Law Commons^™

Introduction, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

It is an honor to introduce this special issue of the Columbia Journal of European Law devoted to the legal method of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). That the issue consists of a single article should come as no surprise to anyone acquainted with Judge Koen Lenaerts, whose keen appreciation of the workings of the Court is quite simply unrivaled.

New Frontiers In The Relationship Between National And European Courts, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

Considering that a full fifty years have passed since the Treaty Establishing the European Community came into force, it seems appropriate to take a "long" view of the subject of this panel, namely, national courts and the courts of the European Union. I mean here to sketch the evolution, as I see it, of the challenge that consists of managing the "interface" between these two series of courts.

The central question pervading this discussion is simply stated: whether and to what extent the European Court of Justice ("Court of Justice" or "Court") (and the European institutions more generally) can count …

European Community Law From A U.S. Perspective, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

Although less than forty years have passed since the founding of the European Economic Community (now the European Community), the lifetime of the Community is well marked temporally. The term of each Commission furnishes a convenient time-line for measuring the Community's progress in legal integration. Since the 1970s, each year has been punctuated by two or more "summit" meetings of heads of state or government. These summits not only are key markings in their own right, but also furnish an occasion for additional monitoring of the Community's state of health. Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, the Community submitted …