Selecting Europe's Judges
Author: Michal Bobek
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2015
Total Pages: 337
ISBN-13: 019872778X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →"The past decade has witnessed changes in the ways judges for the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights are selected. The common aim has been securing greater professional quality of the judicial candidates. 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. Were these institutional reforms successful in guaranteeing greater quality of the candidates? Might they have any positive impact on the legitimacy of the European courts? Has the creation of the expert advisory panels in any way shifted the institutional balance, either horizontally among the various institutions of the respective international organization, or vertically between the organization and its member state? Above all, however, is the spree of 'judicial comitology' as currently applied a good method of selecting Europe's judges? These and a number of other questions are addressed in this volume in a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. First, the volume describes for the first time in depth the operation of the new selection mechanisms from different vantage points, including not just academic, but also practitioners' points of view. Second, having mapped the ground, it critically engages with selected common themes in a comparative way, analyzing the new mechanisms with respect to values and principles such as democracy, judicial independence, transparency, representativeness, and legitimacy"--Unedited summary from book jacket.