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The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and Preliminary References to the European Court of Justice: An Opencast Constitutional Lab

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

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At the start of his paper Keeping Their Heads Above Water? European Law in the House of Lords, Anthony Arnull reports a judgment delivered by Lord Denning in 1979, in the early days of the process of the United Kingdom's European integration. It stated as follows:

[The] flowing tide of the Community law is coming in fast. It has not stopped at high-water mark. It has broken the dykes and the banks. It has submerged the surrounding land. So much that we have to learn to become amphibious if we wish to keep our heads above water.

Lord Denning made a similar remark in his judgment in Bulmer v. Bollinger, which was a pivotal case in the dialogue between the United Kingdom (UK) and European systems.

Type
Part Three
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

1 Arnull, Anthony, Keeping Their Heads Above Water? European Law in the House of Lords, in From House of Lords to Supreme Court. Judges, Jurists and the Process of Judging 129 (James Lee ed., 2011).Google Scholar

2 Lord Denning MR in Shields v. E Coomes (Holdings) Ltd. [1979] 1 All ER 456, 462.Google Scholar

4 “Le rénvoi prejudiciel n'est pas un recours mais un mécanisme, une procedure. Il n'est pas demandé à la Cour de Justice de l'Union européenne de se pronunce sur un litige, ni a fortiori de le trancher, mais de “dire le droit.” Le renvoi préjudiciel institue un lien entre le juge national et le juge communautaire, un pont assurant un dialogue qui s'établit sur les bases d'une coopération constructive entre deux ordres jurisdictionnel saux fins d'assurer l'application uniforme du droit de l'Union sur l'ensemble de son territoire.” George Vandersanden, Renvoi prejudiciel en droit europeen, repertoire pratique du droit belge 9 (2013).Google Scholar

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22 Art. 42, Supreme Court Rules 2009: “(1) Where it is contended on an application for permission to appeal that it raises a question of Community law which should be the subject of a reference under Article 234 of the Treaty establishing the European Community and permission to appeal is refused, the panel of Justices will give brief reasons for its decision.”Google Scholar

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(3) Where at the hearing of an appeal the Court decides to make a reference under Article 234 it will give consequential directions as to the form of the reference and the staying of the appeal (but it may if it thinks fit dispose of other parts of the appeal at once).Google Scholar

(4) An order of the Court shall be prepared and sealed by the Registrar to record any decision made under this rule.”Google Scholar

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24 Case C–434/09, Shirley McCarthy v. Secretary of State for the Home Department, 2011 E.C.R. I–03375.Google Scholar

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(2) In particular, is it sufficient that, under national law and/or practice and/or under the collective agreements and/or contractual arrangements negotiated between employers and workers, the payment made enables and encourages the worker to take and to enjoy, in the fullest sense of these words, his or her annual leave; and does not involve any sensible risk that the worker will not do so?Google Scholar

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(4) Is the relevant measure or comparison: (a) pay that the worker would have earned during the particular leave period if he or she had been working, instead of on leave, or (b) pay which he or she was earning during some other, and if so what, period when he or she was working?Google Scholar

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33 Case C–155/10, Williams v. British Airways, 2011 E.C.R. I–08409, para. 31.Google Scholar

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35 Case C–85/96, María Martínez Sala, 1998 E.C.R. I–02691. This and the other main citizenship cases (e.g. Case C–34/09, Zambrano, 2011 E.C.R. I–01177; Case C–256/11, Dereci, 2011 E.C.R. I–11315) are commented also by Michael Dougan, The Bubble that burst: Exploring the legitimacy of the Case Law on the Free Movement of Union Citizens, in Judging Europe's Judges: The Legitimacy of the Case Law of the Court of Justice 127 (Maurice Adams, Henri de Waele, Johan Meeusen, & Gert Straetmans eds., 2013).Google Scholar

36 I borrow this expression from Andrea Biondi and Silvia Bartolini, Recent Developments in Luxembourg: The Activities of the Court's in 2012, 20 Eur. Pub. L. I–14 (2014).Google Scholar

37 Citizenship is the main subject of other preliminary references such as the cases referred to, supra note 35.Google Scholar

38 Opinion of Advocate General Kokott at para. 1, Case C–434/09, Shirley McCarthy v. Secretary of State for the Home Department (Nov. 25, 2010).Google Scholar

39 UK Immigration rules provide that nationals of third countries who do not have leave to remain in the United Kingdom also do not meet the requirements to be granted leave to remain under those Rules as the spouse of a person settled in the United Kingdom.Google Scholar

40 Case C–434/09, Shirley McCarthy v. Secretary of State for the Home Department, 2011 E.C.R. I–03375, para. 31.Google Scholar

41 Arnull, supra note 1 (examining and taking stock of the preliminary references issued by the House of Lords).Google Scholar

42 Golub, Jonathan, Modelling Judicial Dialogue in the European Community: The Quantitative Basis of Preliminary References to the ECJ, EUI Working Paper RSC No 96/58, 1.Google Scholar

43 From this perspective, see Ruggeri, Antonio, Ragionando sui possibili sviluppi dei rapporti tra le Corti europee e i giudici nazionali (con specifico riguardo all'adesione dell'Unione alla CEDU e all'entrata in vigore del Prot. 16), available at http://www.rivistaaic.it/articolorivista/ragionando-sui-possibili-sviluppi-dei-rapporti-tra-le-corti-europee-e-i-giudici.Google Scholar

44 See Mance, Lord, The Interface Between National and European Law, 4 Eur. L. Rev. 437, 456 (2013). He adds: “In whatever way the European Union may develop, I believe that the United Kingdom's contributions on both the legislative and the legal scenes have been and can in future continue to be pre-eminent.”Google Scholar

45 Malleson, supra note 10, at 761.Google Scholar