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Ideology in the adjudication of the ECJ

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Abstract

This paper analyses the adjudicative methods of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) through the concept of ideology. In part one, I discuss Tamara Ćapeta’s application of Duncan Kennedy’s conception of ideology to the ECJ. I argue it has two shortcomings, both stemming from its account of ideology: treating ideology as pertaining primarily to individual beliefs rather than institutional practices, and not treating the denial of ideology itself as an instance of ideology. In part two, I present my alternative account of ideology which is more structural and functional than Kennedy’s and focuses on uncovering mystification and de-contestation in the case law of the ECJ. In the last part, I argue that at least three features of the Court’s work can be identified as ideological through analysing the conflict between fundamental freedoms and fundamental rights: the methodology of breach/justification, the language of ‘fundamentality’ and ‘balancing’, and the practice of collegiality.

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Notes

  1. From early critiques such as Hjalte Rasmussen, On Law and Policy in the European Court of Justice: A Comparative Study in Judicial Policymaking (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1986) and Guiseppe Federico Mancini, Democracy and Constitutionalism in the European Union: Collected Essays (Oxford: Hart, 2000); to more recent examples such as Fritz W. Scharpf, ‘The Asymmetry of European Integration, or Why the EU Cannot Be a “Social Market Economy”’, Socio-Economic Review 8, no. 2 (2009): pp. 211–50; Alexander Somek, Individualism: An Essay on the Authority of the European Union, Alexander Somek (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Alexander Somek, ‘Europe: Political, Not Cosmopolitan’, European Law Journal: Review of European Law in Context 20, no. 2 (2014): pp. 142–63.; Joseph H. H. Weiler, ‘The Authority of European Law: Do We Still Believe in It?’ (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2019).

  2. The few works which do look at ideology and the Court are Wessel Wijtvliet and Arthur Dyevre, ‘Judicial Ideology in Economic Cases: Evidence from the General Court of the European Union’, European Union Politics, 2020, who conduct an empirical analysis on the influence of judicial ideology at the General Court; Clare McGlynn, Families and the European Union: Law, Politics and Pluralism (Cambridge University Press, 2006), contends that a hetero-normative ideology is embodied in EU family law; and Tamara Ćapeta, ‘Ideology and Legal Reasoning at the European Court of Justice’, in T. Perišin, S. Rodin (ed.), The Transformation or Reconstitution of Europe: The Critical Legal Studies Perspective on the Role of the Courts in the European Union (Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2018), pp. 89–120, whose contribution I will engage with at length in the paper. Pieter-Augustijn Van Malleghem, ‘Proportionality and the Erosion of Formalism’ (Leuven, KU Leuven Faculteit Rechtsgeleerdheid, 2016), https://lirias.kuleuven.be/handle/123456789/539086.

  3. Wessel Wijtvliet and Arthur Dyevre, ‘Judicial Ideology in Economic Cases’.

  4. See below for responses to the Viking quartet, as an example of this trend.

  5. Hereafter simply ‘freedoms’ and ‘rights’.

  6. As of October 2021, Tamara Ćapeta is an Advocate General of the CJEU. My discussion is of her earlier work so I do not include the title of AG when referring to her in order to avoid confusion.

  7. Case C-438/05, International Transport Workers’ Federation and Finnish Seamen’s Union (Viking), EU:C:2007:772.

  8. For a classical survey, see Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction, Ed. and Introd. by Terry Eagleton, Longman Critical Readers (London: Longman, 1994), for a more recent overview, see Jan Rehmann, Theories of Ideology: The Powers of Alienation and Subjection (Leiden: BRILL, 2013).

  9. Duncan Kennedy, A Critique of Adjudication: Fin de Siècle (Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 39.

  10. Ibid., p. 41.

  11. Ćapeta, ‘Ideology and Legal Reasoning at the European Court of Justice’, p. 91, n. 8.

  12. Ibid., p. 96.

  13. Ibid., p. 99.

  14. Kennedy, A Critique of Adjudication, quoted in Ćapeta, ‘Ideology and Legal Reasoning at the European Court of Justice’, p. 89.

  15. Ibid., p. 93.

  16. Ibid., p. 93.

  17. Ibid., p. 91. Although, in concluding the chapter she expresses a clear preference for greater transparency.

  18. Case 59/85 Reed EU:C:1986:157; see also Geert De Baere and Kathleen Gutman, ‘The Impact of the European Union and the European Court of Justice on European Family Law’, in J.M. Scherpe (ed.), European Family Law, Vol. 1 (Cheltenham, UK - Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar, 2016), Chapt. 1, (pp. 5-48).

  19. Koen Lenaerts, ‘Discovering the Law of the EU: The European Court of Justice and the Comparative Law Method’, in T. Perišin, S. Rodin (eds.), The Transformation or Reconstitution of Europe: The Critical Legal Studies Perspective on the Role of the Courts in the European Union (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2018), pp. 61–88.

  20. Ćapeta, ‘Ideology and Legal Reasoning at the European Court of Justice’, p. 99.

  21. Reed, para 15.

  22. Ćapeta, ‘Ideology and Legal Reasoning at the European Court of Justice’, p. 100.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Ćapeta, ‘Ideology and Legal Reasoning at the European Court of Justice’, p. 103.

  25. Ibid.

  26. Meant in the broader sense of insisting on one right answer and interpretative closure, rather than the narrow sense of deductive reasoning. Teleological arguments can be presented just as formalistically as the more traditionally formal deductive ones.

  27. Arguing for the superiority of one version of ideology over another on an abstract level is beyond the scope of this paper. Kennedy spends a good portion of his A Critique of Adjudication motivating his choice conception of ideology and is likely to object to my account of ideology on that abstract level. I will also mainly reference Ćapeta’s use of Kennedy’s work, rather than engage with both at the same time, to avoid undue confusion. I think that on the whole her interpretation of Kennedy on this point is sound and that a full exposition of Kennedy’s writing on ideology is not necessary for my purposes.

  28. Ćapeta, ‘Ideology and Legal Reasoning at the European Court of Justice’, p. 106.

  29. Ibid., p. 90.

  30. Ibid., p. 94; see also W. Wijtvliet, ‘Legal Scholarship, Social Science, and the Behavior of EU Judges’ (2019), https://lirias.kuleuven.be/retrieve/529697.

  31. Ćapeta, ‘Ideology and Legal Reasoning at the European Court of Justice’, p. 96.

  32. Ibid., p. 99.

  33. Ibid., p. 96.

  34. Ibid., p. 90.

  35. Lenaerts, ‘Discovering the Law of the EU’, p. 63.

  36. Ćapeta, ‘Ideology and Legal Reasoning at the European Court of Justice’, p. 119.

  37. Ibid., p. 103.

  38. See Alexander Somek, The Legal Relation (Cambridge: University Press, 2017).

  39. Emilios Christodoulidis, ‘Critical Theory and the Law: Reflections on Origins, Trajectories and Conjunctures’, Research Handbook on Critical Legal Theory, (Cheltenham: Elgar, 2019).

  40. See Paul Ricœur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. George H. Taylor (New York (N.Y.): Columbia University Press, 1986).

  41. Christodoudilis, ‘Critical Theory and the Law’, p. 12.

  42. Rahel Jaeggi, ‘Rethinking Ideology’, in New Waves in Political Philosophy, ed. Boudewijn de Bruin and Christopher F. Zurn (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2009), p. 65.

  43. Giulio Itzcovich, ‘The European Court of Justice’, in András Jakab, Arthur Dyevre, and Giulio Itzcovich, Comparative Constitutional Reasoning (Cambridge: University Press, 2017), p. 294.

  44. Ronald M. Dworkin, ‘The Model of Rules’, The University of Chicago Law Review 35, no. 1 (1967): pp. 14–46, in Jeremy Waldron, ‘Did Dworkin Ever Answer the Crits?’, in S. Hershovitz (ed.), Exploring Law's Empire: The Jurisprudence of Ronald Dworkin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 157.

    Tamara Ćapeta, ‘Ideology and Legal Reasoning at the European Court of Justice’, in T. Perišin, S. Rodin (ed.), The Transformation or Reconstitution of Europe: The Critical Legal Studies Perspective on the Role of the Courts in the European Union (Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2018), pp. 89–120.

  45. Ronald Dworkin, Law’s Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 225.

  46. Case 11-70 Internationale Handelsgesellschaft EU:C:1970:114; Case C-144/04 Mangold EU:C:2005:709.

  47. Ćapeta, ‘Ideology and Legal Reasoning at the European Court of Justice’, p. 110.

  48. Ibid.

  49. Dworkin, Law’s Empire, p. 268.

  50. Roberto Mangabeira Unger, The Critical Legal Studies Movement (Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 571, quoted in J. M. Balkin, ‘Taking Ideology Seriously: Ronald Dworkin and the CLS Critique’, UMKC Law Review 55, no. 3 (1987), p. 415.

  51. Balkin, ‘Taking Ideology Seriously’, p. 418.

  52. Ibid.

  53. Dworkin, ‘Law’s Empire’, pp. 443-44.

  54. Balkin, ‘Taking Ideology Seriously’, p. 421, n.98.

  55. See Duncan Kennedy, ‘Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication’, Harvard Law Review 89, no. 8 (1976): pp. 1685–1778.

  56. Waldron, ‘Did Dworkin Ever Answer the Crits?’, p. 159.

  57. E.g. Somek, Individualism; Mitchel Lasser, ‘Fundamentally Flawed: The CJEU’s Jurisprudence on Fundamental Rights and Fundamental Freedoms’, Theoretical Inquiries in Law 15, no. 1 (2014): pp. 229–60.

  58. Opinion of AG Trstenjak in Case C-271/08, Commission v. Germany EU:C:2010:426.

  59. Mancini, Democracy and Constitutionalism in the European Union.

  60. Morten Rasmussen, Law Meets History: Interpreting the Van Gend En Loos Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

  61. See K. Sabeel Rahman, ‘Democracy against Domination: Contesting Economic Power in Progressive and Neorepublican Political Theory’, Contemporary Political Theory 16, no. 1 (2017): pp. 41–64.

  62. Scharpf, ‘The Asymmetry of European Integration, or Why the EU Cannot Be a “Social Market Economy”’.

  63. Friedrich August Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order (London: Routledge, 1949).

  64. Philippe Van Parijs, ‘Just Europe’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 47, no. 1 (2019): pp. 5–36.

  65. Meaning simply that the way each member states regulates its labour market in law is also influenced by its cultures and traditions.

  66. C-376/98 Germany v Parliament and Council of the European Union, 5.10.2000 [2000] ECR I-8419 (Tobacco Advertisement I); Case C-380/03 Germany v Parliament and Council [2006] [ECR] I-11573 (Tobacco Advertisement II).

  67. Somek, Individualism.

  68. Marco Dani, ‘The Subjectification of the Citizen in European Public Law’, Working Paper, 2015, https://cadmus.eui.eu//handle/1814/34701.

  69. Case C-159/90, SPUC v. Grogan and Others, EU:C:1991:378; CaseC-157/99, Geraets-Smitsand Peerbooms, EU:C:2001:404; and Viking. More cases in which the Court employs breach/justification methodology: Case C-36/02, Omega, EU:C:2004:614; Case C-244/06, Dynamic Medien, EU:C:2008:85; Case C-368/95, Vereinigte Familiapress Zeitungsverlags- und vertriebs GmbH v. Bauer Verlag, EU:C:1997:325.

  70. Lasser, Fundamentally Flawed, p. 230.

  71. This is a simplified formulation. For a more detailed analysis see: Catherine Barnard, The Substantive Law of the EU: The Four Freedoms, 6th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) for an overview, and the Opinion of AG Sharpston in Case C-212/06 Gouvernement de la communauté française.

  72. Viking, para 44.

  73. Picard, ’Collective Action vs Free Movement: The Viking and Laval cases”, 14 European Review of

    Labour and Research (2008): pp. 160–165; Barnard, ‘Social Dumping or Dumping Socialism?’, 67 CLJ (2008): pp. 262–264.

  74. Frank Vandenbroucke, Catherine Barnard, and Geert De Baere, A European Social Union after the Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

  75. DIRECTIVE (EU) 2018/957 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL, Preamble, para 4.

  76. Case C-341/05 Laval un Partneri EU:C:2007:809, para 103.

  77. See Damjan Kukovec, ‘Economic Law, Inequality, and Hidden Hierarchies on the EU Internal Market’, Michigan Journal of International Law 38, no. 1 (2016): pp. 1–55.

  78. Lasser, ‘Fundamentally Flawed’, p. 248.

  79. Reynolds, 644. See also Syrpis and Novitz, ‘Economic and Social Rights in Conflict: Political and Judicial Approaches to Their Reconciliation, 33 EL Rev. (2008): pp. 411–426.

  80. Ibid.

  81. Lasser, ‘Fundamentally Flawed’, p. 251.

  82. Omega, para 36.

  83. Lasser, ‘Fundamentally Flawed’, p. 247.

  84. In Reynolds: Case 15/74, Centrafram BV and Others v. Sterling Drug, EU:C:1974:114, para 8 (goods); Case 152/73, Sotgiu v. Deutsche Bundespost, EU:C:1974:13, para 4; Case 41/74, Van Duyn v. Home Office, EU:C:1974:133, para 13 (workers); Case 2/74, Reyners v. Belgium, EU:C:1974:68, para 43 (establishment); Case 36/74, Walrave and Koch, EU:C:1974:140, para 18 (services); Case 7/78, R v. Thompson and Others, EU:C:1978:209, para 22 (capital).

  85. Reynolds, p. 647.

  86. E.g. in Internationale Handelsgesellschaft.

  87. Eleanor Drywood, ‘Giving with One Hand, Taking with the Other: Fundamental Rights, Children and the Family Reunification Decision’, 32 EL Rev. (2007), pp. 396–407, at p. 397.

  88. Viking, para 79.

  89. Reynolds, p. 646.

  90. Joint Declaration by the European Parliament, Council and the Commission concerning the protection of fundamental rights and the ECHR, O.J. 1977, C 103/1.

  91. Art. 6(1) TEU.

  92. See Reynolds, p. 664.

  93. Ćapeta, ‘Ideology and Legal Reasoning at the European Court of Justice’, p. 103.

  94. For a critique of ECJ’s reasoning see Somek, Individualism.

  95. Ibid., A.G. Trstenjak in Case C-271/08, Commission v. Germany, EU:C:2010:183; Opinion of A.G. Trstenjak in Case C-81/09, Typou, EU:C:2010:304;

  96. Reynolds, p. 665.

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    Aristel Skrbic

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Skrbic, A. Ideology in the adjudication of the ECJ. Law and Philos 42, 561–591 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10982-023-09475-z

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