Activism on and off the bench: Pierre Pescatore and the law of integration

in Common Market Law Review (2020), 57(02), 475-502

This article examines the life and career of Pierre Pescatore, one of the most prominent, but also controversial, promoters of European Community law. Drawing on extensive archive material, as well as ... [more ▼]

This article examines the life and career of Pierre Pescatore, one of the most prominent, but also controversial, promoters of European Community law. Drawing on extensive archive material, as well as interviews with relatives, it aims at understanding how and why he left such a strong footprint on the development of Community, later EU, law, both as a judge at the European Court of Justice and as a law scholar. Going beyond a one-man story, the article situates him in the broader context of the 1970s bench of judges in order to understand the so-called “activism” which the ECJ revealed during this decade. Thus, looking through the lens of one of the leading figures of the Court, it provides new explanations as to why the ECJ’s case law was so provocatively pro-integrationist during the 1970s. [less ▲]

Luxembourg’s judicial elite on the path to independence from foreign and national political influence (1795 to 1848)

Presentation (2019, September 24)

Judge biographies and the acceptance of the CJEU’s ‘revolutionary’ case law of the 1960s and 1970s

Presentation (2019, April 01)

Biographies as a methodology to unveil the politicization of the Court of Justice of the EU

Presentation (2018, September 21)

Bypassing (a lack of) archives: a prosopography approach of the history of the European Court of Justice, 1950s-1970s

Presentation (2018)

Ever since its landmark decisions Van Gend en Loos and Costa v. ENEL, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has played a key role in the so-called ‘constitutionalization’ of the European legal order. The ... [more ▼]

Ever since its landmark decisions Van Gend en Loos and Costa v. ENEL, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has played a key role in the so-called ‘constitutionalization’ of the European legal order. The fact that its jurisprudence has given EU law a proto-federal framework has been demonstrated, analyzed and commented in countless publications by legal scholars and social scientists, who have tried to grasp how the ECJ could consistently pursue its active prointegration path without provoking a rebellion by the Member States. In the historiography of the EU, however, the ECJ was for many decades largely absent. The main reason for this absence is the Court’s long-standing lack of willingness to give researchers access to its archives. It was only in 2016, that the first archival documents from the ECJ were made available to the public at the Historical Archives of the European Union in Florence. Long awaited, they reveal little about the functioning of the Court. This paper presents how I have in my research used a prosopographical approach to raise the following challenge: if the ECJ does not (really) let us inside via its archives, can we get inside by studying those who worked at the Court, and above all, the main protagonists behind its case law, the judges? Could an investigation of their social and professional backgrounds, a study of their networks and convictions towards European integration, the analysis of their academic writings and personal papers, give us an unprecedented peak behind the curtains of European judicial decision-making? This presentation shows that (and how) knowing more about the judges reveals a lot about the functioning of the ECJ in the period in which it laid the foundations of the constitutionalization (1950s to 1970s). By providing key insights on the visions that the first generations of judges had on Europe and their role in the European constructions process, it reveals the dynamics that prevailed inside the Court and explains why the bench of judges became outright provocative in the 1970s. The prosopographical approach also brings to the surface new knowledge on the Court’s relationship with the Member States of the European communities. By laying bare why the first and highly decisive European judicial decision-makers were chosen by the governments, the collective biographies give new insights into the Member States’ expectations with regard to the institution and their reaction towards its provocative case law. Finally, the prosopographical approach reveals that the ECJ had a very active political network, which it used to pursue its strategic legal and political interests, and make sure that it would in its jurisprudence not go to a point where it risked being overthrown by the governments. [less ▲]

Robert Lecourt (1908 - 2004)

Presentation (2018)

Tessili vs Dunlop 1976: The Political Background of Judicial Restraint

in Fernanda, Nicole; Davies, Bill (Eds.) EU Law stories: Contextual and critical histories of European Jurisprudence (2017)