IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/eeupol/v26y2025i2p281-295.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are European Court of Justice judges biased towards their member states?

Author

Listed:
  • Sivaram Cheruvu

Abstract

The Court of Justice of the European Union’s rulings significantly influence the European Union’s single market, the trajectory of European integration, and the efficacy of the rule of law in Europe. However, due to the Court of Justice’s practice of delivering decisions per curiam without publicly available votes, the impact of individual judges’ biases on case outcomes remains largely unknown. This article explores whether the Court of Justice’s judges are biased towards their appointing member states. I provide evidence across multiple datasets that when a judge receives an observation ( amici curiae brief) from their appointing member state, the judge’s panel is more likely to rule in favor of the member state’s position. This result holds irrespective of whether a judge is serving as the rapporteur (judgment-writer).

Suggested Citation

  • Sivaram Cheruvu, 2025. "Are European Court of Justice judges biased towards their member states?," European Union Politics, , vol. 26(2), pages 281-295, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:26:y:2025:i:2:p:281-295
    DOI: 10.1177/14651165251320841
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14651165251320841
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/14651165251320841?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:26:y:2025:i:2:p:281-295. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.