Does Merit Selection Matter for Judicial Performance? Evidence from the Court of Justice of the European Union

The independence, performance and political responsiveness of international and constitutional courts depends on their institutional design. Judicial selection mechanisms are especially important. Recently, many institutions have emphasized merit selection through judicial councils and special appointment commissions composed of other judges. Conversely, increasing political control over appointment processes is central to the “illiberal” turn in some European countries, and the “backlash” against some international courts. Observers within the legal community have encouraged the former (and condemned the latter), but little research exists on merit commissions' effects on judicial behavior. In this paper we study the impact of the so-called “255-Committee”, an advisory panel introduced in 2009 by the European Union tasked with screening candidates nominated by the member states to the Court of Justice. The panel consists of European judges of high standing and evaluates both new nominees and incumbent judges. We argue that the panel functions as both an oversight mechanism and a screening body on behalf of the member states designed to heighten judge’s performance. However, we also need to distinguish political effects from judicial performance. To test our predictions, we compare various measures of individual performance on the court before and after the reform. Our dataset includes information on all cases decided by the CJEU and the background characteristics of all judges at the court. We find evidence that the 255-Committee affected the performance of incoming and incumbent judges in terms of both efficiency, effort and status.