Selecting Europe's Judges - A Critical Review of the Appointment Procedures to the European Courts

Delivers cutting-edge knowledge about current institutional developments and reform Comparitively focuses on both European courts; the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights Provides a novel evaluation of a topical issue that involves academics, diplomats, members of international organisations, political scientists, and national and European civil servants The past decade has witnessed change in the ways judges for the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights are selected. The leitmotif has been securing greater professional quality of the judicial candidates, and, for this purpose, both European systems have put in place various advisory panels or selection committees that are called to evaluate the aptitude of the candidates put forward by the national governments. Are these institutional reforms successful in guaranteeing greater quality of the judicial candidates? Do they increase the legitimacy of the European courts? Has the creation of these advisory panels in any way altered the institutional balance, either horizontally within the international organisations, or vertically, between the respective organisation and its Member States? Above all, has the spree of 'judicial comitology' as currently practised a good way for selecting Europe's judges? These and a number of other questions are addressed in this topical volume in a comparative and interdisciplinary prospective. The book is structured into two elements: first, how the operation of the new selection mechanisms is captured and analyzed from different vantage points, and secondly, having mapped the ground, the book critically and comparatively engages with selected common themes, examining the new mechanisms with respect to values and principles such as democracy, judicial independence, transparency, representativeness, and legitimacy. Readership: Academics in the field of judicial selection and practitioners engaged in the process itself

Prologue:: Michal Bobek: The Changing Nature of Selection Procedures to the European Courts 1.: Henri de Waele: Not Quite the Bed that Procrustes Built: Dissecting the System for Selecting Judges at the Court of Justice of the European Union 2.: Damian Chalmers: Judicial Performance, Membership, and Design at the Court of Justice 3.: Jean-Marc Sauvé: Selecting European Union's Judges: The Practice of the Article 255 Panel 4.: Georges Vandersanden: The Real Test - How to Contribute to a Better Justice: The Experience of the Civil Service Tribunal 5.: Koen Lemmens: (S)electing Judges for Strasbourg: A (Dis)appointing Process? 6.: David Kosar: Selecting Strasbourg Judges: A Critique 7.: Armin von Bogdandy and Christoph Krenn: On the Democratic Legitimacy of Europe's Judges: A Principled and Comparative Reconstruction of the Selection Procedures 8.: Aida Torres Pérez: Can Judicial Selection Secure Judicial Independence? Constraining State Governments in Selecting International Judges 9.: Alberto Alemanno: How Transparent is Transparent Enough? Balancing Access to Information versus Privacy in European Judicial Selections 10: Bilyana Petkova: Spillovers in Selecting Europe's Judges: Will the Criterion of Gender Equality Make it to Luxembourg? 11: Daniel Kelemen: Selection, Appointment, and Legitimacy: A Political Perspective 12.: Mikael Rask Madsen: The Legitimization Strategies of European Courts: The Case of the European Court of Human Rights Epilogue:: Michal Bobek: Finding the European Hercules