Transnational Judicial Communication

• In Event: Courts in the European Union

Abstract

Judges were once thought of as purely domestic actors with powers to arbitrate disputes, interpret law and constitutional meaning, and serve as a check on the other branches of government through judicial review. The post-WW II environment saw the proliferation of international treaties, organizations, and courts shatter the role of the judge as purely a domestic actor. Judges create, interpret, and are consumers of international law. Great attention has been paid to the relationship between international courts and member state courts. This paper will address the understudied role of when and how does judicial communication between the international judge and domestic judge affect the absorption or rejection of international law into domestic courts? This paper begins by using Anne-Marie Slaughter’s “A Typology of Transjudicial Communication” on how judges communicate (direct dialogue, monologue, and intermediated dialogue) and adds to this typology the concepts of indirect dialogue and polylogue. These five mechanisms of communication are then empirically tested in exploring when and how each mechanism affects communication between domestic and international judges in the European Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, and their member state judges.

Author

• Kelley G. Littlepage, University of Houston