How the Chamber System at the CJEU Undermines the Consistency of the Court’s Application of EU Law

Abstract

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) uses a chamber system to more efficiently decide cases. To what extent, and under what conditions, does the CJEU’s chamber system undermine the consistency of the Court’s application of EU law? This paper contributes to the literature on the internal organization of collegial courts by presenting a computational formal model that predicts (a) that hearing cases in smaller chambers undermines the consistency of the Court’s application of EU law and (b) that the magnitude of this effect is larger when judges’ preferences are more heterogeneous and smaller when plaintiffs strategically bring cases. Based on these findings, I use machine learning and empirical data on CJEU judgments in infringement cases to estimate the degree to which we should expect the chamber system to undermine the consistency of the CJEU’s application of EU law in practice.

The CJEU Database Platform: Decisions and Decision-Makers

“…Perhaps most importantly, with a few exceptions (Malecki 2012;Frankenreiter 2018;Fjelstul 2022), previous research has treated the CJEU as a unitary actor with homogeneous preferences in favor of more European integration (Larsson and Naurin 2019, 494;Pollack 2013Pollack , 1265. It is clear that this assumption is a crude simplification, based mainly on convenience and lack of data on votes and separate opinions.…”

“…The chamber system is critical to empirical research about judicial bargaining at the Court. Unlike other courts that political scientists are interested in, like the US Supreme Court or the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the CJEU does not publish voting data and judges do not write dissents or publicly talk about the internal deliberations of the Court (Fjelstul 2022). Thus, we cannot use any of the methods for scaling the preferences of judges that have been developed in the American context (e.g., Martin and Quinn 2002;Clark and Lauderdale 2010;Lauderdale and Clark 2012, 2014.…”

“…When a proceeding involves multiple legal procedures (e.g., an action for annulment and an action for damages), the Court might rule that the applicant is successful with respect to one legal procedure but not others. Data on judicial outcomes in direct actions is important for measuring the preferences of judges (e.g., Fjelstul 2022). The PROCEDURES dataset includes information on the disposition with respect to each legal procedure (except preliminary rulings, where there is no disposition).…”

“…By providing data on the key features of cases, decisions, and decision-makers at the CJEU, which is the court at the heart of the process of judicialization in Europe (Alter 2010), we aim to improve the opportunities to study a range of questions central to the field of judicial politics. We believe this will facilitate better empirical research on the CJEU and open the door to studying new questions about legal mobilisation in the EU (e.g., Hofmann and Naurin 2020; Pavone 2022), judicial bargaining and the internal politics of the Court (e.g., Frankenreiter 2017Frankenreiter , 2018Cheruvu 2019;Hermansen 2020;Fjelstul 2022), the politics of judicial appointments (e.g., Bobek 2015), the sources and impact of judges' attitudes (Vauchez 2012;Larsson and Naurin 2019), and the sensitivity of the Court to its political and social environment, including the politics of noncompliance and legislative override (e.g., Carrubba, Gabel, and Hankla 2008;Alter 2010;Carrubba and Gabel 2015;Martinsen 2015;Larsson and Naurin 2016;Larsson et al 2017;Fjelstul and Carrubba 2018;Blauberger and Martinsen 2020). Previous research on the CJEU has long debated the power and autonomy of the Court in relation to the EU member states, but theory development has been hampered by the treatment of the Court as a unitary actor.…”

Leveling and Spotlighting: How the European Court of Justice Favors the Weak to Promote its Legitimacy

“…We also control for the number of times that EU law is applied as well as the size and experience of parties' legal teams. Finally, since the Court's reliance on smaller chambers and its use of press releases has increased over time (Kelemen, 2012;Fjelstul, 2023;Brekke et al, 2023), all models include decade fixed effects.…”