International Law

Workload of the Court of Justice: The House of Lords EU Committee Inquiry

By Bartolus

The House of Lords European Union Select Committee - of which we are big fans - is currently conducting an inquiry into the workload of the Court of Justice and the impact of the Lisbon Treaty. In the words of Lord Bowness:

?There is a general perception that the Court is unable to handle its current workload and could face difficulties in managing an increase to its workload within reasonable timescales due to the Lisbon Treaty changes. We want to consider how the Lisbon Treaty changes will be felt in terms of workload and efficiency, for example by looking at the turnaround times for disposal of cases and how these compare to other courts of equivalent standing?.

The oral evidence given by British lawyers and civil servants made available here is really worth reading.

More problematic is some of the evidence presented by interest groups and academics available here. One's instinctive reaction to some of it "Hello, has anyone some comparative law perspective?". How can Professor Damian Chalmers seriously claim that "The Court of Justice decides far more cases than senior domestic courts [...] Whilst courts of cassation give high number of judgments, domestic constitutional courts typically give 50-60." Just a cursory glance at the French Conseil d'Etat, for example, would put him on the right track.

Anyway, we await the conclusions and recommendations of the Committee eagerly.

Full post as published by EU Law Blog on December 08, 2010 (boomark / email).