The preliminary reference procedure has long been envisaged as a judicial dialogue between the European Court of Justice and national courts. However, in reality the relationship appears to be closer to one of growing separation rather than to a happy marriage between equal partners. This book tries to find out: what is behind this? A study of the existing literature, combined with a case law analysis and interviews with judges, has shown that there are a number of important stumble blocks...

Although American scholars sometimes consider European legal scholarship as old-fashioned and inward-looking and Europeans often perceive American legal scholarship as amateur social science, both traditions share a joint challenge. If legal scholarship becomes too much separated from practice, legal scholars will ultimately make themselves superfluous. If legal scholars, on the other hand, cannot explain to other disciplines what is academic about their research, which methodologies are t...

This book examines the uncertainties which arise when courts have to deal with complex empirical data and contested scientific evidence in public interest cases, but lack the necessary knowledge and training to do so. Expert contributors explore the strategies, methods and techniques applied by the courts to inform their decisions, reduce uncertainty and assist proportionality assessments.Moving beyond mainstream legal thinking, which evaluates whether courts should engage with pol...