Xxxxx Sweet, Governing with Judges Sample Clauses

Xxxxx Sweet, Governing with Judges. Constitutional Politics in Europe, OUP, Oxford (2000), at 141-144. scrutinised beyond the court though when issues impinging on personal matters concerning the populace are at stake – abortion, same-sex partnerships/marriages, religion/faith, employment rights – but the interest among the public has a tendency to wane when the issues are no longer personal or immediate for them. Where a constitutional court provides a well-reasoned exposition of the domestic constitutional order and its relationship with the EU, such judgement may lead to a flood of articles in learned journals but would hardly become the subject of heated discussions among the general public. The general disinterest of EU citizens in the continued existence of their (for many) centuries- old nation states weighed against an increasingly common future has perhaps left a lacuna in the democratic legitimisation of the integrative processes which the constitutional justices have attempted to plug. Constitutional courts, in order to guarantee a degree of national constitutional accountability, have sought to provide deliberated and reasoned judgements in the face of the seemingly inexorable progress towards an ever closer Union.28 This does not result in a permanent block on all progress to such a closer Union but rather (admittedly, somewhat naïvely on the current author’s part) in the reformulation of the context in which constitutional justices render their decisions on the further impulses of integration and provide their own input in respect of the EU as another level of contribution to the debate in this contested polity. Xxxxx Xxxxx has examined the contours of this process in the French, German, Italian and Spanish legal systems.29 He does not mince his words, though, when he states:30 “It is crucial to stress, however, that the evolution of the supremacy doctrine has steadily upgraded the capacity of both the ECJ and the national courts to intervene in policy processes, to shape political outcomes, and thus to provoke judicialization.” In her research into this area, Xxxxx describes this process accordingly:31 Supreme courts clearly want to avoid a direct conflict with the European Court, conflict that could cause significant damage to the process of European integration and set the precedent that it is legal to ignore international courts if their decisions conflict with national law. As mentioned, supreme courts also do not want to become appeals courts for ECJ decisions. They have ...