The Preliminary Reference Process

Stacy A. Nyikos

European Union Politics, 2003, vol. 4, issue 4, 397-419

Abstract: Litigant desistment, i.e. voluntary litigant implementation of an ECJ ruling in a preliminary reference case that preempts the necessity for a national court decision, is a common - yet often overlooked - strategic behavior new to the study of the ECJ, national courts and the preliminary reference process. The hypotheses directed at predicting and investigating when such litigant behavior occurs are an outgrowth of the ‘implementation prejudice’ that national courts will overwhelmingly apply ECJ decisions in their rulings, which changes the opportunity structures of litigants. Understanding when litigants desist not only expands general knowledge concerning the underinvestigated implementation stage but also arguably could have important implications for our understanding of the evolution of ‘high’ court legitimacy.

Date: 2003
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/146511650344002 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:4:y:2003:i:4:p:397-419

DOI: 10.1177/146511650344002

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in European Union Politics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().