Fine-tuning the Jurisprudence: The ECJ's Judicial Activism and Self-restraint

Andreas J. Obermaier

No 2, Working Papers of the Vienna Institute for European integration research (EIF) from Institute for European integration research (EIF)

Abstract: Legal and political science scholars omit an important variable in explaining compliance with ECJ rulings: the fine-tuning in the follow-up cases. This paper shows with the Kohll/Decker social policy jurisprudence that, first, the Court applied the principles of free movement of services and goods to the Luxembourg health care system in the initial rulings in this series of cases and thereby challenged the institutional configuration of national welfare states. Step by step the ECJ extended the legal principles to other Member States and to similar cases. At the same time, however, the Court exercised self-restraint by narrowing the principles and by thus limiting the impact of its decisions largely to the less costly ambulatory sector. This fine-tuning of the jurisprudence influenced implementation processes and ultimately facilitated Member State compliance.

Keywords: European Court of Justice; European Court of Justice; judicial review; social policy; Luxembourg; free movement; health policy; welfare state; political science (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-09-15
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://eif.univie.ac.at/downloads/workingpapers/wp2008-02.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

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:erp:eifxxx:p0002

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers of the Vienna Institute for European integration research (EIF) from Institute for European integration research (EIF)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Gerda Falkner ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).