Brunell & Stone Sweet on 'Overriding the European Court of Justice?'

Thomas Brunell (Texas) and Alec Stone Sweet (Yale) have posted 'Overriding the European Court of Justice? Qualitative Evidence from Cases in the Carruba, Gabel, and Hankla Data Set (1987-1997)' on SSRN as a Yale Law School Public Law Working Paper (No. 217). This is the abstract:

In “Judicial Behavior under Political Constraints: Evidence from the European Court of Justice,” published in 2008 in the American Political Science Review, Carrubba, Gabel, and Hankla claim that the ECJ has been constrained – systematically – by two mechanisms: the threat of override on the part of member State Governments, acting collectively, and the threat of non-compliance on the part of any single State. In their article, CGH do not identify, let alone analyze, a single instance of attempted override. In this paper, Stone Sweet and Brunell examine what happened when the Member States sought to constrain the ECJ after the Court took positions opposed by the Member States. They failed.

This looks fascinating, and set to generate quite a bit of discussion.