Human Rights and the European Court of Justice: An Appraisal

Through the decisions of the European Court of Justice ( ECJ ), human rights have been placed at the forefront of the agenda of the European Union ( EU ). In analyzing the jurisprudence of the Court, one is struck both by the substantive impact that it has had on the development of human rights throughout the Union and by the procedural route through which this has been accomplished. This brief Essay will attempt to highlight both of these developments and explore some of the challenges that the Court faces as it confronts a vastly different world from that facing Europe in 1957

Can the EU be a Constitutional System Without Universal Access to Judical Review

This Comment engages with a central dilemma about the legal order of the European Union: is the EU a constitutional system, a treaty system, or a hybrid system for which we must develop a new conceptual vocabulary? Besides intrinsic interest, resolving this categorization problem is important for deciding a number of issues in European Union law. For example, are legal strategies that are normally available to parties in international law viable in the European legal order? Should Community law be supreme over national law? If so, what limits should be placed on that supremacy, and “who should have the ultimate power to decide the boundaries of Community competence[?]” Although some scholars have properly cautioned that the answer to these questions “do not inexorably follow from the choice between the competing visions of Community legal order,” the categorization nonetheless suggests which alternative should more naturally follow. One might compare this European issue to the ongoing debate in the American legal community about whether the Constitution is an agreement between the states or an agreement between the people independent of the states. Although answering the question leaves much room for debate about the boundaries of federalism, it does suggest a great deal about one’s orientation, and in some cases may even determine the ultimate outcome

The protection of civil rights and liberties and the transformation of Union citizenship

https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781788113632/9781788113632.00018.xm

RECONCEPTUALISING THE THIRD SPACE OF LEGAL TRANSLATION: A STUDY OF THE COURT OF JUSTICE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

This paper explores the concept of legal translation as a Third Space through the lens of the ‘multilingual’ Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ). In many ways legal translation at that Court fits readily with the characterisation of translation as a Third Space. Due to complex internal production processes the ECJ produces texts which are undoubtedly hybrid in nature, and which exhibit distinctive features on a lexical and textual level marking them out as a product of cross-fertilisation of influences from source and target languages and legal cultures. Even the teleological approach taken towards legal reasoning at the ECJ occupies a space outside the strict confines of the texts involved. Both the processes and the product of the ECJ’s language system appear to bear all the hallmarks of translation as a Third Space. However, translation at the ECJ also challenges the concept of a Third Space. The prevailing definitions of translation as a Third Space fail to effectively conceptualise additional nuances of the specific nature of drafting and the complex nature of translation at the ECJ. This paper uses original empirical data to demonstrate that translation at the ECJ places constraints on the undefined, vague and fluid nature of the Third Space, warping the forces at work within that space. In this regard, rather than an amorphous space, the Third Space is better thought of as a determinate area which is delimited by elements of translation process which constrain it. This adapted framing of the Third Space can consequently be used to better understand and illustrate the dynamics at play in other areas of legal translation where the current concept of the Third Space is equally inadequate for encompassing the specific nature of translation practices which impact on that space-in-between