Suchergebnisse

Tensions and occasional overt defiance of international courts suggest that compliance with international regimes is not a self-evident choice for domestic judges. I develop a formal theory of domestic judicial defiance in which domestic and supranational judges vie for jurisprudential authority in a non-hierarchical setting. The model emphasises the role of domestic non-compliance costs and power asymmetries in determining the conduct of domestic and international judges. I argue that the EU represents a special case of a particularly effective international regime. Weak domestic courts have little to gain from an escalated conflict with the European court of Justice. But even domestic judicial superpowers like the German Federal Constitutional Court have strong incentives to seek mutual accommodation with European judges. The analysis also yields new insights into concepts, such as "judicial dialogue" and "constitutional pluralism" that have featured prominently in the legal literature, and suggests new hypotheses for empirical research.

We investigate the factors influencing the choice of domestic judges to pass on cases to the Court of Justice of the European Union. While EU judicial scholars have typically relied on integration theory or ad hoc theories of adjudication to explain referral activity, our theoretical framework draws on general judicial decision making theory and focuses on the incentives and constraints national judges face when deciding whether to submit a references to the Court of Justice. Consistent with our rationalist account of judging, we find empirical evidence that the rate at which national courts refer cases is influenced by familiarity with EU law, power-seeking motives and political fragmentation.