Can law professors influence court decisions? External audiences play an important role in strengthening the legitimacy and authority of courts vis-à-vis their principals. Yet, we lack understanding of how courts can effectively engage attentive audiences and, conversely, how responsive judiciaries are to legal elites. Particularly for International Courts grappling with pronounced audience fragmentation, legal elites may serve both as a crucial compliance constituency and a sounding board for legal evolution. Leveraging law blogs, or "blawgs", published between the issuance of non-binding opinions of Advocate Generals and the judgement of European Court of Justice as novel data on elite opinion, I consider whether the ability of legal professionals and academics to elicit responsiveness from judges is conditional on personal characteristics, such as status as a repeat player and reputation, upon personal characteristics, such as status as a repeat player and reputation, or case characteristics, such as case public salience, legal complexity, and a politically adverse environment.
