The European Union Law State

The European Union is constructing a judiciary. When the European Court of Justice was established, it was a small, lonely court in Luxembourg composed of seven judges, two Advocates General and handful of staff members. The Court struggled to develop relationships with national judges who might send it cases and apply its rulings. Today, the Court of Justice sits atop an EU level judicial system, which includes two lower Courts – the General Court and the Civil Service Tribunal – and which employs approximately two thousand staff members, sixty-three judges and nine Advocates General. EU courts hear nearly all cases in small chambers of judges – dramatically multiplying their capacity to hear cases. The system continues to grow with EU member states recently agreeing to establish a new set of specialized European patent courts. The EU also views national courts as European Union courts, and the network of national courts that cooperate with the European Court of Justice in the application of EU law has expanded dramatically – both due to EU enlargement and due to the active efforts of the EU to train national judges in European law. While it is well known that the European Court has played an important role in the process of European integration, scholars have had very little to say about the institutional expansion of the EU judiciary itself. This paper explores the construction of the European judiciary, applying theoretical insights drawn from the literature on state building.