"Legitimacy through jurisprudence? The impact of the European Court of justice on the legitimacy of the European Union"

Jetzlsperger, Christian. (2003) "Legitimacy through jurisprudence? The impact of the European Court of justice on the legitimacy of the European Union". In: UNSPECIFIED, Nashville, TN. (Unpublished)

Preview

PDF Download (3187Kb) | Preview

Abstract

Some preliminary and rather superficial observations may ... for the time being, corroborate the impression that legislatures, despite being the branch of government designed to represent the will of the sovereign people, are in general less popular than essentially non-democratically elected responsible judiciaries. According to a recent Eurobarometer opinion poll, people in most member states o£ the European Union seem to have more confidence in judicial institutions that in the two other branches of government. Our hypothesis, then, might be that a democratically elected legislature is, by means of its mere existence a part of the constitutional order, a necessary but, because of the way it operates, by no means a sufficient prerequisite on secure public support for the political system. Other ingredients have to be added to the constitutional recipe in order to stabilize the policy. One of these ingredients might be a strong, independent and effective judicial system, with a special emphasis on its publicly most visible part the supreme or constitutional court.

Actions (login required)