Mimetic evolution : new comparative perspectives on the Court of Justice of the European Union in its federal judicial architecture

Abstract

The dissertation aims at studying the historical institutional evolution of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the judicial arm of the supranational European community. The Court has been largely analysed, in the multidisciplinary field of European studies, particularly because of its central role in the process of continental integration, for the role played for the evolution of the European Union legal order. The perspective I would like to suggest and to develop in this work tries to differentiate itself by taking a somehow reverse standpoint. First, I will focus on the evolution of the Court itself, more than on the impressive evolution of the EU legal order and its judge-made nature. Naturally, this last aspect will be the background of my analysis. In this respect, I will not be much concerned with the evolution of case law, jurisprudence or the interpretative activity of the European Court but more on the structure and the organization of the Court itself, taken as an institution. Finally, I will try to develop this approach by making use of the precious insights provided by the comparative analysis of law. I will select some specific yet central aspects of the structural, organizational, institutional development of the Court in the decades since its foundation and will do this with a purpose. My aim is to show, through a comparative analysis, how the development and institutional evolution of the Court of Justice of the European Union can be considered mimetic - able to engage and somehow internalize the solicitations which came from EU Member States influences of different legal traditions (with increasing strain as the EU grew dimensionally) and responding to global challenges in relation to the increasing role of the international forms of judicial review and of the international judicial review bodies. This proved decisive, I argue, for strengthening the authority of the Court of Justice in its federal judicial architecture.