The Use of Preliminary Reference Procedure by National Constitutional Courts: Beyond Impressions
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The existing research relating to national connotational courts (CCs) and EU law focuses mainly on the theory of constitutional pluralism or the theory of judicial dialogue between the CJEU and CCs. Even though the two narratives stem from an intuition which is in itself hardly disputable, they do not elucidate what the interactions amount to in practice. The pitfall of the scholarly debate is that the research focuses either on the examination of the most prominent examples of CCs’ backlash against the CJEU or on the descriptive analysis of the individual approaches of CCs. No comprehensive attempt has been made in order to examine the real state of a judicial dialogue between CCs and the CJEU through preliminary reference procedure empirically. The proposed article aims to address these gaps in legal and political literature and elucidate the position of CCs within the EU judicial system. The central message of the article is rather minimalistic: We should now look beyond traditional narratives which uncritically glorify the idea of limitless judicial dialogue on the one hand, and which dramatically alert to catastrophic judicial backlash on the other hand. Let us search for comprehensive evidence of judicial behaviour instead. In other words, it is important to look beyond the statistics and the reasons why CCs ask the questions and attempt to assess whether CCs ask the right questions and thus fulfil their specific role within the EU judicial system. |
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