Perspectives on the Supranational Judiciary

Video 17/12: Parte I; Parte II;
Video 18/12: Parte I; Parte II; Parte III; Parte IV.

Room B, Faculty of Law

The judicial architecture of the European Union plays a key role in the definition and enforcement of EU governmental strategies. It includes a two-tier set of institutions: the Court of Justice of the European Union, directly established by the Union, and national courts, co-opted in EU adjudication through a series of rules and doctrines interfacing the EU and national judicial processes. The EU assumes the existence of member states’ judiciaries for the enforcement of its rules given that the judicial function in the EU is almost entirely performed by national courts. The latter operate at the same time as part of member states’ and EU judiciaries and only to a limited extent is their functioning regulated by EU sources of law. This integrated judicial system gives rise to the Supranational Judiciary.
The conference explores the characteristics of the Supranational Judiciary following three distinct perspectives. The focal point of the first perspective is the organisation. A first contribution introduces the notion of supranational judiciary, maps out its structure and identifies the techniques of coordination developed to interface EU and national courts. A second contribution investigates the specific features of the supranational judiciary in the area of freedom, security and justice, with regard also to mainly informal networking. A third contribution explores the impact of EU membership in the organisation, recruitment, training and networking of national courts. A final contribution examines the difficulties emerged in interfacing the EU and ECHR judicial systems, focusing on the specific role plaid by constitutional courts.
The comparative perspective tries to capture the distinctive features of the supranational judiciary by looking at a series of other judicial architectures such as those existing in federal systems, the Inter-American and the European Courts of Human Rights. 
The final session looks at the supranational judiciary from a normative perspective, i.e. it critically reflects on the nature of the EU normative claims and the judicial reactions they can generate at domestic level. It firstly identifies the characteristics of EU legality with a view to the specific policy objectives and normative concerns of the Union. The controversial character of EU legality justifies a variety of reactions (loyalty, dialectic, resistance) which are in turn analysed.

Program

17 December 2015, 14:00-18:30

Welcome and Introduction
Dean Giuseppe Nesi
Roberto Toniatti

KeyNote Address
The Supranational Judiciary and the Quest for a Common European Judicial Culture
Carlo Guarneri

Session I - The organisational perspective
Chair: Marco Dani

The Supranational judiciary: notion, structure and techniques of coordination
Roberto Toniatti 

The Supranational Judiciary in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice
Simone Benvenuti

Being an EU Court: organization, recruitment, training and networking
Raffaele Sabato 

Difficulties at the interface between the Supranational Judiciary and the ECHR
Mathias Hartwig 

16.30 coffee break

18 December 2015, 9:30-12:30

Session II - The comparative perspective
Chair: Roberto Toniatti

The Supranational Judiciary compared with models of a Federal Judiciary
Raffaele Bifulco 

The Supranational Judiciary compared with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
Joan Solanes Mullor 

The Supranational Judiciary compared with the European Court of Human Rights
Monica Claes 

10.30 coffee break

13.00 lunch buffet

18 December 2015, 14:30-18:30

Session III - The normative perspective
Chair: Raffaele Bifulco

Qualifying EU legality
Marco Dani 

Priority in Loyalties: National Courts Serving EU Legality
Daniel Sarmiento 

Dialectic: Courts correcting EU legality (and being corrected by the ECJ)
Jan Komárek

Resistance: Courts opposing EU legality
Augustin José Menéndez 

Concluding Remarks
Miguel Maduro

16.30 coffee break

Coffee break and  buffet lunch will be offered to registered participants.