discourses defining the numerically identified
patterns. In so doing, this third step uncovers the more fine-grained causal
mechanisms, of mostly a discursive nature, that are theoretically expected
to underpin the workings and effects of reasoning by precedent. To the
extent that these reviews enable collecting the empirical evidence necessary for corroborating context-dependent causal mechanisms, they also
shield the study from reproducing binary ‘grand theory’ constructs on the
Court’s role which, although largely abandoned within qualitative scholarship, are still found to hinder opportunities for consensus-building in
contemporary quantitative studies (Carruba et al., 2012; Stone Sweet &
Brunell, 2012). In all, by combining both quantitative and qualitative orientations the study seeks, in line with the traditional argument for conducting mixed methods research (Creswell & Clark, 2010), to combine
the strengths of each approach whilst simultaneously offsetting their
respective weaknesses.
1.4   Outline and Structure
The study is composed of nine chapters. After this initial sketch of the
research agenda, Chap. 2 surveys prior political science engagements with
questions on the CJEU’s role and autonomy. The chapter traces these
engagements from their origins in 1980s contextualist legal literature,
over their meta-theoretical phases during the 1990s, up onto the most
recent writings. By now, social scientists have produced more research on
the CJEU and its political impact than on any other court in the world,
with the single exception of the US Supreme Court (Stone Sweet, 2010).
Whilst debates on the CJEU’s role have been declared “closed” or
“resolved” at various stages over this long time period (see e.g., Ibid.,
p. 22; Mattli & Slaughter, 1998), claims and counter-claims on the interpretative leeway which the Court enjoys relative to the EU Member States
continue to date to claim the attention of the field. The chapter’s concluding section retraces the different sets of hindrances of both a theoretical
and methodological nature that account for the striking perseverance of
these academic divides. The findings on these theoretical and methodological hindrances constitute the background against which the theoretical perspectives and methodological strategies of the present study are
Drawing on insights from both legal theory and political science, Chap.
3 advances a theoretical framework on the nature and long-term, cumulative effects of reasoning by precedent. Chapter 4 presents the data
The next three chapters embed the empirical analyses. Chapter 5, to
begin with, traces Member States’ interest articulations during the negotiations on EU family reunification law. In that manner, it provides an ex
ante benchmark of Member States’ political preferences against which the
further analytical stages set out to review whether and how autonomous
judicial outcomes can be observed. Chapter 6 presents the quantitative
analyses and the systematization of the data achieved on that basis. The
quantitative findings provide the structure that guides the analytical focus
of the qualitative reviews that form the subject of Chap. 7. Chapter 8
brings together the findings on Member States’ political preferences as
collected at the beginning of the analysis with those on the long-term
implications deriving from the Court’s precedent-based reasoning as
examined in the further analyses. On that basis, this chapter presents the
study’s overall analytical findings on whether and how precedent-based patterns strengthen the Court’s autonomy. Chapter 9 concludes by reflecting
on these findings, evaluating their limits and offering avenues for further
Case C-34/09 Gerardo Ruiz Zambrano v Office national de l’emploi (ONEM)
[2011] ECR I-1177.
Case C-434/09 Shirley McCarthy v Secretary of State for the Home Department
[2011] ECR I-3375.
Case C-256/11 Murat Dereci and Others v Bundesministerium für Inneres [2011]
ECR I-11315.
Eurostat. (2017). Residence Permit Statistics. Retrieved December 28, 2017, from
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Residence_
permits_statistics
Adams, M., De Waele, H., Meeusen, J., & Straetmans, G. (2013). Judging Europe’s
Judges: The Legitimacy of the Case Law of the European Court of Justice. Oxford:
Alter, K. (1998). Who are the Masters of the Treaty? European Governments and
the European Court of Justice. International Organization, 25(1), 125–152.
Alter, K. (2008). Agents or Trustees? International Courts in Their Political
Context. European Journal of International Relations, 14(1), 33–63.
Blauberger, M. (2012). With Luxembourg in Mind…The Remaking of National
Policies in the Face of ECJ Jurisprudence. Journal of European Public Policy,
19(1), 109–126.
Carruba, C., Gabel, M., & Hankla, C. (2008). Judicial Behavior under Political
Constraints: Evidence from the European Court of Justice. American Political
Science Review, 102(4), 435–452.
Carruba, J., Gabel, M., & Hankla, C. (2012). Understanding the Role of the
European Court of Justice in European Integration. American Political Science
Review, 106(1), 214–223.
Conant, L. (2002). Justice Contained: Law and Politics in the European Union.
Creswell, J., & Clark, V. (2010). Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods
Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Dawson, M. (2014). How Does the European Court of Justice Reason? A Review
Essay on the Legal Reasoning of the European Court of Justice. European Law
Journal, 20(3), 423–435.
De Witte, M., Dawson, M., & Muir, E. (2013). Judicial Activism at the European
Court of Justice Causes, Responses and Solutions. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar
Garrett, G. (1992). International Cooperation and Institutional Choice: The
European Community’s Internal Market. International Organization, 46(2),
533–560.
Garrett, G. (1995). The Politics of Legal Integration in the European Union.
International Organization, 49(1), 171–181.
Garrett, G., Kelemen, R. D., & Schulz, H. (1998). The European Court of
Justice, National Governments, and Legal Integration in the European Union.
International Organization, 52(1), 149–176.
Garrett, G., & Weingast, B. (1993). Ideas, Interests and Institutions: Constructing
the European Community’s Internal Market. In J. Goldstein & R. Keohane
(Eds.), Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change
(pp. 173–206). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
George, A., & Bennett, A. (2005). Case Studies and Theory Development in the
Social Sciences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Goldner-Lang, I. (2018, January 24). Towards ‘Judicial Passivism’ in EU
Migration and Asylum Law? Preliminary Thoughts for the Final Plenary Session
of the 2018 Odysseus Conference. Blogpost on EU Immigration and Asylum
Law and Policy. Retrieved from http://eumigrationlawblog.eu/towardsjudicial-passivism-in-eu-migration-and-asylum-law-preliminary-thoughts-forthe-final-plenary-session-of-the-2018-odysseus-conference/
Hailbronner, K., & Thym, D. (2011). Comment on Zambrano. Common Market
Law Review, 48, 1253–1270.
Lenaerts, K. (2015). EU Citizenship and the European Court of Justice’s ‘Stoneby-Stone’ Approach. International Comparative Jurisprudence, 1, 1–10.
Mattli, W., & Slaughter, A.-M. (1995). Law and Politics in the European Union:
A Reply to Garrett. International Organization, 49(1), 183–190.
Mattli, W., & Slaughter, A. M. (1998). Revisiting the European Court of Justice.
International Organization, 52(1), 177–209.
Schmidt, S. (2014). Judicial Europeanisation: The Case of Zambrano in Ireland.
West European Politics, 37(4), 769–785.
Stein, E. (1981). Lawyers, Judges, and the Making of a Transnational Constitution.
The American Journal of International Law, 75(1), 1–28.
Stone Sweet, A. (2010). The European Court of Justice and the Judicialization of
EU Governance. Living Reviews in European Governance, 5(2), 1–50.
Stone Sweet, A., & Brunell, T. (2012). The European Court of Justice, State
Noncompliance, and the Politics of Override. American Political Science
Review, 106(1), 204–213.
The Court’s Role in Processes of European
Tucked away in the fairyland Duchy of Luxembourg and blessed, until
recently, with benign neglect by the powers that be and the mass media, the
Court of Justice of the European Communities has fashioned a constitutional framework for a federal-type structure in Europe. (Stein, 1981, p. 1)
This famous first sentence of Stein’s seminal “The Making of a Transnational
Constitution” has, since its appearance in 1981, featured in many accounts
on the Court’s role in processes of European integration. Rightly so, as
this first sentence (and Stein’s account generally), epitomized a turn in the
literature on the CJEU—at the time, exclusively legal scholarship—away
from previous legalist formalist approaches which had studied EU law as
determinate constructs devoid of any socio-political dimension (see on
this early scholarship Arnull, 2008 or Neergaard & Wind, 2012). Stein’s
article set the stage for what was, in hindsight, termed a new contextualist
approach to EU law. This contextualist legal scholarship would, in turn,
pave the way for the political science discovery of the CJEU in the early
1990s and inform much of its early research agenda.
In what follows, this first chapter traces the long lineage of political science debates on the Court’s role in processes of European integration,
starting off with their origins in the contextualist legal scholarship of the
1980s (Sect. 2.2). The next Sect. (2.3) details, first, how the competing
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93982-7_2
claims of 1990s pioneering political scientists established the conceptual
groundworks of an academic discussion that was to become a classic as
over time new generations of scholars enlisted at either side of the opposing propositions. By now, social scientists have produced more research on
the CJEU than on any other court in the world, with the single exception
of the US Supreme Court (Stone Sweet, 2010, p. 5). Section 2.4 examines
how the debate’s original fault lines still divide current political science
works as both qualitative scholarship (2.4.1) and quantitative analyses
(2.4.2) continue to engage with the research topics and questions defined
in the early 1990s; albeit separately, that is, within distinct sub-pockets of
In spite of significant refinements introduced over the course of more
than three decades of sustained academic analysis, both theoretically as
methodologically, competing conceptions on the autonomy of the CJEU
relative to the Member States continue to claim the attention of the field.
The chapter’s concluding Sect. (2.5) retraces the different sets of hindrances of both a theoretical and methodological nature that account for
the striking perseverance of these academic divides. The findings on these
hindrances constitute the background against which the theoretical and
methodological perspectives guiding the present study are presented.
2.2   The Origins: The Contextualist Legal
Scholarship of the 1980s
Following on from its famous “Tucked away” opening line, Stein’s account
proceeded with a critical review of a number of the Court’s landmark decisions. Particular attention was paid to the manner in which these decisions
interrelated with and impacted on the Community’s broader political processes. Amongst others, Stein coined the argument that the Court’s “fashioning” of a “constitutional framework” had been built on the judicial
establishment of first, the principle of direct effect in Van Gend en Loos
(C-26/62) and, second, the doctrine of EU law supremacy following
Costa vs. ENEL (C-6/64). The interaction of these two doctrines was
presented as having transformed the EU legal order from what was originally a set of legal arrangements between sovereign states, into a vertically
integrated, ‘higher-law’ constitutional regime that from then onwards
effectively conferred individual rights which could be enforced before
domestic tribunals. The net effect of these constitutionalizing develop-
ments, Stein emphasized, was also to enable the Court to “arrogate to
itself the ultimate authority to draw the line between Community law and
national law” (Ibid.). Of importance, and what further set his writings
apart from his legalist predecessors, in developing this ‘constitutionalization narrative’, he undertook to assess to what extent the Court had
accommodated for the policy preferences of Member States. By comparing the arguments which governments submitted in their written observations to the Court with the final disposition of the cases, he concluded that
the CJEU had developed its constitutionalizing case law in the face of
“consistent opposition to increased integration from the part of the member governments” (Ibid., p. 25).
Following Stein, an increasing number of legal scholars was to move
beyond the prior ‘black letter’ approach to EU law and extend their analytical focus to the interaction of the Court’s jurisprudence with broader
processes of European integration. In that manner, Stein’s ‘constitutionalization narrative’ was ever more fleshed out over the decade that followed.
Works regularly cited in relation to this new ‘contextualist’ literature
include, amongst others, those of Weiler (1981, 1982, 1991), Rasmussen
(1986), Mancini (1989), and Lenaerts (1990, 1992).
Writing but one year later, Weiler (1982) for instance advanced a strong
plea for political scientists to start engaging with Community law, given
that the Court’s increased legal output had played, and was playing, an
important role in the evolution of the Community’s political structure.
Starting off on the basis of Stein’s findings, his work provided a further
evaluation of the Court’s expansionary, constitutionalizing doctrines with
particular emphasis on their ramifications for Community decision-making processes. This, so as to highlight the relevant ‘points of contact’ for
future political scientist works on judicial processes. In his later, influential
“The Transformation of Europe”, Weiler (1991) further expanded on
these contentions, providing additional detail to the documentation of the
Court’s constitutionalizing jurisprudence. Amongst others, it was in this
paper that he put forward the much-quoted observation that, on account
of the Court’s establishment of the doctrine of direct effect, “(e)ffectively,
individuals in real cases and controversies (usually against state public
authorities) became the principal “guardians” of the legal integrity of
Community law” (Ibid., p. 2414). Weiler’s account further described
how, in combination with the supremacy principle and other constitutionalizing doctrines (e.g., implied rights, human rights) an incrementally
accelerating process of legal integration was set in motion as ever growing
numbers of individual rights claims were invoked before national courts
which—through the preliminary reference procedure—fed into the
CJEU’s docket.
Featuring strongly in Weiler’s work, and in many of the contextualist
writings of the time, is an engagement with questions relating to the federal character of the EU polity, and in particular the authority of the CJEU
to administer the vertical division of powers between the supranational
(‘federal’) and national (‘federated’) levels of governance. The starting
point for these enquiries being, as also pointed out by Stein, that the net
effect of the constitutionalization of the EU legal order had been a selfappropriation of authority from the part of the CJEU to draw the line
between national and Community competences. Besides Weiler, other
notable contributions to this topic were provided by Lenaerts (1990,
1992). Amongst others, Lenaerts (1990) reviewed a number of Court
rulings that had already amounted to de facto pronouncements on the
fault line between national and EU law. This judicial ‘umpiring’ of the balance of powers between the EU and its Member States was, he asserted,
the CJEU’s proper function given that, as the findings of a comparative
assessment of federal judiciaries around the world revealed, this was nothing but customary practice of supreme courts in federations everywhere.
In a later 1992 article, these lines of reasoning re-appeared in the context
of a broader review of the interaction between the Community’s judicial
structures and its political processes (Lenaerts, 1992). According to the
author, in spite of what could at first sight appear to be a “one-way street
in which the former pushed the latter”, the Court had in fact responded
to the expectations of the political processes (Ibid., p. 133). That is, a
number of judgments that may have originally been perceived as “excesses
of judge-made law” were to later serve as catalysts for moving Community
political processes forwards. In freeing political decision-makers from a
number of difficult decisions, the Court enabled them to move beyond
political gridlocks towards a higher level of effectiveness. The Court’s
establishment of the principle of mutual recognition in Cassis de Dijon
(C-120/78) and the ensuing incorporation of this principle in the Single
European Act (SEA), was cited as a case in point. In all, the Court helped
safeguarding the effectiveness and continued development of European
integration. In the end, therefore, it was ultimately the Community’s
political processes that emerged as the ‘true winners’ of the Court’s innovative jurisprudence.
Similar considerations around the ultimately positive boost that the
CJEU’s integrationist case law provided to the EU’s political processes
could also be found in the writings of Mancini (1989) who was, like
Lenaerts, a judge in Luxembourg at the time of writing. In his depiction
of the Court’s constitutionalizing jurisprudence, he readily admitted that
the CJEU’s “judicial creativeness” had, at times, met with “bitter opposition” in certain quarters. However, with time, the resulting “wounds” to
the Court’s legitimacy had healed and the scars were left barely visible as
many came to realize that the alternative to the Court’s expansive rulings
would have been an erosion of the Community, “a possibility that nobody
really envisaged, not even the most intransigent custodians of national
sovereignty” (Ibid., pp. 600–603; p. 614).
A more critical perspective was provided by Rasmussen’s (1986) broadgauge study on “judicial policy-making”. Although recognisant of the fact
that the European judiciary safeguarded the Community experiment at an
early stage of its development, he nevertheless famously ended his review
of the Court’s constitutionalizing rulings with the warning that the “judicial activism running wild”, as displayed over the course of the 1960s and
1970s, could in time be met with court-curbing, or even court-destroying
initiatives from the part of countervailing powers (Ibid., p. 513). The
ensuing loss of legitimacy and authority of its judicial institution could
eventually prove fatal to the Community which does not possess effective
means of its own for the enforcement of its laws (Ibid., pp. 8–9).
It would not take long before these striking claims and findings around
the political dimensions of the Court’s jurisprudence were picked up by
political scientists as Weiler (1982) had advocated for. In fact, the questions engaged with by these early contextualist legal scholars, and their
differing evaluations of the exact political leeway available to the Court
strongly resonated with the sort of analyses that were in vogue around the
same time in political science scholarship. That is, following the reinvigoration of political and economic integration processes post-SEA (1986),
renewed attention had gone out to contending ‘grand theory’ explanations of European integration processes (Nugent, 2010). At their core,
and put in the most basic terms, these metatheories divided on whether
either the rational behaviour of nation states primarily accounted for the
pace and substance of integration processes (intergovernmentalist perspectives), or whether instead these processes principally resulted from the
interactions of sub- and supra-state actors who, responding to demands
for further cooperation stemming from earlier harmonization efforts
(‘spillover effects’), continuously pushed integration further, even beyond
Member States’ political preferences (neofunctionalist models). The EU
judiciary, however, had not yet been included in these discussions. Rather,
and remarkably similar to the perspectives of the earlier formalist legal
approach to EU law, the Court and its activities were perceived as pertaining to a politically-neutral, technical domain, the study of which was the
province of legal scholarship exclusively. This, in sharp contrast to the state
of affairs in US political science scholarship, where the study of judicial
politics in relation to the US Supreme Court had already become part and
parcel of mainstream political science. Not surprisingly, as remarked by
Dyevre (2010), the first political scientists to start analysing the role of the
EU’s Court all hailed from American universities. As first, Garrett (1992),
and next Burley and Mattli (1993), took up on the findings of the contextualist legal scholarship and framed them within contending European
integration paradigms, a debate was instigated that—as the next sections
outline—has continued fuelling academic discussions to date.
2.3   The Role of the CJEU in Processes
of European Integration: A Classic Debate
The Early 1990s: Intergovernmentalist Vs.
Neofunctionalist Readings
The first work to pick up on the constitutionalization narrative was
Garrett’s (1992) account of the evolution of European integration since
the SEA (Garrett, 1992). His rational choice explanation of these developments specifically included an evaluation of the judicial oversight to common rules provided by the CJEU. Citing in his argumentation amongst
others the writings of Stein and Weiler, he conceded that the Court held a
remarkable authority to impose EC law on Member States and constrain
their behaviour, even in areas that “impinge directly on the traditional
authority of national governments” (Garrett, 1992, p. 555). This was
puzzling from a rational choice perspective and led him to question why
sovereign states would abide by Court dictates when these are detrimental
to their interests. The answer, he asserted, and reminiscent of Lenaerts’
and Mancini’s evaluations, resided in the fact that the judicial enforcement
of the EC legal system was ultimately consistent with Member States’
broader interests in having a functioning common market.
Garrett went on to explain this ‘seemingly paradoxical’ assessment by
pointing out, first, that the Court’s judicial monitoring is helpful in providing information on compliance with commonly agreed rules. Without
it, uncertainty over other members’ behaviour would reign and incentives
for defecting from the agreements would be high. In other words, judicial
oversight helped to alleviate problems of ‘incomplete information’.
Second, and in connection, given that it is impossible to make exhaustive
agreements that anticipate every possible application of the common rules
to all specific situations that may arise, the CJEU also assisted in mitigating
what are known as ‘incomplete contracting’ problems. In that light,
Garrett asserted that the power of the Court was not to be overstated.
Ultimately aware of its servient role, and the fact that its authority and
legitimacy are contingent upon the continued acquiescence of Member
States, the Court, he stated, was careful to make decisions that “faithfully
implement the collective internal market preferences of national governments” (Ibid., p. 558).
Garrett supported these arguments, first, by highlighting the control
and sanctioning mechanisms retained by Member States; that is, legislative
override (through secondary legislation or, at the extreme, Treaty revision) and control over the processes of judges’ appointment. Second, he
argued that a number of seemingly contra-national rulings were in fact
congruent with the economic trade liberalization preferences of powerful
Member States, most notably those of Germany and France. Following
this logic, observations of government-sanctioning Court rulings that
were ultimately complied with did not discard his evaluation as it was to
be expected that the CJEU would at times issue sanctioning rulings when
this was required to strengthen the efficacy of the common market. In
doing so, however, the Court would always act strategically and only rule
against a Member State when it anticipated that its decisions would not
provoke a political reaction, as the affected government would consider
the broader economic benefits gained from the ruling to outweigh the
losses suffered in the short-run. Empirically, this claim was supported by a
review of the Court’s Cassis de Dijon decision. This seminal judgment was
considered exemplary of the CJEU’s practice to cater to the interests of
France and Germany. Although the Court sanctioned German protectionist measures, overall, the outcomes of the ruling helped opening up
European markets to foreign trade by dismantling non-tariff barriers
which was ultimately in line with Germany and France’s broader economic
interests. Of importance, in so doing, the Court was careful not to venture
into those areas of economic activity that these powerful Member States
deemed central to their domestic economic performance (e.g., industrial
This delegation-centred line of reasoning also returned in a co-authored
work with Weingast (Garrett & Weingast, 1993). Although the authors
did not explicitly avow to this themselves, by emphasizing the importance
of state interests and rejecting the capacity of a supranational Court to
generate outcomes that counteract national governments’ interests, their
writings were to become associated with intergovernmentalist theories of
European integration. The two-fold delegation-centred explanation
around (i) incomplete information and (ii) incomplete contracting was to
become an evergreen of subsequent works that, in their footsteps, reviewed
the role of the Court from an intergovernmental, state-centred perspective. In addition, the labelling of their work as intergovernmentalist may
also have been inspired by the fact that the writings that most forcefully
came to criticize Garrett (and Weingast) strongly avowed to a neofunctionalist reading of European integration processes.
These were the writings of Burley and Mattli who, shortly after, presented an entirely contrasting interpretation of the Court’s judicial autonomy (Burley & Mattli, 1993). Like Garrett and Weingast, the authors also
started off on the basis of the remarkable recording of the Court’s authority presented by the contextualist ‘constitutionalization’ narrative. Legal
scholarship on this constitutionalization process had however, in their
view, failed to provide an explanation that was convincing to political scientists. In attributing aggregate motives and interests to the institutions
involved and failing to specify causal mechanisms, this literature lacked
microfoundations and was therefore unsatisfactory from a theoretical
point of view. On the other hand, the explanations that had been offered
by political scientists—that is, at the time of writing only those of Garrett
and Weingast—were “simply wrong” (Ibid., p. 51). Amongst others, the
authors strongly criticized the empirical support Garrett and Weingast had
adduced in support of their contentions. This consisted of no more than
one single judgment, Cassis de Dijon, which, Mattli and Burley stated, was
selectively chosen and of which—in addition—the outcomes had been
incorrectly explained so as to fit the authors’ claims.
The deficiencies to both sets of literature, legal scholarship and political
science alike, could be remedied by truthfully integrating the insights from
the first in a theoretical framework acceptable to the latter. Such a framework was found in Haas’ (1958) neofunctionalist theory. The application
of this theoretical model to the contextualist legal literature’s findings
would lead the authors to conclusions that diametrically opposed those of
Garrett and Weingast. That is, the Court’s jurisprudence was said to have
generated ‘supranational’ outcomes that went beyond the intentions of
national governments. These results came about, and could be explained—
following neofunctionalist predictions—by the converging of interests of
a number of sub- and supra-state actors who joined forces across national
boundaries in the pursuit of their own aims and ambitions and who, in
doing so, further added to the ‘integrative momentum’ at the expense of
nation states’ sovereignty.
In the context of legal integration, the Court had largely created those
opportunities itself with its constitutionalizing judgments in Van Gend en
Loos (direct effect) and Costa v. Enel (supremacy of EU law). By that token,
these judgments were in and of themselves examples of a supra-state actor
promoting its own self-interest, that is, extending its mandate to have a
more influential say in Community affairs. These Court decisions were
also the pre-conditions that would, next, allow for the co-opting of substate interests by providing personal incentives for individual litigants,
national courts, lawyers and the wider legal academic community to participate in the construction of an expanding EU legal system. Following
an argumentation similar to that presented by Weiler (1991) and others in
the contextualist legal literature, the pronunciation of direct effect was
credited for having transformed citizens into a new constituency of rightsholders to whom, henceforth, EU law represented an opportunity structure for the advancement of their own goals. If need be, by holding their
own governments accountable to their EU obligations before domestic
tribunals. This, also in line with the logics established by Weiler (1991),
Lenaerts (1992) and others, encouraged further use of the preliminary
reference procedure and in that way granted national courts a stake in the
Community law game. That is, to national courts, EU law came to represent an opportunity structure for the enhancement of their own judicial
power vis-à-vis their governments; or in the case of lower courts vis-à-vis
higher tribunals. On account of these interconnected processes, lawyers
and legal academics also gained an interest in the furtherance of EU law.
Particularly academics were said to have wilfully exploited this interest by
providing apologetic, legitimizing descriptions of the Court’s expansionary case law so as to burnish the prestige of the institution to which they
were themselves professionally connected.
With time, the different interests for whom EU law represented an
opportunity structure started converging and would come to reciprocally
empower one another. The processes of continued integration which their
interactions sustained were further buttressed by the (neofunctionalist)
dynamics of functional spillover, according to which cooperation in one
area creates the need for action in a related sector, which in turn creates a
further need for action, and so on. Such dynamics could, amongst others,
be identified in the CJEU’s habit of portraying its expansionary decisions
as filling in legal interstices that were merely a logical follow-up of the
parts of the legal structure already built. In addition, the authors identified
political spillover effects of adaptive behaviour in the incremental acceptance of CJEU discourses by Member States who, although originally
overtly hostile to a certain decision, at a later point in time would come to
accept that Court’s pronouncement as a statement of law and proceed to
make arguments from that benchmark in subsequent litigation. This also
served as an illustration of how, in all of this, the role of governments was
reduced to one of being, at best, “creatively responsive” (Ibid., p. 54).
Overarching their entire line of argumentation is the oft-cited assertion
that “law functions as a mask for politics”. That is, the neofunctionalist
dynamics described were enabled by the apparent separation of law from
politics, or, by the nominally non-political nature of legal dictates. As Haas
had originally foreseen for the field of economics, the Court could indirectly penetrate the realm of the political by clothing its decisions in the
purportedly neutral, technical language of the law so as to camouflage the
potentially controversial political ramifications of its decisions. Such political ramifications would nevertheless eventually be felt. However, given
that judicial decisions were framed as legal observations, contending political interests that would react in follow-up could no longer attack them
but by a ‘battle of proxy’. That is to say, they had to frame their political
objections as legal objections, which then relegated these objections back
into the sphere where the Court holds the last word. In that sense, law
functioned not only as a ‘mask’, but also as a ‘shield’. Like the writings of
Garrett and Weingast which they challenged, the lines of reasoning
advanced by Mattli and Burley were to become evergreens of scholarly
works that, in their footsteps, rejected a portraying of the Court as merely
a validator of Member States’ interests but instead supported the claim
that the CJEU held sufficient autonomy to engender independent, supranational outcomes.
In spite of the critique they had voiced on Garrett and Weingast’s
methodology, Burley and Mattli’s line of reasoning was similarly supported by no more than a few scant citations to Court decisions which
served mostly as illustrations to the arguments made. In essence, they
repeated Garrett and Weingast’s narrow sampling on the dependent variable. That is, where Garrett and Weingast discussed cases they viewed as
axiomatic of Court’s responsiveness to Member State interests, Burley and
Mattli similarly selected cases they considered exemplary of—conversely—
Court autonomy. To add to the problem, and oddly enough, the same
Cassis de Dijon judgment featured in both of the contending accounts,
albeit with entirely contrasting readings as either (i) a judgment that furthered Member States’ interests (Garrett & Weingast) or, conversely, (ii)
one that counteracted those interests (Mattli & Burley).
Garrett retaliated (1995), and so did Mattli and Burley (by then
Slaughter) in sequence (Mattli & Slaughter, 1995). Both nuanced their
theoretical contentions in the process, but did not depart from their central claims and cause for disagreement, that is, their differing views on the
extent to which the Court takes account of States’ interests. The (limited)
theoretical refinement was not matched by progress on the methodological plane however. To the contrary, in the newer contributions, the methodological discrepancies were brought even stronger to the fore and
became new points of contention in and of themselves. Both pairs of
authors would come, in parallel, to challenge the other study’s empirical
strategies around a two-fold set of comparable shortcomings. This dual set
of methodological hindrances would later on resurface in much of the
political science literature on the CJEU that was to follow.
First, as Mattli and Burley had already done in their earlier review, each
study criticized the case selection strategies that were employed in the
rivalling account. Along similar lines, these were said to be both biased, as
well as too narrow to constitute a representative sample of the Court’s
activities and hence allow for a generalisation of the respective findings to
the CJEU’s case law as a whole. Additionally, and in connection, the smalln case study evidence adduced did not allow for disproving contending
propositions as each Court ruling cited in support of either Member State
or Court autonomy could—in turn—be counterchecked by the opposing
study with references to a next, different decision more supportive of the
opposite scenario. These are, of course, familiar methodological obstacles
of qualitative case study research generally speaking. They are particularly
problematic, however, against the background of an empirical ­environment
as heterogeneous and idiosyncratic as the CJEU’s case law. Given that
each single Court judgment is highly issue-specific and context-dependent, numerous case law shifts can be observed over the course of time
depending on such factors as the issue matters under review, the precise
legal provisions invoked, the wording of the questions raised, and many
more aspects unique to the proceedings at hand. Such contingencies then
create opportunities for the analyst to, depending on the rulings selected,
either observe decisions that appear reminiscent of Member State interests, or—conversely—rulings in which the Court apparently did little to
accommodate for such political interests. Further exacerbating this problem, given that proceedings before the CJEU usually consist of multiple
legal issues—over which the Court does not necessarily always favour the
same side—even within a single Court decision evidence can be marshalled
to support competing claims, depending on which issues in the judgement
are singled out for observation. In the discussions between Garrett, Mattli
and Burley, Cassis de Dijon continued to take centre stage in that regard as
both accounts—in taking turns—continued to subject this landmark ruling to ever more intricate interpretations meant to either prove, or disprove, its compatibility with Member State interests.
A second methodological problem to hinder these first discussions
relates to what is more generally known in delegation literature as the
problem of ‘observational equivalence’. That is, scenarios in which institutions with delegated powers (in casu, the Court) operate independently
from their delegators (in casu, the Member States) can be ‘observationally
equivalent’ to their opposing others, i.e., scenarios in which the entity
with delegated powers is in fact constrained by the policy preferences of its
delegators but anticipates the delegators’ reactions and rationally adapts
its behaviour beforehand in order to avoid provoking costly retaliations.
Following such logics of rational anticipation, if threats of political sanctions (e.g., legislative override) are effective, they need not be used and
there will, accordingly, not be anything for the analyst to observe.
Consequently, observations of the absence or rarity of Member State sanctions in response to Court rulings cannot discriminate between opposing
views as they are consistent with scenarios of both Court autonomy as well
as Member State control, albeit for different reasons (this methodological
problem in the context of the CJEU is discussed further below, Sect.
2.4.2; see for a more general discussion in the context of delegation literature, Pollack, 2002). Along such lines, Garrett and Weingast’s ‘rational
anticipation’ evaluation also discarded the evidence on the rarity of
Member State sanctions which Mattli and Burley had adduced. As contended by Garrett and Weingast: “The fact that a court’s decisions are
neither overturned nor the subject of considerable controversy does not
demonstrate that it exercises real discretion. The opposite conclusion is
also consistent with the same observation.” (Garrett & Weingast, 1993,
p. 202; see also Garrett, 1995; pp. 180–181).
2.3.2  The Mid-1990s: Other Scholars Join In
The theoretical divides and methodological obstacles of these earliest
political science writings on the Court were to set the stage for much of
the political science to come. Among the first to pick up on the assertions
put forward was Alter. In her seminal 1996 paper “The European Court’s
Political Power” she furthered Mattli and Slaughter’s argument (originally
deriving from the contextualist legal scholarship of such authors as Weiler
(1991) and Lenaerts (1992)), that the Court’s ability to advance legal
integration against Member States’ interests rested to a significant extent
on the successful co-opting of national courts. On the basis of a review of
the different responses by differently ranked domestic courts to the
CJEU’s declaration of the supremacy doctrine depending on their respective hierarchical ranking within national legal systems, she argued that the
gradual penetration of EU law into such national legal systems had been
significantly facilitated by inter-court competitive dynamics. That is, lower
courts were more inclined to accept the doctrine of supremacy, start applying EU law, and refer preliminary questions than higher courts. Used to
having a higher hierarchical court above them, such lower courts had
lesser concerns in having their decisions rewritten by another tribunal. In
addition, for such lower courts the application of EU law also represented
an opportunity structure to circumvent potentially restrictive jurisprudence of domestic higher courts, or to re-open legal debates that had been
closed with an outcome that was not to their liking. The CJEU encouraged these dynamics by giving serious evaluations to the referred questions and dismissing higher court refutations of their own authority. As
the inflow of preliminary questions continued increasing, so did the
opportunities for the CJEU to expand its jurisprudence and jurisdiction.
Eventually, as EU law started touching on ever more issues of domestic
law, and so many lower courts were following the CJEU’s lead, the potential opposition to the application of EU law by higher courts lost its effectiveness. Once co-opted, the support of national courts greatly enhanced
the CJEU’s authority as its decisions became binding not only on the basis
of its own jurisdiction, but also on the basis of that held by domestic tribunals. This then significantly changed the political realities associated
with non-compliance. Whereas ignoring CJEU decisions could have been
a feasible strategy for national governments previously, disobeying their
own domestic tribunals would have very different political implications.
In a later article, “Who are the Masters of the Treaty”, Alter would
come to more clearly join the counter-Garrett and Weingast side (Alter,
1998). She repeated her argumentation on the authority enhancement
that the co-opting of national courts entailed, and then added two further
lines of explanation to account for the Court’s remarkable power. To
begin with, drawing on theoretical explanations on European integration
developed by Pierson (1996), the Court, she argued along the lines of
Mattli and Slaughter’s ‘mask and shield’ argument, had successfully played
off the inherently shorter time horizons of politicians by carefully and
gradually developing legal doctrines that, although significant in the long
term, were first announced in materially unimportant cases in order to
evade immediate political reactions. However, “(t)he doctrinal precedents
stuck into the Court’s benign legal decisions were in fact formidable institutional building blocks that would be applied in the future to more
polemic cases” (Ibid., p. 135). In so doing, the Court could successfully
exploit politicians’ fixation on the short-term material consequences of
legal decisions and instead focus on expanding its authority in the long
run. In addition, Alter took issue with Garrett’s and Weingast’s delegation-centred arguments by positing, in contrast, that the control mechanisms available to Member States did not constitute a ‘credible threat’ to
the CJEU. Governed by the logics of ‘joint-decision traps’ (Scharpf,
1988), it was very difficult for Member States to find a uniform consensus
to override Court decisions through legislative changes, let alone to mobilize sufficient political support to change the situation through Treaty
amendment. Moreover, unified control through appointment processes
was equally improbable, considering the fact that career paths of high judicial officials strongly diverge from Member State to Member State. Like
the preceding literature with which she engaged, Alter’s arguments were
empirically supported, predominantly, by qualitative analyses of ‘fitting’
Alter’s challenge of the delegation-centred framework is indicative of
another trend that would come to run through the debate. Following on
from Garrett’s narration of limited Court influence on account of the
­ elegated nature of its powers, others were to similarly formulate their
rebuttals of this account in political science ‘Principal-Agent constructs’,
albeit emphasizing—conversely—the weakness of Member States as
Principals to control their Agent the Court. Criticizing, like Alter, the
effectiveness of Member States’ sanctioning mechanisms, such works
would claim that the CJEU in fact operates in an unusually permissive
environment which offers many opportunities for agent “shirking” or
“slippage” (e.g., Pollack, 1997a; Tallberg, 2000a, 2000b).
Other notable works to join the neofunctionalist side included the writings of Stone Sweet and Brunell (1998) who tested neofunctionalist predictions of ever expanding legal integration processes against a
comprehensive dataset of preliminary reference proceedings covering a
period of three decades. On the basis of, first, a quantitative statistical
analysis they reported a positive correlation between, on the one hand,
growing transnational trade within the EU and, on the other, growing litigation on EU law. This increasing interdependence of transnational
exchange and judicial activity would lead to ever more ‘spill-over effects’
as litigants came to identify and put pressure on new barriers to crossnational exchanges. This first set of dynamics then propelled a self-reinforcing process that pushed for the progressive expansion of supranational
governance. In addition, a more detailed, qualitative review of jurisprudential developments in the areas of free movement of goods and social
provisions led them to the conclusion that such self-reinforcing progressive dynamics were in no manner congruent with the preferences of dominant states. In respect of the freedom of movement of goods, first, they
identified a disproportionate amount of ‘integrative’ case law outcomes in
litigation that targeted those countries with markets of high interest to
cross-national traders (with Germany as the most notable example), indicating how free trade litigants—not governments—were in the driving
seat of integration. With regard to social provisions legislation, second,
in-depth reviews of the case law indicated that the CJEU had primarily
attacked precisely those national rules and practices that represented the
lowest common denominator position adopted by the Council. At times
the Court even used its judicial fiat to re-enact provisions that had previously been vetoed by one or more Member States during Council negotiations. Following Mattli and Burley’s depiction, governments’ overall role
was portrayed as limited to being ‘reactive’, not ‘proactive’ in integration
Following up on the findings of Stone Sweet and Brunell, Cichowski
(1998) tested a range of similar neofunctionalist predictions against data
on preliminary reference rulings in the area of EU environmental protection legislation. She found broad support for the claim that preferences of
powerful governments do not constrain the Court on the basis of an analysis in which she reviewed (i) first, how many times the CJEU ruled to
declare the national rule as consistent or inconsistent with EU law obligations and (ii) second, how these judicial outcomes related to the written
observations submitted by Member States prior to the ruling. In line with
Stone Sweet and Brunell’s conclusions, Cichowski’s findings revealed, for
the first question (i) that the Court had often ruled to declare national
rules ‘inconsistent’ with EU law and, second (ii) that the relation of these
rulings to the written observations refuted the intergovernmentalist premise that the preferences of powerful Member State governments systematically constrain the Court. The paper further specified, in a subsequent
qualitative analysis, how the Court’s decisions had, over time, cumulatively engendered expansive outcomes that progressively shifted policy
authority away from Member State control to the supranational level. In
addition, in this article, and more clearly in later analogous works on gender equality legislation (Cichowski, 2001, 2004), Cichowski also called
attention to the role of civil society interest groups who increasingly
started using EU law litigation as a forum for promoting their interests.
Questions regarding this additional role of public interest litigation in supporting the build-up of the Court’s authority and the expansive outcomes
of its case law, were also notably explored in the writings of Wincott
(1995), Pollack (1997b) or Alter and Vargas (2000).
A final addition to the neofunctionalist line of reasoning that deserves
mention is the work of Schmidt (1998, 2000), who outlined how a
dynamic of mutual strategic co-opting between the Commission on the
one hand, and the Court on the other, explained the remarkable authority
of these two supranational institutions over the policy preferences and
legislative actions of the Council of Ministers. According to her account,
the Commission strategically initiated and followed up on Court rulings
as a means to either change the legislative preferences of some Member
States by singling them out for targeted infringement proceedings, or coax
the Council as a whole into taking legislative action by tactically initiating
a series of strategic infringement proceedings within a certain specific policy area.
Returning to the intergovernmentalist side, although the claims of
Garrett and Weingast appear to have generated more challenges than support, intergovernmentalist readings of the Court’s role were not left unattended in the meantime.1 Garrett himself remained the most forceful
defender of his own account. In a later game theoretic analysis, coauthored with Kelemen and Schulz, he reinforced his statement that the
Court is a strategic actor in that it must take account of, and is restrained
by, the reactions of member governments (Garrett, Kelemen, & Schulz,
1998). Responding however to criticisms on the earlier work, these contentions were strongly qualified in comparison to the previous versions in
that the authors accepted the argument voiced by, amongst others, Mattli
and Slaughter (1995) that the Court’s authority is also dependent on it
being seen as an impartial arbiter of the law. As a result, the authors conceded, the Court is at times cross-pressured as it must weigh considerations on anticipated Member State reactions against the requirement to
respect legal consistency by taking account of case law precedents. This
could explain the outcomes of some Court decisions that Member States
arguably would not support as, in cases where precedent is clear, the CJEU
would feel compelled to issue adverse rulings in order to maintain the
requirement of legal consistency. In response to criticisms regarding the
empirical grounding of the previous accounts, the new, more nuanced version was based on qualitative analyses of a range of CJEU decisions in
three different policy areas (agricultural trade, gender equality and state
liability) although, arguably, the criticism of selective sampling of Court
decisions on the dependent variable still applied.
In a next article with Tsebelis, Garrett re-visited the Principal-Agent
framing of Member State-Court relations that had, in follow-up to his
indirect usage of these constructs in the earlier articles, spurred a range of
scholarship on the Court that made use of the same paradigm (Tsebelis &
Garrett, 2001). On the basis of an elaborate game theoretical model of
institutional interactions at EU level and the rules set up to govern those
interactions, the authors argued that Court rulings—even when appearing
Remarkably, even within intergovernmentalist circles, Garrett’s state-centred account of
the CJEU’s role was not unequivocally supported. Moravcsik, one of the leading exponents
of intergovernmentalist theory at the time, for instance conceded that the CJEU represented
an “anomaly” for his functional explanation of national governments’ delegation of power to
the supranational level. He instead accepted—with reference to Mattli and Burley’s work—
that the Court’s decisions transcended what was foreseen and desired by most national governments (Moravcsik, 1993, pp. 513–514).
to move beyond the legislative intent of the Council—were often still
located at a policy position within the ‘core area’ of what Member States
Over the years, as ever more scholars took up on the different claims
that underpinned the initial, competing accounts of Garrett, Mattli and
Burley, contributing new insights and new data, the debate as a whole
acquired more nuance and gradation. Explanatory variables were further
specified, or newly added, and tested against empirics from ever more
diverse issue areas. With time, this generated more support for nuancing
ideas that, in the end, both legal and political considerations matter when
accounting for the role of the Court. By the end of the 1990s, few scholars
would still subscribe to the stark, binary claims as originally advanced in
the pioneering accounts, including those authors themselves who came to
mutually recognize the added value of integrating the insights from the
opposing versions into their own frameworks (see Garrett et al., 1998;
Mattli & Slaughter, 1998). Scholars would also take pains to situate their
narratives of the Court’s role in what were perceived as more nuanced
theoretical frameworks. Alter (1998, see also 2009), for instance, would
come to label her arguments as historical institutionalist because such a
theoretical approach was seen as offering a more open framework that
dealt better with contingency and could capture important contextual elements that neofunctionalist framings could miss. Stone Sweet framed his
arguments within a revised ‘institutionalist’ neofunctionalism (Stone
Sweet & Sandholtz, 1997; Stone Sweet & Caporaso, 1998). Other works
asserted that their more nuanced theoretical approaches allowed for a
straddling of the paradigmatic divides in the literature. Amongst these for
instance Garrett et al.’s (1998) game theoretic analysis of the CourtMember States strategic environment, Garrett and Tsebelis’ institutionalist explanations (Tsebelis & Garrett, 2001) or Tallberg’s use of an
‘extended’ Principal-Agent model (Tallberg, 2000b). In their third and
final contribution to the discussions, Mattli and Slaughter even set out to
“close the books” on the neofunctionalist-intergovermentalist debate they
had themselves initiated. A new generation of scholarship and empirical
puzzles, they asserted, would have to focus on working towards the development of ‘midrange hypotheses’ regarding the conditions under which
the CJEU enjoys either more or less autonomy relative to the Member
States (Mattli & Slaughter, 1998, pp. 178–179).
In spite of these efforts however, the ‘books’ were not ‘closed’. Whilst
growing cross-engagement between the different theoretical foci led to a
more nuanced portrayal of claims and findings, it did little more than that.
In essence, and as documented, the writings of the late 1990s could still
with ease be positioned at either side of the conceptual divides that had
been drawn up in Mattli, Burley and Garrett’s original accounts; i.e.,
stressing either Court autonomy or, conversely, Member State control. In
addition, although the increased scholarly interest and output led to a
broadening of the empirical data on which different claims rested, the
strategies for evaluating these data were not necessarily updated much in
parallel. With the exception of Stone Sweet and Brunell’s (1998) mixed
quantitative-qualitative research design and the work of Cichowski (1998),
analyses continued to rely predominantly on traditional, qualitative case
study approaches. As a result, essentially the same, two-fold set of methodological obstacles that had hindered the pioneering discussions of the
early 1990s resurfaced in the follow-up literature. First, the small-n case
study approaches continued raising questions in regard of case selection
and the representativeness of that selection and, second, this evidence
could not generally control for the invisible effects of possible ‘rational
anticipation’ behaviour by the Court (in line with the problem of ‘observational equivalence’).
In all, the core point of contention—that is, the extent to which the
Court can make decisions independent of Member States’ preferences—
carried over into the next decade with some theoretical refinement, but
little to no progress as regards methodological testing strategies. As will be
elaborated on next, this central question has continued to permeate much
of recent political science on the CJEU’s role, as both qualitative (2.4.1.)
and quantitative (2.4.2.) works continue to seek to account for either
Member State control or Court autonomy.
2.4   An Ongoing Debate: Developments Since 2000
2.4.1  Qualitative Research Continued
The 2000s and 2010s saw, to begin with, the continuation and accumulation of qualitative case study research on the role and autonomy of the
CJEU. The tendency to move away from the meta-theoretical, binary
paradigms of the early accounts, already instigated at the close of the
1990s, was generally carried on after the turn of the century. That is,
instead of framing their enquiries in the frameworks of ‘grand’ European
integration theories, a new generation of scholars focused on midrange
hypotheses that allowed for more precision and nuance. As a result, and in
order to do justice to these developments, the below sketching out of the
fault lines in the more recent political science research on the Court’s role
also no longer accords to the neat black-and-white image that could be
drawn for the 1990s but is instead necessarily more nuanced as well.
To begin with, and a research theme that was clearly carried on from
the 1990s, relates to evaluations of the role of national courts and the
extent to which their strategic interaction with the CJEU assists this latter
in enacting a pro-integrative agenda. Nyikos has for instance widened the
focus of such enquiries by reviewing in two subsequent works, (i) first,
what happens after the CJEU has ruled on a preliminary reference question in terms of the implementation of that judgment by national courts
and, (ii) second, what happens prior to such a preliminary reference in
terms of the potential strategic leveraging of the CJEU’s authority by
lower national tribunals. The findings of her first study revealed an overall
tendency of national courts to faithfully implement the CJEU’s guidelines
once it has pronounced its verdict (Nyikos, 2003). This tendency, in turn,
strongly affected litigation strategies of private parties at the national level.
The more secure litigants felt that national courts would follow the
CJEU’s ruling, the more likely they were to desist from the national proceedings. Instead they then chose to jointly apply the CJEU’s rulings
themselves as a means to save money and time. This practice, Nyikos
asserts, can be regarded as lending further legitimacy to the CJEU as its
authority commands respect not only at the elite judicial level but also
amongst litigants facing on-the-ground legal disputes. In the second article, Nyikos (2006) built on the earlier findings of Alter regarding the
strategic co-opting of the CJEU by domestic courts. She critically analysed
the procedure whereby domestic courts and—in line with Alter’s findings—particularly lower ones, send ‘preemptive opinions’ along with their
preliminary references. Her findings revealed that domestic courts strategically use such prior opinions as a means to signal their substantive legal
preferences to the EU judiciary and steer the CJEU’s interpretation
towards their own preferred positions.
Further new insights into the nature of CJEU-national court relations
were provided in Conant’s seminal, broad-gauge study on interest mobilization dynamics in litigation on EU law (Conant, 2002). Amongst others, the data she collected on EU-related case law from French, German
and UK tribunals revealed that the large majority of domestic court rulings on questions of EU law are in fact decided upon without a reference
to the CJEU. This, at the very least, calls for an attenuation of the importance attached to national court-CJEU strategic interactions. Davies
(2012) points to a similar “overstatement” of the CJEU’s influence in
national litigation contexts as, he argues, national judges in fact enjoy considerable margins of interpretative discretion when ruling on the merits of
cases concerning EU law or when deciding on whether or not to refer a
question to the EU judiciary.
Conant’s work also contributed, more specifically, to research on the
role of societal interest groups in organizing and sustaining the judicial
enforcement of EU rights, a second research theme that was continued
from the 1990s. Amongst others, Conant called attention to the fact that
integrationist or innovative Court rulings do not exert an automatic policy
influence in and of themselves. Rather, her argument goes, they typically
remain ‘contained’ to Member States’ compliance with only the smaller,
more detailed and specific requirements of a judgment as they apply to the
facts of the case. In order for the ramifications of a judgment to move
beyond such narrow ‘containment’ and acquire a broader policy relevance,
she argued, sustained mobilization efforts are indispensable. In their
absence, evasive political or administrative responses that seek, above all,
to dilute the broader consequences of a Court decision will prevail.
Mobilization efforts can consist of strategies such as, for instance, filing
new, related legal claims (‘copycat cases’), or lobbying elected representatives and government officials. Given the high resources needed to sustain
such mobilization efforts however, those societal interests that command
the strongest organizational and/or financial capital are also most likely to
see their strategic EU law litigation campaigns translate into broader policy outcomes. Börzel (2006) and Slepcevic (2009) have reached similar
conclusions in related studies, with Börzel synthesizing her findings on
private enforcement litigation around EU environmental law as “paradoxically, the empowerment of the already powerful” (Börzel, 2006, p. 130).
Further notable recent contributions to this area of research have been
provided by Cichowski (2004, 2007). Building on her earlier findings,
and in staying close to her original neofunctionalist orientations, she put
forward a comprehensive conceptualization of public interest litigation
around EU law as consisting of multiple processes, involving a multitude
of actors and institutions, whose evolving dynamic interactions are causally connected by means of ‘feedback effects’. According to her evaluation, civil society organizations and the CJEU come to mutually, and in
taking turns, empower one another. Every CJEU decision offers the
potential for filing new claims, and every new legal claim in follow-up to a
Court ruling in turn reinforces that judgment and enables the CJEU to
continue clarifying and constructing its case law. These arguments were
supported by mixed methods research designs within which reviews of
large-N datasets on preliminary references in the areas of gender equality
legislation (Cichowski, 2004, 2007) and environmental protection
(Cichowski, 2007) were supplemented with in-depth qualitative analyses
of important Court decisions. In all these works, the earlier as well as the
later ones, Cichowski (1998, 2004, 2007) employed a similar coding
scheme to structure data on Court rulings as either ‘consistent’ (no violation of EU law) or ‘adverse’ (a violation). This information was then
assessed against Member States’ preferences as recorded in written observations submitted to the CJEU prior to the ruling. For both policy areas
under review, the exercise led her to conclude that the expansionary feedback effects of societal interest litigation around EU law resulted in an
expansion of EU competences “often in the face of Member State opposition” (Cichowski, 2004, p. 508; 2007, p. 91, 136).
Strongly embedded in this literature on societal interest litigation lies,
as a third example of a sustained research topic, a clear acknowledgment of
the importance of individual rights’ claims for furthering the influence and
authority of the CJEU’s jurisprudence. As in the preceding 1990s literature, or the even earlier contextualist legal scholarship, this has continued
to be a central theme underpinning many recent research agendas on the
role of the CJEU. The importance of individual rights’ claims has either
been related to other, connected research interests (such as above, in the
literature on civil society litigation), or has featured as a topic of interest in
and of itself. Examples of such latter enquiries include the writings of
Stone Sweet and Stranz (2012) or, in that same special journal issue,
Scharpf (2012), who have argued in similar ways that the continued and
even strengthened emphasis on individual rights (e.g., on account the conferral of binding legal effect on the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights in
the Lisbon Treaty) predicts a continued, or even strengthened,
Europeanization of national law. Considerations along these lines also feature prominently in Kelemen’s assertion that EU governance is increasingly taking on characteristics of an American style ‘adversial legalism’
(Kelemen, 2003, 2006, 2011). That is, according to his analyses, EU law
and law-making are marked by a growing rule-orientation, a rising emphasis on formal and adversial enforcement of legal norms and—on the other
hand—a declining importance of originally more cooperative, informal
means of achieving regulatory objectives. Indications of the emergence of
such a “European variant of American regulatory style” include, for
instance, the increased use of a ‘language of rights’ in EU policy-making
processes (although see Kagan, 2007, for a more sceptical take on whether
an increased legalization indeed indicates a move towards American
‘adversial legalism’).
A further example of a current research theme of which the analytical
origins can be traced back to the 1990s relates to evaluations of practices
by which other supranational institutions ‘co-opt’ the CJEU’s judicial
authority for their own purposes. This field of enquiry has been notably
reinforced by contributions of, amongst others, McCown (2003), Jupille
(2004) or, more recently, Blauberger and Weiss (2013). McCown has for
instance critically reviewed legal basis disputes initiated by the European
Parliament (EP) under Art. 236 TFEU as part of a broader strategy aimed
at strengthening its own institutional involvement in the EU’s decisionmaking processes. Typically, judicial questions raised in such disputes seek
to secure an answer from the Court that would institutionalize a preference for a legal basis that prescribes, for instance, the co-decision procedure over a legal basis requiring merely consultation with the EP. McCown’s
findings show that these strategies tend to be successful. The Council saw
its margin of political discretion over the choice of Treaty base shrink over
the years as it had to continuously adjust its workings to a growing body
of CJEU case law which contained dictates on the criteria to be used when
making such choices. Recently, Blauberger and Weiss (2013) argued,
along the lines of Schmidt’s (2000) contentions reviewed above, that the
smooth adoption of the defence procurement directive in 2009 can be
attributed to the Commission’s strategic use of the CJEU’s jurisprudence.
The Commission deliberately induced new case law through infringement
proceedings and interpreted the implications of earlier Court jurisprudence expansively so as to alert and threaten Member States with the possibility of leaving further harmonization in this sensitive area ‘uncontrolled’
in the hands of CJEU judges. At the same time these ‘negative incentives’
were combined with the ‘positive incentive’ of proposed draft legislation
which offered an opportunity to ‘restore political control’. On the whole,
by strategically engaging in judicial politics, the Commission was able to
both ‘push’ and ‘pull’ originally recalcitrant Member States into legislative
Furthermore, the continued interest around delegation-centred, PrincipalAgent models of CJEU-Member State relations deserves m
­ ention as well.
Tallberg (2002) and Pollack (2003) have for instance continued refining
their earlier accounts of the Court as an Agent which enjoys an extraordinarily large zone of discretion vis-à-vis its Principals, the Member States.
They base this assertion, amongst others, on a comparative assessment of
the Court’s discretion relative to that which has been granted to the
Commission. Most recently, Davies (2016) has further extended on these
premises by arguing that the zone of discretion which the Court enjoys is
so large that the Principal-Agent relationship should in fact be construed
conversely, that is, as the Court being the ‘Principal’ and the Union legislature the ‘Agent’.
Alter (2008) has similarly continued extending her earlier line of delegation-centred arguments to reach the conclusion that the Court’s autonomy vis-à-vis the Member States is of such an extraordinary size that it
surpasses the perimeters of standard Principal-Agent constructs. As she
argues, the relation between the CJEU and national governments is better
conceived of as corresponding to the logics of ‘Trusteeship’ as developed,
amongst others, by Majone (2001). According to such logics, delegating
relations are not to be thought of as singular in nature, but rather, ‘dual’
in that they may consist of either (i) those installed for the purpose of
reducing decision-making costs, which accord to ‘traditional’ PrincipalAgent relations, or (ii) those introduced to enhance the credibility of
long-term policy commitments, which are better conceived of as relations
of ‘Trusteeship’. In this second type of delegation, the Principal accords
powers to the ‘delegate-trustee’ with the specific aim of enhancing the
trustworthiness of its policy commitments in the long run. This can be
necessary vis-à-vis powerful civil society actors or large economic interests
whose cooperation is required for achieving the desired policy goals. Such
type of delegation tends to be applied particularly to those issue matters
for which optimal long-term policy strategies conflict with what would
seem profitable from a short-run perspective as, in such situations, incentives for policy-makers to renege on prior policy commitments may be
high. Similarly, ‘trusteeship delegation’ can also be advisable for those
policy contexts in which it is uncertain whether the next legislature would
still abide by the (long-term) policy choices made by the current one. In
such situations it is a necessary condition that the delegate-trustee is
awarded with sufficient autonomy to pursue the course of action that it
deems most appropriate according to its own professional standards and
expertise, even when these differ from the dominant political preferences
of the day. It is even in the Principal’s interest to ensure that the
­ elegate-trustee’s preferences are not always perfectly aligned with those
it holds itself as such would defy the purpose of the trustee delegation act
in the first place (Majone, 2001, p. 110; Alter, 2008, pp. 38–44).
‘Lock-in’ arguments of this kind are of course no novelty to studies on
the role and autonomy of courts (see e.g., the discussion in Staton &
Moore, 2011). Alter specifically applied them to the context of the CJEU
however, as she also strongly emphasized in later work (Alter, 2009), with
the goal of laying to rest a personally held academic frustration with the
methodological problem of ‘observational equivalence’. In her understanding, this problem was a product of flawed rationalist interpretations
of the Court’s role which subscribed to the tautological reasoning that:
“the mere fact that states do not sanction the ECJ is assumed to be proof
that the state sought, or realized they actually desired, the outcome they
got” (Ibid., p. 13). Given their tautological nature, such presumptions
could not be empirically falsified. Or, by adopting an imagery of Member
States acting as ‘hidden puppet masters’ through the threat of contractual
sanctioning, such logics placed a burden of proof on contending academic
claims that could not possibly be met. Her application of the Trusteeship
model to the CJEU’s context was aimed at breaking new ground in this
respect by destabilizing the epistemological underpinnings of such rationalist Principal-Agent conjectures (Ibid.; Alter, 2008).
A further topic that informs recent literature on the Court’s role relates
to what appears as a new wave of academic interest in tracing the outcomes of Court rulings up to their factual, on-the-ground implications.
Of course, evaluations of the impact of Court decisions have always been
a central concern of political science on the Court’s role. In the past however, such evaluations often remained limited to comparing the outcomes
of Court rulings with stated (or assumed) Member State preferences. This
does not surprise when considering the vast empirical ground that has to
be covered in order to grasp the range of possible on-the-ground effects
that Court rulings can have across the European Union. Nevertheless, in
a number of recent works, scholars have precisely started to pave the way
towards a deeper understanding of the de facto domestic impacts of CJEU
judicial rule-making. Many of these new research puzzles are informed by
Conant’s earlier (2002) “justice contained” thesis as they set out to review
whether, and to what extent, CJEU rulings indeed tend to remain limited
(“contained”) to their immediate, first-hand legal consequences or under
which conditions broader policy implications can be discerned.
Wasserfallen (2010) for instance built on Conant’s argumentation to
review when and how Court decisions gain traction beyond their immediate “court room relevance”. More specifically, he critically assessed the
ability of Court rulings to influence the adoption of secondary legislation
at EU level by means of a process-tracing analysis of the manner in which
the seminal Grzelczyk (C-184/99) judgment reverberated in EU negotiations on the then to-be-adopted Citizenship Directive (2004/38/EC).
His findings revealed that, in instances where there is little consensus
amongst Member States in the Council or amongst EU institutions, the
Court’s pro-integration doctrines hold a significant sway on legislative
decision-making processes by strengthening the power brokerage of the
more integrationist actors in the discussions. However, the point to be
taken away from the analysis, Wasserfallen posited, is that in spite of salient
policy impacts, “activist Court decisions cannot by themselves effectively
influence Europeans’ everyday lives”. Instead, “they need explicit support
of some member states and other relevant actors in the legislation process”
(Ibid.; pp. 1142–1143).
Also starting off from Conant’s ‘contained compliance’ thesis,
Blauberger (2012) reviewed the strategies available to national governments to defend their regulatory autonomy in the face of adverse CJEU
rulings. Pointing at the high consensus requirements that hinder attempts
at jointly redressing Court decisions through legislative action at EU level,
he argued that more attention needed to go out to the ways in which
Member States instead respond unilaterally through legislative adjustments at national level. His analysis of such domestic reforms showed that
they differ from Member State to Member State depending on such factors as ‘adjustment costs’ or ‘resonance with domestic political culture’.
Often governments will find themselves cross-pressured to both comply
with CJEU judgments in order to avoid further legal challenges, whilst at
the same time remaining responsive to domestic constituencies that call
for the preservation of the regulatory status quo ante. Eventually, given
that Court rulings hardly ever prescribe specific policy responses, but
rather “circumscribe a legal corridor within which member states can
remake their policies in various EU-compatible ways” (Ibid., p. 111), governments tend to be able to preserve their original legislation to a considerable extend whilst making it ‘CJEU-proof’ by adopting a variety of
either more or less intrusive reregulation strategies.
In a next, 2014 article these logics were further explored (Blauberger,
2014). Seeking to shed further light on the conflict in theoretical
a­ rguments around, on the one hand, the ‘contained’ impact of Court rulings as posited by Conant (2002) and others and, on the other, empirical
records of broad policy reforms engendered by Court decisions, he went
on to evaluate two opposing theoretical expectations. The first positing
that Member State governments may opt for a strategy of ‘contained compliance’ when ambiguities in CJEU case law create ‘loopholes’ for minimising broad domestic consequences. The second advancing that
ambiguities in CJEU case law may, on the other hand, also provide opportunities for interested litigants to pressure national policy-makers to enact
broader policy reforms in order to avoid sustained legal conflicts.
Empirically, the broad domestic reforms enacted in response to CJEU
decisions in the context of ‘posted workers’ cases were compared to the
limited legislative adjustments that had taken place in response to Court
jurisprudence on free movement of capital (‘golden shares’ cases). The
exercise revealed that governments’ strategic calculations to either ‘contain’ compliance or, instead, engage in broader policy reforms differed
depending on how the burden of legal uncertainty was distributed. Where
this burden rested mostly on the shoulders of those seeking to challenge