The European Court of Justice and the Annulment of the Tobacco Advertisement Directive: Friend of National Sovereignty or Foe of Public Health?

In Case C-376/98 Germany v Council the European Court of Justice annulled a Directive which banned the advertisement and sponsorship of tobacco. The judgment sanctions regulatory policy-making at the national rather than the Community level. The paper examines the legal basis of the annulment, its effect on economic efficiency and the implied role of the Court in the formulation of public policy in Europe. Within the institutional limits of the judicial power to determine policy, the Court focused on whether or not disparate national laws restrict free movement and distort competition and affirmed the primacy of the nation state to regulate economic activity.     

A Political Economy Perspective of Judicial Review in the European Union: Judicial Appointments Rule, Accessibility and Jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice

The paper examines the benefits the sovereign member states of the EU expect to derive by granting the European Court of Justice the power to review the collective policy making decisions of the EU legislative bodies. Using the methodology of constitutional political economy it investigates the one-country one-judge rule of judicial appointments in the ECJ, the restrictions imposed on litigants to access the ECJ and the limits on the jurisdiction of the ECJ to review EU legislation. It also analyses how the presence of judicial review affects the size of the policy measures taken by the policy makers.     

Joint Dynamics of Legal and Economic Integration in the European Union

We evaluate the causal linkages between the economic and legal integration process that has characterised the formation of the European Union. Specifically, using the frequency of national references for preliminary rulings sent to the European Court of Justice as a measure of legal integration we investigate its joint dynamics with the expansion of intra-EU trade over the 1960–1998 time period. Our objective is to formally test whether any such linkages exist and the direction within which they have operated.     

The political economy of Solon’s law against neutrality in civil wars

Public Choice - In 594 BCE, the Athenian lawgiver Solon, called upon to resolve a deepening social crisis, introduced a new constitution and mandated that in civil conflicts, no citizen is to...     

Constitutional judicial review and political insurance

Considering constitutional judicial review of policy, the power of courts to annul legislation, as a political insurance mechanism to protect against losses from adverse election outcomes, the paper analyzes three questions: First, under what circumstances a political ruler, who wins an election and the right to propose measures of policy, subjects those measures to the checking powers of an independent judiciary. Second, the net expected gains of a political ruler from granting binary choice to the reviewing judiciary rather than open choice. Third, the equilibrium degree of policy review power granted to the judiciary. Differences in the policy preferences of competing politicians, the judiciary and the status quo, the probability of winning an election and the probability that the judiciary confirms legislation passed by the incumbent emerge as the main determinants of judicial review and its political independence.     

The Economics and Politics of the Structure of Public Expenditure

The paper derives a complete system ofdemand equations for public consumptionexpenditures as the outcome of rationalbehaviour in a model where governmentmaximizes expected electoral support. Theallocation of expenditures is found todepend not only on the prices of publicservices and total expenditure and tosatisfy the constraints of demand theory,which have been the focus of attention ofprevious empirical studies of theallocation of public expenditures, but, inaddition, on the prices of privateconsumption goods, the distribution ofvoter incomes and the expected change invoter support from varying the levels ofpublic provision.