Polish civil judges as European Union law judges: knowledge, experiences and attitudes

The study seeks to provide a better understanding of the way civil judges of lower courts in Poland – a relatively new Member States of the EU - behave in the context of EU law and, moreover, to explain how the national judges adapt to the new legal circumstances created by the law of the European Union. For that purpose, the study examines the way national judges approach the law of the European Union by providing empirical, that is to say quantitative and qualitative data gathered among Polish private law judges of lower courts. The respective data was collected by means of a questionnaire distributed among the respective judges and semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with them. The present study is a descriptive attempt at evaluating and explaining what is actually happening in the Polish civil courts in the context of EU law application and more precisely how and why national judges participate in the process of legal integration within the European Union. For the foregoing purpose, the study focuses on three a priori established set of problems which relate to the knowledge of EU law and of the mechanisms of its application among national judges, the daily experiences of judges with the application of EU law and their personal attitudes towards the law of the European Union and the new role it imposes on them and the Union itself. The three clusters of variables are scrutinized in a broader institutional and operational legal context of the daily judicial functioning. In that sense, the study first establishes the formal, legal context in which the judges function and respectively it focuses on the way judges personally construct the EU legality, the way they perceive and understand their function as EU law judges and the way they experience the law of the European Union in the daily practice. By and large, the book offers a contextual and nuanced approach to the problem of operation of EU law in the national legal order

Why more needs to be done to improve national judges’ knowledge of EU law

The European Union and its courts cannot ensure the effective application of EU law alone, with courts at the national level also playing a vital role in its application within individual countries. But how knowledgeable are national judges concerning EU law? Outlining results of a recent survey, Juan A Mayoral, Tobias Nowak and Urszula Jaremba write that the level of knowledge of EU law exhibited by national judges is not as high as might be expected. They propose a number of potential changes which could be implemented to improve the training of national judges and ensure that EU law is applied more effectively in domestic courts

Perspectives on Europeanization of National Judiciaries: Old and New Questions

The aim of this article is to bring together different legal, political science and sociological perspectives addressing the problem of Europeanization of national judiciaries. In that sense, this article provides an overview of several old aspects regarding the way and extent national courts/judges adapted to their role of European judges. Next to that, it is looked into the manner of and reasons behind judges’ involvement in the process of EU legal integration, whereby a new research agenda is offered. For that purpose, new questions are raised and different empirical aspects are discussed concerning, for instance, courts compliance with EU law, the relevance of national judges’ individual profiles (knowledge, attitudes and values) but also the role of institutions (networks) and legal systems in the process of Europeanization of judges

At the Crossroads of National and European Union Law. Experiences of National Judges in a Multi-level Legal Order

__Abstract__ The notion and theory of legal pluralism have been witnessing an increasing interest on part of scholars. The theory that originates from the legal anthropological studies and is one of the major topical streams in the realm of socio-legal studies slowly but steady started to become a point of departure for other disciplines. Unavoidably it has also gained attention from the scholars in the realm of the law of the European Union. It is the aim of the present article to illustrate the legal reality in which the law of the Union and the national laws coexist and intertwine with each other and, subsequently, to provide some insight on the manner national judges personally construct their own understanding of this complex legal architecture and the problems they come across in that respect. In that sense, the present article not only illustrates the new, pluralistic legal environment that came into being with the founding of the Communities, later the European Union, but also adds another dimension to this by presenting selected, empirical data on how national judges in several Member States of the EU individually perceive, adapt to, experience and make sense of this reality of overlapping and intertwining legal orders. Thus, the principal aim of this article is to illustrate how the pluralistic legal system works in the mind of a national judge and to capture the more day-to-day legal reality by showing how the law works on the ground through the lived experiences of national judges

De samenloop van het kapitaalverkeer en de vrijheid van vestiging: een duidelijke afbakening tussen de vrijheden op het gebied van de fiscale behandeling van dividenden?

De inhoud van het vrije verkeer van kapitaal (artikel 63 VWEU) en het vestigingsrecht (artikel 49 VWEU) kunnen elkaar aanzienlijk overlappen. De kwestie van samenloop van beide vrijheden is tegenwoordig een van de meest relevante aspecten betreffende de regels van de interne markt. Het antwoord op de vraag of er een duidelijke afbakening tussen deze vrijheden bestaat is cruciaal in de context van derdelandensituaties, dat wil zeggen situaties waarin vennootschappen uit derde landen betrokken zijn. In deze bijdrage wordt de kwestie van de ontwikkeling van de rechtspraak van het Hof van Justitie omtrent de samenloop van bovengenoemde vrijheden besproken. We behandelen deze kwestie aan de hand van een analyse van de jurisprudentie van het Hof die betrekking heeft op voornamelijk, maar niet uitsluitend, de kwestie van de fiscale behandeling van dividenden

Interviewing Judges in the Transnational Context

This article addresses the problem of qualitative interviewing in the field of legal studies, and more precisely the practice of interviewing judges. In the last five years the authors of this article conducted two different research projects which involved interviewing judges as a research method. In this article the authors share their experience and views on the qualitative interviewing method, and provide the reader with an overview of the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ attached to this tool, but also its advantages and disadvantages

Creating EU law judges: the role of generational differences, legal education and judicial career paths in national judges' assessment regarding EU law knowledge

The judicial protection system in the European Union (EU) is premised on the fact that national judges are supposed to act as decentralized EU judges. This role is exercised through tools enshrined in, inter alia, primacy, direct and indirect effect of EU law, and the preliminary ruling procedure. However, a number of studies show that national judges experience difficulties in exercising EU competences due to their lack of knowledge in the field of EU law. In this contribution we study the differences in the level of self-evaluation of EU law knowledge among judges, which consequently influence the way judges approach EU law. For that purpose we question the relevance of several institutional and socio-legal factors, such as organization of the judiciary, generation, the system of legal education and judicial training and practical experience with EU law. Our analysis is based on data collected from German, Dutch, Polish and Spanish judges