L’influenza della dottrina sulla giurisprudenza delle Corti europee

This article deals with the influence of the legal scholarship on the European highest courts, i.e. the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union, as can be measured from the references to pieces of legal scholarship in their respective rulings. Drawing on an empirical analysis of a large sample of judgments and decisions from the ECtHR, and of all the opinions of the advocates general before the ECJ, in the years 2008-2013, the authors conclude that both courts are silent as a rule, namely they rarely quote legal scholarship explicitly. However, there are some significant exceptions to this picture, and in some instances a specific work of legal literature has even had a relevant, though generally only indirect, impact on the outcome of a case.