Abstract
A cross-section analysis covering up to 42 countries and including the usual control variables shows that central government outlays as a share of general government outlays are significantly larger if the judges of the constitutional or supreme court are independent of the federal government and parliament and if the barriers to constitutional amendment are high. This evidence is consistent with the view that constitutional judges have a vested interest in centralization or that there is self-selection or both. These insights are used to draw lessons for the reform of the European Court of Justice. Self-selection should be reduced by requiring judicial experience—ideally with the highest national courts. The vested interest in centralization could be overcome by adding a subsidiarity court.
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Notes
See, e.g., Schermers (1974), Stein (1981), Philip (1983), Rasmussen (1986), Weiler (1991, 1999), Bzdera (1992), Burley and Mattli (1993), Garrett (1993), Neill (1995), Bednar et al. (1996), Garrett et al. (1998), Pitarakis and Tridimas (2003), Voigt (2003), Josselin and Marciano (2007) and Höreth (2008).
Spain is, strictly speaking, not a federal state but some of its provinces are highly autonomous so that I classify it as quasi-federal.
“The few existing comparative studies of federal high courts indicate that all such courts do not hinder the accrual of power to the political center through legislative actions of the central government, and sometimes these high courts actively encourage such centralist tendencies” (Bzdera, p. 124). “Central judical institutions almost invariably have centralizing rather than particularist tendencies” (Chalmers, p. 63). “Federal polities sustained through effective judical review tend to evolve in ways that centralize power. The result hinges in part on the extent to which the court performs its assigned role” (Stone Sweet, p. 8).
For a probit analysis of the federalism decisions of individual judges see Collins’ study (2007) of the US Supreme Court.
The dummy for provincial autonomy has been set equal to 1 for all countries which reported provincial government outlays in the IMF Government Finance Statistics: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Malaysia, Mauritius, Peru, the Russian Federation, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland and the US.
The dummy for regional devolution has been set equal to 1 for France, Italy and the UK.
This requirement exists in all countries contained in the sample except Iceland, Kazakhstan and Sweden. In Sweden, all constitutional judges are appointed by the national executive which is likely to be more centralist than Parliament and the electorate which decide about constitutional amendments.
Recent experience in Germany is an excellent example.
According to the data, the real income of the judges is protected by the constitution in the following federal states: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Mauritius, Russia, South Africa and the US. The repeated majority requirement for constitutional amendments exists in all federal states except Argentina, Germany, Russia and Switzerland. The case of Switzerland, however, is difficult to interpret because the Bundesgericht’s role in interpreting the constitution is quite limited and because constitutional amendments require a popular referendum. If Switzerland is omitted from the sample, the significance level is 10.6%.
The significant coefficient of income independence could be due to reverse causation if “political unification makes independent tribunals possible” (Posner and Yoo 2005: 72) but the authors hesitate to apply this hypothesis to national rather than international courts.
The data were kindly provided by Stefan Voigt.
The most important example was the so-called Cassis de Dijon decision (1979).
On this point see especially Weiler (1991).
A rare counter-example is the so-called Barber case of 1989 (262/88, ECR I-1989). The Court’s ruling that sex-based differences in pensionable ages had to be eliminated was overturned by the so-called Barber Protocol of the Maastricht Treaty.
For an econometric analysis of the enforcement problem see Vanberg (2005, Chap. 4).
Stone Sweet concludes: “The system worked steadily to expand the supranational character of the EU, to push the integration project much further than Member States governments would have been prepared to go on their own” (p. 15).
As the European Representation Study has demonstrated, the members of the European Parliament prefer far more competencies for the European Union than the citizens do (Schmitt and Thomassen 1999, Table 3.1).
Weiler (1999, p. 322) supports the idea.
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Acknowledgments
The author thanks Bernhard Boockmann, Martin Gassebner, Rafael La Porta, Dennis Mueller, George Tridimas, Georg Vanberg, the participants of the Corsica Workshop on Law and Economics and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper. Computational assistance from Ugurlu Soylu is gratefully acknowledged.
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Vaubel, R. Constitutional courts as promoters of political centralization: lessons for the European Court of Justice. Eur J Law Econ 28, 203–222 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-009-9108-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-009-9108-8