Refine
Year of publication
- 2014 (2) (remove)
Document Type
- Article (2) (remove)
Language
- English (2)
Has Fulltext
- no (2)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (2)
The failure of individual and institutional remedies to ensure the effective enforcement of European Union (EU) law has increasingly focused attention on collective routes to ensuring adherance to EU policies and rights. How comprehensive, however, should collective remedies under EU law be? This introductory article - as well as the other articles of this volume - explores the feasibility of a horizontal approach to the collective enforcement of EU law. While the hope for such an approach has been bolstered by the engagement of the EU institutions, the Commission's most recent 2013 Recommendation fails to significantly advance the development of collective remedies at EU level. The article will conclude by exploring some further, non-legislative, alternatives to furthering the collective enforcement of EU law.
How does the European Court Reason? A Review Essay on the Legal Reasoning of the Court of Justice
(2014)
This review essay analyses two significant recent contributions to the debate over the reasoning of the Court of Justice (CJ). These contributions highlight the impossibility of a wholly scientific and deductive approach to attributing ‘correct’ outcomes to the Court's case-law. At the same time, their analysis adds significant findings for the debate over the Court's possible ‘activist’ or political role. Following from these contributions, this essay makes two arguments: firstly, that the inability of the Court to anchor its reasoning solely in a deductive form of legal reasoning should encourage the CJ to engage in a more advanced ‘constitutional dialogue’ with the EU's political institutions; and secondly, that truly understanding the Court's reasoning involves a closer analysis of the institutional and personal dynamics influencing Court decisions. Understanding European judicial reasoning may require a closer look at the social and political—as well as doctrinal—context within which European judges act.