Empowering National Courts In Eu Law

National Courts and EU Law examines both how and why national courts and judges are involved in the process of legal integration within the European Union. As well as reviewing conventional thinking, the book presents new legal and empirical insights into the issue of judicial behaviour in this process. The expert contributors provide a critical analysis of the key questions, examining the role of national courts in relation to the application of various EU legal instruments.

Judicial institutions in the new democracies established after the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe have become patterned on a transnational template that maximises judicial empowerment to the detriment of national parliaments. Through the influence of an elite, transnational community of interest, revisions to the judiciary have been implemented with little attention from politicians or the public. As a result, there has been a shift in the role of the judiciary from adjudication under the law towards improvising public policy. Transnational Networks and Elite Self-Empowerment is an inquiry into why and how this could have come about, and what the implications are for democracy. Cristina Parau explores the processes by which the elites have used transnational networks as a means of self-empowerment, and how they have been able to entrench their minority influence within the constitutions of their countries. Taking an inter-disciplinary approach, she builds a strong case through a deep analysis set against and supported by an extensive series of interviews with key political actors. This is a timely reminder of the need to pay attention to our democratic institutions and not to take for granted the foundations on which they are laid.

The Ghostwriters unmasks how lawyers catalyse policy change across borders by encouraging deliberate law-breaking and mobilizing courts against their own governments.

National Judges as EU law Judges: The Polish Civil Law System by Urszula Jaremba aims at filling a research gap in one of the key areas of EU law concerning its enforcement at the national level and the phenomenon of judicial behaviour. More precisely, it examines the way civil judges in Poland function as EU law judges, and the practical problems they encounter while striving to actualise this constitutive role. However, the book goes beyond the formal law scenario, and investigates how Polish civil judges establish their own understanding of EU law and the new requirements it has imposed upon them. To this end, the study employs an empirical − that is to say quantitative and qualitative − methodology and theory to result in a socio-legal study that combines legal and empirical insights into the way national judges function in the context of EU law.

This book critically engages Jürgen Habermas's comprehensive vision of constitutional democracy in the European Union. John P. McCormick draws on the writings of Max Weber (and Habermas's own critique of them) to confront the difficulty of theorizing progressive politics during moments of radical state transformation. Both theorists employ normative and empirical categories, drawn from earlier historical epochs, to analyze contemporary structural transformations: Weber evaluated the emergence of the Sozialstaat with antedated categories derived from nineteenth-century and premodern historical examples; while Habermas understands the EU almost exclusively in terms of the liberal (Rechtsstaat) and welfare state (Sozialstaat) paradigms. Largely forsaking the focus on structural transformation that characterized his early work, Habermas conceptualizes the EU as a territorially expanded nation-state. McCormick demonstrates the deficiencies of such an approach and outlines a more appropriate normative-empirical model, the supranational Sektoralstaat, for evaluating prospects for constitutional and social democracy in the EU.

This volume, comprising three parts and ten chapters, all of them peer-reviewed essays, arises from the work of the Swedish Network for European Legal Studies. Its focus is on labour and social security law. The chapters, written by distinguished legal researchers associated with Swedish universities, provide insight into a range of topical and important developments, seeking new and interesting perspectives. Sweden has been a member of the European Union since 1995, and EU law and European law perspectives have been well integrated into Swedish labour law and social security law research. Within the European Social Model and the European Welfare State, Sweden (and to some degree the other Nordic countries as well) can be said to represent a specific system, as regards both labour law and industrial relations and social security law. In terms of influential comparative typologies or models (naturally 'flawed' by a certain element of vagueness and simplification, but also very helpful in analytical and pedagogical respects), Sweden has been described as a representative of, inter alia, a Nordic legal family, a Nordic labour law model, a social-collectivist industrial relations system, a consensual industrial relations system, a social-democratic welfare state regime, a Scandinavian social security law system (a 'sub-group' of the Beveridge system), and a coordinated market economy. But since 1995 EU law and European law perspectives have been extensively integrated into existing Swedish labour and social security law, and the chapters in this book go a long way in illustrating the far-reaching and multifaceted ways in which Swedish law has been 'Europeanised'.

The third edition of EU Administrative Law provides comprehensive coverage of the administrative system in the EU and the principles of judicial review that apply in this area. This revised edition provides important updates on each area covered, including new case law; institutional developments; and EU legislation. These changes are located within the framework of broader developments in the EU. The chapters in the first half of the book deal with all the principal variants of the EU administrative regime. Thus there are chapters dealing with the history and taxonomy of the EU administrative regime; direct administration; shared administration; comitology; agencies; social partners; and the open method of coordination. The coverage throughout focuses on the legal regime that governs the particular form of administration and broader issues of accountability, drawing on literature from political science as well as law. The focus in the second part of the book shifts to judicial review. There are detailed chapters covering all principles of judicial review and the discussion of the law throughout is analytical and contextual. It begins with the principles that have informed the development of EU judicial review. This is followed by a chapter dealing with the judicial system and the way in which reform could impact on the subject matter of the book. There are then chapters dealing with competence; access; transparency; process; law, fact and discretion; rights; equality; legitimate expectations; two chapters on proportionality; the precautionary principle; two chapters on remedies; and the Ombudsman.