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Text and Telos in the European Court of Justice - Gunnar Beck, The Legal Reasoning of the Court of Justice of the EU (Hart Publishing2012) 486 p., ISBN 9781849463232 - Gerard Conway, The Limits of Legal Reasoning and the European Court of Justice (Cambridge University Press2012) 344 p., ISBN 9781107001398 - Elina Paunio, Legal Certainty in Multilingual EU Law (Ashgate2013) 234 p., ISBN 9781409438618 - Suvi Sankari, European Court of Justice Legal Reasoning in Context (Europa Law Publishing2013) 275 p., ISBN 9789089521170

Four Recent Takes on the Legal Reasoning of the ECJ

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2015

Joxerramon Bengoetxea
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Type
Book Review Essay
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European Constitutional Law Review , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , May 2015 , pp. 184 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2015 

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Footnotes

*

University of the Basque Country.

References

1 On these and related issues on the theory of legal reasoning, see Dickson, J., ‘Interpretation and Coherence in Legal Reasoning’, in E.N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (Summer 2014 edn.)Google Scholar <plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/legal-reas-interpret/>, visited 5 February 2015, esp. section 2.4.

2 See the criticism by former President of Germany Roman Herzog and Lüder Gerken, ‘Stoppt den Europäischen Gerichtshof’ [Stop the European Court of Justice], Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 8 September 2008, in strong criticism of the Grand Chamber judgment in Case C-144/04, Mangold, [2005] ECR I-9981. The charge is twofold: the ECJ acted as a legislator and invented EU law and it trespassed the distribution of competences.

3 See Dawson, M. et al. (eds.) Judicial Activism at the European Court of Justice (Edward Elgar Publishing 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Hartley, T., ‘The European Court, Judicial Objectivity and the Constitution of the European Union’, 122 The Law Quarterly Review (1996) p. 95Google Scholar.

5 Rasmussen, H., On Law and Policy in the European Court of Justice (Martinus Rijhof, 1986)Google Scholar.

6 See the chapter by Clemens Kaupa, ‘Maybe not Activist Enough?’, in Dawson et al. (eds.), supra n. 3.

7 Sankari, p. 61.

8 Conway, p. 77 ff. Until then, the Court had been accused of ‘running wild’, see Conway n. 29, but this charge was not based on the reasoning of the cases. The debate between Neil, P., A Case Study in Judicial Activism (European Policy Forum 1995)Google Scholar and Edward, D., ‘Judicial Activism – Myth or Reality?’, in A.I.L. Campbell and M. Voyatzi (eds.), Legal Reasoning and Judicial Interpretation of European Law. Essays in Honour of Lord Mackenzie Stuart (Trenton 1996)Google Scholar was based on the reasoning and methods of interpretation used in a list of cases selected by Patrick Neil. By contrast, the charge made by Herzog and Gerken, supra n. 2, is more serious, and not only one of defective argumentation and inventing legal principles of EU law, but furthermore that the ECJ deliberately and systematically ignores fundamental principles of interpretation of western legal culture.

9 I had the opportunity to act as examiner, ‘opponent’, in the doctoral defence of two of them: Elina Paunio and Suvi Sankari, at the University of Helsinki. I also had the opportunity of briefly meeting Gerard Conway during a doctoral research visit he made at the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law. I do not know Gunnar Beck personally.

10 My analysis of each of the books will differ, in some cases trying to sum up their arguments (Beck, Sankari), in some dialectically expounding their views on cases (Conway) and in some cases fully engaging with their ideas (Paunio) in a more discursive manner.

11 With some exceptions to the rule, e.g. ECJ 8 March 2011, Case C-34/09, Ruiz Zambrano, [2011] ECR I-1177, where the reasoning is so scarce that there is no supporting structure of argumentation.

12 See editors’ introduction in Dawson et al. (eds), supra n. 3. Gunnar Beck also calls our attention to the fact that appointments to the constitutional court of some member states (e.g. Germany, but also Spain) are political in the sense that they are party-political. Indeed, the Spanish Constitutional Court found no objection to the fact that its president had not disclosed his affiliation to the Spanish Popular Party, see Tribunal Constitucional 17 September 2013, Auto 180/2013.

13 See, in this sense, Bengoetxea, J., ‘Judicial and Interdisciplinary Dialogues in European Law’, in S. Menétrey and B. Hess (eds.), Les Dialogues des Juges en Europe (Larcier 2014) p. 19Google Scholar.

14 Beck, p. 283-384.

15 MacCormick, Neil and Summers, Robert (eds), Interpreting Statutes, Ashgate, Dartmouth, 1991Google Scholar.

16 Beck, p. 279.

17 Beck, p. 187 and 438.

18 Beck, p. 291. Interesting differences depend on the subject areas of interpretation, as analysed in Beck, p. 294-316; Beck, p. 311: ‘the more detailed and technical the legislation in issue and the more speicific its wording the more likely the ECJ is to pay very considerable regard to the wording of a provision.’

19 Bengoetxea, J., The Legal Reasoning of the European Court of Justice. Towards a European Jurisprudence (Oxford University Press 1993)Google Scholar.

20 Beck, p. 242-274.

21 Beck, p. 6.

22 Beck, p. 333.

23 Beck, p. 97.

24 Beck, p. 155.

25 Beck, p. 1.

26 ECJ 27 November 2012, Case C-370/12 Pringle v. Government of Ireland, Ireland and the Attorney General, not yet reported.

27 Beck, p. 449.

28 Beck, p. 451.

29 Beck has reinstated his attack engaging in a debate with Craig, Paul in ‘The Legal Reasoning of the Court of Justice and the Euro Crisis – the Flexibility of the Cumulative Approach and the Pringle Case’ 20 Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law (2013) p. 635Google Scholar. See Craig’s, Paul reply in ‘Pringle and the Nature of Legal Reasoning’ 21 Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law (2014) p. 205CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Craig holds that the Court’s approach ‘remains defensibly legal even though it is contestable’, p 220.

30 Beck, p. 446.

31 These are not the exact words of Article 125 TFEU which provides: ‘shall not be liable for or assume the commitments of’. The term ‘financial assistance’ on the other hand only appears in Art. 122 TFEU, in relation to ‘severe difficulties caused by natural disasters or exceptional occurrences beyond its control’ but the application of this provision was discarded.

32 Beck, p. 157.

33 Tuori, K., ‘The European Financial Crisis – Constitutional Aspects and Implications’, EUI Law Working Papers No. 28 (2012), p. 24Google Scholar. See also Tuori, Kaarlo and Tuori, Klaus, The Eurozone Crisis (Cambridge University Press 2014)Google Scholar.

34 Beck, p. 215.

35 Beck, p. 175.

36 Beck, p. 263-266.

37 Conway, p. 92.

38 Conway, p. 26.

39 Conway, p. 193.

40 Conway, p. 26.

41 Conway, p. 36.

42 Conway, p. 50.

43 Conway, footnote 113.

44 Conway, p. 28.

45 Conway, p. 28.

46 Conway, p. 29.

47 Conway, p. 29.

48 Conway, footnote 130.

49 Conway, p. 37.

50 Conway, p. 41.

51 Conway, p. 41.

52 Conway, p. 43.

53 Conway, p. 51.

54 Conway, p. 51.

55 Conway, p. 84.

56 Conway, p. 84.

57 Conway, p. 273.

58 Conway, p. 87.

59 Conway, p. 106.

60 Conway, p. 106.

61 Conway, p. 283.

62 Conway, p. 90.

63 Conway, p. 91.

64 Conway, p. 144.

65 Conway, p. 144.

66 Conway, p. 277.

67 Conway, p. 152.

68 Conway, p. 201.

69 Conway, p. 220.

70 Sankari, p. 10.

71 Sankari, p. 20.

72 Sankari, p. 21.

73 Bengoetxea is duly criticised for the choice of cases and for not having updated his case analysis; Sankari, p. 82 and 85.

74 Sankari, p. 22 and 85.

75 This point will be further developed infra when summarising Paunio.

76 Sunstein, C., Legal Reasoning and Political Conflict (Oxford University Press 1996)Google Scholar; Sankari, p. 30.

77 Sankari, p. 37.

78 Paunio, p. 51.

79 Paunio, p. 50.

80 See Kjaer, A. L, and Adamo, S. (eds.), Linguistic Diversity and European Democracy (Ashgate 2011)Google Scholar and Derlén, MMultilingual Interpretation of European law (Kluwer 2009)Google Scholar.

81 Paunio, p 21 ff.

82 These words were contained in Elina Paunio’s doctoral thesis. The initial title of the version I examined was ‘Doing Things With Words at the European Court of Justice. Legal Certainty in a Multilingual Legal Order’, whereas the final manuscript of the thesis has shortened it to ‘Beyond Words: The ECJ and Legal Certainty in Multilingual EU Law’. Both are enigmatic titles. The first had clear austinian (JL Austin) connotations and perhaps emphasised pragmatics and illocutionary and perlocutionary aspects, where as the second title stays closer to the locutionary and interpretative approach, and it expresses more clearly the main message of the thesis, going beyond the standard conception of interpretation as discovering the true, objective meaning of words and the concomitant preference for literal interpretation.

83 Paunio, p. 182-186.

84 Paunio, p. 6-11.

85 Dworkin, R., Law’s Empire (Fontana 1986)Google Scholar; Alexy, R., The Argument from Injustice: A Reply to Legal Positivism (OUP 2002)Google Scholar; MacCormick, N., Institutions of Law (OUP 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86 Paunio, p. 195.

87 Anderson, B., Discovery in Legal Decision-Making (Kluwer 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also J. Komárek, ‘Legal Reasoning in EU Law’ (forthcoming) – I have had the opportunity to read the manuscript kindly sent to my by the author.

88 See Dawson, M., ‘The Political Face of Judicial Activism: Europe’s Law-Politics Imbalance’, in Dawson et al. (eds.), supra n. 3, ch. 2Google Scholar.

89 See Micklitz, H., ‘Judicial Activism of the European Court of Justice and the Development of the European Social Model in Anti-Discrimination and Consumer Law’, EUI Working Papers 2009/19Google Scholar.

90 On quality standards, see Bengoetxea, J., ‘Quality Standards in Judicial Adjudication: The European Court of Justice’, in Müller-Dietz et al. (eds.), Festschrift für Heike Jung, (Nomos Verlag 2007)Google Scholar; also Bengoetxea, J., ‘La Calidad de la Justicia Comunitaria como Factor de Integración’, in A. S. Arnaiz (ed.) and M. Zelaia (coord.), Integración Europea y Poder Judicial, (IVAP 2006) p. 75-102Google Scholar.

91 Cappelletti, M., ‘Is the Court of Justice “Running Wild”?’ 12 ELRev (1987) p. 3Google Scholar.

92 MacCormick, N. and Summers, R.S. (eds.), supra n. 15; see also by the same editors, Interpreting Precedents, A Comparative Study (Ashgate 1997)Google Scholar.

93 See Conant, L., Justice Contained. Law and Politics in the European Union (Cornell University Press 2002)Google Scholar.

94 Muir, E., ‘The Court of Justice: a Fundamental Rights Institution Among Others’, in Dawson et al. (eds.), supra n. 3, ch.5Google Scholar

95 See Tuori, Kaarlo, Ratio and Voluntas. The Tension Between Reason and Will in Law (Ashgate 2010)Google Scholar; see also Perju, V., ‘Reason and Authority in the European Court of Justice’ 49 Virginia Journal of International Law (2009) p. 307Google Scholar at p. 315-327.

96 Bourdieu, P., ‘The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field’ 38 Hastings Law Journal (1987) p. 814Google Scholar.

97 Komárek, supra n. 87.