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Revisiting Judicial Empowerment in the European Union

Limits of Empowerment, Logics of Resistance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Tommaso Pavone
Tommaso Pavone*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
*
Contact the author at tpavone@princeton.edu.
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Abstract

Judicial empowerment is often cited as a driver of transnational governance, particularly in the European Union. In this view, lower national courts enthusiastically began referring cases to the European Court of Justice to acquire new powers of judicial review. Revisiting this argument, I argue that path dependent, everyday practices within domestic judiciaries stemming from insufficient training in European Union law, workload pressures, and cultural aversions to judicial review can resist Europeanization even when it would lead to empowerment. The argument is evaluated via a critical case study of judicial practice in Italy that is placed in a broader comparative context.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , Fall 2018 , pp. 303 - 331
Copyright
© 2018 by the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

I am indebted to Kim Lane Scheppele, R. Daniel Kelemen, Fernanda Nicola, William Phelan, Juan Mayoral, Jan Komárek, Fabien Terpan, Daniele Gallo, Nicola Lupo, Cristina Fasone, Pietro Faraguna, David Klein, and three anonymous reviewers for very helpful feedback provided in earlier iterations of this article. Funding for this research was generously provided by the National Science Foundation’s Law and Social Sciences Program through a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (no. 1628301) and by a fieldwork grant from the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice. The usual disclaimer applies, and all errors are my own.

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