BOOK REVIEW* Judicial Review and the Rights of Private Parties in EC Law

Based on the thesis for which Dr Ward was awarded her doctorate from the European University Institute in Florence, Judicial Review and the Rights o f Private Parties in EC Law gives a comprehensive yet succinct account of the limits of judicial review and the extent to which the rights of private parties are adequately protected in European Community law. The author explains at the outset that the purpose of the book ‘is to critically examine the concepts of “individual rights” and “effective judicial protection” in the European Community legal order’.* 1 She then proceeds in a careful and thorough manner to show, through a detailed analysis of the case law of the European Court of Justice (‘ECJ’), the way in which the protection of the rights of individuals afforded by the ECJ is more vigilantly exercised in relation to Member States’ observance of and compliance with Community law than is the case in relation to the same observance and compliance by the Community institutions. The thesis developed by the author is a technical one, requiring close consideration of a great many cases. There is a real danger, when writing on such a subject, of becoming mired in the minutiae of the case law and losing the reader at an early stage in the process. Dr Ward capably overcomes this risk in a number of ways. In terms of the overall book, she sets the scene in Chapters 1 and 2 for the detailed discussion in the ensuing chapters. At the beginning of a number of chapters Chapters 3, 5, 7 and 8, for example she sets the context for the ideas she will be developing in that chapter. She explains the purpose of the particular chapter itself and how the objects of that chapter are to be achieved. At the end of the chapter, she draws the threads of the discussion together and reiterates the objectives of the chapter, which she has now established. At appropriate points in the text, she explains the objectives of a particular section of the book, placing that section in the overall framework she is constructing. In Chapter 6, for example, the author explains that a major objective of Chapters 6, 7 and 8 ‘is to table evidence of the Court’s failure to show “equal solicitude” when called on to ensure the effective protection of