Abstracts from the 8th International Conference on cGMP Generators, Effectors and Therapeutic Implications

This work was supported by a restricted research grant of Bayer AG

Are Advocates General Political? An Empirical Analysis of the Voting Behavior of the Advocates General at the European Court of Justice

The question whether political preferences of EU Member States play a role in the decision-making of the members of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has so far gone largely unanswered in the literature. This paper formally tests the hypothesis that the political preferences of Member State governments are reflected in the decisions of the Advocates General, who are judge-like members of the ECJ. The empirical analysis is motivated by a novel model of the interaction between the Advocate General and the judicial panel. Based on this model, the paper develops a formal test to answer whether there is a relationship between the policy preferences of EU Member State governments with regard to European integration and the decision behavior of Advocates General appointed by these governments. It then tests this hypothesis using a newly assembled dataset combining information on agreements and disagreements between the opinions issued by the Advocates General and the ensuing judgments of the ECJ in preliminary ruling proceedings with information on political preferences of Member State governments obtained from party manifesto data. The results of this test suggest that the votes of Advocates General reflect the political preferences of the appointing governments vis-à-vis European integration.ISSN:1555-587

The Limits of Smart Contracts

This essay investigates the potential of smart contracts to replace the legal system as an infrastructure for transactions. It argues that (contract) law remains relevant for most transactions even if they are entirely structured by way of smart contract. The reason for this is that the power of smart contracts to create and enforce obligations against attempts by the legal system to thwart their execution is limited. These limitations are most relevant for obligations to perform certain actions outside the blockchain, but also apply to other obligations contingent on facts outside the records stored on the blockchain

Writing Style and Legal Traditions

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) in many ways is a unique court, and it has undergone a remarkable transition in its roughly fifty-five years of existence. While it originally consisted of just seven judges, six of whom hailed from a country with a French law tradition, it now consists of twenty-eight judges from all major European legal families. Originally designed as an international court with jurisdiction to adjudicate disputes about the interpretation of an international treaty with a rather narrow scope, it has developed into what might be the single most powerful court in Europe. Despite the ECJ’s importance, the drivers of its decisions are not well understood. Commentators take different views on whether its decisions are mainly motivated by legalistic considerations (Sankari 2013), whether the ECJ is best understood as a political actor with strong preferences toward European integration (Rasmussen 1986), whether the political background of individual actors plays a role (Frankenreiter 2017, 2018), and to what degree the French legal culture, which dominated the ECJ at least during its early years of existence, still influences the output of EU courts today (Komárek 2009; Zhang, Liu, and Garoupa 2018). The study presented in this chapter focuses on one specific aspect of the ECJ’s output, namely, the writing style of its opinions, and uses a computational approach to explore whether the French influence has become less dominant over the years

Text as Observational Data

Quantitative research has traditionally been focused on estimating the parameters by which different variables are related, with an emphasis on establishing causal relationships. It is well known that any study using observational data has to overcome fundamental challenges to its internal validity and precisely elucidate the reasoning and assumptions made about the counterfactual. In this chapter, we address this crucial concern in the context of the new wealth of textual observational data now available for quantitative approaches to legal studies. We also discuss at a high level the opportunities made possible by these new data, as well as the methodological considerations raised by the use of quantitative techniques in a domain heretofore dominated by qualitative approaches

Forum Selling Abroad

Judges decide cases. Do they also try to influence which cases they decide? Clearly plaintiffs “shop” for the most attractive forum, but do judges try to attract cases by “selling” their courts? Some American judges actively try to enlarge their influence by making their courts attractive to plaintiffs, a phenomenon known as “forum selling.” This article shows that forum selling occurs outside the U.S. as well, focusing on Germany, a country that is often held up as the paragon of the civil law approach to adjudication. As in the U.S., German courts attract cases primarily through the pro-plaintiff manipulation of procedure, including the routine issuance of ex parte injunctions in press cases and refusal to stay patent infringement proceedings when the patent’s validity is challenged in another forum. A critical difference between forum selling in Germany and the U.S. is that court administrators are more actively involved in Germany. As state officials, German court administrators have the incentive to consider the effect of caseloads on government revenue and the local economy, and they use their power to allocate judges to particular kinds of cases in order to make their courts attractive. They also use their power over promotion, case allocation, and resources to reward judges who succeed in attracting cases. Based on an extensive set of interviews with attorneys, judges and court officials, this article describes evidence of forum selling in German patent, press, and antitrust law. It also analyzes how German courts compete internationally with courts from other countries

Forum Selling Abroad

Judges decide cases. Do they also try to influence which cases they decide? Clearly plaintiffs “shop” for the most attractive forum, but do judges try to attract cases by “selling” their courts? Some American judges actively try to enlarge their influence by making their courts attractive to plaintiffs, a phenomenon known as “forum selling.” This article shows that forum selling occurs outside the U.S. as well, focusing on Germany, a country that is often held up as the paragon of the civil law approach to adjudication. As in the U.S., German courts attract cases primarily through the pro-plaintiff manipulation of procedure, including the routine issuance of ex parte injunctions in press cases and refusal to stay patent infringement proceedings when the patent’s validity is challenged in another forum. A critical difference between forum selling in Germany and the U.S. is that court administrators are more actively involved in Germany. As state officials, German court administrators have the incentive to consider the effect of caseloads on government revenue and the local economy, and they use their power to allocate judges to particular kinds of cases in order to make their courts attractive. They also use their power over promotion, case allocation, and resources to reward judges who succeed in attracting cases. Based on an extensive set of interviews with attorneys, judges and court officials, this article describes evidence of forum selling in German patent, press, and antitrust law. It also analyzes how German courts compete internationally with courts from other countries