Like any other adjudicative body, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is an essentially reactive institution: it cannot create disputes on its own motion, but it needs to be 'mobilized'. This simple observation leads us to a question of central importance in the field of courts and social justice: who brings social justice claims before the Court of Justice? This is a particularly salient question if confronted with the Court's restrictive legal standing rules: individuals and collective actors have limited access to the Court and engaging in EU litigation requires the availability of specific resources and allies. This paper relies on an original dataset of 291 rulings of the CJEU in the field of migration, complemented with qualitative empirical research, to unveil and map the actors that defend migrant rights in Luxembourg. The analysis offers an innovative and critical reflection on the accessibility of international courts by disadvantaged groups, showing how some features of the preliminary reference procedure affect the type of actors that engage in EU litigation.

Who Mobilizes the Court? Migrant Rights Defenders Before the Court of Justice of the EU

Virginia Passalacqua
First
2022-01-01

Abstract

Like any other adjudicative body, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is an essentially reactive institution: it cannot create disputes on its own motion, but it needs to be 'mobilized'. This simple observation leads us to a question of central importance in the field of courts and social justice: who brings social justice claims before the Court of Justice? This is a particularly salient question if confronted with the Court's restrictive legal standing rules: individuals and collective actors have limited access to the Court and engaging in EU litigation requires the availability of specific resources and allies. This paper relies on an original dataset of 291 rulings of the CJEU in the field of migration, complemented with qualitative empirical research, to unveil and map the actors that defend migrant rights in Luxembourg. The analysis offers an innovative and critical reflection on the accessibility of international courts by disadvantaged groups, showing how some features of the preliminary reference procedure affect the type of actors that engage in EU litigation.
2022
15
2
381
405
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/ldr-2021-0102/html
international courts; migrant rights; Court of Justice of the European Union; legal mobilization; social justice
Virginia Passalacqua
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2318/1890697
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