In person icon Decision-making on the bench

Abstract

Within the field of EU judicial politics, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) takes the centerstage. Yet, work in adjacent fields of legal mobilization and empirical legal studies has shown that law is dynamic: legal communities bring forth new claims, re-interpret existing laws, and expand initial interpretations across different fields. This begs a constant reassessment of the perennial question: What influences decision-making in the CJEU? Knowing why judges decide the way they do remains an unsolved puzzle, hence we rely on theories of causation tested via proxy of evidence to provide explanations. This panel brings four papers that engage with new data and use state of the art research methods to expand our knowledge of when (scope of inference) and to what extent (degree) certain variables matter for explaining CJEU decision-making. Speaking to the founding theories of European integration, the papers address: How responsive is the Court to repeat players, whether they are lawyers or legal elites? Does the Commission agenda-setting power prompt legal innovations by the Court? And how do the internal procedures of the Court impact judgment outcomes? By addressing variation across policy fields, such as rule of law or state aid, or case characteristics, this panel brings fresh insights to ongoing academic debates.

Title	Details
Blawgging the bench: Investigating judicial responsiveness to legal elites	View Paper Details
The effect ideology on court rulings: the role of judges in state aid litigation before the Court of Justice of the EU	View Paper Details
Towards a theory of judicial agency in international settings: Government input and litigant success before the European Court of Justice	View Paper Details
The European Commission, the European Court of Justice, and the EU’s Rule of Law Revolution	View Paper Details
Judicial Leadership at the Court of Justice of the European Union	View Paper Details