Levels of Generality in the Legal Reasoning of the European Court of Justice

The level of generality or of abstraction used to describe a precedent, a right, or the legislative intent behind a statutory provision or constituent purpose behind a constitutional provision can have a decisive impact on the outcome of a case. Characterising it in narrow terms has the effect of reducing the scope of decision of a judgment; conversely, a broader characterisation provides more leeway for a judge in a case to encompass its facts within the precedent, right or purpose in issue. The issue raised by the level of generality problem is the extent to which courts have a discretion or freedom of manoeuvre as to the level of generality they decide upon, and thus whether generality and abstraction are manipulable in the hands of judges and are not really predetermined by the legal sources in question or an established judicial method of interpretation. Uncontrolled judicial discretion of this kind is problematic from the point of view of the rule of law and democracy, especially when adjudication concerns constitutional provisions, the equivalent in the EU being interpretation by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) of the EU Treaties; reversal of ECJ interpretation through Treaty amendment is particularly difficult to achieve because it requires unanimous coordination by the Member States. This article examines two alternative ways of determining the correct or appropriate level of generality issue in ECJ interpetation, coherence or the legal traditions of the Member States, and argues in favour of the latter as a less subjective method. Application of the two alternative approaches is tested in two areas of EU law, state liability and criminal law.