A Case of Disaggregated Sovereignty: The European Court of Justice and the Turn to Fundamental Rights Protection, 1969-1974
Tommaso Pavone
University of Chicago
February 1, 2012
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to protect fundamental human rights in a series of important cases between 1969 and 1974. It addresses the central question of what prompted this jurisdictional expansion – was the court simply channeling the preferences of member states, was it acting independently in the quest for self-empowerment, or is the narrative more complicated? Drawing from a case study of its Stauder (1969), Internationale Handelsgesellschaft (1970), and Nold (1974) decisions, I argue that the Court’s turn to protect fundamental rights is neither emblematic of the constraining power of member states nor the ECJ’s supranational entrepreneurialism. Rather, the Court’s decisions support a theory of disaggregated sovereignty that emphasizes the role of transnational judicial networks. These networks produce webs of intertwined elastic linkages and dialectical interactions that play an increasingly important role in the daily practice of European governance.
This paper analyzes the decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to protect fundamental human rights in a series of important cases between 1969 and 1974. It addresses the central question of what prompted this jurisdictional expansion – was the court simply channeling the preferences of member states, was it acting independently in the quest for self-empowerment, or is the narrative more complicated? Drawing from a case study of its Stauder (1969), Internationale Handelsgesellschaft (1970), and Nold (1974) decisions, I argue that the Court’s turn to protect fundamental rights is neither emblematic of the constraining power of member states nor the ECJ’s supranational entrepreneurialism. Rather, the Court’s decisions support a theory of disaggregated sovereignty that emphasizes the role of transnational judicial networks. These networks produce webs of intertwined elastic linkages and dialectical interactions that play an increasingly important role in the daily practice of European governance.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 31
Keywords: European Court of Justice, Court of Justice of the European Union, human rights, fundamental rights, European Union, European integration, intergovernmentalism, neofunctionalism, principal-agent theory, sovereignty, transnational governanceFull text available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1997528
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