Michal Bobek

Peeking into each other's backyard and getting inspired by how a similar problem has been tackled by a neighbour or a colleague is certainly nothing new. Moreover, in most professions, acknowledging such inspiration coming from abroad will not pose a problem. For instance, it would only be welcomed if an English doctor suggested a less known but much more effective treatment in a hospital in Birmingham with reference to German expertise in successfully treatingthe same illness. There might be, however, a problem with similar argument in law. Modern positive law has been construed as a territorial national enterprise: for solving a legal dispute in Birmingham,only English law matters. English judges therefore ought to apply English common law and English statutes. What the Germans say or do in similar cases is irrelevant. This book is about judicial peeking: when and why do judges use inspiration from other systems in solving cases in national law? The book examines the frequency and the genuine practice of judicial peeking across national boundaries in contemporary Europe. It evaluates these findings and on their basis asks what theymean for our understanding of judicial reasoning and judicial function today.

Comparative Reasoning in European Supreme Courts

Jeremias Adams-Prassl

Regulation 261/2004 on Air Passengers' Rights has been amongst the most high-profile pieces of EU secondary legislation of the past years, generating controversial judgments of the Court of Justice, from C-344/04 ex parte IATA to C-402/07 Sturgeon. The Regulation has led to equally challenging decisions across the Member States, ranging from judicial enthusiasm for passenger rights to domestic courts holding that a Regulation could not be relied upon by an individual claimant or even threatening outright to refuse to apply its provisions. The economic stakes are significant for passengers and airlines alike, and despite the European Commission's recent publication of reform proposals, controversies appear far from settled. At the same time the Regulation should, according to the Treaty, have uniform, direct and general application in all the Member States of the Union. How, then, can this diversity be explained? What implications do the diverging national interpretations have for the EU's regulatory strategy at large? This book brings together leading experts in the field to present a series of case studies from 15 different Member States as well as the extra-territorial application of Regulation 261, combined with high-level analysis from the perspectives of Aviation law and EU law.

Ten Years On

Air Passenger Rights

The past decade has witnessed change in the ways judges for the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights are selected. The leitmotif has been securing greater professional quality of the judicial candidates, and, for this purpose, both European systems have put in place various advisory panels or selection committees that are called to evaluate the aptitude of the candidates put forward by the national governments. Are these institutional reforms successful in guaranteeing greater quality of the judicial candidates? Do they increase the legitimacy of the European courts? Has the creation of these advisory panels in any way altered the institutional balance, either horizontally within the international organizations, or vertically, between the respective organization and its Member States? Above all, has the spree of 'judicial comitology' as currently practiced a good way for selecting Europe's judges? These and a number of other questions are addressed in this topical volume in a comparative and interdisciplinary prospective. The book is structured into two elements: first, how the operation of the new selection mechanisms is captured and analyzed from different vantage points, and secondly, having mapped the ground, the book critically and comparatively engages with selected common themes, examining the new mechanisms with respect to values and principles such as democracy, judicial independence, transparency, representativeness, and legitimacy.

Michal Bobek

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