Dissemination of Case-Law of the European Court of Justice and Efficiency

AuthorElena Falletti
ProfessionPhD in comparative law, Università di Milano, Research fellowship on Legal Language, Formal Language and Legal Expert Systems, Universität Münster
Pages86-89

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1. Introduction

The gratification derived from, and sense of belonging of citizens to, an institution, in particular to European institutions, is measured by several indicators. One of them is, first of all, the confidence that European citizens have in the judicial institutions of states and international organisations. This should be encouraging: the Eurobarometer shows that European citizens are satisfied with the role and the work of the European Court of Justice 1 in protecting their rights and interests. This is an outstanding outcome, which shows that the complaints of European citizens in respect of the gap between their daily life and the European institutions are being overcome. In this connection the action of information technology could help in disseminating the outcome of the judicial activity of the European Court of Justice and the Court of First Instance and improve the legitimacy of other European institutions 2 because of the persuasive arguments in the enforcement of EC law used by the judges in Luxembourg.

Accessibility, transparency and publicity are the best solutions in order to change opinions on the European Community in general 3 and engender a good feeling of belonging to the EU among European citizens 4. In line with this view it is considered that the dissemination of European case-law can develop access to justice for Member States' citizens by increasing the freedom granted to them which is recognised by the European Treaties: the freedom of movement of people, goods, services and capital.

2. Access to legal information and access to justice

A comprehensive and timely system for publishing laws and judicial decisions has important consequences for the rule of law. For efficient access to information on European case-law the judicial institutions should allow the users' service to see court judgments, the rulings of courts, case outcome and case management information, court procedures and forms, and informa-Page 87tion about processes to assist citizens to realise what their rights and benefits guaranteed by law are. Whether research information services should be available commercially or free of charge, in particular where there is shared access between the judiciary and courts, and the legal profession, can be discussed. Attention has to be paid to:

  1. legislative aspects, in particular with regard to privacy in publishing judicial and court information on the Internet;

  2. administrative aspects, in particular with regard to collecting and publishing mechanisms;

  3. technical aspects, in particular with regard to citation standards;

  4. environmental aspects, in particular with regard to interaction with statutes and regulations provided over the Internet and on involvement of publishers in the process; and with regard to interaction with commercially published legal information, particularly where publishers add value to court and judicial information 5.

    As part of this topic it could be interesting to develop the existing approach of Artificial Intelligence applied to dissemination of court case-law to back up transparency and access to legal information for European citizens 6.

    The Internet and information technology are instrumental in delivering Bentham's basic idea that people should have free access to the law 7. However, there remain some difficulties in this area. Part of the scientific community 8 summarises these as:

  5. absorbing the data;

  6. thinking conceptually;

  7. understanding legal structures, systems and institutions;

  8. currency and comprehensiveness;

  9. acknowledging that technology, as human activity, is not infallible.

    Nevertheless, the digital divide between citizens, as between young people and older generations, could be a problem in need of an urgent answer. In this sense, lack of information technology literacy could pose an additional barrier to public access of lay citizens to the law. Even if citizens are armed with knowledge of our legal systems and structures, and have access to the appropriate technology, what if they are unable to use that technology or to search the databases to achieve positive outcomes?

    Publishing information on a website is necessary to guarantee transparency and access to legal information for all citizens, not only for lawyers or professionals. On the other hand, effectively hiding it due to a number of skills the user needs to have (e.g. searchPage 88 engine syntax, results list navigation, web experience) virtually ensures that the members of the public who are not able to access it are totally excluded from the service's benefits 9.

3. The Internet's role in the European Court's case-law authoritativeness

On the other hand, the role played by Luxembourg judges in recent years to coordinate and harmonise EC law has been intense.

First of all, CELEX and later EUR-Lex have an outstanding role to play in coordinating, at the horizontal level, EC law in institutional matters and at the vertical level, EC law and national law.

EUR-Lex ambitions are now to reach the same horizontal and vertical coordination, not only with respect to the case-law of the European Court of Justice, but also with respect to the other sources of EC law: treaties, directives, preparatory acts, agreements, and so on.

This transparency operation is essential to have a common basis for the building of a European culture of rights, in particular of consumer protection, freedom of movement, freedom of establishment and also in the field of human rights.

The horizontal and vertical coordination of EC law is unsatisfactory when the European citizen is not able to benefit from those processes. In this regard the Internet has a big and almost irreplaceable role in engendering a common sense of European citizenship.

The new EUR-Lex also has a new search engine, N-Lex. N-Lex is a powerful weapon in the Europe-making process that can improve this project to facilitate the building of a European juridical common culture and it is also valuable for a common sense of European citizenship. N-Lex points out to the European citizens that national laws are part of EC law.

The making of a European common juridical basis for ordinary citizens, not only for professionals or for officials, would also be possible by using juridical search engines via the Internet due to their user-friendliness. If the results of a search with an engine are immediate, clear and appropriate, people's approach could swap from scepticism to confidence in EC law as the daily-life law, e.g. the rules in food safety, consumer protection, privacy protection etc., and not only the law of the Brussels administration.

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4. Transparency and efficiency

In many ways, transparency is an important feature of efficiency. First of all, transparency takes place in the context of bureaucratic, governmental and organisational action. In an efficient administration, organisation and management must be transparent to demonstrate that it offers the same treatment to each member of the society. Secondly, availability of information is also important. Sometimes, this is expressed as a duty to make information available or a general requirement of visibility of information. In the perspectives discussed in this paper the availability of information, in particular court decisions and precedents, is essential to allow citizens to participate in the development of EC law. Thirdly, another element of transparency involves fundamental accuracy and clarity. This may take the form of concern over the presentation of data. It may be expressed in broad requirements that information be, for example, observable and comprehensible and readily understandable, or by reference to its quality and completeness or essential meaning 10.

5. Conclusions

The electronic dissemination of European case-law via the Internet with search engines is part of e-government developments in European institutions. The application of ITC technologies in this specific democratic process in EU institutions allows a more friendly access of citizens to the bureaucracy. It also improves the approach - which has become more transparent and efficient - to the European initiatives and decisions. In this sense, transparency may reduce transaction costs in the judicial process and the dissemination of court decisions improve the accountability, confidence and prestige of the European institutions, in particular of the European judges who supervise citizens' rights and institutional relationships.

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[1] The European Citizens and the Future of Europe, Eurobarometer, Qualitative Study, May 2006, p. 51.

[2] K. Alter, Who Are the 'Masters of the Treaty'?: European Governments and the European Court of Justice, in International Organization, Cambridge, 1998, 52/1, pp. 149-176. A comparison with the American system can be found in J. J. Mondak, Policy Legitimacy and the Supreme Court: The Source and Context of Legitimation, Political Research Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Sep. 1994) , pp. 675-692.

[3] The Eurobarometer research shows that 52 % of European citizens are not interested in European Community affairs (The Future of Europe, cit., p. 13).

[4] O. Costa, The European Court of Justice and democratic control in the European Union, Journal of European Public Policy, 2003, pp. 740-761.

[5] D. McKechnie, The Use of the Internet by Courts and the Judiciary: Findings From a Study Trip and Supplementary Research, 11 Int'l J.L. & Info. Tech. 109, (2003), p. 112.

[6] On the application of Artificial Intelligence in dissemination of courts case-law, J. Zeleznikow, Using Web-based Legal Decision Support Systems to Improve Access to Justice, Information & Communications Technology Law, 2002, pp. 15-33.

[7] H.L.A. Hart, Biographical entry on Jeremy Bentham in Biographical Dictionary of the Common Law, (ed. W B Simpson), 1984, p. 44; R. Susskind, Transforming the law: essays on technology, justice and the legal marketplace, Oxford, 2001, p. 260.

[8] D. McKechnie, cit.

[9] D. McKechnie, cit.

[10] W. Mock, On The Centrality of Information Law: A Rational Choice Discussion of Information Law and Transparency, 17 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 1069, (1999), p. 1080.

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