New Research Platform: Judging in Europe

To create a research platform for studying the problems and challenges of national courts to adjudicate in a European legal context. 

National courts are crucial in the independent and impartial application and adjudication of European law. In most cases where conflicts arise in the context of European law, the national courts are the prime locus of conflict resolution. They are the key actors in guaranteeing fundamental rights and upholding a European rule of law. Therefore we aim to create a research platform to generate a new body of knowledge through cutting-edge interdisciplinary research on the administration of justice in Europe. The platform seeks to bridge academic research and day-to-day judicial practice of the national courts in the European Union. We aim to engage an interdisciplinary group of researchers within the Faculty of Law and beyond; to foster research and (net-) working with a high level of international scholarship on the study of national courts. 

We adopt a vanguard bottom-up perspective to study the inner-workings of national courts as a legal and social phenomenon in looking at how European pressures and challenges transform national courts both internally and externally.

we will work in close proximity with the judiciary and other stakeholders to not only contribute to the body of knowledge on (the organization of) national courts in the European context, but also to find practical solutions for the daily problems that national courts face in implementing, applying and interpreting European law.

The platform is coordinated by the Maastricht Centre for European Law's,  Monica Claes,  Marc de Werd  and supported byAnniek de Ruijter.