Download or read book Coherence in the Legal Reasoning of the European Court of Justice written by Leonor Moral Soriano and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aim of this article is twofold. First, it proposes a theoretical theme to explain coherence in legal reasoning; second, it applies this theme to the case-law of the European Court of Justice in environmental matters. The paper analyses several decisions of the European Court of Justice on environmental matters, which concern the conflict between two incommensurable goods, namely environmental protection and economic freedoms. Although there is no metric to measure goods such as environment and economic freedoms, choices can be made in a fair and rational way; the question is how can incommensurable goods be evaluated and how can choices be made without their being irrational or arbitrary. Here, a modest notion of coherence is needed to evaluate the legal reasoning of the European Court of Justice. The conclusions show that attempts to generate coherence by making all decisions fit into a single line, namely integration, and the criticisms of judicial activism of the Court are based on a poor understanding of coherence in legal reasoning, or at worse, the lack of such understanding.
Download or read book The Legal Reasoning of the European Court of Justice written by Joxerramon Bengoetxea and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1993 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can a jurisprudential approach help lawyers and legal philosophers to understand the sources, organization, and main features of European Community (EC) law? How does the European Court of Justice interpret EC law and justify its decisions? This study examines these questions and related issues--analyzing EC law and the decision-making process of the European Court of Justice from a legal theoretical perspective. The justification of legal decisions is a crucial issue in legal and political theory, with courts achieving legitimation through their practice of justification. This study also assesses the justificatory practice of the European Court of Justice and how its jurisprudential approach contributes to an understanding of European integration.
Download or read book Levels of Generality in the Legal Reasoning of the European Court of Justice written by Gerard Conway and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 19 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The level of generality or of abstraction used to describe a precedent, a right, or the legislative intent behind a statutory provision or constituent purpose behind a constitutional provision can have a decisive impact on the outcome of a case. Characterizing it in narrow terms has the effect of reducing the scope of decision of a judgment; conversely, a broader characterization provides more leeway for a judge in a case to encompass its facts within the precedent, right or purpose in issue. The issue raised by the level of generality problem is the extent to which courts have a discretion or freedom of manoeuvre as to the level of generality they decide upon, and thus whether generality and abstraction are manipulable in the hands of judges and are not really predetermined by the legal sources in question or an established judicial method of interpretation. Uncontrolled judicial discretion of this kind is problematic from the point of view of the rule of law and democracy, especially when adjudication concerns constitutional provisions, the equivalent in the EU being interpretation by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) of the EU Treaties; reversal of ECJ interpretation through Treaty amendment is particularly difficult to achieve because it requires unanimous coordination by the Member States. This article examines two alternative ways of determining the correct or appropriate level of generality issue in ECJ interpretation, coherence or the legal traditions of the Member States, and argues in favor of the latter as a less subjective method. Application of the two alternative approaches is tested in two areas of EU law, state liability and criminal law.
Download or read book The Limits of Legal Reasoning and the European Court of Justice written by Gerard Conway and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-01-12 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The European Court of Justice is widely acknowledged to have played a fundamental role in developing the constitutional law of the EU, having been the first to establish such key doctrines as direct effect, supremacy and parallelism in external relations. Traditionally, EU scholarship has praised the role of the ECJ, with more critical perspectives being given little voice in mainstream EU studies. From the standpoint of legal reasoning, Gerard Conway offers the first sustained critical assessment of how the ECJ engages in its function and offers a new argument as to how it should engage in legal reasoning. He also explains how different approaches to legal reasoning can fundamentally change the outcome of case law and how the constitutional values of the EU justify a different approach to the dominant method of the ECJ.
Download or read book Precedents and Case Based Reasoning in the European Court of Justice written by Marc Jacob and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-20 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marc Jacob analyses in depth the most important justificatory and decision-making tool of one of the world's most powerful courts.
Download or read book European Court of Justice Legal Reasoning in Context written by Suvi Sankari and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The task of the European Court of Justice is to ensure that the law is observed in interpreting and applying treaties. This duty is carried out in a transnational constitutional environment where interpretation and application are, to a large extent, divorced from each other. An array of approaches to assessing the Court's work already exists. The distinct underlying assumptions of each perspective affect how Court practice is interpreted and evaluated. In terms of legal interpretation, at the one extreme would be those who subscribe to a historical-originalist - or conserving - approach, and, at the other, those subscribing to an uncritically teleological or dynamic approach, premised on furthering integration. Neither extreme necessarily reflects, in either descriptive or normative terms, a fair or realistic understanding of the Court, its work, and the outcomes of legal interpretation. Even if, in reality, the differences were more a matter of degree, developing a better balanced approach is useful. The approach advocated in this book is called Court of Justice legal reasoning. The approach is critical towards offering generalizations concerning the Court's work based on purposively chosen case law, downplaying the role of law in not only facilitating but also restraining the Court's choices, and overemphasizing teleology or integration as pre-designated and permanent explanatory factors of legal evolution. The Court of Justice legal reasoning approach is firmly anchored to actual case law analysis, instead of abstract legal theory, which ensures it does not become wholly disconnected from the everyday of courts. Moreover, the approach takes into account how the Court keeps applying its relatively conventional self-assumed criteria of legal interpretation, considers interpretations offered in preliminary rulings in their systemic and factual context, and generally views the Court as the constitutional court of a legal order. Finally, the approach builds on sincerely listening to the Court: considering the meaning of silences in reasoning, ways of restrictive interpretation, and the distinction between singular cases and lines of cases in defining the degree of universality of interpretations included in them.
Download or read book The Legal Reasoning of the Court of Justice of the EU written by Gunnar Beck and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-21 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Court of Justice of the European Union has often been characterised both as a motor of integration and a judicial law-maker. To what extent is this a fair description of the Court's jurisprudence over more than half a century? The book is divided into two parts. Part one develops a new heuristic theory of legal reasoning which argues that legal uncertainty is a pervasive and inescapable feature of primary legal material and judicial reasoning alike, which has its origin in a combination of linguistic vagueness, value pluralism and rule instability associated with precedent. Part two examines the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the EU against this theoretical framework. The author demonstrates that the ECJ's interpretative reasoning is best understood in terms of a tripartite approach whereby the Court justifies its decisions in terms of the cumulative weight of purposive, systemic and literal arguments. That approach is more in line with orthodox legal reasoning in other legal systems than is commonly acknowledged and differs from the approach of other higher, especially constitutional courts, more in degree than in kind. It nevertheless leaves the Court considerable discretion in determining the relative weight and ranking of the various interpretative criteria from one case to another. The Court's exercise of its discretion is best understood in terms of the constraints imposed by the accepted justificatory discourse and certain extra-legal steadying factors of legal reasoning, which include a range of political factors such as sensitivity to Member States' interests, political fashion and deference to the 'EU legislator'. In conclusion, the Court of Justice of the EU has used the flexibility inherent in its interpretative approach and the choice it usually enjoys in determining the relative weight and order of the interpretative criteria at its disposal, to resolve legal uncertainty in the EU primary legal materials in a broadly communautaire fashion subject, however, to i) regard to the political, constitutional and budgetary sensitivities of Member States, ii) depending on the constraints and extent of interpretative manoeuvre afforded by the degree of linguistic vagueness of the provisions in question, the relative status of and degree of potential conflict between the applicable norms, and the range and clarity of the interpretative topoi available to resolve first-order legal uncertainty, and, finally, iii) bearing in mind the largely unpredictable personal element in all adjudication. Only in exceptional cases which the Court perceives to go to the heart of the integration process and threaten its acquis communautaire, is the Court of Justice likely not to feel constrained by either the wording of the norms in issue or by the ordinary conventions of interpretative argumentation, and to adopt a strongly communautaire position, if need be in disregard of what the written laws says but subject to the proviso that the Court is assured of the express or tacit approval or acquiescence of national governments and courts.
Download or read book The Coherence of EU Law written by Sacha Prechal and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-01-24 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The EU legal order sits above a diverse mix of 27 national legal systems, with some 23 different languages. Amongst such diversity, how can the unity and coherence of the European legal system be guaranteed? Is there a common understanding between lawyers from different national backgrounds as to the meaning and application of EU law? In addressing these issues the idea of 'common concepts' has played a crucial role - it is argued that the unity of the system is guaranteed by the consistent application of certain core principles shaping the law. To what extent can these concepts be trusted to provide a firm basis for the coherence of the EU legal order? Believers in common concepts argue that there is a relatively clear, shared and accepted framework of ideas, providing an understanding of the system that is ultimately unified in spite of all apparent divergence. Sceptics hold that there is no such framework; 'common concepts' turn out to be additional sources of misunderstanding, confusion and, subsequently, legal divergence. According to a third thesis, there is indeed no common conceptual core, but the necessary unity and coherence of EU law can be articulated and even reinforced through the use of divergent concepts. The contributors to this collection of essays address these issues from different disciplinary perspectives - legal sociology, linguistics, comparative law, European legal scholarship, legal theory and practical experience. The research group focused on the application of two general themes: the protection of rights and judicial discretion. In addition to the thematic research, case studies from core policy sectors are featured, including energy regulation and social policy.
Download or read book The Tapestry of Reason written by Amalia Amaya and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-04-30 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years coherence theories of law and adjudication have been extremely influential in legal scholarship. These theories significantly advance the case for coherentism in law. Nonetheless, there remain a number of problems in the coherence theory in law. This ambitious new work makes the first concerted attempt to develop a coherence-based theory of legal reasoning, and in so doing addresses, or at least mitigates these problems. The book is organized in three parts. The first part provides a critical analysis of the main coherentist approaches to both normative and factual reasoning in law. The second part investigates the coherence theory in a number of fields that are relevant to law: coherence theories of epistemic justification, coherentist approaches to belief revision and theory-choice in science, coherence theories of practical and moral reasoning and coherence-based approaches to discourse interpretation. Taking this interdisciplinary analysis as a starting point, the third part develops a coherence-based model of legal reasoning. While this model builds upon the standard theory of legal reasoning, it also leads to rethinking some of the basic assumptions that characterize this theory, and suggests some lines along which it may be further developed. Thus, ultimately, the book not only improves upon the current state of coherence theory in law, but also contributes to the larger debate about how to articulate a theory of legal reasoning that results in better decision-making.
Download or read book The Legal Reasoning of the European Court of Justice written by A. N. Parr and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Coherence of EU Law written by Sacha Prechal and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2008 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the problems of legal and linguistic diversity in the EU legal system. In a union of 27 member states, with 23 different languages, how can the coherence of EU law be guaranteed? The volume addresses this central question from a range of theoretical and practical perspectives.
Download or read book External Relations Law of the European Community written by Rass Holdgaard and published by Kluwer Law International B.V.. This book was released on 2008-03-05 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: External Relations Law of the European Community begins by noting two common characteristics of legal analyses in the field of EU external relations. First, most legal analyses assume that EC external relations law cannot be studied or applied without a constant awareness of the underlying political dynamics. Yet, the same analyses fail to explain how these ‘dynamics’ are to be understood, assessed and systematically applied. Second, most legal analyses tend to focus only on narrow segments of the ECJ’s case law, often taking as their points of departure individual cases or a group of topically related cases. This ‘commentary’ approach disregards the general inter-connectedness of legal structures and the recurring meaning configurations in the field. Against this backdrop, the author sets out to strengthen the legal language – both theoretically and practically - in the field of EC external relations. The first two parts of the book provide, with extensive references, an in-depth legal analysis of a wide range of topics pertaining to: the distribution between the EC and the Member States of norm-setting authority in their external relations, i.e. the rules that determine what the EC and the Member States can do (individually or together) in international relations; and the reception and application of rules of international law within the Community area, including the way in which international law enters Community law. In these parts of the book, the aim is to reconstruct the core areas of the Community’s external relations law in a coherent and systematic manner. In the third part of the book, the author develops and applies a theoretical and methodological framework inspired by discourse analysis. This novel approach is used to identify and describe some of the most significant legal discourses in EC external relations
Download or read book The European Court of Justice written by Gráinne De Búrca and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2001 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays originated in a series of seminars given at the summer courses of the Academy of European Law at the European University Institute, Florence in 1999.
Download or read book Legal Reasoning and Judicial Interpretation of European Law written by Angus I. L. Campbell and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Legal Reasoning and the European Court of Justice written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Coherence of EU Free Movement Law written by Niamh Nic Shuibhne and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-08-29 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the heart of the European Union is the establishment of a European market grounded in the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital. The implementation of the free market has preoccupied European lawyers since the inception of the Union's predecessors. Throughout the Union's development, as obstacles to free movement have been challenged in the courts, the European Court of Justice has had to expand on the internal market provisions in the founding Treaties to create a body of law determining the scope and meaning of the EU protection of free movement. In doing so, the Court has often taken differing approaches across the different freedoms, leaving a body of law apparently lacking a coherent set of foundational principles. This book presents a critical analysis of the European Courts' jurisprudence on free movement, examining the Court's constitutional responsibility to articulate a coherent vision of the EU internal market. Through analysis of restrictions on free movement rights, it argues that four main drivers are distorting the system of the case law and its claims to coherence. The drivers reflect 'good' impulses (the protection of fundamental rights); avoidable habits (the proliferation of principles and conflicting lines of case law authority); inherent ambiguities (the unsettled purpose and objectives of the internal market); and broader systemic conditions (the structure of the Court and its decision-making processes). These dynamics cause problematic instances of case law fragmentation - which has substantive implications for citizens, businesses, and Member States participating in the internal market as well as reputational consequences for the Court of Justice and for the EU more generally. However, ultimately the Member States must take greater responsibility too: only they can ensure that the Court of Justice is properly structured and supported, enabling it to play its critical institutional part in the complex narrative of EU integration. Examining the judicial development of principles that define the scope of EU free movement law, this book argues that sustaining case law coherence is a vital constitutional responsibility of the Court of Justice. The idea of constitutional responsibility draws from the nature of the duties that a higher court owes to a constitutional text and to constitutional subjects. It is based on values of fairness, integrity, and imagination. A paradigm of case law coherence is less rigid, and therefore more realistic, than a benchmark of legal certainty. But it still takes seriously the Court's obligations as a high-level judicial institution bound by the rule of law. Judges can legitimately be expected - and obliged - to be aware of the public legal resource that they construct through the evolution of case law.
Download or read book Judicial Coherence in the European Union written by K. J. de Graaf and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a selection of interesting papers presented at the Third REALaw Research Forum, which was held in Utrecht on January 30, 2015. The overarching theme of the colloquium was Judicial Coherence in the European Union. 0 0Ever since the establishment of the EU’s judicial system, coherence in the administration of justice within the EU has been an intriguing topic for debate amongst legal scholars and practitioners. Throughout the development of EU (administrative) law in recent decades, courts have been major players in shaping the EU legal order in law and practice. In the overwhelming majority of cases in everyday EU legal practice, national courts and tribunals fulfil the duty of ensuring that the law is observed in the interpretation and application of EU law. Recent judgments clearly illustrate that judicial coherence in the EU concerns a shared responsibility of the Court of Justice and the courts in the Member States. Between the lines, anticipation of the growing horizontal interaction between national courts of the EU Member States can be observed. 0 0The variety, richness and refreshing approaches to questions relating to judicial coherence in the European Union in this book prove that judicial coherence deserves to be further explored and discovered and is of great societal relevance as well.
