Changes in the Legitimacy of the European Court of Justice : a post-maastrich analysis
By: GIBSON, James L.; CALDEIRA, Gregory A
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ArticlePublisher: Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, January 1998British Journal of Political Science 28, 1, p. 63-91Abstract: Little is known about how ordinary Europeans feel about the central policy-making institutions of the European Union (EU). This has encouraged us to analyse mass attitudes towards the legitimacy of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Relying on a cross-time (1992-93) panel analysis, as well as a cross-institutional analysis (the ECJ, the European Parliament and the high courts of the meber states), we discover that (a) the ECJ does not possess a surplus of legitimacy, and it is doubtful whether the legitimancy shortfall is only a short-term function of the row over Maastricht; (b) attitudes toward the ECJ, although in the aggregate fairly stable, changed significantly over the one-year panel survey; (c) the European Parliament has little legitimacy it can share with the ECJ; and (d) although the national high courts do have greater legitimacy, there is little evidence that they are capable of trasnferring that legitimacy to the ECJ. We conclude with some speculation about whether the ECJ will be able to build greater legitimacy, and the consequences for the EU if the court fails to do so
Little is known about how ordinary Europeans feel about the central policy-making institutions of the European Union (EU). This has encouraged us to analyse mass attitudes towards the legitimacy of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Relying on a cross-time (1992-93) panel analysis, as well as a cross-institutional analysis (the ECJ, the European Parliament and the high courts of the meber states), we discover that (a) the ECJ does not possess a surplus of legitimacy, and it is doubtful whether the legitimancy shortfall is only a short-term function of the row over Maastricht; (b) attitudes toward the ECJ, although in the aggregate fairly stable, changed significantly over the one-year panel survey; (c) the European Parliament has little legitimacy it can share with the ECJ; and (d) although the national high courts do have greater legitimacy, there is little evidence that they are capable of trasnferring that legitimacy to the ECJ. We conclude with some speculation about whether the ECJ will be able to build greater legitimacy, and the consequences for the EU if the court fails to do so
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