European Union Law ( EU Law) - Additional reform ideas
Over the years, a lot of reform ideas for the preliminary judgments process have been offered. These ideas can be divided into two categories: those that aim to lessen the number of requests that reach the ECJ and those that aim to improve or streamline the European Union's judicial capacity for handling these matters. (The General Court's grant of jurisdiction, as already noted, belongs to the latter type.) Group 1 suggestions comprise: limiting the selection of national courts or tribunals that have the authority to request rulings. This could mean eliminating the ability for national courts and tribunals to obtain decisions in "first instance" (for example, magistrates' and county courts and the majority of tribunals in England). Since "first instance" courts rarely ask for references, this would presumably have little practical effect. denying "first tier" appeal courts and tribunals, like the High Court and the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT), the ability to request decisions. The number of requests would undoubtedly be significantly reduced as a result of this. According to statistics, the High Court and the EAT provide a significant portion of the preliminary judgements that British courts request. These organizations would be forced to interpret EU law on their own if they lost the ability to request decisions (with the risk of divergent rulings being made). tightening the Dorsch Consult (1997) criteria to exclude inquiries from organizations like "adjudicators" and "appeal boards." removing the requirement for national courts of last resort to refer cases. This has maybe already been accomplished thanks to the acte clair doctrine. Article 267 should be revised to require national judges to take the significance, difficulty, and/or novelty of the proposed judgement into account. Among the ideas in Group 2 is letting the ECJ weed out inquiries. The majority of national courts of last resort have the ability to exclude cases found to be too minor or unoriginal. There are reasons to argue that the ECJ should have the same authority. establishing regionalized tribunals with expertise in EU law, under the supervision of a new "European High Court of Justice" that would replace the ECJ. In the United States, federal courts are organized similarly, with the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, at the top, presiding over the rulings of the different federal "circuit" courts, which in turn supervise the federal courts in the states that make up each "circuit." The academics Jacque and Weiler were the ones who first put forward the latter recommendation: The [ECJ] will continue to be at the top of the system; it may be renamed the European High Court of Justice. We suggest setting up four new Community Regional Courts with the authority to accept preliminary references from national courts in each region and issue preliminary judgements in those cases. A party to the proceedings, as well as the Commission, Council, Parliament, or Member States as interveners, may appeal to the European High Court of Justice when the Regional Court issues its decision or preliminary ruling. On the Road to European Union: A New Judicial Architecture, J. P. Jacque and J. Weiler (1990), 27 CMLR 185 A distinct interpretation of decentralization was put out by the academics Richard Drabble, Justine Thornton, and Veerle Heyvaert. They assert the following, extrapolating from the General Court's 1989 and the Civil Service Tribunal's 2005 foundings: By creating specialized organizations for issues that are normally thought to require a high level of technical specialization and expertise to address, such as trademarks and competition disputes, it would be able to broaden the spectrum even more. Environmental decision-making may fall under the category of a field that requires a specialized court. In order to account for the ongoing increase in procedures filed over time, the creation of additional EU courts or tribunals could at least minimize delays from getting any worse. "With Reference to the Environment: The Preliminary Reference Procedure, Environmental Decisions, and the Domestic Judiciary" by V Heyvaert, J Thornton, and R Drabble (2014) 130 LQR 413 All of these ideas would lighten the ECJ's load and shorten the waiting period, but at what cost? Restricting the authority of national courts to request rulings will undoubtedly result in more appeals in the national courts as disgruntled litigants attempt to bring a case before a national court that has retained the ability to do so. The "cooperation" between the ECJ and the courts and tribunals of the Member States could be jeopardized by filtering. The development of EU legal principles may be hampered, as this could discourage national courts from seeking rulings in situations where they would otherwise do so, potentially resulting in inconsistent interpretations among Member States (important doctrines like direct effect, indirect effect, state liability, and fundamental rights were all developed during preliminary ruling cases). Regionalization jeopardizes consistency, and opening numerous new courts will be expensive in terms of infrastructure, personnel, communications, and IT. There can also be disputes over where any future regional courts should be located.
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