Supreme Courts As Gatekeepers: Studying Patterns of Supreme Courts Reaction to European Legal Integration

Since the foundation of the European Union and the European Convention on Human Rights, the amount of international law facing national courts has skyrocketed. The question is, however, how national courts respond to this development. Do they engage themselves in some kind of European legal dialogue, pushing towards increased (legal) integration in Europe? Or, at the other extreme, do they largely ignore the rising amount of European (case) law? Since the Supreme Courts hear more complex cases as compared to the lower instances – most importantly cases related to the compatibility between European and national law – the behavior of Supreme Courts seems especially important in this regard. Although these questions are crucial in order to comprehend the dynamics of integration Europe, the literature still lacks a systematic investigation into diverse impact of European law in national supreme courts and the factors leading to the openness/receptiveness of national courts to European jurisprudence. Why do some national Supreme Courts apparently show a much more positive attitude towards international law than others? Based on a comparative case study, this paper sets out to investigate exactly this question.